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At FSU Practice, Nowhere To Hide

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By COREY CLARK/The Tallahassee Democrat

Published: August 24, 2008

TALLAHASSEE Darius McClure remembers the moment he found out about the "eye in the sky."

After his first practice in a Florida State uniform, the safety from Birmingham, Ala., sat down in a meeting with the defensive backs.

He had no idea what he was about to see.

"We started watching film on, like, everything," said McClure, now a senior. "It was every drill. Everything we did. And I was like, 'Oh my God, they're going to fuss at me for something. They're going to see me off to the side talking to somebody or something like that.' "

It's a realization that plays out at major college football programs across the country this time of year. Incoming freshmen find out right away that it doesn't matter if their position coach is keeping a close eye on them, because the camera always is.

From high-rise video towers to tripods on the ground, the Florida State video crew records every position group for every second of every practice.

The eye in the sky never blinks.

"Even the stretching gets filmed," senior linebacker Derek Nicholson said. "Coach [Bobby] Bowden takes stretching seriously. He wants to know who's taking it seriously and who's clowning around during stretching."

That was news to FSU junior receiver Rod Owens.

"I didn't know we had stretching filmed," the Jacksonville native said with a smile.

Asked if that concerned him, he laughed as he replied: "I don't mind. I stretch hard, too. So it doesn't matter to me."

Nicholson said it shouldn't matter to any of the Seminoles. Whether a coach or a camera is watching, he said, it should have no effect on how hard he and his teammates work during each drill.

"It shouldn't change anything," Nicholson said. "Because your character and the way you approach practice on the football field shouldn't change because of the eye in the sky."

Said senior cornerback Tony Carter: "They say character shows when no one is watching. But here they are always watching. The cameras are always around. So you better work. When they go back and replay it, that's something you don't want to see - you doing something wrong or something bad."

For the position coaches, the constant filming is an invaluable tool.

Showing how far the technology has come in recent years, FSU players can take a DVD of their position group's entire practice home after each workout.

They can turn their apartments into film rooms whenever they like, watching each drill and each play over and over.

"We do these cut-ups," first-year tight ends coach James Coley said. "So I can show [anything from] a drill to a competitive drill to an actual play.

"And they get to see their errors."

Workouts were being filmed - though on a smaller scale - when Dexter Carter was starring as a running back at FSU in the late 1980s. But there were certainly no DVDs being handed out after practice.

The Seminoles' second-year running backs coach said the technology can be a great learning device for the current players.

"If you got a playbook and a DVD - with every single protection, with every single pass route, every single run - sit down and go through those notes you should have been taking that day," Carter said. "Go over those. Look at the DVD, look at that play. There's no way you shouldn't be able to get ready in a short amount of time.

"It's a terrific tool."

Coley agrees.

"Absolutely," he said. "And it's not so much that you're trying to police them, it helps them because it shows them that everything they do on the field is important."

And that nothing they do on the field is going to be missed by the camera.

Not even the stretching.

"You have to be on top of your game at all times," McClure said. "It makes you more conscious of what you're doing, of not being lazy. You've got to be on top of your game, because that eye in the sky never lies.

"It never lies."

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