Training camps are a concept that has run its course. Away with them, I say.

Once, they represented a beginning. Fat men would show up in them. They were glorious creatures. For them, the preseason was a period in which they would work a winter’s worth of beer out of their bones, reshaping themselves while preparing for the trials to come.

Now, rather than a start, the camps constitute a continuation of drills that began weeks ago. There are no fat men, or precious few. Most players are finely conditioned when the procedures get under way. The preseason is for sharpening, and for fitting rookies into a team’s scheme. It is not in any way as meaningful as it was in another time.

Further, it is too long. Teams do not require four exhibition appearances to ready themselves for the games that count. Two would be sufficient. Nevertheless, clubs still charge regular-season prices for what are nothing more than practices. Read: Rip-off.

More franchises ought to approach the preseason as former Vikings coach Bud Grant did. Grant kept the nip-ups as brief as he could. He preferred being out in field and stream to being in a training camp. Under Grant, the Vikings would not gather their athletes together until their peers were well into their procedures. Grant could do this; he had veteran squads, and he did not load them with candidates not apt to be around when the real racing began.

One year, the Vikes were parties to the Hall of Fame affair in Canton only about a week after putting on pads for the first time. They won, too, if I recall correctly, which I believe I do.

“The reason training camps start when they do is because coaches can’t wait to start coaching,” Bud would say. He could not be counted among those coaches. Bully for him.

This idea of taking grown men and cooping them up for an extended period away from their families is dehumanizing. Properly, many clubs are getting away from it, with more and more franchises conducting their exercises either in their own facilities or in ones nearby. The day and age when camps would be in the cornlands of Hiram, Ohio, and Rensselaer, Ind., is past. Some teams continue to venture into the hinterlands, but every summer they become fewer, for which players should be thankful.

One other thing has to be appealing to the athletes. Two-a-days, those ordeals when they are required to practice twice daily, are going to be less frequent. Teams no longer are going to have the guys to engage in such tortures, not when they cannot exclude players from NFL Europe. The player limit for training camps has become a hard 80, which is going to limit the number of practices appreciably, one can suspect.

Please do not infer that I consider what happens in July and August of no consequence. Training camps, I long have thought, are about rookies. We know what veterans can do; let’s find out about the newgrounders.

While we’re doing it, we have the Brett Favre situation to fix on. I don’t know what is going to occur here, but I know this: Favre’s agent, Bus Cook, is mistaken when he says the next move is the Green Bay club’s. The next move is Favre’s. Unless he shows up in Green Bay, the Packers can just sit there and proceed with their plans to invest their offense in Aaron Rodgers.

Only if Favre swallows his pride and presents himself in Green Bay are the Packers apt to trade him. Even then, I am being told, dealing him would not be easy. It’s that reported $25 million he is due in the final two years of his contract. That’s a bunch for a fellow who is, after all, 38.

As Favre has, John Unitas had played 17 years when the Chargers acquired him prior to the 1973 season. Unitas had been hard used. He had knees that bent both ways, as one of Harland Svare’s coaching lieutenants put it. Unitas could do little for the Southern California club. He no longer was around when the team concluded its season. Favre is more fit than Unitas was, but 38 is 38.

About those rookies. I observed them when they came to the La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad for the NFL’s rookie symposium. A fine group of young men, I’m sure. On the afternoon I looked in on these hearties, they were working with a gaggle of youngsters from Camp Pendleton families who had been invited to a clinic. Players drafted by the Colts would work with one group, players drafted by the Saints with another, and so on. The clinic’s format represented an opportunity to assess each team’s choices from the standpoints of size and maturity.

The group that most impressed me had the Bears’ logo on their visors. The Bears had a bountiful draft, naming 12 collegians, and their choices run to size, which is a good thing. There also did not appear to be any callow youths in this group.

To me, Darren McFadden, the Arkansas running back whom the Raiders selected in the first round despite some red flags relating to his conduct, appeared one of the most joyous fellows on the grounds. I expected LSU DT Glenn Dorsey, the first selection of the Chiefs, to be bigger. Jake Long is a pleasant fellow, but the offensive tackle from Michigan who has been made immensely wealthy by the Dolphins seemed to me to be very young.

Just observations. The validity of them is to be tested during the training regimen. It is good for something.

Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for PFW since its inception in 1967.