For someone who was at first quite skeptical of picking up training camp and moving it to a beach town 1,500 miles away from home, Mike McCarthy has become a California convert in a very short time.
The Cowboys head coach spoke to the media on Tuesday just before his team’s first camp session in Frisco and on the heels of a nearly month-long stay on the West Coast. And while the home of the Cowboys is undeniably deep in the heart of Texas, McCarthy says the annual tradition of holding the first portion of camp in Oxnard is one he wouldn’t mind extending.
“In hindsight,” McCarthy told reporters, “I wouldn’t leave Oxnard until we have to next year. I’d consider staying there this week [leading into the third and final preseason game].”
As it is, the team will hold just two practices this year in front of home fans. Compare that to 13 public practice sessions for the California crowd.
The yearly trip to Oxnard is typically described as a circus, and that’s not far off. It costs seven figures and takes over six months of planning to relocate the entire organization to the 15-acre, 32-building California campus each July.
McCarthy admits he had misgivings when he first joined the team in 2020 about why a cross-country vacation was part of the club’s routine at a time of year when hardcore football instruction should be the only objective.
“Everybody just kept talking about how much fun you had out there,” McCarthy explained Tuesday. “I never heard anybody talk about, ‘Hey, the football was good, the practices were great.’ It was everything but football. If someone said anything about Oxnard, it had nothing to do with the football team getting better. What coach wouldn’t be nervous if you’d never went out there before?”
It took McCarthy a while to get it. The team’s 2020 trip- and even McCarthy’s own pre-camp scouting trip that year- was axed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And by the time he visited Oxnard for the first time in 2021, an HBO camera crew was already embedded for the filming of that season’s Hard Knocks reality series.
But somewhere in between the press conferences and the packed grandstands and celebrity appearances and autograph sessions near the merch tent, McCarthy saw the value in working his players in 75-degree temperatures and coastal breezes as opposed to the stifling triple-digit heat indices of the Metroplex.
McCarthy’s Packers teams held camp right at home, in the cool summers of Wisconsin. But given the brutal north Texas heat and humidity, the Cowboys are one of just a few teams anymore who travel for camp. And they have for over 40 years.
Of course, some of that is simply because they’re the Dallas Cowboys and they draw a crowd wherever they go. But McCarthy has warmed up to what the players and coaches alike get out of their California camp trip.
“I’ve been around some great training camp environments,” the coach shared, “but to have the practice fields a two-minute walk from your dorm room, then your office is another minute-walk from there, and the cafeteria is 10 more steps from that. It’s beautiful and it’s extremely functional, so we were able to get a lot of work done there.”
The Cowboys are squeezing as much as they can out of the final week of camp at the Ford Center. Two practices are open to the public, complete with all the fanfare of a second opening ceremony (held Tuesday). ESPN will tape its First Take show at Tostitos Championship Plaza on Thursday morning, and a glitzy blue-carpet Season Kickoff Event takes place that evening, all before the preseason finale versus Seattle at AT&T Stadium on Friday.
While it’s difficult to imagine team owner Jerry Jones scrapping those fan-friendly cash-cow events at home just to drag out the Oxnard stay a little longer, it sounds as if McCarthy has done a complete 180 on the subject. He may have once doubted the team would get much real work done on the coast; now he’s actually longing for those California days.
“Our practice environment in Oxnard: I am so pleased with it,” he continued. “We get to go heavy two days in a row. The recovery is in place. The weather is a huge part of it. I think the 11-hour work day helps the players. They definitely have the regeneration period and recovery in the evenings. That is something over the last two years. I think Oxnard has been a tremendous asset for us to train.”
It will continue to be so. The Cowboys have inked a deal with the city to return through 2025.
And if it’s up to McCarthy, they may start staying even longer.
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