Posted by: Pete Roussel on August 2, 2012

John L. Smith stated tonight, "This is as good a practice as I can remember in 40 some odd years that I've been coaching - the first day out."

I like Will Muschamp's quote from earlier today when he stated, "This is the University of Florida's team not Will Muschamp's team so it will perform for this University."

Muschamp also stated, "Potential is a bad word in my profession. It means you haven't done it.''

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Kevin Sumlin opens camps tomorrow in College Station.  Tomorrow is also Sumlin's 48th birthday.

Kevin Wilson stated follow Thursday's practice that Indiana is moving to morning practices during the season.  Duke, Northwestern, Cal, NC State, Kentucky are just some of the programs that practice in the mornings during the fall.

Following Utah's first practice, Kyle Whittingham, "There's no doubt we've upped our talent level."

I liked the sound of 25-year old offensive coordinator Brian Johnson in his post-practice comments.  Johnson sounded very confident.  Johnson is 1 of 12 coaches in the country that will call plays for the first time this season.  Utah State offensive coordinator Matt Wells is another coach preparing to call plays for the first time.  Wells was mistakenly left off my list.

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Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly was asked what it takes for a good steady player to step up and be a leader at wide receiver?

Kelly explained, "Confidence and opportunity.  You gotta have the opportunity, obviously.  And we have that with Michael (Floyd) leaving.  And then I think you've got to have the confidence.  I think we believe as a staff we've got receivers that are going to get that opportunity. They need to go make some plays because once they make a couple of plays and their confidence soars, they have the athletic ability to be really good players."

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I found it interesting that Colorado State head coach Jim McElwain hired a mental training coach from IMG Academics to work 16 sessions with his team this off-season.  According to The Examiner, Colorado State is 1 of 6 programs to utilize IMG Academic for the mental training exercises.  The other programs include Bama, LSU, Oregon, Washington, and Florida State.

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Saints wide receiver Lance Moore made an interesting comment about his former position coach Curtis Johnson, who is now the head coach at Tulane.  Moore told WWL TV, "Any time you have the same guy for a bunch of years you can get somewhat complacent or kind of relax in what you're doing. But, at the same time, C.J. did a good job of making sure we never got like that."

Green Wave fans got to like that.

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Quite frankly, I was glad to see Dan Mullen set a standard with the media following Mississippi State's first practice of the season.  Mullen, who has done a nice job with the media in his first three years in Starkville, made it clear he's not going to talk about injuries.

So when asked about the status of a couple of players today, Mullen literally got up from his chair and reminded reporters in an understandable manner that his policy is to not discuss injuries.  The policy had already been communicated with reporters on the front-end, so Mullen was irked.  It's the very first day of camp, so Mullen gave them a harsh warning before sitting back down.  See the video, right here:

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