Strength coach Mickey Marotti one of most valuable Florida Gators

By BEN VOLIN

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

GAINESVILLE — Mickey Marotti is not listed as a coach on the University of Florida's roster on its Web site.

He doesn't call a play on offense or defense, doesn't teach technique and doesn't break down video.

Yet for the 8-1 Gators, few have meant more to the team's success this year than Marotti, the Gators' director of strength and conditioning.

"The strength coach is, if not the most valuable, one of the two most valuable members of our staff," Florida head coach Urban Meyer said this week. And "he is the best in college football."

Marotti, 43, does so much more than teach proper weight-lifting technique.

He is one of Meyer's top motivators, giving fiery speeches after practices and before games.

He'll ask his players to haul rocks, flip tires, move cars, play tug of war - anything to challenge their bodies and their minds.

Marotti chest bumps players on game days, and introduces things like midnight workouts and "The Valentine's Day Massacre," a grueling February session, to the Gators' training regimen.

He sets weight goals for players in the off-season, and helps them achieve the goals through tough love and positive reinforcement. Meyer calls him a "master" of motivation and mental preparation.

"It's amazing that he can, in the off-season, bring that much intensity to an hour-and-a-half workout, non-stop," offensive coordinator Dan Mullen said. "He really gets them going year-round."

Marotti definitely has the tough-guy act down pat.

"At times he'll be mad or whatever, but you know he's doing the best thing for you," said linebacker A.J. Jones, who has put on 50 pounds of muscle under Marotti's supervision. "He's just being real with you."

The NCAA limits the interaction between Meyer and his players to four months in the fall and 15 days in the spring, so they count on Marotti as the year-round coach.

Meyer refers to him as "the head coach of the first floor," where the Gators' weight room is located at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

"Coach Meyer turns to coach Marotti for everything - how players are doing, what they're feeling, what they're thinking," fifth-year senior Butch Rowley said. "Without question, his right-hand man."

Meyer credits Marotti with toughening up the Gators' "soft" defense, which lost four games last year and allowed 42 points to Georgia and 188 yards to Knowshon Moreno. This year, the Gators are No. 1 in the SEC in scoring defense, allowing 11.9 points per game.

Marotti made sure the players would remember those numbers, making them do weight-lifting repetitions of 42 and 188 in summer workouts.

"The biggest thing we do is hold the players accountable," Marotti said. "We basically try to suffocate them as much as we can, and stay on them 24-7."

Meyer met Marotti in the early 1990s, when Marotti was the strength coach for the basketball team at the University of Cincinnati. Meyer, then a receivers coach at Notre Dame, returned to South Bend, Indiana that week and said, "This is a man we need to hire." The Fighting Irish did hire Marotti, and he worked for them from 1998 until Meyer hired him to work at Florida in 2005.

To a man, the players credit Marotti for much of the team's turnaround this season.

"He is the most instrumental dude," Rowley said. "I've never met someone who knows so much about life, about how to become a real man, about how to take care of your body the right way.

"Sometimes it's hard to get motivated for a workout, but with a guy like him breathing down your neck, you know you've got to go hard."