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Let's get let's get the pressing question out of the way.
Yeah, let's start off, and really forgot where this interview is going to go.
Right off the bat.
Where do you stand on the twenty nine Big Twelve Championship when Texas sold from Nebraska with one second left?
Okay, So, you know, throughout history and throughout time, there's always been you know, controversial plays, players getting injured, whatnot. But it's the football gods, man. Things happen the way they're supposed to happen, right, So Texas won.
When you're at the University of Texas, the gods are kind of in your guys's favor.
I'd like to think.
So you weren't at Texas at the time when you're watching it, when you're at the team. I was watching the game live and you see us celebrate games over cold. If Sue wasn't that fast, bro Cole was not.
He does an interview I bust his balls about it all the time where he's like, oh, there was an alarm clock that went off in my head. I threw it out. There was one second left. I'm like, bro, if Sue wasn't that fast, you're not getting rid of the ball. But they add the second back on kick canfield goal to win the game. But it was the most we celebrated. And you, as a coach watching, what are you thinking there's one more second.
I'll be honest with you, I thought there was one more second. Now, mind you, we're gonna jump around here. I was at USC for the bush push against Notre Dame N five and they stormed the field and they had to get him off the field.
Then there was the bush push to win the game.
So I've been hard of those games too, Like this is you know, I hate to tell you that, like this is the only time it's ever happened, It happens.
I gotta get out of my bubble. You're gonna be all right.
I know, I know when you were so you're in high school, you received no offers.
It's not a shot.
Just read your Wikipedia.
You walk on a USC play to play baseball, ends up transferring to El Camino. I believe it was where did you find, like regain your love for football to eventually turn you into.
A ball coach? Questions?
So I went back to El Camino and John Featherstone was the head coach at that time at El Camino, kind of a legendary junior college coach. And I was playing baseball, but I was in health class with Coach Featherstone and he just kind of kept prodding me to come back out, come back out play football and uh, legendary junior college program. I had no business in my mind thinking I was going to go out there and
play with these guys. But I went out when baseball season was done and just kind of started working my way up the depth chart and next thing you know, here comes the season open and I was a starting quarterback at El Camino and we had the worst team in El Camino history.
Two and eight.
My freshman year, like never happened at El Camino, and I was like, I must not be very good, right, I mean individually.
I played Okay, Yeah, I played pretty good.
I had Actually I had a couple offers to leave that year, and I just thought, man if I could stick around and do it again. And then the next year we went out and had a really good year and got a lot more opportunities and old ultimately went on to BYU.
Yeah, those first couple offers, you got what we're talking about, D one double A.
No, they were actually pretty good. I mean they were. Yeah.
Like the weird thing about junior college, I played it and I coached it. Everybody's got a need and at that time, there was no transfer portal like we're dealing with now. It was like, you better go to the the JC ranks and get a guy that can leave right now. And I could haven't been a four to two four transfer or I was already academically eligible, so I could have left after that first year, but ultimately stuck around and played the second year.
If it wasn't for that coach and that health class, where do you think you would be now?
I'd probably be a high school teacher and a high school coach. I really would.
Coaching football or baseball, probably probably both.
I mean you get you know, when you're a high school coach and teacher. I mean in California especially, man, you got to do it all. You got you got, you got gym class, You're probably coaching football, You're probably coaching baseball, and you might be coaching freshman basketball too.
I mean, you got to do it all.
But that's what I was doing in the off season when I was playing in the CFL. I was a substitute teacher and I helped out, and that's kind of I was always that. This has always made sense to me.
So when you transfer from El Camino and you go to BYU, when you get that scholarship because you were slinging the rock around your sophomore year at El Camino, you get a scholarship to go to BYU. In ninety six, you win the Semi Ball War, the top passer in the in the country. Then you play three years in
the Canadian League, you played professional ball. Talk to people about how that translates for you being here now managing a quarterback room with nothing but talent With Quinn yours arch man comes to mind, and I know there are more guys even in that room, but talk about how you keep that healthy competition going while also teaching and developing developing these guys, because you know, especially in this day and age, like guys want to come, they want
to play right now. And you've been at spots like BAM and USC where you've had talent all around these rooms. Talk about how your experience there being in every seed has helped you become the teacher.
I think it's I think it's a valid point in question. I was never the most physically gifted player, right, I didn't have the biggest arm. I'm not the tallest guy. I wasn't the fastest guy. So I had to play the game up here.
You know.
I had to know our offense so well. I had to know defenses so well, and how plays were going to work predicated off the defenses we were going to get. That's how I played the game, and so that's how we teach the game. We try to teach the game beyond just knowing how to run our plays, but how do they fit with the defense We're going to get?
What's the front, what's the coverage?
You know, where's the weakness in the defense and where's the whole predicated on the play we're going to run. So that's how we teach it and we've been teaching it that way for jeez, almost twenty five years now, going back to when I was back at junior college
to coaching Carson Palmer at USC. But at the end of the day, we try to get these guys to understand that, like your journey's your journey, focus on what you need to do and not get so caught up in what the guy next to you is doing or what he's working on, because everybody's at a different stage. Those early years at UC had I had Carson Palmer, Matt Castle, and Matt Lioner all in the same quarterback room. All three of those guys went on to have careers in the NFL and make a bunch of money, and
they're great guys that lent itself to shoot. When we were at Alabama, you're in the same room with Jalen Hurts to a tongue of Illo and Mac Jones, everybody was at a different stage. Everybody was working on their craft. Now all three of us were starting in the NFL and doing their things, so you can recruit that room and you can get guys to understand it's not about just getting on the field and playing, it's when you
get your opportunity to play great Mac. You know, Mark Sanchez was a one year starter for US at USC was a fifth pick of the draft. Mac Jones was a one year starter for US at Alabama, was a first round pick for New England. And if both guys were first year starters in the NFL, we felt like we prepared them to play in the NFL and they only needed one year to go do it. And both those guys were championship quarterbacks in college. So that's kind of what we preach here. You know, we've got a
great room. You know, it's a talented room. With Quinn, with Arch, with Malik Murphy. All those guys are going to have have aspirations of playing in the NFL. Our job is to have them have a great experience while they're here, be part of championship teams, and then put them in position to fulfill their dreams of playing in the NFL.
With the new landscape of college football and the way the NIL deals are going and the transfer portals, essentially turning into free agency those huge rooms and like you're talking about USC and Alabama, Like how do you keep a talented quarterback room together? And getting guys to believe, Hey, all it takes is one year when guys can just go off and go wherever they want to be starters right away, Yeah, with lots of just And I think that's that's always the challenge, right at the end of
the day. Nil deals are great, you know they are, And I think it's good for our sport, I really do. I mean, guys are working their tails off and trying and if they can use their name, image and likeness to to take advantage of of who they are and
get paid to do so, unbelievable. But the reality of it is that money compared to the money that's really going on in the NFL, and especially now more than ever, of where the money is going in the NFL with the guaranteed money and the free agency con that's the real money. That's that's the real money to try to go attain and achieve that, that's that's life changing money
that you have opportunities to go get. So do we try to create opportunities for our guys here from anil perspective, and is that part of the motivation to keep him.
I hope not.
I hope they want to be here because they want to be great, and they want to have a ten to twelve year career in the NFL and get three contracts and you know, their kids never have to work again, kids exactly. But if if we're short sighted, and if the individual or the family short sighted on that, this probably isn't the place for him anyway.
Quite frankly, when you do with Famili's from a recruiting standpoint, we all watched arts Manning and I'm sure you get the question all the time of.
The entire family. Yeah, the entire family. And he's not doing media. He did.
He took a very unique approach to his high school football and how he went about his business. Like, what was your process like recruiting him? Was it the whole family? Because nowadays, like with Nil and all that, and you have to recruit an entire family, not just the player.
You know, I couldn't. I tell his mom and dad all the time. They did an unbelievable job raising him. And in the process, I never I never talked to Peyton. I never talked to Eli. I talked to cup, I talked to Ellen, I talked to Arch, I talked to Hyde, I talked to sister. Like it was about the family, truly the family. It wasn't about the Manning brand. It was about Arch Manning and is this the best fit for him to go to school football wise, academically, socially,
the city of Austin. And I think that's why they got to a spot to where they could make a really kind of just clear minded decision what was best for him.
And it wasn't this enormous media circus.
I mean, they kept that thing pretty tight, but they went about it in a really positive way. They took on official visits, they took official visits, They created relationships with the coaches at the varying schools, and they're all great schools. Ultimately, they felt like this was the best place for him, and I think it came down to what he wanted and then the family supported him.
That's awesome.
I mean it makes you feel like like if you just had one year of eligibility to play quarterback, like this could be a guy. See why guys gravitate towards wanting to play absolutely, speaking of recruiting you've been You've
mentioned the talent rooms at USC Alabama here. Now, what's a what's a unique recruiting story that you have back in the day to where a guy's had an incredible career that you look back on and they might have had the most interesting recruiting story from your time on the road.
This is always the toughest one, man, Like I always remember one story we were in We were in Gatson City, Alabama, and I was assistant coach at USC and we were recruiting. Man, I want to say, it might have been Drake or Patrick or that. I can't remember.
There was there's some kids there, and there's a lot of a lot.
Of coaches there, and I were meeting this young coach and and he was talking really fast, and I'm trying to figure out, like what what is this guy's name?
You know?
And then Coach Carol met him and I circle back and I said, hey, can I get your card because I wanted to know his name. Come to find out, it was Dabo Sweeney and he was a young coach. He was a young coach at Clemson like almost twenty years ago now, and we're all there, you know, recruiting the same guys at Alabama.
But man, he was a fast talker.
And Davel and I have a great relationship now, but that one was funny to me to think, like, everybody's on this journey, in this path, and we all started somewhere right and we were both young coaches, assistant coaches, just trying to go recruit good players for our head coach and our programs. And we're talking you man, let's due deb And I was like, what did this guy just tell me his name was?
You know? Can I get your card?
You know? And I joke with him about it now, like, hey, oh okay, Davil sween, I remember that. Pretty good career so far. Now that's one a couple of national.
JP. He's a he's a South Carolina game cop. Ye.
Oh, man, hey he's doing a good job. Man, that's good. That's doing great right there.
With when you were you were in Alabama before you were here, correct, yes, sir. So when you are obviously having the talent you are the type of coach that you become, you obviously had a lot of offers out there to go to different universities. What about Texas was such a selling point?
For you.
Yeah, I mean I think it got to a point at the end of my first year at Alabama, I had gotten a couple job offers, and at that point it was, Okay, I'm going to be a head coach again. Let's make sure it's right because I don't know if I'm going to get another opportunity after that one. So we got to make sure this is the right one and coach another year at Alabama. And when when Texas
ultimately called. And you think about like as a kid when I was growing up, right, first of all, the uniforms, like the helmets, like the helmets like to me, those were iconic helmets and uniforms. And I had when I was a kid, I had a remember the Sports Illustrated Posters edition. Yeah not those ones posters, but yeah, I had. I had the poster of Earl Campbell above my bed playing for the Houston Oilers, like it was Earl Campbell.
Okay.
So then you fast forward Ricky Williams. I'm like, he was a California kid coming to Texas. I was like, wow, you know, they never come to California, you know, And there's Ricky goes and wins the Heisman, Trophy, and then all of a sudden, I'm on the other sideline when Vince Young beats USC. I'm calling plays for USC in that game, and I'm watching what I thought was Superman and the.
Confetti come down.
And so I've always held Texas football in very high regard.
And then you start doing the research.
You start looking at the value of the education, You start looking at what's happening in the city of Austin. You start looking at recruitability and the recruiting base in the state of Texas, and then the national brand, the ability to go national and to do that and then have a known Chris del Connie, the athletic director, and then getting to meet President Hertzel, it just felt right.
And then the last piece to the puzzle that I always hold on to, it's like, it's a lot easier to win championships when they've won them before and this place is one and before and naturally, hey, there was a decade there where it wasn't Texas like what everybody thought it was. Shoot, but when Pete Carroll got hired by USC, there was about a decade of mediocrity before they went on that run, before Nick Saban went to Alabama,
there was about a decade of mediocrity. So all the blue blooded programs at times can fall on some hard times, but they're a lot easier and a lot quicker to get back on track because of the history and tradition.
You hear that Nebraska fans before Matt rule was brought to Nebraska a decade of losing. The good times are coming. We have one last question. I see, I see.
We're going to have one last question. It's called factor fiction. That's a segment, Taylor, get it outa get it out.
We're going to show you a photo and you're basically going to express your opinion if it's fact or fiction. Taylor, show the camera the photo, and then show him the photo.
I can't see.
Fact you have over here.
Fact It says the glass Rivalry and college football Fact ninety six thousand fans. If there is a game played in the third week of November. I think it's called the game.
It's called the game.
Yeah, between Ohio State and Michigan, widely noticed, the greatest probably in sports. So how is what I just said fact?
Yet? That is fact?
Honestly, I was before you said that, I was like, man, the iron Bowls.
That was a pretty good rivalry. Yeah, I would say probably be second.
I think five, and then Nebraska I think up there too, seriously.
Right right behind Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, and then probably you're right the iron ball. I was going to give you guys top three, but you kind of just talked yourself out of that.
No, I think he's saying his list is rhetoric one iron ball one. I think that's what he's saying. You're saying, the game is three?
Which game?
The game?
Oh he's got he's got us playing his game. He goes which game? He knew the game he's got us?
In a blender? Would you put usc U c l A over Oha State Michigan say.
Yes, probably because of proximity.
You know, the mileage of proximity, the how tight, how close the schools are.
You think about how many people you have to pass to get from one place or the other. Though it's probably way more people, so technically it seems farther away and LA traffic, it's a hell of a deal.
Yeah, I feel like I feel like.
I feel like he's he's really flipped the flip the script.
Well, great game, though, I watch it when I can listen. If it was if it was two years ago, i'd have probably given you it. But Michigan, we've won two in a row.
So they're both dynasty and I will say this, that's what makes right, That's what makes rivalryes great.
Right. Yeah.
The great thing about yours too, is it's early in the year. I feel like there's like a you know when that week's on, right, the sunshine.
This setting is amazing, right, I mean, you go, you go to Dallas, You're at the State Fair. The stadium is split fifty to fifty right down the middle. The locker rooms. When you come out, you're about ten yards apart. Both teams are right there. It's at the old Cotton Bowl. You know, we're at in Jerry's world. Yet you know it's you're on the grass like in It's It's a
really cool setting, man. It's it's something that I have never experienced in a game like that where the fans are split fifty to fifty and they're not split, they're split at the fifty yard line. So in one end of the field it's a home game. You get to the other end of the field, it's a road game. And I mean that I had to learn that the first the first year, I mean, we couldn't we fall
start and I'm like, what is going on? We were stuck in their end of the field, and that that ultimately kind of spun the game there in the fourth quarter.
Tack and you said it. You said it quickly. But for everybody watching, the Texas State Fairy is taking very serious in the State of Texas.
Yes it is.
It's very serious. But there we thank you for your time. This was awesome.
Appreciate you guys.
Hope you had as much fun as we did.
Now, appreciate, appreciate you boys.
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