Camps, Combines and Competition

Prep football, and covering prep football, is no longer an August-November pursuit. Although summer camps are nothing new, they have developed and spun off a cottage industry of

QUARTERBACK COMBINES, LINEMAN COMPETITION AND LINEBACKER CHALLENGES

My question is, what's the point? Is it for these athletes to showcase their skills, does it promote team chemistry or is it just another example- albeit at the prep football level- of our country's insatiable year-round appetite for anything with a pigskin?

Tim O'Halloran, otherwise known as Edgy Tim, breathlessly blogs from the Maine West 7-on-7 camp that took place last week.

The Sun-Times has a report from the Bolingbrook Lineman Challenge. Apparantly, the Naperville North Huskies, the defending 8A champs who also won this competition last year, had a bunch of lineman show up this year. The competition consists of a 40-yard-dash, an obstacle course and a medicine ball throw.

What, no egg toss? What about the potato sack race?

I'm sure it's a fun competiton for the high schoolers, to work out in front of their peers. But aside from that, why are we doing this?

I'll drill down on this topic a little deeper in a later post...