It is proven that if an athlete takes two weeks off from training, that it takes 4 weeks for him to recover from where he left off. The dead period is good to have, but should be moved to the beginning of the summer so that the athlete can build up for the coming season. For the people that think that there should be no off season, you obviously don't think that any of our kids should go to college to continue thier athletic careers because if they don't train in the off season, they will never have that chance. I worked in texas and lived there for 6 years and we had contact with our players year round and never had a dead period. Texas high school football is ranked #1 in the country because that is what is done there.