Hardin- Same time same place for Panthers

[Hairless Cat]

Hardin: Same time, same place for Panthers

Monday, August 3, 2009

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Groundhog Day.

The 15th training camp for the Carolina Panthers began like the 14 before, with a caravan of luxury cars streaming down from Charlotte and an undefeated football team unloading at Wofford College.

Are you ready for some football? Not really. It's going to be 93 degrees here today, and this isn't football anyway. It's practice.

Sunday wasn't even that. It was reporting day for almost 90 players who moved into a dormitory for the annual retreat that is football in August in sweltering Spartanburg. The soft rain that fell on the campus the day before the first practice of summer was a mockery of what's to come.

"I need the rain," quarterback Jake Delhomme said.

He wasn't being facetious. Delhomme has walked around under a black cloud for more than seven months, and his apologetic arrival was not unlike his apologetic exit when he led the Panthers to a 33-13 loss to Arizona in the NFC Divisional Playoffs last January.

We stood under the same tree we'd stood under last year and the year before that, the same tree where Mike Minter stood and Sam Mills stood, in front of the same dorm where Kevin Greene stayed and Chris Weinke stayed. An assembled media waited out the arrival of Steve Smith and DeAngelo Williams, watched the rookies file past carrying pillows and electric fans, watched players zip around on motorized scooters. Team staff carried in computers and suitcases. Several were needed to drag a safe up the steps leading into the dorm.

more...............

http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/08/03/article/ed_hardinaposs_column_same_time_same_place_ame_spartanburg

[CarolinaPanthers8789]

I love this day. I could almost cry. Time to show everybody that last years playoff loss was a fluke.

[Hairless Cat]

take it easy dude- got a long season ahead