| | ESPN.com
With training camp underway for every NFL team, ESPN.com continues its series of burning questions with the experts at Bristol University.
What did you hate most about training camp?
Chris Mortensen |
Preseason games
The biggest bummer of camp is the preseason games. Otherwise, I always found camp to be terrific. From a reporter's perspective, camp is a great time of getting a grasp on a team's entire roster. Reporters work long days during camp, but no reporter could really complain about training camp. | |
John Clayton |
Dorm rooms
I covered the Pittsburgh Steelers' camp and had to stay in a dorm room at St. Vincent's College. The rooms didn't have any air conditioning to combat the heat and humidity, so I had to open my windows. When I was working at night, I was spending more time swatting bugs than writing stories. The big bugs would be flying through my window, but I had to keep the window open to get the air moving through the room. | |
Mark Malone |
Repetitive practices
When I was a player, the facilities weren't as luxurious as they are now. They were very stark with no air conditioning. During practice, we had contact drills everyday, and sometimes twice a day. The difficult part is the grueling repetition and the soreness that comes with that. For a veteran, it's so repetitive. Six weeks would be a long time to be sequestered in a nasty environment where you are sore all the time and have to look at the same people. And the football games don't mean anything. As a veteran, it was hard to focus on what you needed to do because camp is set up for the younger players and how to integrate them. | |
Andrea Kremer |
Work
In camp, you are working for so many entities -- SportsCenter, ESPNEWS, NFL 2Night, Radio, ESPN.com -- and what I wanted to do was hang out and talk to players and coaches. There are always live shots and other job-related issues. It's a busy time with so many responsibilities. I just want to be able to talk to people. | |
Mike Golic |
Camp
Just camp itself. I hated training camp. It's stinks. It's awful. I had to get up at 6:30 and be in bed at 11:30 or midnight with maybe a half-hour nap in between. I played for coaches who believed in tough training camps. We were hitting all the time, morning, afternoon and night. You couldn't look ahead to the next day; you looked ahead to the next five minutes. | |
Merril Hoge |
Short summers
It interrupted my summer. Just when my summer was getting started, I had to go stay in sweaty, hot dorms and get beat up everyday. Summer lasted about 16 days, and then it was over. | |
Sean Salisbury |
Boredom
Around the third or fourth day of camp, you are over the excitement of being at camp. It becomes a drudgery. There's the repetition of running every single play before the first exhibition game. There are still 90 guys on the field, making it look like a cattle ranch. And your body starts to break down. | |
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