D.J. Durkin, the University of Maryland’s head football coach, was not shy about extolling the virtues of his new strength and conditioning coach, Rick Court, in summer 2016.

“He’s the most important hire I’ve made,” Durkin told Sports Illustrated.

“He’s critical to all we do,” he said to the Carroll County Times.

Court fit the part. He seemed to personify the fire-breathing, helmet-smacking, iron-fisted drill instructor, his head shaved bare, whistle dangling from his neck. He spoke often about juice, or energy, and his catchphrase “excessive juice” — or what is required upon entering the weight room — became a team motto at Maryland.

“He always talked about ‘bringing the juice,’” said Tim Cortazzo, who played wide receiver under Court at Toledo. “He’d be in the weight room at 5:30 a.m., and he’d be the most hyped up, energetic guy there.”

But after a 19-year-old football player, Jordan McNair, died in June, two weeks after struggling to recover from a grueling offseason workout, an ESPN report this month described a toxic culture of fear and intimidation in the Maryland program. Court was the program’s first staff member to resign over the death; Durkin’s fate remains in limbo pending the results of a new investigation. The university apologized to McNair’s family and acknowledged that the player’s temperature and other vital signs were not taken and other standard procedures not followed after he was overcome while running sprints.

McNair’s death has thrust a spotlight on collegiate strength and conditioning coaches, who are seldom celebrated yet are vital cogs on the athletic staff. They are usually the loudest and most energetic ones on the sideline. They also spend more time with the athletes, particularly in the offseason, than any other coach.

“The players’ most important relationship is with the strength coach,” Cortazzo said. “You’re with them all the time.”

But in college football especially, the strength coaches are typically hired — and fired — by the head coach, with little or no oversight by an athletic administration official. Their salaries (which can be upward of $400,000 per year) come out of the football budget. And while the NCAA requires that strength coaches maintain certification through a nationally accredited program, those programs can vary.

This can often tie the strength coach to the football coach in a way that, many say, promotes massive conflicts of interest. A team’s loss is the strength coach’s loss. Too many losses, and the entire staff is looking for a new job.

“We always say it’s who you know, not what you know,” said Michael Zweifel, who holds the NCAA record in career receptions and is now the strength and conditioning coach at Division III Dubuque. “That’s how you get hired in strength and conditioning. You’re not hired based on your qualifications, knowledge and experience. It’s almost more of your brand.”

Cortazzo, who went on to work on the strength and conditioning team at Ohio State before co-owning his own training business out of Pittsburgh, said “tough love” was part of Court’s approach, but he never felt it got abusive. Others have disagreed.

If punishment is what the head coach wants, however, it can be difficult to say no.

Christina Specos, a former strength and conditioning coach at Purdue, said she was aware of plenty of instances in which strength coaches were required to dole out the punishment to a player who had misbehaved, in effect serving as the head coach’s enforcer.

“Strength coaches and other support staff have this pressure to do things the coach’s way because they’re worried about their job security,” Specos said. “They’re just the ‘do’ boy.”

Bob Alejo, the former director of strength and conditioning at North Carolina State, understands this pressure firsthand. In 2017, he did not get his contract renewed after the basketball coach, Mark Gottfried, was fired.

“You are a little bit beholden,” Alejo said. “I think there’s some conflict of interest. There should be a buffer there.”

Alejo, who also worked for Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics, added: “Asking strength coaches to handle some disciplinary actions, like someone misses a class or is late for practice, and that requires extra pushups or pullups, that somehow along the line has come under our umbrella. It is, in my opinion, a huge mistake. That’s not what we’re here for.”

While tragic episodes are rare, there have been other recent cases of fatalities or injuries during offseason training programs, including the hospitalization of two Nebraska football players because of rhabdomyolysis — a condition resulting from excessive weight lifting — in January, and a similar instance involving multiple Oregon players in early 2017. Typically, it is the strength and conditioning coach who receives the blame.

“In many cases, the strength coach is perceived as this crazy, meathead guy who acts wild and hypes people up,” Zweifel said. “The act of strength and conditioning, exercise physiology, biomechanics, it’s very complex and intricate. Instead, we give it this simplistic view of more, more, more, and heavier, heavier, heavier.”

Recently, there have been calls for reforms to everything from their hiring structure to training practices and accreditation. Most calls have still been left unanswered.

Last summer, Bob Bowlsby, commissioner of the Big 12 Conference, suggested the strength and conditioning certification process needed significant revamping, likening it to where the licensing for sports medicine professionals was 30 years ago.

“When you look at the catastrophic occurrences that are happening in the sport, the deaths are happening during conditioning and offseason practice,” Bowlsby told reporters. “Very few of them are happening during the season, during contact, during regular preparation.”

But Randy Ballard, an associate director of athletics for sports medicine at the University of Illinois, said proper accreditation was not the only reform the strength and conditioning profession needed to accept.

“You can have the best professionals,” Ballard said. “But if you don’t have people policing those cultures, you’re going to have bad outcomes. Unfortunately, we see that every summer.”