The seventeenth of Tennessee Head Coach Robert Neyland’s 38 maxims for playing successful football was “You can’t do yourself justice without getting and staying in condition.” Physical conditioning was a trademark of Neyland-coached players and for ten seasons, 1938-1940 and 1946-1952, Mickey O’Brian was overseer of that portion of Volunteer team preparedness. Hired by General Neyland, O’Brian was a taskmaster when it came to monitoring player exercise routines. When General Neyland was recalled to active military duty and later ordered to prepare a special army all-star football team that would play three games against professional teams over a nine-day schedule in 1942, he called on Mickey O’Brian to oversee physical training. The U. S. Army East all-star team beat the New York Giants 16-0 and the Brooklyn Dodgers 13-7, but lost to the world champion Chicago Bears 14-7 in the final minutes of that game. Coach Neyland’s continuing confidence in Mickey O’Brian’s training techniques at Tennessee is clearly shown in his pregame talk to his 1950 Cotton Bowl team, when he said “Texas is a physically stronger team than we are, but they aren’t in a good condition…We’ll wear’em down and win in the fourth quarter.” The Volunteers won the 1950 Cotton Bowl, 20-14, on a late fourth-quarter touchdown. Gene Moeller, linebacker on the 1950 to 1952 Volunteer teams, complimented Mickey O’Brian’s training techniques by saying that “When we went onto the field, we believed we were better conditioned and better prepared mentally than the other teams.”
