"Coach Bryant didn't want to see us (in the summer)," said Ricky Davis, a Crimson Tide safety who lettered in 1973 and 1974. "He wanted everybody home. If you wanted to go to summer school to be eligible, he wouldn't pay for it. You were on your own if you hadn't made your grades."

Bobby Bowden says he sees both sides of the voluntary workout issue.(Allsport)

Davis was one of five players who stayed on campus the summer of 1974. For various reasons, Davis said he, Richard Todd, Sylvester Croom, Bill Henderson and Mike DuBose stuck around Tuscaloosa despite the fact the athletic dormitory and cafeteria were closed.

It was a different time and, compared to today, a novel concept, when summer vacation meant just that.

"Now," Davis said after visiting Alabama's campus a couple of weeks ago, "it's like every scholarship guy is out there. They're everywhere. It's a completely different mentality."

Sometime during the last decade, according to most accounts, coaches filled in the summer gap and caused college football to become a year-round sport. What used to be summer vacation is now called "summer conditioning." The hidden definition of the seemingly banal term holds more meaning than a Fellini film.

It is important to first understand that the so-called "voluntary" summer workouts for players are anything but voluntary. Sure, the weight and unsupervised workouts with no pads are optional. But so is playing time doled out by the coach.

"Is it voluntary?" former Auburn coach Terry Bowden said. "(Coaches could say,) 'You don't have to do this, but I voluntarily don't have to play you next year.' That's not a specific coach that said that, but for every coach it's understood, and for every player it's understood."

That's the sideline Catch 22. The threat of no sweat, no play is always there. Eyebrows are already being raised at Florida, where quarterback Rex Grossman has chosen to spend at least part of the summer at home while his teammates sweat it out in Gainesville. It's hard enough being a quarterback under Steve Spurrier. We'll see how the Florida coach reacts in the fall to Grossman exercising his "option" to stay home.

"I wish the NCAA would quit pretending this is voluntary," Kansas strength coach Fred Rolle said, "because when you do that, it means you can't give the athletes a lot of things in the summertime when they are supposedly here voluntarily."

Summer school often keeps the players on campus. Schoolwork plus summer conditioning, coaches argue, eliminate idle hours and keep them out of trouble. But at a school like Florida State, players aren't covered by insurance unless they are enrolled full time (six hours) in summer school. Classes and practice -- it doesn't sound much different than the fall.

"If you don't show up, you're not going to play," said Ryan Roques, a former UCLA safety. "Actually you worked harder in the offseason than you did in the season."

Yet, summer conditioning remains a nouveau don't ask-don't tell tradition of college football. Few question it, because the guy down the road is doing it too.

"The nature of the game now is to train year-round," said Miami offensive line coach Art Kehoe. "If you take off more than two or three weeks at any time, you're going to lose a lot of strength. It isn't like we're the only ones doing it."

Says Bowden: "The point you're getting at is, when is it too much? Do we ever give them a break? As liberal thinking as I am, I sit there and look at what Olympic athletes do on their own. Football is just a more popular sport to read about. A marathon runner runs 15 miles a day, and you don't talk about him. These are amateur athletics. After you coach for a while ... you feel like there is an argument for both sides."

Mike Gundy was the quarterback of the most potent offenses in NCAA history in the late 1980s at Oklahoma State. But in the summer, he seldom saw teammates Barry Sanders, a future Heisman Trophy winner, and receiver Hart Lee Dykes, possibly the best receiver in Big Eight history. That's because Gundy, like most of his teammates, seldom saw campus during summer months.

"I'm going to say four or five years ago it started getting pretty serious," said Gundy, now the offensive coordinator for Oklahoma State. "Most of your teams that were successful, your guys were there in the summer. It's like everything else in athletics from top to bottom, there is such a demand to win in all phases of athletics.

"People can say what they want, but it's college coaches under pressure to win games," Gundy said later. "They say, 'Hey, let's set up an offseason for our players. We can't require them to be there but we can kind of help them get set up and they can do it themselves.'"

As a coach, Gundy has no choice but to urge his players to be part of the process.

"If I were playing now," he said, "it would be very important for me to be here."

Most fans' offseason highlight is spring practice. Schools are allowed 15 organized practices, starting as early as February, to fine tune things on the field.

By then, the influence of strength coaches already has taken hold off the field. Ask any on-field coach -- strength coaches are usually the leaders in the offseason. They set up an offseason workout plan for their players soon after the regular season ends. During the summer, strength coaches are allowed to oversee proper technique but not allowed to run formal workout sessions.

They have names like "Mad Dog" (Texas' Jeff Madden) and "Doc" (Colorado's E.J. Kreis). Because of their physiques, they can intimidate by their mere presence. They often still look like the football players they are trying to sculpt.

"The guys who become your integral people are your strength coaches," Kehoe said. "They're as important as any human being in the whole building. There's no doubt."

The quarterbacks aren't necessarily leaders in the offseason as they are during the season.

"Without saying it," Bowden said, "coaches aren't concerned about how much lifting quarterbacks and receivers do."

It's the guys you'd expect to see leading in the weight room -- team captains, linemen, linebackers. They can lead by peer pressure

"We had a group that just said, 'Get out of the way,' when they came in," Rolle said. "They'd grab a workout sheet and say, 'Coach, don't get in our way.' The young guys see that and get caught up in it. If they're not working, the older guys will kick their ass."

Rolle, entering his 13th year at Kansas, is so well-respected that NFL veteran defensive lineman Gilbert Brown is in Lawrence this summer following a weight program developed by his old strength coach.

"The biggest problem is really in the weight room," said a former NCAA enforcement official. "You can't work them out per-se. You can be there to assist, but you can't do any kind of coaching."

Obviously, the guidelines of NCAA compliance can become blurred, most often during those voluntary on-field practices. Coaches aren't allowed to even observe players if they are running informal plays on their own.

"At Auburn, our offices were glassed in for specifically one reason, they overlook the practice fields," Bowden said. "You're not (supposed to look during the summer) but I'm saying that's why they were built that way."

Former Iowa State coach Jim Walden last coached in college in 1994 but knows the drill.

"A coach can't be on the field," he said. "but he can hand a slip of paper to someone saying, 'Here, run these 20 plays.'"

"I would think it (summer violations) happen more than the NCAA processes," the same former enforcement official said.

Bowden and others say the reason summer conditioning has taken off is because it eliminates what used to be a staple of fall practice -- getting in shape. Now coaches can begin installing the game plan as soon as full-contact practices begin, able to assume that their players are in condition.

"Let's say the NCAA says this has to go away," Walden said. "The trainers would vote for it to stay. The athletes arrive in shape. But I thought that's what two-a-days were for."

It certainly worked for Bear Bryant.