NEW YORK (AP) — Two-a-days and wind sprints. Lugging heavy
playbooks and checking into dorms.

As NFL teams get going this weekend, take a long, hard look. This
might be the end of training camp as we know it.

Next year a work stoppage might affect camps. Then by 2012 the
league’s owners hope for an 18-game regular season, which would
throw off the traditional football math of late summer: two weeks
of camp before the first exhibition, six before the opener.

If the proposal to essentially turn the last two preseason games
into regular-season contests becomes reality, teams could just
start practicing two weeks earlier, right? Well, maybe not. Players
worry a longer regular season would increase injuries, and NFL
leaders have suggested they might cut back on training camp as a
concession.

“It has to be done in a comprehensive way, which includes how we
look at offseason training,” commissioner Roger Goodell said
Thursday while visiting the Packers’ annual shareholder meeting.
“Should we still have OTAs? If so, how many? Should we have
restrictions on how long training camp is? Should we have
restrictions or limitations on how practices are evolved?”

Talk like that leaves coaches to fret that the new schedule would
leave them with too little time to prepare their teams for the
season. These competing desires to make training camp longer or
shorter, more intense or less, will be among the many issues the
league and union talk out as they negotiate a new collective
bargaining agreement, with the current one set to expire in
March.

Here’s the coach’s perspective, from the Ravens’ John
Harbaugh:

“I think it will make training camp more intense. You won’t be able
to pace your way quite as much into some of the work you want to
do. We’ll have to throw a lot more at them a lot quicker.”

And the player’s perspective, from Panthers receiver Steve
Smith:

“I’m biased, but yeah, I think camp is too long. If camp was four
days I’d think it was too long.”

Players point out they stay in shape during the offseason, so they
don’t need a long training camp for conditioning.

“I take a couple of weeks off after the season and do absolutely
nothing, but I’m right back into it doing some sort of a workout,”
said Buffalo linebacker Chris Kelsay, the Bills’ alternate union
rep. “It is a league where you’ve got to be in shape and you’ve got
to be working out.”

Conditioning may be the least of coaches’ concerns. They want
enough time to evaluate players and teach the playbook. They also
hold dear the tradition of using training camp to toughen up their
teams.

“You want to wear your guys down and you want them to have to
operate under adversity because you’re going to have that during
the season,” Chargers coach Norv Turner said. “I think you get that
camaraderie by going through some adversity in camp, whether it be
grueling practices, whether it’s being out here in the afternoon on
a hot day and having to fight through it when you’ve already
practiced six straight days of two-a-days.”

The question is whether six straight days of two-a-days in sizzling
heat will do more harm than good for players who still have to
endure an 18-game regular season. Currently the NFL does not
restrict how teams run training camps, yet the new CBA could limit
not only how long camp runs but how much players practice each
day.

For now, of course, it’s all speculation. George Atallah, the NFL
Players Association’s assistant executive director, said in an
e-mail it’s too early in negotiations to be able to discuss the
subject in detail.

“I’m comfortable saying that an extra game proposal raises these
issues, along with a number of others that I could describe, and
that they have to be negotiated over,” he wrote.

Among the many topics to be discussed is when those additional two
regular-season games will even take place. If the regular season
starts earlier than it does now, hot weather is a problem in the
South. If it runs later, cold weather is a problem in the North
during the season. Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy has
raised the possibility of a bye week between the last exhibition
and first regular-season game.

“One of the thoughts is that you’re trading out two preseason games
for two regular season games so in effect you’re trading out
possibly two-a-day practices for regular-season practices,” he said
on a conference call in June. “Just from my own experience, the
wear and tear on your body is much greater in the preseason than in
the regular season.”

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AP Sports Writers Mike Cranston in Spartanburg, S.C., David
Ginsburg in Westminster, Md., Chris Jenkins in Green Bay, Wis.,
John Wawrow in Pittsford, N.Y., and Bernie Wilson in San Diego
contributed to this report.