news-record.com

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Groundhog Day.

The 15th training camp for the Carolina Panthers began like the 14 before, with a caravan of luxury cars streaming down from Charlotte and an undefeated football team unloading at Wofford College.

Are you ready for some football? Not really. It's going to be 93 degrees here today, and this isn't football anyway. It's practice.

Sunday wasn't even that. It was reporting day for almost 90 players who moved into a dormitory for the annual retreat that is football in August in sweltering Spartanburg. The soft rain that fell on the campus the day before the first practice of summer was a mockery of what's to come.

"I need the rain," quarterback Jake Delhomme said.

He wasn't being facetious. Delhomme has walked around under a black cloud for more than seven months, and his apologetic arrival was not unlike his apologetic exit when he led the Panthers to a 33-13 loss to Arizona in the NFC Divisional Playoffs last January.

We stood under the same tree we'd stood under last year and the year before that, the same tree where Mike Minter stood and Sam Mills stood, in front of the same dorm where Kevin Greene stayed and Chris Weinke stayed. An assembled media waited out the arrival of Steve Smith and DeAngelo Williams, watched the rookies file past carrying pillows and electric fans, watched players zip around on motorized scooters. Team staff carried in computers and suitcases. Several were needed to drag a safe up the steps leading into the dorm.

It was just like old times. Julius Peppers even avoided the media, just as he's done for his entire career.

"I saw him this morning," Delhomme said. "I shook his hand like I would've done had he been there for mini-camp or OTAs."

Peppers hasn't been with the team since the day after the playoffs loss to Arizona. In the interim, he announced he no longer wanted to play for the Panthers, who he said were holding back his development as a player. He spoke on the record to the Charlotte Observer in a story that ran Sunday, but he still has some explaining to do. He chose not to do it on the day he drove his dark blue Maserati into a parking lot and disappeared.

The strange feel of the 15th training camp had a little to do with the 14th. It was a year ago Sunday, to the day, that Smith slugged teammate Ken Lucas in the nose, sparking a fight and a suspension and a near disaster that was averted when Lucas forgave the mercurial wide receiver and ended the controversy. A year later, Lucas is the only starter from last year no longer with the team.

Smith, who has turned 30 in the interim, said he was sorry Sunday. Sort of. Which is sort of what he said last year, too.

"I'm not too excited about being in camp due to the circumstances from last year and all the things that will be said and a lot of the things that happened, being a distraction, stuff like that," he said.

Smith, in his rambling manner, went on to say that turning 30 has changed him, has caused him to lose a step and forced him to become a team leader. That's a development worth watching.

He said it's all new to him too, since this is his first time being 30. Delhomme came to his aid, saying turning 30 in the NFL does strange things to a player's psyche, unless you're a kicker or a punter, he added. Or a quarterback.

Delhomme's psyche is the most important thing to watch this year as he tries to live down the six-turnover performance against Arizona. "The last game I played wasn't too darn good," he said .

He said he'll replay that game for as long as he lives.

As he stood there under the familiar tree in front of the familiar dorm the Panthers have been living in for 15 years, Tshimanga Biakabutuka could've walked past and it wouldn't have felt all that out of place, though some 14 years ago we waited the entire camp for him to come walking up, and he never did. His sent his agent, who stood under another tree and held one of the most bizarre press conferences in team history.

I parked under that tree Sunday just for old times sake. Well, that and it was raining and I didn't want to put the top up on my convertible.

Not much has changed through the years. There's some talk that this could be the last training camp held here because the old contract drawn up between the Panthers and Wofford ends this year. No one expects to be anywhere else this time next year, though. It wouldn't be the same.

It doesn't feel all that long ago that were talking to another quarterback outside the dorm when a rookie walked past carrying golf clubs. I don't think we ever saw the rookie again. The quarterback was Kerry Collins.

"The older you get, the quicker the years go by," Delhomme said Sunday. "It feels like yesterday we're back here and back for another season."

That made no sense at all except to all of us who'd been there for every one of those yesterdays.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com