Sports

For certain eyes only

By Matthew Semisch

04/21/2015

In certain parts of the country, college football season starts sooner than many might think.

Some 200 miles east of Bottineau in the Red River Valley, die-hard fans have been busy getting ready for their local teams’ spring football games. North Dakota State will hold its spring game this Saturday in Fargo, while the University of North Dakota will hold its final spring scrimmage that same day in Grand Forks.

Until this year, Dakota College at Bottineau’s (DCB) football program ran similar spring operations. The Lumberjacks are being put through their paces again this spring, but only much more quietly than before.

That’s the way it has to be. Ahead of last season, DCB joined the Minnesota College Athletic Conference (MCAC), which doesn’t allow for official spring football practices and scrimmages.

Within the MCAC’s football operating code, the league mandates that the football season and practices can only start on a certain date. For the 2014 season, the first allowable date for practice and conditioning sessions was Aug. 4, 19 days before DCB opened its season with a 22-9 home win over Minnesota West.

Four months after last season ended - the Jacks finished 8-3 - DCB’s practice field is being put to use again. Only this time, it’s being used by the players without coaches present.

SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

Around 40 players from last year’s team plan to return in the fall. One of them, sophomore-to-be quarterback Austin Ruiz, is trying to adapt to a version of spring football that he hadn’t anticipated.

“I had no clue it would be like this,” said Ruiz, an Aurora, Colo., native. “It was something I had to adapt to, but we’re getting there. It’s not what I had in mind, but I’d love to have a coach there telling me what I’m doing wrong, what I’m doing right, just so I know what to work on.

“We do still talk with the coaches but it’s pretty hands-off besides that,” Ruiz continued. “It’s hard because they can’t see our progress and we can’t get feedback, but at the same time we’re still out there working.”

Ruiz and his teammates also use DCB’s campus facilities for weight and agility training on top of meetings with the Jacks’ coaching staff. Once a football is introduced into the equation, however, the coaches have to go away.

When asked how it compares to what he thought spring college football would be like, Ruiz likened it to refined version of what younger football players do together in their free time.

“This is more of backyard football with your friends when you’re a little kid than it is what you’d think of,” he said, “but that’s just because it’s just us, no coaches, but you just kind of deal with it.

“It’s not really conditioning but more mechanical, technical stuff. We’re working a lot on our route-running, our progressions, things like that, but there’s also a lot of individual stuff for us, too. Linemen work together on the (blocking) bags and the rest of us work on our stuff and then we’ll do seven-on-sevens.”

COACHES AS ADMINS

On the coaches’ side of spring ball, they have their own adjustment period to undergo. Tim Pfeifer is the only football head coach DCB has ever known, and he’s working to get used to his redefined spring role as part-coach, part-administrator.

Some parts of this new version of spring football count as business as usual. Others, not so much.

“Ever since we came back after Christmas, we’d have weight training in the mornings, normal stuff,” Pfeifer said, “and then the guys would go outside on their own and play seven-on-seven and do individual drills, but we as coaches can’t be present. 

“Basically we call them captains’ practices because that’s what they are: Teammates leading teammates. As long as the coaches aren’t present, they can do that as long as they want. We just can’t be there, can’t have anything to do with it.”

Pfeifer said that he still has plenty on his plate during the spring between recruiting new players and keeping an eye on present personnel. He wishes, however, that spring ball at DCB would have the same hands-on feel for him as it did before the school joined the MCAC.

“I know that the guys want me to come out and watch what they’re doing so that they can be evaluated, but I can’t be seen with them, because if someone turns us in, that’s a problem,” Pfeifer said.

“We’re busy enough,” he continued, referring to himself and the rest of his coaching staff. “There’s enough stuff to do between recruits visiting, sophomores leaving here, making sure kids get to classes, but would I enjoy two hours outside? You bet, I’d enjoy two hours outside.”

CHANGE UNLIKELY

The MCAC’s reasoning for its spring football rule is that, were it not in place, some schools would have an unfair advantage. The southernmost teams in the conference and Rochester - the only school in the league with an indoor practice facility to utilize - could start spring ball many weeks sooner than others.

“This spring, you could do it, but on the average spring, there’s only one team in the conference that could do a decent job with spring football and that’s Rochester because they’ve got the facilities,” said Steve King, the MCAC’s acting president for football. King is also the head football and softball at Minnesota State-Fergus Falls.

“The rest of us are a little bit reluctant to say that we should have spring football while (Rochester) can get full pads and go in a dome while some other schools might still have a foot of snow to deal with.”

What’s more, although King is the only MCAC football coach who coaches two sports, many more used to have dual roles.
That might make the spring ball rule sound redundant. It also seems unlikely, however, that the rule will be changed.

“I don’t see it being changed, to be honest with you,” King said. “I really don’t. It was brought up probably two or three years ago, and it was voted down then and I think it might be again.”