To the average college football fan, everything begins next month when the teams begin practicing for the fall season.
However the success of the team in the fall is largely determined a lot by what goes on in the weight room during the summer, which is true for the University of Utah, coming off its perfect 12-0 season.
Barry Johnson has taken over for Matt Balis as Ute strength coach, and as he puts it, "Summer is my game time."
Balis was given a lot of credit for the Utes' success the past couple of years, and to some followers of Utah football, his loss was almost as significant as losing Urban Meyer and Alex Smith.
But new coach Kyle Whittingham hired Johnson less than a month after taking over as Ute coach and is thrilled with the job he has done with the Utes over the past six months.
Like Whittingham, Johnson is a former Cougar, graduating from BYU in physical education in 1987. But also like Whittingham, he's now a true Ute, and he's been working hard to keep up the strength level of the Ute football program as well as the U.'s other athletic programs.
Johnson, who has experience as a strength coach in several programs around the country, has been very impressed with what he has seen in the Ute football program over the past six months.
"This is the hardest working team I've ever been involved with," he said. "I'm really impressed with this team. The discipline and work ethic is really good. The previous strength coach did a great job of instilling a great work ethic."
Johnson has worked at the University of Pacific, Washington State, Idaho State and the University of Virginia, where he was the head strength coach for three years.
However, three years ago he decided he wanted to move back out west with his family and get out of the college profession. He was working at a high school in Idaho when Idaho State called.
"They called me out of the blue," said Johnson, who decided to give it a try. After working in Pocatello for two and a half years, he was offered the job at Utah last January.
"This is a place that's going to explode athletically," he said.
"They've already shown what they can do. Things are in place that can make this a fantastic place for a strength coach. I like the direction coach Whittingham is going and the same thing with coach (Ray) Giacoletti."
Whittingham works closely with Johnson and says the work the players do in the off-season is vital to the success in the fall.
"It's critical," Whittingham says. "When all is said and done, the players spend more time with the strength coach than with their position coach. You cannot underestimate the importance of the strength coach."
Whittingham said it's important for the players to want to work for Johnson and praises him for implementing "the cutting edge of what is going on" in strength training.
Both Johnson and Whittingham stress there's more than one way to train athletes and that the key is "how you do it" rather than "how much you do."
"It's more than just hard work," Johnson says. "You don't just work for the sake of work. If you overtrain the athletes, then you don't get the best results."
Johnson learned his trade under Don Chu, a nationally renowned authority in sports training and plyometrics and uses many of his philosophies in his training techniques.
"My motto is 'get athletes faster in three steps,' and everything is geared toward that," Johnson says. "My way is 'three steps and a cloud of dust' with a lot of speed and explosiveness. But I'm also concerned about the mental toughness aspect, which was already in place here."
Johnson says every athlete he works with, whether it is a football player, basketball player or soccer player, has a need for three-step quickness.
"In every sport you need to be able to accelerate in three steps and be able to stop and change direction," he said.
To accomplish that "three-step quickness" Johnson emphasizes the 10-yard dash, vertical jumping and power clean lifting in his training techniques, in addition to several other lifting techniques.
Each player has short-term goals and long-term goals, called "Gold Standards" to work toward. Most of the Ute players have been working out in the Ute training facility since the first week of June and according to Johnson, "We're pretty much right on schedule" for the upcoming season.
The only real negative to Johnson's experience so far was the freak injury earlier this month to starting defensive end Marquess Ledbetter, who tore a tendon in his thigh while lifting.
"That was very unfortunate," said Johnson. "It's the first time I've ever seen an injury in the weight room that has cost a player a season."
In June after most of the players returned from a break, the players lifted four days a week and ran three days a week. But that changed in July to four days of running and three days of lifting.
"The goal is to have the players conditioned enough for two-a-day practices in August," Johnson said. "Then we'll polish things off in the three weeks after that."
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