It was the summer of 2013 and the Wolf Pack’s freshmen football players had just gotten into trouble.
The team’s strength coach at the time, Matt Eck, made the group run and then delivered a message.
“We had a day where we got in trouble that first summer and Coach Eck was punishing us and told us, ‘There’s 25 of you now and by your senior season there will only be five,’” center Thomas Newton recalled. “We were looking around thinking, ‘There's no way.’ Sure enough here were are and only a few of us are left.