Stephen McGee shares his worst conditioning experiences

Key notes from Stephen McGee interview

• The worst conditioning experience I've ever had was like two years ago, after the Pebble Creek member-guest. My wife made me workout. I had a lot of poison in the bloodstream, that’s all I’ll say. People were looking at me in the weight room, and I was struggling to even move the bar.
   
• The worst actual conditioning I ever had was a conditioning test we had in 2006. We had to run 24 110s. It was the early Franchione days. On the football field, in College Station in the summer, the dew starts to burn off, and it gets hot. I was not a skill guy coming out of high school. I always thought of myself as a little unathletic, but here I am running with the wide receivers. We had 14 seconds to run across the field, so we're sprinting. The hardest part was stopping before you hit the wall. In the whole day, we got to take a single one-minute timeout the entire time.
   
• I've never been a conditioning guy. I like to do curls in the gym, that's it. The better you look, the better you play. Those are facts.
   
• In Austin that day, it was hot - like 85 degrees. You're tired, yes, but you're more tired of getting hit. It hits differently than a conditioning beatdown. The conditioning test was much more difficult because it's not a win until you're done. Something about taking it to the t-sips, it leaves you feeling better. It was like a party after that game.
   
• It is vital to have a shutdown corner, but the one position that a quarterback and an offensive coordinator really hate is a game-changer at defensive end. You have to slide protection, chip and cut block that guy. It's different than the 1-on-1 matchup between a corner and a receiver. He might break up a play, and it's frustrating. It’s still more important to plan for the end.
   
• For a defensive coordinator, it's huge to have a shutdown corner. You can play cover one, man and cover two. It's very important. Having a shutdown corner who can play on the short side in college with the wide hashes, it's the second most important position in the defensive unit.
   
• The nickel is so important because of the amount of snaps they get in today's college football. The chances of the nickel sam playing the majority of the snaps is much higher than a true sam linebacker. The slot wide receiver is generally going to be off the ball. That is where a guy like Cole Beasley was so good. He couldn't get off press coverage, but if you give him space off the ball to release, those slot guys can get crafty. This is where the nickel sam comes in and being able to jam that guy is huge. Being able to stop the run from that position the way Charles Woodson could towards the end of his career with the Packers is big as well.
   
• That's Bullcrap: COVID-19 is bullcrap, but Major League Baseball and the guys that don't want to play baseball because they're only going to make $7 million while 40 million Americans are unemployed is also bullcrap. Woe is me. It's time to go out there and play for the country. It might be time to bring out the replacements. I'll go all Kenny Powers out on the hill if I need to.