Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Spear football beat reporter
I feel it. You feel it. Your dog laying sideways, with its tongue falling out of its mouth, panting heavily feels it.
SJSU head coach Brent Brennan felt it, too.
Brennan, with a brown towel wrapped around his neck, entered his weekly Tuesday afternoon press conference after jogging in San Jose’s skin-melting 100-degree plus heat.
“I’m gonna grab a water hang on, sorry,” he said after initially taking the pulpit to talk about the Spartans’ upcoming matchup against Auburn this Saturday.
Five minutes later, he’d exit stage left again.
“Go ahead,” Brennan said to me while wiping beads of sweat off his forehead. Naturally, I asked about how Alabama’s unrelenting heat and humidity will affect the Spartans.
“Both of your questions are about two things that are completely out of our control; the environment and the weather. All we can do is worry about how well we prepare over the next few days.”
All the Spartans can do is control variables like sleep, hydration and eating.
“We’ve had more hydration breaks in the last two weeks than I’ve ever had.”
There’s also a personal responsibility put upon the players.
“There’s a big part of it that’s up to them [upperclassmen] to teach the young players, right? ‘This is what time you go to bed. This is how you eat. This is how you sleep. This is how you hydrate.’”
The Spartans have to treat their bodies with the same detail-oriented care Ferris Bueller’s dad gave the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
If they don’t, it’ll be an excruciatingly long 60 minutes of football filled with cramps and even worse. For those with a weak stomach, I wouldn’t suggest clicking the link.
During the Utah and Florida thriller from the weekend, Brennan noticed “the turf was really wet.”
A slick surface would turn what would’ve been a Reggie Bush-esque cutback to a play that pulls your feet out from under, making you parallel with the ground, before landing on your coccyx with a prominent thud.
“If you’re looking at the forecast, we are going to have some rain that day, so we have to be ready for all that, but we’ll bring our rain gear.”
