Editor’s note: TCU Football is in the midst of its bye week, giving players their first week without a football game since before the season. Offensive lineman Andrew Coker is aiming to rid himself of aches and pains while catching up on life.

The goal for the bye week is always to get your legs back, get your body back, take a mental and physical break and just kind of relax. This is the first time since I’ve been here that our bye week is so late in the season. Usually it has been in Week 2 or 3, but in Week 8 we’re almost three-quarters of the way through the season.

Photo by Rodger Mallison

For the coaching staff, it’s getting their guys back. The coaches need to get some guys — guys like me and a lot others who play a lot of snaps — feeling better so we can make that last push through the end of season.

We really don’t put in any new wrinkles on offense. We clean up what we’ve been doing. By Week 8, we have a good idea of what kind of football team we have and who we are. We’re trying to grow on that and clean stuff up so that we can get better.

With a few days off from practice, I always try to make time for my girlfriend. With school, it’s usually either catch up or get ahead while you I can. I take a lot of time just to watch football, kick my feet up, take naps and walk my dog.

I have a pit-lab mix named Neegan. We rescued him. He’s a headcase. We got him three years ago, me and my ex-roommate. He had some pretty bad habits we had to get out of him really quickly. He’s fairly aggressive, which I think is reason why he was where he was to begin with. But I’m a big guy, so I can handle it. But, yeah, I love him to death. We train him a lot. He’s gotten a lot better.

Courtesy of TCU Athletics

School-wise, my class load isn’t too bad. I’m an MBA student, and I don’t if that’s been done by an active football player. I’m kind of the guinea pig. It’s not too bad right now. The classes are eight weeks long, and we just finished our first eight weeks. Now it’s like a new semester for the next eight weeks of classes.

In these eight weeks, I have three classes, and that will be changing because full-time is two classes. Right now I’m in global and environmental business, business analytics and business simulation. I was just in business reporting. I’m kind of over the numbers and over Excel. But it’s not too bad. The MBA professors also realize that a lot of the students work a real job and then they come to class. Football is my real job. The workload is not too bad. It’s just not easy conceptually.

This will be my last year here, but classes are also online. No matter where I’m am after this, I can always do classes online. I think I’ll be the first one in my family to get a graduate degree. It’s hard to play and go to grad school, but it’s not impossible. That’s really the question, “Is it doable?” I don’t think anybody thought this was going to be easy, but it’s doable.