Nebraska assistant coach Ron Brown on the importance of off-season conditioning:
"That's why they put 'Coach' on your shirt. We just have to bring physicality out of the players. It's in there. I think there's something inside every young man, I don't care who he is. There's something inside him that says, ' I want to be physical. I want to be a tough guy.' That's certainly true with football players.
"But you can coach that thing down. You can coach that thing down to mediocrity. You can keep it to where it's just simmering. But you can get it to where it's exploding as well. You have to go down there and get it. Through winter conditioning, that's what we did. We reached inside of them and grabbed their hearts and tried to pull that physical play out.
"Normally in winter conditioning, you're not looking for a lot of cardiovascular conditioning (in football). But we pushed them in a cardiovascular way- not just so they could get in great shape. We wanted them to understand that we're going to invite pain and exhaustion in our life. We're going to embrace it. We're going to go after it.
"All that type of thing brings out that tenacity, that relentless pursuit, and that physical mentality that says, 'You know what, we can't control the final score. But we are literally going to go out and dominate our opponent. We're going to out-work them, out-effort them and out-hit them.' "
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