The great athletes often have a routine they swear by to get ready for competition, and Harrison Smith is no different. Now in his fourth season, Smith has become one of the NFL’s best safeties. Each Saturday morning, he begins his final preparations for Sunday’s game the same way: With a glazed croissant.
“For me, it starts my routine for a game, as stupid as that sounds,” Smith said.
He’s not alone. The Vikings’ Saturday Donut Club dates from the days of quarterback Gus Frerotte bringing pastries to the facility on Saturday mornings. It evolved with defensive players like Jared Allen, Kevin Williams, Brian Robison and Chad Greenway, who introduced it to tight end Kyle Rudolph when he was a rookie. The weekly training room tradition now involves more than a dozen players most weeks.
“It’s kind of taken on a whole persona of its own,” Rudolph said. “I can’t think of a better way to start off a Saturday morning. It’s funny — all the different superstitions and rules guys go with, getting the same donut every week, or eating more or less (depending on how they played). I don’t ever switch it up, but some guys do. It’s pretty cool.”
What are the rules of Donut Club? The first one, apparently, is not, “Don’t talk about Donut Club,” because athletic trainer Eric Sugarman tweets out a picture of the gathering each Saturday and players were willing to share the details on their sugary selections. The standards have gotten looser, Smith said, now that more players are involved and vanguards like Allen and Williams are gone. But when he was drafted in the first round in 2012, Smith’s selection didn’t come with an open invitation.
Players meet at 8 a.m. on Saturdays, well before they need to be at the facility for meetings or the Saturday walk-through. Even players who are getting treatment for an injury on Saturdays have to make an early trip to the Vikings’ facility for donuts, so the get-together is a bit of an open secret.
“Nobody really tells you about it,” Smith said. “If you’re in the training room, you see it. I probably saw it halfway through my rookie year, and I was like, ‘Alright — I want to get involved in this.'”
Sugarman — an aptly-named mastermind for a donut operation if ever there was one — typically places an order on Fridays at YoYo Donuts and Coffee Bar in nearby Minnetonka. And whether by consistent attendance or by acts of service — like picking up the donuts, as Smith did as a rookie — players have to show commitment before they get their official Donut Club T-shirt.
“They’re definitely on a trial run,” Robison said. “They have to earn their shirts. They don’t just get their stuff as soon as they come in. They have to kind of earn their keep.”
Many players are committed to their weekly standby, though there’s a varied list of preferences; Robison is devoted to the jelly donut, while Rudolph prefers a custard-filled chocolate long john. Fusco, the salt-of-the-earth lineman from Division II Slippery Rock University, is a “big glazed guy — it’s got to be glazed, with any kind of topping,” while Smith acknowledges his pastry of choice technically isn’t a donut.
Approaches may vary, but on Saturday mornings — the calm before the storm in a NFL locker room — a chance to build camaraderie means something to Vikings players.
“You want to know the guys you’re playing with,” Robison said. “At the same time, you want to make this game as much fun as you possibly can, because there’s times where it can be a grind. It’s just a way for us to come in, have fun with each other and have a good time.”
So as you wake up on Saturday mornings in the fall, the Vikings are laying a path to victory on Sundays. And for some players, though not all, that path has a hole in the middle.
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