Saban wincing over 9 pounds ... Spears afraid to show up without a little "extra weight" from fear of having hiz azz worked off and losing too much weight in 2-a-days you gotta love this! http://www.shreveporttimes.com/lsu/html/0259CAF4-13BF-41D6-BF52-CA10A0798C7D.shtml By Glenn Guilbeau [email protected] BATON ROUGE -- Marcus Spears was one of the LSU football players who reported to summer practices Sunday overweight. So, are you going to tell him something about it? LSU coach Nick Saban, all 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds of him, did. Spears, a 6-4 All-Southeastern Conference defensive end and preseason All-American, checked in at 298 pounds. Saban wants him closer to 289. "He got on me," Spears said slowly in that deep voice of his after Monday afternoon's first practice. "I understand where he's coming from. Coach Saban, he gets after me about it. But he's been at it longer than me. I know what he means. I can't tell a guy you need to lose weight if I'm overweight." This has happened before, and Spears has lost the extra weight before. So he's really not worried about it or losing his starting defensive end job. "I take it all in stride," Spears said. "If you can't lose 10 pounds during practices down here, well you're just not working at all. And I take that challenge personally." Saban challenged the many players who reported overweight Sunday and questioned their commitment. "As a team, we didn't do a real good job over the summer," Spears said. "And we have to deal with the consequences of our mistakes. But I'm not extremely over my playing weight, and I passed all my conditioning tests. But he got on me because I didn't come in at a certain weight." Spears was not surprised by the scales, though. "I did not want to come in at my goal weight," he said. "Because I know I drop every year here in Louisiana." And there's another reason. There's a local delicacy that Spears, a Baton Rouge native out of Southern Lab, just can't do without. "Fried catfish," he said. "Man, I go to the Chimes, Phil's Oyster Bar, Parrain's. I go everywhere to get it. I can name them because I've been there. But it's time to get back to football shape now. It's about discipline." Saban was not as upset with the test results on Monday. "I was a little more encouraged about how we ran the 110 tests this morning," he said. "I'm still not pleased with it but was very encouraged by it." Junior offensive tackle Nate Livings, who is 6-5 and 322 pounds, blew Saban away with his scores Monday. "It's probably the first time in the history of my coaching career that a guy like Nate Livings got the most points on the overall conditioning test between speed, strength and endurance tests," Saban said. "I don't know if I can ever remember a lineman doing that because it's so much to the advantage of a skill guy who has efficiency in running who can do these things so much better. "That really says a lot about the commitment Nate made and the shape he came in. So we were really pleased with what Nate was able to accomplish." Senior quarterback Marcus Randall, who enters camp as the starter, scored a 74 on his tests. "This is the best I've come back. That's the highest I've ever had," Randall said. "We had about 25 guys over 75 points, and that's very good," Saban said. "The 30 guys who didn't pass the test is cause for concern, but we just can't depend on those guys until they get themselves in shape. They're kind of penalizing theirselves some." ©The Shreveport Times August 10, 2004
