Auburn Tigers 2015 Preseason Practice Starts August 4th

Attention veterans and freshmen: Auburn begins fall practice one week from today. The story: http://t.co/qJ73HunxTv pic.twitter.com/4kipmTZJfO

— Auburn Gold Mine (@AUGoldMine) July 28, 2015

With one tweet, Charles Goldberg got the hearts of all Auburn football fans racing as the official word came down on when Auburn will begin the official fall practices for the 2015 football season. The offseason was dark and full of terrors, but thankfully it wasn't near as bad as last summer (knock on wood for the last week).

From the article on the official site we learn that players "report" next Monday (reality is they've all been here the whole summer, anyway), practice begins on the 3rd, and the first day in pads is the 8th.

Practice Coverage

We all know by now that Gus Malzahn & Company are extremely close-hold when it comes to practices. The media are only allowed certain "viewing periods" during a limited number of practices. Rest assured we'll be here to round-up as much of the coverage that's available as we can. Similar to the spring, we'll be providing comprehensive coverage of multiple sites' articles, stories, and video to give you a great resource for following the progress of the team.

NCAA Practice Rules

The NCAA Manual says in by-laws 17.9 governs pre-season practices and contains things such as limits on how many participants can take part in practice sessions prior to the first day of classes (105 according to 17.9.2.1.2). So there will likely be a few more walk-ons joining the team after the first day of class on August 17th.

All participants must undergo a five-day acclimation period according to by-law 17.9.2.3. Anyone joining after the first day of official practice on the 4th must still undergo this acclimation period. So, say Jonathan Jones isn't quite ready to participate in on-field practices prior to the 4th, then whenever he is ready to rejoin the team, then he must still go through the acclimation period of no pads, shells, etc, until he reaches that first day of pads.

Gone are the days of things like constant two-a-days practices. By-law 17.9.2.4 says that multiple-session practice days cannot occur on consecutive days, and even when they do have multiple sessions, the total amount of practice time cannot exceed five hours, and there must be no less than three hours of complete break (no meetings, weight-lifting, etc) between those practice sessions.