Welcome back to another edition of the Wolverine.com podcast. I'm Chris Ballas with me, Doug Skeen, Michigan's five-time all-big-10. Well, no, not five-time all-big-10, five-time Big Ten champion and one-time All-Big-10, first-team, all-big-10 player and NFL star for the New England Patriots, at least a starter. So skiing, I appreciate you being here, man.

Let's talk a little spring football.

First things first.

I want to know your thoughts on when it comes to those 15 practices and everybody says,

well, that's a time for guys to separate or guys to really make their move.

How big can that be in preparing a guy for the, for the 2024 season or season or for the next season and giving him so men, I'm going into that?

Well, it's not the end, all of it, Ballas, but it's the beginning, right?

So obviously, fall camp is the final exam.

If you want to earn that starting spot and be in the top five, offensive linemen or any other position group on the field.

But spring football is the basis to get to be a finalist come fall. So spring football is the

time to reset all the fundamentals, the way you approach the entire your outlook on the game,

the way you approach the meetings, the practices, everything else. And because it's

such a condensed period of time, and you only have so much time on the practice field,

and what's different now for these guys than decades ago when we played, Spring Football was a daily

bloodbath of really, really physical practices to see who could survive. And it was a toughness building

exercise in a lot of ways back in the day.

But now that time is there.

It just, it's limited because the NCAA has limited the amount of full football practice time.

It doesn't change the intensity of whenever that time is.

For us, it was a lot for these guys.

Now it's condensed.

It doesn't matter.

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