Teams forge summer bonds in interesting ways

Greg Matthews (left) and Mario Manningham were among the instructors at Michigan's Women's Football Academy. Tony Ding/Icon SMI

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ATLANTA -- Sitting in front of a projector screen in a dark room in Bobby Dodd Stadium, Georgia Tech's football team watches Tom Cruise slip into his armor, his character, Nathan Algren, preparing for the climactic battle scene against the Imperial Army of Japan in The Last Samurai.

"That's us puttin' our pads on, bro," running back Tashard Choice yells out.

Minutes later, with the Samurai legion lined up for battle across from the Japanese army, Cruise and Samurai leader Lord Katsumoto, portrayed by Ken Watanabe, march out to meet the enemies' captains.

"Coin toss," Choice comments, drawing laughs from his teammates.

Steeped in battle, the Samurai, outnumbered and without the technology of the gun-toting Japanese army, gained a surprising upper hand as they led the infantry into a trap and mowed them down with a volley of arrows in a grotesque scene that earns a few "oohs" from the Yellow Jackets. When the storm of swords and gunfire had ceased, bringing a pause to the bloody chaos, Cruise told Watanabe, "It's not over."

"That's exactly how we have to look at the fourth quarter," Choice said over the building strings of the soundtrack as the Samurai forged ahead to their ultimate demise.

It's the last night of Georgia Tech's four-part "Team Time" series, run by team chaplain Derrick Moore, and the theme is "Finishing the job." Each week they focused on a different theme (which included "Staying together," "Making a stand" and "Fighting the fight"), and offered their sacrifice to the team -- be it a poem, challenge or anything else. Choice's offering came in the form of an emotionally charged speech about the importance of playing a complete game, a point he then drove home with Cruise's epic. "It shows every quarter of a football game, how they look, how they finish," he said. "If you finish on top like Tom Cruise did in the movie, everybody bowed down to them, and that's how we want to be as a team."

Team. It is the one theme that reverberates across the country as players work to forge a bond away from the rigors of summer workouts that, while the NCAA stipulates are voluntary, are really anything but in today's 12-month-a-year commitment that is college football. It is away from the watchful eyes of their coaches where players build the trust that stands as the foundation for the season ahead.

"We can practice and we can play, but we gotta be together as a team and these types of things bring us together even more, bring us around each other, get us closer and keep us bonded together, so that's the most important thing," Choice said.

Georgia Tech is one of many teams which found ways to come together over the summer. For the second consecutive year SI.com searched the nation to see what teams did to bond over the last few months. Here's a sampling:

Michigan: School's In Session

Mike Hart put the running backs through position drills, teaching the campers basics such as taking a handoff and how to hold onto the ball. It's like any other camp -- except the would-be tailbacks at Michigan's Women's Football Academy just happen to look a lot like mom.

The full-day camp, which raised more than $180,000 to benefit the Coach Carr Cancer Fund, offered 500 participants an opportunity to learn how to play the game. They went through drills, position instruction and offensive, defensive and special teams strategies, and concluded with a scrimmage in Michigan Stadium -- all under the tutelage of Wolverines players and staff.

"It's funny because it's a lot of older women that come in and they're just there to have a good time, so we just get to mess around with them and they just like taking pictures ... it's a great time," Hart said.

The academy is just one of the activities the Wolverines take part in to raise money for the Carr Cancer Fund, all while spending valuable time away from the game. Players also participated in the Carr Wash. While his teammates were off scrubbing down vehicles, Heisman-hopeful Hart avoided the work by signing autographs.

"The first half I was signing stuff, [and] the second half I got out there and sprayed some cars down," Hart said. "I wasn't doing too much washing; [I] leave that to the younger guys."

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