For football coaches, it’s a dilemma as old as the rulebook and as clear as a foggy window - how much work is too much work?

 

Hard work and college football have gone hand in hand from the days of Walter Camp and John Heisman all the way to the present. Teams one through 125 in this year’s FCS rankings are all going to work hard, but, naturally, some feel the need to work more than others.

 

For years, West Virginia has prided itself on outworking its opponents. There have been countless occasions when good, old-fashioned hard work and will-power have helped the Mountaineers prevail.

 

And, of course, there have been other instances when too much work has turned into a double-edged sword and harmed the team. We can all think of instances through the years when overworked teams hit a wall at the end of the season.

 

I distinctly recall something the supremely self-confident Jim Carlen once said about how he prepared his West Virginia football teams back in the late 1960s - “I’m not losing football games on the practice field” - meaning Carlen’s teams rarely hit in practice during the season at a time when toughness was football’s most valued attribute.

 

Veteran offensive coordinator Joe Wickline has been around the game for a long, long time and he readily admits he doesn’t possess the answer to this age-old question.

 

“There are two things professionally that have yet to be answered and are always a dilemma at staff-meeting tables,” he began. “No. 1, do we hit enough? And, when you hit so much, when is too much hitting? If you don’t hit enough you’re not tough enough, you’re not physical enough. Well, if you hit too much no one’s left and you beat everybody up.

 

“Same thing with work ethic. At what point does the workaholic begin to give no dividends? I’m a prime example. I’m concerned someone is outworking me in every single phase we do. To me, that’s a winning edge, but it can also be scary because you’ve got to be able to get away from it.”

 

The NCAA rulebook has helped the process these days by limiting the amount of time coaches are allowed to be with their players.

 

But what players choose to do on their own is solely up to them. Some will spend endless hours getting in the work they feel they need, while others will take any extra time they have off to remain fresh when the season reaches its climactic point.

 

It’s the same deal for coaches.

 

There are no rules governing how long a coach chooses to watch game tape, or how many hours he spends in his office putting together a game plan for the following week.

 

Some will go as long as it takes to get done what they need to get done. Others will sometimes step away briefly to re-charge their batteries and get a fresh look at things.

 

Which approach is best?

 

It depends.

 

Senior quarterback Skyler Howard, who spent the last half of the 2015 season a physically beat-up football player, believes the hard work he is putting in now during the summertime will pay big dividends when the calendar flips to November.

 

“If you preserve yourself too much now you’re just going to get beat up during the season,” he explained. “I think getting under the squat rack and doing 300, 400 pounds, that’s going to prepare me and keep me healthier throughout the season instead of laying on the couch and watching some TV,” he said.

 

Yet, when the season was over, following West Virginia’s come-from-behind victory over Arizona State in the 2016 Cactus Bowl - five months after the season began - Howard admitted he was eagerly looking forward to the week he was about to spend in California away from the game.

 

His body simply needed the time off.

 

“The little breaks in between, Fourth of July, and the week away before we start camp (is enough),” he said. “I may go home for a few days for that week (before camp) but I’m ready to get back to work. I want to be ready to go full-throttle for camp.”

 

Defensive coordinator Tony Gibson has been coaching for more than 20 years and he understands the juggling act of being a highly-trained athlete and a well-rounded college student.

 

“There are two ways of looking at it. Obviously they are going to be here anyway so let us work with them, or, are we doing too much and these kids are not enjoying being a college student?” Gibson said. “You go to the season to bowl prep to spring ball to summer to August. It’s an everyday cycle, but I think that we have a good setup here the way we do it.”

 

Ah, the setup, the plan or, as Wickline calls it, “the process.”

 

The process is what guides all coaches. The ones who have a consistent plan, believe in it and surround themselves with people who believe in the plan are the ones who usually are the most successful.

 

Coaches who adjust, constantly tweak or dramatically change their plans throughout the year, or have people around them constantly questioning their plan, are the ones who typically seem to run into trouble during the season.

 

“You work the system and you stay with the system,” Wickline explained. “You have a plan and you stay with the plan so decisions have already been worked out. Decisions on game day and during the work week were already made a long time ago, so basically you just put a system in.

 

“There are gut decisions - go for two, go for it on fourth down, punt, not punt, field goal, play this guy, don’t play him, move the formation around, but by the time you get to game time most of it has been structured. Decisions have already been made and all you try and do is hone and get better at what you do,” Wickline said.

 

Running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider agrees.

 

“You can’t really worry about what everyone else is doing,” Seider said. “No matter what you do everybody is going to be different. Some guys have more than what we’ve got. You can’t compete with what Alabama is doing right now, or Ohio State. You’ve got to take what you’ve got and you’ve got to make it work.

 

“But meeting with them and coaching them, you have to be careful how hard you push them because we want them to have fun with this, too,” he continued. “It’s a fine line.”

 

“At a place like West Virginia where winning is key and you really want to lean on guys, I think there is a way you do it and you let them be themselves,” Wickline added. “Something I learned from Coach (Dana) Holgorsen back in 2010 is you’ve got to be careful and don’t wear them out. You don’t wear out their legs, you don’t wear their minds out because after a while they won’t be fresh when they report (for camp) and then you get into the race.”

 

Generally speaking, older players seem to handle the grind of a long season much better than younger players, simply because they’ve been through it before. They know how to get through a work week when they are sore after a tough, physical game, and they understand how to make sure the prior game doesn’t negatively affect the next one.

 

But because of roster limitations, top players leaving school early for the pros and other reasons, younger players have now become such an integral part of the equation.

 

Sometimes these young guys are mentally and physical ready, other times they are not, which means coaches have to pay close attention to how hard they are working their players at all times.

 

“When you go back to my era, freshmen just didn’t play,” said Wickline. “It was unheard of for a freshman going in and playing so his role on the football team was being a developmental guy and working on the scout team. Now as guys graduate early and go to the NFL early, as guys get injured and scholarships were reduced, obviously over a while now freshmen are depended on, especially situationally. Those are the guys you worry about.

 

“But I think it goes back to the individual,” Wickline noted. “There are some guys who are 18 that might as well be 25, and vice versa. The biggest thing you will see is what we call the ‘wall’ or that season wall when a freshman comes in and plays and by game three or four, he hits a wall. He went, went, went and he’s never gone that hard before and competed that hard to get his job and all of a sudden, bam, he hits a wall. You try and do what you can do and take each guy differently and you measure it out and get them to be the best they can be.

 

“You’ve got to take care of them in the summer and you’ve got to take care of them in the fall,” admitted Wickline. “They’re not used to this grind and they’re not used to this process. I’ve seen guys that were freshmen that never flinched and kept on going, but each guy is different.”

 

“That’s why it’s really, really hard to count on an 18-year-old freshman at this level to come in and play right away,” Gibson added. “If he can be a backup and come in and play 10, 15 plays, that’s great.”

 

And coaches, too, sometimes need a break.

 

Keeping things fresh for them is just as important as getting the work they need to get ready for the season. Again, it’s finding the proper balance, which can sometimes mean stepping away, even when others may still be working away.

 

“I need a vacation,” Seider admitted. “I need to get away. About a week or two away and I will be charged up. I tell (the players), ‘I love you but I don’t want to see you right now. I want a break.’”

 

Then, it’s right back to work.