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Football
Buckeyes Ready for Football After Long, Hard Summer
By Brandon Castel

COLUMBUS — When Brian Rolle saw a van parked on the practice field, he couldn’t imagine what was coming next.

As a senior entering his fourth and final season at Ohio State, Rolle thought he had seen everything. He knew Eric Lichter, OSU’s strength and conditioning coach, liked to push the envelope with his workouts, but this seemed liked madness, even for him.

The Buckeyes were at the tail end of their “midnight madness” practice which ran from 10 p.m. to midnight. They were dead tired. They were ready to go home. It was time to get some sleep. Only here was this van sitting on the field and everyone knew that meant the night wasn’t over.

Brian Rolle
Photo by Jim Davidson

“We did it last year, but this year was harder,” said Rolle, who returns as Ohio State’s starting middle linebacker after finishing ninth in the Big Ten with 94 tackles a year ago.

“This year was hard. Last year we did the sandpit, army crawl, that type of thing, but who wants to push a van at 12 o’clock at night?”

Rolle had figured it out. After four years he has started to understand how Lichter thinks and realized the only way that van was getting off the practice field was if they pushed there. It only made sense, especially with the way his final summer in Columbus

“I honestly feel like it was (extremely tough). Not that anybody was out of shape, it was just a good hard summer,” the Florida native said.

“I just think our runs have evolved from last year. Some things we did last year we didn’t do this year. We did more things than last year. It was just one of those summers like ‘dang, what do we got today.’ Last year it was like you wake up in the morning and go get it over with, but this summer you had to worry about what was coming up next because the next thing could be even harder than the day before.”

Which brings us back to that van. What was it doing there? Had coach Lichter lost his mind? Could he really be insane enough to ask a group of extremely tired athletes to push around a van in the middle of the night?

Players began to murmur. Some thought about walking off the field.

“At first we were all complaining, but then we all took it like we’re going to have fun on the field together we might as well condition and have fun,” said Rolle, who will certainly draw some consideration for captain when the players vote later this month.

“This year it was long, it was hard, it was tiring, but I think guys had a lot of fun. We left with smiles on our faces.”

It was exactly what Lichter was hoping for, to push this group a little further than they had ever gone before while at the same time uniting them in their bitterness towards to the mean strength coach. Only it didn’t quite work that way, at least not for guys as mature as Rolle.

“It’s not a complaint, the coaches did a good job of pushing us harder this summer,” said the 5-foot-11 linebacker. 

“It’s not like they didn’t expect more from us before, but they knew they could push us to another level and everybody would take on that challenge.”

According to Rolle, it was up to the seniors to let the younger guys know that it was worth it to take on that challenge and succeed.

“We let guys know that the harder you push yourself in practicing and conditioning, it’s going to make the game that much easier,” he said.

“When you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t matter how hard somebody pushes you because you’re going to want to do it because it’s something you love to do.”

After all that “fun” over the summer, Rolle and the rest of the Buckeyes, who were ranked No. 2 in the preseason coaches’ poll Friday, are ready to hit the practice field for the first time today as they prepare for the 2010 season. Most are happy to trade midnight van hauls for helmets and shoulder pads, but the seniors know the reality that is 29 practices in the blistering humidity of the August heat.

The Buckeyes got through that truck deal during conditioning, but there is another truck staring at them now, one that is saying "Yeah, you got through the first truck, but this truck means there is no letup in store now that camp is here."

"Coach Tressel always drives a truck during camp," said Ross Homan,  "so his theme is going to work. Put on the hard hat and grind."

“The first week (of camp) is always fun,” Rolle said.

“Everybody loves to run and hit, but when the middle of that second week comes and your legs are sore, you’ve got to let guys know that two weeks from then we’re going to be lining up against Marshall.”

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