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View Full Version : The origin of Pro Day



PA Season Ticket Holder
03-13-2003, 03:02 PM
March 11, 2003) -- Let me take you back to 1960. The University of Mississippi and then-head coach John Vaught initiated what led to what we call "Pro Days." Ole Miss would hold spring practice early, and by early, I mean they would start in the first week of February and wind up in the middle of March. They would run a program they called "football track" in which every player that was on the football team had to participate.

In essence, this was what we refer to as an "offseason program" today, although it's much earlier in the calendar. The culmination of this was that on a Friday or a Thursday, they would have these guys ready to go for an extensive spring workout. Other colleges began to follow suit, and Pro Days were born soon thereafter.

Until maybe 10 or 11 years ago, we didn't have the type of Pro Day that we have now where a school designates a specific day for its seniors to work out. We used to have coaches call a player and set up an appointment for a workout. The problem a player would encounter was that several teams could call and set up appointments of their own, and pretty soon, a player was working out six or seven times in one week, sometimes even two or three times in the same day.

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