The schedule is the schedule. Except when practice starts 90 minutes late -- by choice of the head coach.
And practicing 100 miles away from your own SEC facilities at an up-and-coming FCS program?
Yeah, designed.
Sunday practices for three-straight weeks, including under the lights in your home stadium?
Check.
As college football continues its breakneck evolution off the field, its coaches also are adapting to help their teams be positioned for success on the field.
Especially as more games are played on different nights of the week, not just Saturdays and not just not Saturdays in the MAC, and in more unique locations with compelling circumstances.
So, Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman had the Fighting Irish work the first three Sundays of this month, including a night session inside Notre Dame Stadium.
Why? In part because preseason No. 6 Notre Dame opens its season away from home for the fifth consecutive season, this time at No. 10 Miami under the Hard Rock Stadium lights at 7:30 p.m. on ABC.
"You try to make the scrimmage about something to simulate some type of game environment where that there is a reward for winning," Freeman said. "And, losers are losers. So, we try to create that type of environment to see your guys compete with a little pressure. They competed. They did a really good job competing.
"We know these guys will go, we know these guys will compete. There are some things we gotta clean up all three phases. Fortunately, we don’t play today. We got two weeks. But, we gotta fix a couple little minor details with urgency. That’s what we’ll get back to work doing here this afternoon."
Missouri, meanwhile, is back at home after conducting its practice Saturday at Lindenwood University, an NCAA FCS program some 100 miles from Columbia, Missouri, and just outside St. Louis.
"I wanted to see where we were at," said Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz. "I wanted to see from a mentality standpoint, would we start fast. Did we have the right mindset? Did we come out ready to play? In a road game, you can't ease into it.
"You look at our poor performances last year, three of them we were really, really slow."
To the head coach's point. Missouri fell behind Texas A&M 24-0 at halftime, trailed Alabama 13-0 and faced a 21-6 deficit at South Carolina.
Alabama got put through one of the final sessions of its preseason camp portion on Saturday -- after Kalen DeBoer deliberately started practice 90 minutes late. He wanted to simulate a weather delay, which has in recent years become a much more common occurrence in college football, particularly early-season games with extreme heat and humidity.
"We actually had it originally scheduled earlier, moved it back just to get a little more heat," Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer told reporters. "It's good for us. We even conditioned at the end; did some extra work.
"And, so, just trying to get ready in every way possible."
Meanwhile, at rival LSU, Brian Kelly worked his team beneath the lights of Tiger Stadium -- prelude to the 'Battle of Death Valley' in two weeks when LSU visits Clemson. It's a game that features Kelly's ninth-ranked Tigers against Dabo Swinney's fourth-ranked Clemson Tigers.
"Yeah, we want to be able to duplicate a night game the best we can," Kelly said. "So, give our guys the opportunity to feel the night experience. We'll have the (LED) boards lit up, things that will distract you, we have to work on it so that they don't get distracted by the noise and by the boards lit up. That really is the emphasis, scrimmaging in that kind of environment."
Another SEC program, Texas, saw its head coach channeling his inner jerk. Yep, Steve Sarkisian felt he might have been a bit too kind last week to his Texas Longhorns.
"They were probably like, 'Coach Sark's being a jerk," Sarkisian said Saturday of his Longhorns offensive players. "Well, I'm being a jerk for the best interest of them so they can perform."
Texas, coming off an SEC runner-up finish and College Football Playoffs semifinals appearance, is the AP's preseason No. 1 team for the first time in program history and set to open its season Aug. 30 at No. 3, defending CFP champion Ohio State.
