Back in a completely different era of professional sports, training camps were a time for players to get in shape after the offseason. The notion of an “organized team activity” — a particularly jargony word for an offseason practice pioneered by the NFL — was laughable.
Pro athletes 50 or 60 years ago commonly held second jobs to supplement their income. As a Cleveland Plain Dealer story about the era notes, pertaining to the NFL: “It was also a time when the NFL schedule was more conducive to squeezing in a second job. Teams played no more than 14 regular-season games.