Chris Dawson, Kansas football strength and conditioning coach, watches as players work out. Many former players regard Dawson as one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the country.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The man behind the desk carries with him a concrete expression and an ever-apparent intensity. He’s generous with his answers, but he’s taken the liberty of trimming most of the fat and unnecessary parts of conversation.
Chris Dawson, Kansas football strength and conditioning coach, adjusts a players workout for the 6:45 a.m. session late last week. Dawson's impact on the team has been compared to coach Mark Mangino.
Chris Dawson, the strength and conditioning coach, watches Kansas' players complete an early-morning workout last week. Throughout the year, Dawson spends more time with the Jayhawks than any coach on staff, including Mark Mangino.
At any time, it seems he could rise from his chair, walk out of his office door and perform a sweat-pouring workout on any one of the pieces of equipment that fill the lower level of the Anderson Family Football Complex.
Most likely you’ve never seen his face or heard his name, and he’s fine with that.
But here sits the man who spends more time working and crafting players than any other member of Kansas’ staff, including coach Mark Mangino.
Meet Chris Dawson, the strength and conditioning coach.
“He’s done more for that program than anybody but Mangino himself,” former running back Jon Cornish said.
A visitor sits in Dawson’s office one day, picking his brain about the different schedules and responsibilities that fall under the umbrella of Kansas’ strength and conditioning coach. In the middle of conversation, though, the visitor asks a question that catches Dawson’s attention.
Is the grind of the job difficult?
A sly smirk creeps across Dawson’s face, a hint that maybe he knows something the visitor doesn’t. Then, quickly, Dawson responds in a way that tells everything about him as an individual and a professional.
“You ask the question like that’s a negative,” Dawson said. “I don’t know that it’s ever not a grind. But I think some people gravitate toward the grind. I like the structure, the discipline, the schedule. I like the grind. I won’t make any bones about it.”
After all, the grind is the meat and potatoes of any strength and conditioning. Dawson’s job is to push players through the grind, allowing them to continue developing and improving.
And as much as players may squirm over the difficulty of Dawson’s workouts and drills, those interviewed for this story respect the edge the hard work has given them.
“He has one of the best strength coaching staffs in the nation and he’s one of the best strength coaches in the nation,” former linebacker Mike Rivera said.
“He’s the anchor, if you will, of everything that goes on,” senior running back Jake Sharp said.
“It would be an understatement to Chris Dawson to call him anything less than one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the nation,” Cornish said.
Dawson’s workouts aren’t easy. Any former or current player will attest to that.
But on certain days when the Jayhawks are grinding through another workout regimen, Kansas’ players will glance at one of the pieces of equipment and see ... Chris Dawson?
“Daws, he’ll do the same workout we’re doing,” sophomore cornerback Daymond Patterson said. “That really makes you look at it and say, ‘OK, he’s old, he’s not playing no more. We should be able to do this if we’re still playing.’”
Therein lies an underlying theme for Dawson. He wants his workouts to be challenging and difficult, but he doesn’t want them to be impossible.
Still, don’t be mistaken: Dawson’s job is to topple previously thought limits and replace them with an even higher, more demanding standard.
Cornish, a lightly recruited running back from Canada, is a prime example.
Cornish originally arrived at Kansas with an already conceptualized idea of what it would take to become a successful player in the ultra-competitive Big 12. Then he met Dawson, who tossed that idea aside.
Cornish rushed for 1,457 yards his senior season. It still is the highest single-season total in the history of Kansas football.
“Some people don’t have the drive,” Cornish said. “What I think Dawson does is give players the drive. I think a lot of other teams in the Big 12 have strength coaches like him. But at the same time I think he’s one of the reasons why the program is where it is now.”
Dawson’s path to becoming a strength and conditioning coach started in the weight room — where else? As a player at Oklahoma in the early ‘90s, Dawson quickly noticed the subtle writing on the wall.
If he wanted to play at Oklahoma — if he wanted to be able to compete against top-level athletes — the weight room had to develop into a second home.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Dawson said. “If I wanted to get on the field when I played football in college, I had to live in the weight room. I wasn’t talented enough to do otherwise.”
After graduating, Dawson decided to join then-Oklahoma strength and conditioning coach Joe Juraszek’s staff as a graduate assistant.
“Initially when I went into it I didn’t think I’d stay in it,” Dawson said. “But I really enjoyed it. I decided about after six months that this is exactly what I want to do.”
Dawson, who Mangino said impressed him while at Oklahoma, arrived at Kansas before the season in 2003. And immediately he was faced with an uphill climb.
The Jayhawks hadn’t been to a bowl game since 1995. They won just two games, including zero in the Big 12, in 2002. Mangino, entering only his second season, was attempting to disband a nagging losing mentality.
“When coach Dawson first came in, he literally made sure that everyone was doing everything all the time,” Rivera said. “He was a discipline freak, running people all the time and all that kind of stuff. Now he’s into developing players.”
The general division made in the college football world is simple: There is a season and then there is an offseason. For Dawson, there is no such distinction.
Dawson spends roughly 352 days of the year with players — “That’s not exact,” he said, noting mandatory days off and voluntary workouts — but it highlights an interesting part of the job.
While Mangino and his staff are rigorously restricted by the number of days they can be around the team, especially in the offseason, Dawson has far fewer limits.
“Chris is important to the program because Chris does about 80 or 90 percent of his work when I’m not around and the assistant coaches aren’t around,” Mangino said. “Your strength coach has to be a guy that has great enthusiasm. He’s a self-starter and he takes a great deal of pride in the performance of the players.”
Plus, Dawson has little influence in direct game day decisions, allowing for a more open relationship. Sharp, Kansas’ running back, said Dawson’s office door is usually open and the coach is always willing to talk.
“I don’t have a depth chart on my board. I don’t get to decide who is on the field. That takes a lot of stress or pressure off the relationship as well,” Dawson said. “You really get to see the kids grow and mature.”
Near the end of the conversation, the visitor sitting in Dawson’s office gets his attention once more. This time Dawson is talking about Kansas’ turnaround, specifically the higher-caliber of athletes and the recently built facilities.
So the visitor decides to tack on one more question: Does the job ever get easier?
“I don’t know that I’ve ever referred to it as a job other than sitting here with you because that’s certainly not how a view it,” Dawson said. “The grind, the work — it doesn’t change.”
He wouldn’t want it any other way.
— Edited by Tim Burgess
Mallot and Haworth Halls, two of the larger ...
1 comment
Lawrence Settles Lawrence graduate student “I like T-Pain ...
1 comment
Mallot and Haworth Halls, already two of the ...
1 comment
It was the symmetry of this sidewalk that ...
1 comment
Texting while driving is the cause of many ...
1 comment
Comments
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.