Ever since the New England Patriots 2005 Super Bowl win, a new trivia question has run rampant through the professional football world: What player or coach has been a member of the most Super Bowl teams?

On more than one occasion this season, the camera panned the Patriots’ sideline past head coach Bill Belichick and between linebacker coach Pepper Johnson and quarterback Tom Brady before it finally set its sights on a glum, well-built man named Mike Woicik.

The Patriots strength and conditioning coach has six Super Bowl rings – three from New England and three from his time with the Dallas Cowboys in the early ’90s. But what Phil Simms and Dick Enberg and John Madden didn’t tell you is that before Woicik ever laid eyes on the NFL, he developed the strength and conditioning program and his name at Syracuse.

When Woicik came to Syracuse in 1980, he was hired in a joint capacity for the track and football teams. There wasn’t a full-time strength coach for either and football coaches were only beginning to see the real benefits of weight-lifting.

Woicik worked nine months a year at SU. During the summers, he operated a drill press at a nearby machine shop to supplement his income. When his workday was finished, he would come to the SU campus to open the gym for the dozen or so football players that hung around all summer.

Woicik said football-specific training was in its infancy, and he had to develop his own program from his experience as a track coach at Springfield College in Massachusetts. Once Dick McPherson took over the football program, though, Woicik began to earn his trust and became a national leader in college football training.

‘As time went on, the time demands were too great,’ Woicik said. ‘I had a grad assistant with track and with football, and then it became evident that football was just taking too much of my time.’

Woicik earned a full-time job on the football staff and helped McPherson regain SU’s national prominence. Instead of lavish training facilities, SU had to attract top recruits in other ways. Woicik compiled a book with the exercises he developed – ‘Total Conditioning for Football: The Syracuse Way’ – to show that SU was on the cutting edge of training.

‘Coach McPherson was a detailed coach and he was interested in objective criteria in evaluating his players,’ Woicik said. ‘Based on testing you could see where guys were getting faster and stronger. We could see the importance of the strength and conditioning programs across the country and he was very open to it.’

In 1987, the SU football team was undefeated in the regular season, and it was just a matter of time before a NFL team snagged Woicik.

In 1990, with the recommendation of former Orangemen fullback Daryl Johnston, Woicik latched on with Jimmy Johnson and the Dallas Cowboys. During his seven seasons in Dallas, he earned NFL’s ‘Strength Coach of the Year’ in 1992 as he watched several Hall-of-Famers in the making.

Throughout his career, Woicik maintained that while he helped his teams, he was never the reason they won so many Super Bowls.

‘It was a great opportunity in Dallas,’ Woicik said. ‘We had some great successes; at that time I was a guru so I went to New Orleans (under new head coach Mike Ditka) and I was no longer a guru. We suffered through 6-10 and we all got fired.’

Once Belichick was hired in New England, Woicik was one of the first hires he made. Six years and three Super Bowls later, you know the rest.

But through it all, Woicik has remained humble about his success. He said he never intended to be a NFL strength and conditioning coach, just that opportunity knocked and he answered.

‘I would hope that what we do helps the guys,’ Woicik said. ‘I think we’re supportive, but I don’t think we’re the reason we win or lose. Some people in my profession think we are the reason. You win with players with good coaches and good schemes.’

Woicik’s late-’80s strength programs may now be useless, but now you know that Mike Woicik is more than just some answer to a trivia question.

Timothy Gorman is the sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns will eventually appear every Tuesday. We promise. E-mail him at tpgorman@gmail.com.

Published on January 24, 2006 at 12:00 pm