WEST HARRISON, Ind. -- With about 20 minutes left in practice, two student trainers parked their golf cart alongside the makeshift swimming pool and started dumping bags of ice into the pool. After practice there would be a quick conditioning session, then a quick lecture from the head coach, then the players would be free to park themselves in the ice.
And they did -- by the dozen. There were gasps of relief and shock as the tired bodies sunk into the two-foot pool and the ice started taking effect.
The idea of a program that's very much involved in college football's big-money arms race gaining something from spending a few hundred bucks at Wal-Mart on a pop-up swimming pool and placing it under a picnic pavilion is bigger than just the temporary healing. It's a philosophy.
The family that ices together stays together.
For two-plus weeks, the Cincinnati Bearcats do everything together.
The Bearcats are one of eight Division I FBS programs to take their preseason training camp on the road. In this case, they go over the river (literally) and through the woods (again, literally), about 30 miles northwest of campus to Higher Ground Conference and Retreat Center in West Harrison, Ind.
Cincinnati has held its preseason camp at Higher Ground since 1999. It's remained the preferred locale through coaching changes and administrative changes because of what it offers and what it doesn't. For two weeks, it's not just practice but almost everything else that's closed to the public.
Butch Jones, Cincinnati's third-year head coach, thinks Higher Ground is the perfect name -- and darn near the perfect place.
"It's the greatest thing we do in our program when you're talking about the development of our football team," Jones said. "A team is a born in the winter months with strength and conditioning but there's something to be said about coming here, where there's one way in and one way out. It eliminates the clutter.
"No distractions, all football, just this football team. Us."
The whole campus covers 268 acres, according to the Higher Ground website. At any given time, the Bearcats are usually taking up just a couple of those acres. A makeshift locker room sits just behind the fields, which are adjacent to the dining hall, which essentially shares a parking lot with buildings the coaches use to meet and watch film and the equipment staff uses as a temporary headquarters. The pavilion that houses the swimming pool is just 20 or yards off the practice fields. Underclassmen stay in dorms and upperclassmen stay in the lodge; both are just up the road from the practice fields.
Signs alongside the narrow, unpaved roads that lead from the retreat's main entrance back to the artificial turf practice fields remind visitors that they must be invited. The best way to find the practice fields is to just listen for the sound of pads popping.
"It's good for concentration levels, meetings, team bonding," Jones said. "And they also get their proper rest. On campus, we don't know how guys are spending their free time. Here, they leave the field and walk 100 feet to their beds. The amenities here are first class. We win because of Higher Ground."
Sixth-year senior safety Drew Frey came to three camps at Higher Ground under ex-coach Brian Kelly and is now in his third with Jones in charge. He's heard enough speeches and been through enough bonding experiences to know that the Higher Ground experience is special.
"We get away from all the distractions," Frey said. "I know every coach in America has his own way of telling his team to block out the noise and lock in, and there's pretty much no better place to do it than out here, where there is no noise besides the birds. Eat, sleep, breathe football. The food is great, too.
"We really do become a family and establish our brotherhood during the time we're out here. It's something we take pride in."
Frey has been around long enough to see the place grow up a bit. Last year, lights were installed to allow the Bearcats to beat the August heat with night practices. Jones wears a portable microphone on his shirt so he can be heard throughout the practice area.
There's also another golf cart with speakers that Jones occasionally orders on to the practice field to park behind his quarterbacks, blasting music or the sound of a crying baby to force his quarterbacks to concentrate.
"When it's not his voice, it's something else," Cincinnati quarterback Munchie Legaux said. "He's going to make sure he's challenging us all the time."
The best part of the piped-in noise? There are no neighbors to complain.
"It's just us, 102 guys that are our family," Legaux said. "All we have out here is family, and all we know for these two weeks is football and each other."
The true camp experience might prove to be even more beneficial by late this fall as Cincinnati's roster has 65 players in their first or second year with the program. The Bearcats won a share of the Big East title last fall and figure to be in the mix again this season if Legaux plays well in his first year as a full-time starter, if the defense can mature and if the Bearcats can replace the playmaking ability of Big East Player of the Year Isaiah Pead, who was drafted in the second round by the St. Louis Rams.
If things click, basically. Which is the point of loading up the bus, filling the pool with ice, dining and living together off the field and having Jones use the microphone to address his players with the voice of God on it.
"A long time ago I was an assistant with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and we were one of the first NFL teams to go off-site for camp," Jones said. "But it was nothing like this, and this is something that our program can never take for granted. It's truly something special. The players look forward to it each and every year, and I truly believe they benefit from it each year, too."
