PLATTEVILLE, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin offensive lineman Trey Wedig’s challenges in his first week of preseason camp weren’t limited to creating running room and protecting his quarterback.
The Badgers’ dormitory accommodations at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville also meant the 6-foot-7 Wedig had to figure out how to sleep comfortably in a twin XL-sized bed.
“My feet are hanging off or hitting that wooden frame,” Wedig said. “I sleep diagonally so I don’t hit that wooden frame.”
The Badgers spent a week working out in Platteville, about 70 miles from Wisconsin’s Madison campus. New Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell got the idea to train out of town from his coaching tenure at Cincinnati, which is spending a 25th straight year practicing about 30 miles from campus at Higher Ground Conference & Retreat Center in West Harrison, Indiana.
Schools that train out of town rave about how isolating themselves from campus builds camaraderie that can carry a team through the grind of a season. Fickell said after his team’s final practice in Platteville that “there’s no doubt” he’d want to make this trip again.
“They really enjoyed it,” Fickell said. “They’ve asked several times about, ‘Can we stay here for another week?’ … I’m the same way. If we could stay here another week, I’d love it.”
Wisconsin and Cincinnati are among a shrinking number of programs training off campus.
Of the 93 Football Bowl Subdivision programs that responded to an Associated Press survey, only Cincinnati, Wisconsin, Arizona State and Florida State are holding portions of training camp outside the city in which their campus is located and having at least one overnight stay. Ten years ago, 14 different schools spent at least part of the preseason working out of town.
That list of 14 schools included Northwestern, which has permanently discontinued its training camp in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which had been an annual tradition since 1992. Some of the hazing allegations that led to the firing of Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald and the filing of at least a dozen lawsuits stem from those Kenosha camps.
Brian Crow, who has researched hazing while chairing the department of sport management, hospitality and tourism at Slippery Rock University, says it’s encouraging to see fewer teams leaving campus for preseason workouts.
“I believe there is a correlation to more bad behavior the further from campus they are,” Crow said.
Elizabeth Allan, a University of Maine professor of higher education, conducted a 2018 study with colleague Mary Madden in which 57.1% of students reported hazing was most likely to happen off campus.
Allan noted her survey wasn’t limited to athletes and didn’t collect data specifically focusing on off-campus training sites like the one in Kenosha, so it couldn’t determine whether there was any indication these types of camps increased the risk of hazing.
“I don’t think that just having a preseason football camp off campus will cause hazing,” said Susan Lipkins, a psychologist and the author of “Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment and Humiliation.” “But in groups that already have hazing as part of their rituals or traditions, it is very likely they will occur in those kinds of situations.”
Lipkins suggested that teams going off campus for preseason workouts should be extra vigilant in making sure there’s enough supervision to avoid hazing incidents. Wedig said Fickell warned Wisconsin’s players against hazing by telling them, “We’re not doing that,” as soon as the Northwestern reports surfaced.
“He specifically told us, ‘Stay away from any of that stuff. We’re not even going to give it a gray area,’” Wedig said.
