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MORGANTOWN -- WVU football coach Neal Brown calls his strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph "the head coach of the offseason" and he really isn't stretching the point.
One cannot downplay the importance of strength and conditioning in the game of football, something that has grown from jumping jacks and push ups to a discipline that now has integrated 21st-century technology into the business of muscle and reflexes in search of the perfect athlete.
Joseph is the man in charge, the latest branch off the tree that Don Nehlen planted when he came to WVU in 1980, a lineage that ran through the highly-regarded strength gurus Al Johnson and Mike Barwis.
Joseph is the latest branch on that tree, a group that turned running law school into a tradition that has players not only doing traditional exercises, but expanded it to innovative challenges such as tossing tires and push tractors and who knows what else in the search of a bigger, stronger and faster athlete.
The strength coach's role and staff members have grown over the years to the point that they are every bit the equal to offensive and defensive coordinators.
"He's the head coach of the offseason; the winter, the summer," Neal Brown said of the man he inherited from Dana Holgorsen, who inherited him from Bill Stewart, in the job. "The thing people don't understand is they spend more time with the strength coach than any other coach because players lift year-round. The strength staff never leaves; they are on campus all year round."
On-field coaches have duties such as recruiting that takes them away from the day-to-day operation. When they are out, and it's more and more often, it seems, each few years, the boys in the weight room are at their busiest.
Oddly, the lifting of several restrictions have given the coaches more time with the players, but there remains a lot of gaps in which the strength coaching staff is in direct contact with the players and working with them.
Just as the recruiting calendar has changed, so has the conditioning calendar. And, as transfers and junior college recruits have exploded on the scene, further change has been thrust upon everyone.
"A lot of times during early winter, coaches are doing a lot of recruiting so we're the ones who are hands on with them and running what the head coach wants of them," Joseph explained. "At the end of spring ball, the coaches go back on the road again recruiting and we're able to get back with the guys and training them.
"Same thing in June, the coaches get to work with the players more than they did but they are doing a lot of recruiting and are involved in a lot of camps, so they are time constrained.
"The coaches are out for two or three weeks now, too. So, we stay very engaged with them. It's very important we know how the head coach and staff envision what they want our team to be during the season."
It is, Joseph believes, a well-defined goal.
"Our job is to maximize their potential so when the coaches come back we hit August running," Joseph said.
After graduating from Fairmont Senior, Joseph was a star running back at Fairmont State in the mid-1990s, enough so that he was the WVIAC Player of the Year in 1996 and is the school record holder in touchdowns with 58 while ranking third all-time at the school in both carries with 663 and receptions with 171.
After graduating, he realized he was interested in the strength and conditioning field, the science and mechanics of it grabbing hold of him. He served as strength and conditioning coach at Fairmont State for a year.
"When I finished my career at Fairmont State, Al Johnson got me involved and I found my passion," he said.
He signed on as a graduate assistant, spent some time at Eastern Michigan and five years as an assistant strength coach at Notre Dame before returning to WVU under Stewart.
He fit the mold.
"At West Virginia, it goes back to Coach Nehlen. With him, and all the coaches since, West Virginia has been known as blue collar, very intense, work ethic, very physical, fast and athletic teams," he said.
"We're always trying to make sure we are maximizing that fabric of what we really stand for and what we represent," he continued. "We've always been a high-level developmental school, taking guys who were maybe under recruited or overlooked, or guys who didn't work out somewhere else. We bring them here and maximize their genetic potential."
It isn't so much a job as a passion, Joseph said.
"We take pride in our passion for strength and conditioning. We understand what the team means to the state, to the whole fan base. We have to have a fast, physical, athletic and dominant team. We take that mentality into the weight room and try to give them that blue collar, fighter mentality onto the field."
The last few years have not produced the winning seasons that WVU had come to be known for.
And so, this off-season, they are approaching it in the way you would expect someone with those WVU philosophies would.
They are working harder.
"The overall workouts here have been a little more difficult, which is expected," offensive lineman Ja'Quay Hubbard said recently. "We have to get over it and it starts in the off-season.
"This summer has been a little different than the past summers," quarterback Nicco Marchiol said during a recent youth camp at Mountaineer Field. "This one's been a lot more physically challenging. We've been pushing ourselves to our limits, just as far as conditioning and lifting weights."
"He puts us in tough situations to compete and grow as a team," Hubbard added. "In the summer, you grow as a team with the more sacrifices you have together. I can't give you our secret recipe of what we've been doing, but just know it will prepare us come the fall."