Big Ten football survival involves a lot of hard work - hard work that usually goes unnoticed by the fans that wake up early on fall Saturdays to tailgate and cheer for their favorite team.

While these fans spend their summers at the cottage barbecuing and chatting with their peers about the upcoming season - and making their predictions for what will happen - college players around the country are sweating their summer days away to give fans the show they expect to see come fall.

MSU is one of the big-time football programs that puts their players through a hard summer regimen. But summer training is essential to the football season that begins in the fall and starts with the Spartans’ Sept. 8 showdown against Central Michigan at Spartan Stadium.

“I think what we have been doing thus far as a team will lead (to success),” senior linebacker and co-captain Josh Thornhill said of MSU’s summer training. “But you can’t ever be satisfied with where we’re at. I always try to find a way to make each week harder than the next doing different stuff, doing more stuff, just putting things in the work-outs to make each week tougher to keep raising the bar.”

MSU trains four days a week in the summer and that involves lifting, running and seven-on-seven game simulation drills.

Throwing up the pounds

Lifting takes place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays under the tutelage of strength and conditioning coach Ken Mannie - who MSU sports information director John Lewandowski said prefers not to do interviews. But Spartan players know Mannie’s workouts can be quite an ordeal.

“(It’s) intense,” Thornhill said. “That about sums it up. Anybody that’s worked out under coach Mannie knows that’s about it, you never know what to expect. A guy could be doing a million things and you never know when to expect it to end.”

Senior wide receiver and co-captain Herb Haygood knows what it’s like training under Mannie and he said the players better be ready each time they’re in the weight room.

“In the weight room, if you don’t come ready to lift, you might as well not even come,” Haygood said. “You got to be ready to go anytime you go in there - you got to be ready to go.”

The entire team trains the same way, with the only variable being the amount of weight a player is able to lift.

“Pretty much all of our workouts are the same,” Haygood said. “It just depends on how much weight you do. We do the same things.”

But Thornhill said the weight room is a democratic setting - allowing players to choose the order in which they will work out instead of having a coach dictate their training.

“Basically it’s up to the guys, whatever they feel like doing first,” Thornhill said. “They could start off with neck and shoulders then move to bench press then after that, you can go upper body or lower body, whatever you want.

“You can pick various machines on upper body, various machines on lower body and then we’ll have a couple things in there for finishers - just different types of stuff like pushing a sled.”

The weight room might seem like boot camp, but Thornhill said it’s not as serious as advertised.

“(It’s) serious to a point,” Thornhill said. “It’s not like game atmosphere or anything like that. People are working hard, but at the same time, they might joke around a little bit. But for the most part, it’s guys in there giving it their all.”

Big ol’ track stars

After the lifting sessions - which most players do at 6 a.m. - it’s time for running work-outs. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the Spartans run long distances, while Tuesdays and Thursdays are for agility-enhancing runs.

Long distance running can involve 300-yard sprints or players doing “gashes,” which are sprints across the width of the field.

But the style of running is never set in stone.

“(There are) variations,” Thornhill said. “We get ideas from coach Mannie and we just play them out. We use the field any way we can in conditioning, whether it’s running it length-wise, 110-yard sprints, 300-yard sprints around the field, gashes, going down and back, ladders - touching the 20 coming back, touching the 10, sprinting to the 30, whatever. Just different variations of things.”

Hard work and Big Ten dreams

Seven-on-seven drills take place three days a week - Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Haygood said the games have become a good indicator of the team’s standing and can serve to pump up the offensive unit.

“Our defense is strong,” Haygood said. “But they have always been strong. And I tell our players ‘if we can beat our defense, then you know we can beat anyone in the Big Ten or anybody in the country.’”

Most of the incoming freshmen are already on campus, and both Haygood and Thornhill said that, for the most part, their efforts have been good.

“They’re having a tough time with running though, but that’s expected,” Thornhill said. “The difference between high school and college conditioning is a big, big gap.”

But keeping the freshmen positive will help the Spartans achieve their season goals.

“It’s all about respect this year,” Haygood said. “So we’ve got to take that and push ourselves harder. Because we got a lot of talent and we all have to gel together. This summer is getting everybody ready to finish and getting everybody ready to jump in at anytime.”

And thus far, everything is progressing as Haygood and Thornhill had envisioned. Most of the team stayed in East Lansing for the summer and everyone is working hard.

“We got to have a winning season this year,” Haygood said. “Our goal is to be better than the ’99 team. If we’re doing this good now, there’s no telling what’s going to happen.”