This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Fox Sports fourteen fifty powered by Nova Insurance Services insure your most prized possess yets.
Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Iron the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera. In with me today's co host Jeff Skurrin, you know him, former high school football legit in town. How many years where I find you? You didn't pull you off the golf course today?
You know I've never since I was a teenager, I haven't better golfer. So now you just pulled me away from doing honeydewes and.
Chores and thank me later, thank you later.
And poking into possible jobs. Oh all the things the recent retired do you know? You said at home? And you go, hmm, yeah, I make a mistake here or not?
You suck at retirement.
I my wife, for ins told Greg Hansen, you know, coach has only failed at four things in his life retirement four times.
Four different times. Don't tell me you're looking to get back.
I you know, it's yeah, I am, I am, And I'll get back to doing something and we'll just see what pops up and you know, it's not the coaching, it's not the time.
With the kids.
Some people talk about it's the parents and stuff. I've never had that problem really. I really like most of the parents. And well, a lot of it is I'm just proactive and I talk to people.
And I enjoy what I do, and they know I enjoy what I do.
And I think most people have come to learn that I know my stuff pretty decently, and so I just don't get a lot of that, a lot of the drunk yeah, and so that's never really bothered me. But it's the it's it's kind of the state of schools
now and the adherence the rules and stuff. I don't have that on the field, but I have to deal with it all day long with teachers that that you know, don't understand what what a good athletic program or a good music program or good drama program things like that, what they can teach kids outside of the classroom area about their life and how to conduct themselves.
And yeah, yeah, we got question but that.
But but but drama and band and that, they all those things do the same thing if you've got a good coach behind it. And I missed that part of it.
Let's say.
You know, I do a lot of that with my charity work now of course, and still work with kids and and just you know, I went this summer to Europe and I did eight clinics and we visited eleven countries, a lot of my old friends from coaching over there.
You uh, when we came in, you know, I joked with you because I say, do you look good for your age? You don't have to say your age on the air if you don't want. But I'm sure the kids kept you younger.
I don't think there's any question about that at all. They certainly keep you lively, they keep you informed. And I'm the kind of teacher coach that when you ask a question, I want to give you an answer that's the real answer. I want to give you the full picture and the full story. So I did a lot of research and spend a lot of time because because I think answer asking questions is a good thing. I think that's what students are at school for, and I think as a good teacher coach, that's part.
Of your responsibility. Back and forth.
Yeah, that's great, it's a lot of fun. You were in the business for Hull fifty years, fifty years, and I've said this all along, and then maybe you're going to say, Steve, you're wrong that the worst thing that happen to kids athletically are the parents, and now specifically because they seem the kids nowadays more so than in the past, they're the meal ticket.
Here's the thing as a coach and a teacher, particularly if you if you, if you wear both hats.
I see the kids of the morning when they get to school.
I see the kids all day long, hanging out with the very kids you told them specifically not to be with.
I see the kids. I see the kids at lunch.
I see the kids after school before practice again, hanging out with the people that you probably wish they wouldn't hang out with.
I see the kids for two two and.
A half to three and a half hours of practice every day.
I see him at night.
I see him perform under the hardest stress you could ever imagine. If if a parent thinks that we don't know their children, they ought to walk in our shoes for a little bit. When you count up waking hours, I'm with that kid, yeah, ten times.
More than a parent is. You're right, and so.
I like talking to the kids, and I like talking to the parents, particularly the ones who are honest with me about what their child is like.
So let me ask you, because you're you're right, you do spend a lot of time, you know, from eight in the morning, if not earlier, till the end of the day, because they're with you at least for a few months, right, if not more months. Have you ever had a parent or two I'm sure you have, Jeff, what's going on? What's going on with our kid? You know, I'm trying to figure this out.
Oh yes, oh yes, that's all. I get that all the time. I was educated here. I came to Tucson in nineteen eighty four to come to graduate school. I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship at that time with one of the best psychology departments in the world, not the nation, but in the world, and I had
a great faculty advisor, and I was I got. I received a great education psychology, and that served me so well to understand the dynamics of a kid and the world around them, which includes the parents, the home, the siblings, their friends, and of course what happens to them during the school day and with sports.
So I get this question every now and again. And I've been doing this a while as well, and I've covered some great guys, great guys here in town for a number of years. Great and a couple, you know, not some great guys. But people ask me what makes the difference between a good kid and a bad kid?
You know who you like?
Talking to another guy you know is kind of so early and kind of a pain in the The one thing I say is they've got good parents.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
But let me tell you something, and hopefully a lot of parents and coaches out there will heal this. I never assume when a kid does something wrong, whether it's a play on the field or just doesn't act properly, do something like that, my first assumption is is maybe they were ever taught this. It's one thing to speak you're at a person, and I hear me speak at a person, not with a person. It's one thing to speed at a person. And that doesn't mean it gets absorbed.
That doesn't mean they understand it, that doesn't they learn it. I mean, if you take what I teach a kid like a quarterback, and so much of it is involves muscle memory and if you allow them to do it incorrectly, over time, it's almost impossible to change it. So if they've had a bad coach coming up teaching them, yeow, I think you should do it this way, and it's in fact the incorrect way. That's very challenging for me as a coach. So I've always assumed that that kid
wants to do well. You know, you say bad kid, and yes, there are some, that's for sure, But most kids are really good kids, even if they do bad, and it's just a matter of teaching them the right thing, talking to them make them feel comfortable in a situation. And that that's the thing with a sport like football in particular, and of course any sport. I just spoke two weeks ago the University of New Mexico baseball team. The head coach there is one of my former quarterbacks.
Tossed around yeah from me, and and it's the same way. It's just don't assume these kids know what to do. And let's we're teachers. We're coaches, but we're also teachers. We're teaching a sport, we're teaching manners, we're teaching behavior on the field, We're teaching them win over the fans. We're teaching them win over the referees. We're teaching them win over your teammates. You know what they say about coaches, You have to win the locker room. These are real question. Yeah,
these are realistic things. And don't assume that these kids automatically know what to do. And so that teaching process and frankly, I find it to be a lot of fun.
Call me, we'red guy. I just I just enjoy it and I miss it greatly.
Thanks for everybody for listening. You reached the preaching point of the eye on the ball segment. But no, no, I really like this. Let me tell you. Let me interrupt us. We're gonna have PJ. Brown from the Daily Star. She covers the women's basketball team at Dea Barnes and all that that's going to start pretty soon was the big twelve media days. So we're going to talk to
her about what's going on with the program. And then the second half, we're going to talk to somebody you know very well, have your morales from All Sports Tucson, who's written a number of stories. Uh you know you who hasn't written number of stories and you coach Uh let's go let's go back. Uh you've been out a little bit, but you're still coaching just maybe a year, right, because you're at Rio Rico last correct.
Yeah, it was last December that I decided that pretty much I'd done everything I could do down there.
Uh.
My daughter, unfortunately, uh, her second her husband passed away unconnectedly, and I had to deal with the trauma of all that, sure and in some cases PTSD for that.
The kids and and they're back in Tucson.
So I really needed that that this time beating Tucson to be there and even though it's not that far away.
Uh.
The superintendent down there, David Verdugo, one of my he played for me and one of my favorite football players, And it was so much fun to learn that culture and be part of it and to and assimilate with those kids. I can't I can't tell you how much I learned from those families down there about what the border and what life is really like and not what you see on TV. For sure, And that's almost a joke now when I when I see the news about
stuff like that. Anyway, just with a great experience, but I really needed to be back here and now there's kind of this whole and I'm not quite sure yet how to fill it. I'm still real healthy, I'm still really active. I'm in good shape.
You know what. There's there's more on the.
Horizon, and uh, there's more games to win and more hills to conquer.
So that's our guest.
What I wanted to go with that question is you've been around a long time, a long time. I'm wondering back in the day, back in the day, compared to today, do kids still still want to be coached?
Kids are kids? Haven't changed everything else? Really, everything else has changed. Kids are still kids. And the younger you get them, the more you begin to see that. I have some eight nine year old quarterbacks will knock your socks off. I could show you pictures. Unfortunately on the radio doesn't do much. I could show you some pictures of some of my kids and watch them throwing, and people are going to say, wow, kids can learn that at that age. Yeah, we're the right with the right coaching,
with the right setup, with the right motivation. Sometimes we'll bring popsicles out on the field. Sometimes we bring them little nickknacks and toys that I was given, you know, sports oriented.
Things and motivational.
Of course, it's just you know, in the end, it's a sport. And again, whether you do drama, music or stuff like that, it's still an activity that's supposed to be fun and educational, and you just have to approach it that way.
When I go on the field, I want to have fun.
If I'm with eight nine year olds, it's a different kind of fun with them with when I was coaching college.
In your years, you've had about you said fifty in that time, you probably had h one hundred and twenty quarterbacks. I'm assuming two a year. Blah blah blah.
So let me go with this.
In your as a coach, would you have a smart, cerebral quarterback who has obviously talented be the quarterback or a very talented quarterback who doesn't have that same acumen.
The answer is yes. Now, I know you, I know you were. You think that's a cop out, But let me tell you this. I was with the Stanford recruiters one time. Because I've had a bunch of kids who have gone there very fortunate to be around that kind of intelligence.
And a young a young man or a young woman.
And but I've had those kind of athletes and that are on that level, like a Banny red.
Hair who you have a tennis players might have.
I coached girls tennis back then, and she's one of the best athletes in terms of all the different family.
Just a great family, you know, just a hustle.
Everything you could think of, and of course people want to think of most recently red Rod and stuff. But I had I talked to a Stanford recruiter about a kid I had named Corey Hill, who I was just with in Portland in Oregon this past weekend of Cory's doing unbelievable, one of the head guys at Oakley Sunglasses and went to end up going to Stanford playing for Bill Walsh. And I was talking to one of the recruiters and basically I asked them the same type of
question you just asked me. Would you rather have a kid with all these tools or someone who shows up, you know, and just works their butt off and wants to be great?
And the end they said yes.
And I like that answer because I think all kids are capable of so much. It's just the right structure, the right teachers around them, the right system in place, and teaching them the attitude and the expectations and frankly holding them to some demands because, after all, the answer is, hey, do you want this? And they turned in and say yes, Coach, I want this, And I say, I'm going to read the guy.
I'm going to be the.
Very guy that holds you to your answer. Now let's go over this again. Do you want this? I say yes, coach, and I might even have have them signed a contract or a card sometime. And believe me, it gets pulled out a lot because kids are kids and things happen in their life. And listen, here's my here's my definition as a psychologist of a teenager. The inability to see past Saturday night?
M H.
Is that a good or bad thing?
It's a thing. It's good or bad maker, it's up to you. But they can't see past Saturday. So you want to punish him for a month, you might as well punish him for.
A hundred years. They can't see past Saturday night.
I don't even know how to respond to you, because thank you for the answer, but you didn't answer my question. So but yes is an answer, I guess I don't thank you for.
Showing up here that it's nice to have athletes.
It's always nice to have athletes, sure, and it's real nice to have someone that can respond, to deliver and become a leader like say, uh, you know, I've had some great quarterbacks in my day.
The kid you remember on the field, you don't win, you're your coaching. You win.
The kids have to win the game, and so you can't ever forget that. So it's great to have those kids that can go out there and be like I was, which is just a coach on the field.
You need that.
You need that someplace out there because I talk about I love those kids. Yeah, I talked about twenty to thirty yards of separation. You know, people talk about the six degrees of separation Kevin Bacon that whole game. I talked about the thirty yards of separation on the football field. That's the difference between the coach on the sidelines and what goes on during the game.
I'm not in the huddle. I'm not there.
I need kids to deliver the message that I want delivered. And if you don't have those kids in the huddle, it can be real rough.
Yeah, you're exactly right. We got to go.
You give me the sign to get out of here. Okay, we're gonna get ahold of PJ. Brown talk a lot about what's going on at the UA Women's Program.
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Steve Rivera, He's got his eye on the ball. On Tucson's sports station, Fox Sports sporteen fifty.
Hey, welcome back to I on the Wall here on POT Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera and today's coach Jeff Scurrin. Now on the fund we have PJ Brown. It was on a Daily Star reporter covering the women's basketball team.
How you doing, Pj?
I'm doing great. How about you guys?
We're doing well. Thank you. You must be excited about the new season.
Absolutely. You know, it's kind of funny.
I was just telling somebody this the other day, but you know, as this season sort of ramps up, you're like, uh, you know, you had summer, right, so it was a little bit of slow down. Time, took some vacation, and you're like, I don't know if I'm ready for the for.
The season to come.
And then I went to a couple of practices and I'm like, oh, yeah, bring it, Yeah, go ahead.
Yah.
That that's an amazing thing that you go through. I know, the exact feeling.
You know, everybody says in coaching you have to embrace the off season. And I think if you cover a particular sport, it's the same way because you guys get so involved in the details because that's what that's what people want to know when they read the articles.
Absolutely, it's just we sort of live, breathe, eat, sleep the sports, just like you coaches do. So we're always you know, we write almost every day, either we're talking to you guys, or we're and or we're writing.
And so there's you know, it's always funny.
I always tell people when when February hits in the the end of January or February in the midst of basketball season, we talk about the players hitting the wall while the reporters hit the wall.
I hit the wall every time, and I have.
To like take a couple of nights and sleep a little longer, or do something work out a little harder, just to like, Okay, there's about six, seven, eight more weeks of this season.
I got to just like push through this.
But you guys have such an important job because as we say in football, you know, where does that all American come from? And it comes from a long run and a poet in the press box. So you people take on a bigger role than most people would ever imagine.
If you don't.
We want the inside story, but but we also want you know, we want to hear the nice things. That's that's we want to be fans. And I think a good reporter makes that happen.
Well, thanks, thank you.
So now you're going to be a poet PG you got to be a poet?
Yeah, now I do. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a lot of pressure. Right.
Well, it's a lot of stories because it's not a small season. It's a five month season. If they go all the way or go deep into the into the March month, you know. So so what do you what's up next? Because you're part of that special section, right what are we going to look for?
So I have three stories in the special section. It comes out. I believe it's the Sunday, right before the day before both men's and women's basketball has their home opener season home opener, which is on that November fourth, which is a Monday. The women play it for the men play at seven or eight I think must be eight o'clock. And yeah, we're just gonna it's gonna be jam packed.
Full of.
You know what, it's going to be like and and Plus you know, with Arizona moving to a new conference, there's a lot of more teams, there's a lot more teams to get to know and their players and their coaches. I was just doing the finish the what we call the Big twelve capsules, which are just like a highlight of all the schools their coaches, returners, addition what they lost from last year, plus what we think about the team.
And wow, there were a lot of them.
You know, I'm used to doing twelve and now there's sixteen teams and I was like, oh my god, Like, am I ever going to get through this? Plus at the same time, you're you yourself as a writer reporter, are learning about these schools that they're going to play. Some of them we know, right, it's easy for like the Utah's Colorado issue. We know them, we know their coaches,
we know a lot of their players. But when you go into this new conference, you know, I know a few of the coaches because for various reasons, I know a few of the players because you know, there are a couple of them that played in the Pac twelve that maybe played for Arizona at some point, then they've transferred out, so we know those players. And then there's some who are just best players in the nation right
who are in the top fifty. Maybe they're all Americans, and I've watched them play the last couple of seasons, but a majority of them I have no idea yet, and so it's going to take a while to learn them, to learn about these schools and these programs, and that's sort of the deep dive that we take. And then as they come up and Arizona plays them, it's really like learning about them all over again.
PJ.
I have a question about coach Barnes, and this is from a coaching point of view, and you can't help but notice this, and it happens to be number one on my personal hit parade of what makes a coach a great coach? Her teams get better as the season goes on, and everybody sees that, and it just it's it's really a wonderful thing to watch. What what what
do you think? What do you see as her particular devices and ways that she pulls this off, because it's just a fact every single year, you know, sometimes a team at the beginning he goes, oh, it's not going to be such a good season, and then they were competing for the pack, you know, for the PAC title.
You know, what's her secret? What do you see there?
Sure, well, there's a couple of things.
I mean, it's interesting yesterday at media day, you know, they asked Ado about being picked seventh in the league, and she said, I don't care. I don't here where I'm picked preseason because it's more important where you finish than where you start, right because she wants to be playing for titles. She wants to be in the NCAA Tournament, journament every single year and making a run.
And that's what her goal is.
What I see, and you know, I always talk about the development that Idea has brought to this program with her and coach Salvo Kopa as well as the other coaches, but those two sort of it's there. It's Ideas program and Salvo has been with her obviously throughout the whole her whole tenure here.
It's the development.
It's it's that every day, besides having practiced during the season, they work on fundamentals.
They have individual skills sessions.
So it's not just in the off season where they're lifting and there and they're they're getting those individual skills sessions and learning a little bit about the system that Adia runs. But it's what they do every single day in the season. This makes a big difference. Most schools
don't do this. I was talking to the assistant coach Bett Shelby last year about this, and I had asked her about this, and she said, because she's coached at Maryland with Brenda Freese, she coached at West Virginia under Mike Carrey, and and a lot of other places. And she said schools, just coaches, just head coaches, don't do this, and that it seems to be the key where idea is a she works with them every day and and and they peak at the right part of the season.
You saw this last.
Year with with Skyler Jones was a perfect example of this. Right, So, she's a freshman, she comes in, she has a little bit of success, but not a lot. And then when they have the injuries and they lose a lot of players, she comes in at the last portion six weeks or so of the season, all of a sudden, she's starting.
She gains a little bit more confidence, she starts scoring, she starts being more of a threat on defense, where she uses her long arms to play Arizona defense, gets steals, does all these.
Things that.
Makes the Arizona system what it is, right, and that happens as you go along, and as the season goes along, not only are they developing like that every day, but Idia puts in a little bit more.
Of the system.
So you will see new things being introduced, especially on the defensive side of things, as the season progresses, which is always really neat, but it's just not like they stop learning. You know, they're learning every day and the system's becoming more robust and they're starting to do things that are more technically advanced as the season goes on.
Well, and that's what I saw. That's why I asked you that particular question. And the other thing that you added to that that I think is just wonderful to hear, and that's that she's in that she's there with every single step personally, which which tells her athletes. This is the this is primarily important. You know, if you if you you know, of course you have to count on your assistance, but if you form things out that the athletes know that that's a secondary thing. If you, if
the head coach does it, that's a primary thing. And it's great to hear that say that, because I say, I think you're talking about some of the golden rules of coaching, and but the results are obvious. Like I say, I watch what she does and I see them get better and better, and it makes me feel good as a coach because I just think that's what we're supposed to do. I mean, we can, we can control the
hand we're played to a certain extent. But a lot of coaches in today's world, particularly the transfer portal in the nil that they don't want to coach anymore.
They want they want to recruit a team.
And now you're seeing I think we got a chance to see what happens when you really can impact your kids on a day by day basis.
Yeah.
Yeah, let me let me ask you a quick question about the roster. Uh, it's my understanding. I could be wrong. You know, we all know Tommy Lloyd's got nine scholarship players and one hundred on his bench with walk guns. Is it Dia has the same Is she doing the same thing with at least with the scholarship players.
She's got all scholarship players on on? Uh, she had two walk guns last year in Aaron Tech who also is on the the track team and she's a javelin thrower, but she got injured right away, and then she brought on Brooklyn Roads, also a walk on, and about a week or two after they were brought on, I think Brooklyn was even earlier. She put them on scholarships. So
they're still on scholarship. So all fourteen players. They have a fifteen limit, fifteen player limit in women's basketball, and she's got fourteen and they're all on scholarship.
Okay, so I didn't realize that one and two do you think how deep will she go?
She might go pretty deep this year. I mean typically Adia Barnes goes like eight nine deep. And the tricky thing this year is that she's got all these really interesting pieces that as you move into the Big twelve and there's it's a different style of play. So they have real centers in the Big twelve.
They're kind of big.
They're more like Reagan Beers who used to play for Oregon State, really big tall girl, uh woman, and and so a lot of it's that way, which is which is not? You know, Pac twel was more of a finesse kind of a league. It's a little different, and so I think to compete, she's gonna be throwing out a lot of different looks. She has a lot of post players this year, so she'll have a little bit more depth, which will help. And I think she's gonna sometimes go small and be more, have that more finesse,
and sometimes go a little bit bigger. I think she's got the pieces as long as these new players and the you know, the freshmen come along to do some of this, and so it's gonna look I think a little bit different. So I could be wrong. She could end up just sticking with those nine and and being that way. But the other day when I talked to her, she said, oh, I'm gonna have different lineups and so,
you know, different rotations and stuff come in. So that leads me to believe that she could use more than the eight or nine players than she typically does.
Yeah, I guess the star of the star or two would be.
I think it's it's tough because they don't have a real star star. I mean it's not like I can't say, oh, Halana Pueo, right, And as Mary Martinez, I think it's the sophomore class. So the three plus Mantea who Mantea do who they consider a freshman because she was out injured last year. But the class of Jada Williams, Brea Cunningham, Skuyler Jones and then Montea do, I think those are the real.
The leaders of this team.
Okay, super PJ. Good luck, It's gonna be a long season.
Thanks, thanks, and it was great talking to you, especially you coach. I haven't seen you in a while.
Yeah, I've been with laying low here a little.
Bit impossible, impossible, but you know, you know, in our business, you just don't know when the phone is going to ring.
And I got a call from Italy this morning. I mean you just yeah, you know, you just you keep your whistle wet, you know.
Yeah, absolutely, that's interesting.
You will, PJ, thank you, thank you. Yes, interesting interesting. They start soon like the men, and we'll see how they do. I mean, picking seventh in the league. She used the overchiefs.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you what if you if Adella Barnes is connected to it, they're going to compete. And I love watching her coach. I love watching her on the sidelines. I've seen her a couple of times of practice and and the people. If you haven't seen that happen, that's a fortune of nature that that that woman knows her job and she knows how to coach.
It's like say, for me, it's a it's a real joy watching her.
She's as popular as anybody in town with their social media stuff. So let's take a break here, come back and maybe we'll take a call or too. Five two four one forty. If you're an ABSO a men's basketball fan, you know it's been successful for nearly forty years. Now
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Streaming live on the Iheartsradio WIP. This is Eye on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Fox Sports Sports fifth Day.
Hello, welcome back to Are in the Ball hero on Fox Sports fourteen. Cooky, I'm Steve Rivera, He's Coach Skurrin, Jeff Sturren, got Henry work on the board. If you want to call us, please do want to say hello to coach five two zero four one six seventy four forty you'd like to hear from you?
Maybe you have a story about coach now stories, no stories, We don't enough time for stories. Uh, we'll see.
We'll see what happens with the ones basketball team. We're looking forward to both the programs. Both should be pretty good, you know, and still middle of the road right in the conferents. That's fantastic. You're gonna let me ask you this philosophy wise, your schedules were your schedules, right you, Patty?
Did you couldn't your schedule your scheduled? Did you get the schedule a time, a team or two.
Yeah, you try to, you want to, you want to have input in there, but there's so many factors that goes into that, and it's much more complex in college too because of the travel involved.
Well, so let me let me throw this at you then. Okay, so your schedule is what it is. I'm sure you trying to sprinkle in a tough opponent early to see what you need to work on, who you need to you know, figure out who's going to play whatever. You're a philosophy guy who played tough early and see what you're going to.
Do, or just let me get some wins.
Well, you know, it's it's kind of a mix and it depends upon what you got coming back. If you have all rookies coming back, you want a chance to get on the court or in the field. And I was just watching the UFA basketball and they're playing the D two team from a lot in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and it's just like.
People say, well, what are they doing that for.
They're getting their guys used to playing together against someone else other than the scrimmage and you end basketball. They do two, three, four of those games before they even think about playing the powerhouse. And then they'll go into a tournament sometimes over in Hawaii or some other place that really doesn't count, and then they see what they can do. But that thing doesn't it's a special tournament. It doesn't really. Of course, everything counts, but it doesn't
really count against your conference. Now, Arizona this year, as they've discarded in football, is going into a new, entirely different creature. And I've heard them talk about it, and I'm not at their meetings, so I just really don't know. But I just know what happened with football, and it's not the pack anymore. And this is that these guys live on being physical most of their athletes.
Of course they in the portal now.
They come from everywhere, but most of their base athletes are coming from Texas and Oklahoma and places like that, because you know, people got to realize athletically, you've got Texas, California and Florida.
So let me let me ask you this. You can be critical if you like. You don't have to be critical if you don't want to. Do you think because everyone's on better now and I'll just prefer.
It that way.
Do you think that the team, because it moved into a different conference just wasn't prepared for the new conference and the style. Is that a part of the problem.
Yeah, And again I'm not to be critical.
I don't know exactly how you prepare, but I think there should be an awareness that you're going into an entirely different type of comforts where they just assume punch in the mouth in football is look at you. And I of course I remember how they play basketball, and it's not going to be a whole lot different. I mean, they're going to run you, and they're going to beat you up, and they're going to press on you. We're going to get completely different officials and in basketball that's.
Really a thing.
I mean, it's a thing in every single sport, but in basketball it's really a thing, and it's going to get a little bit like stepping up into the NBA.
Well, well PGA talked about it. She used the word that I've used a lot is finesse. You're going for finesse to physical.
And finesse is great, but it's got its time and place, and it's the old rock paper scissors type of thing.
You know, it depends upon what you got.
If you got finesse people that can hang in there, you know, whether the storm of being the other physical team and be finesse, yeah, that can work. But so it's a much more complex thing. But here's the thing, Steve. It's now sixteen teams, so you're.
Going to get a lot more of that. You're not going to get these some of these easier teams sprinkled in.
You're gonna have to it's I talked about the SEC, having having played in there myself and a background in there as a coach, and you know, when you're in the SEC every week as a battle, maybe you get one a season, and if you can really got a good a D you can get two and it's not just to get a break for your other guys. It's to play a lot of your other guys, your backups, and get those guys playing time because practice becomes real different.
When they get on the.
Field, they they want their job too, So so it's a it's a much bigger thing.
But in the SEC.
You know, one, you know, when I was a scout team quarterback. You know, one week or I was Georgia, next week I was Alabama. The next week, I was Miami. The next week I was Florida State, next week I was Auburn. You know, where's the break?
Wait a second, you were a quarterback, a backup in the SEC. Backup.
That's been way too complimentary, way too. I was rocky with my bag on the hook.
So because you're not a tall man, so so you know that you're exactly saying what is going through? Well, yeah, he's about an inch taller than me.
But back then, at least we had the option and that was my special okay. And when I went to Florida, that's that's what they were running under, a guy named Lindy and Fonte before I got there. And then they made the switch based on this guy that no one ever heard of out of Johnson City, Tennessee named speed Steve Spurrier and all he did was won the Heisman Trophy.
Yeah, I didn't know that. You know, that's interesting. Okay, Okay, so you know, you observe you, you see what's going on at you. They again, you don't have to be it's just it's totally different than what we thought would happen.
Whether they fix it, we'll see. Well, it's totally different from what you thought would happen.
I just happen to know people in different places to tell and well, these guys were licking their chops.
For these pack teams. Okay, that makes sense. They were.
They were because and it's not anything personal against coach Brennan or against any of the players or anything like that. It's just that the idea that this you're coming into our territory, you're coming into our houses. You're coming you're thinking, look, look what's happened to the old Big ten teams that have gone to the SEC.
That's a real lesson for them.
Sure, I'm sure that Texas had no concept of what Georgia was going to do to them. And it wasn't just Georgia. Here, Steve, here's the thing. It was Georgia, it was Alabama, it was it was it was Mississippi, was South Carolina, it was I mean, it was these teams that they're all loaded with great athletes and great.
Football everybody, but Oregon is not doing well. Yep. And Oregon's got a different They got it. They're a little bit different, you know.
It's hey, listen, we're in college football is now semi pro football. And I say semi not not to say the old semi pro. The most of us know they're kind of pro football. Sure, it really is. And and it's a completely different management now. The successful teams that you're seeing right now that have this initial success in terms of depth and all these other.
Things, it's not just coaching.
They have somebody that really knows how to manage that trans for portal and the NIL. And it's not just the head coach. Maybe he had to go out and buy somebody, you know, that was really good at that stuff. But that is now a part of it. Just like when I went to Pima, I had to have an opsky. If I didn't have an OPS coach, there's no way in operations for people that don't know that word.
There's no way we could have been nearer successful as we did.
Because that allowed me to have the time to coach the kids and deal with those issues and problems.
And you have to have that now it's not the same staff that you used to have.
And again, like I said, nobody wants to nobody wants to coach anymore. But if you're, you know, a school that doesn't have the money or doesn't have the wherewithal to get these a roster filled with star players, your only other option is to have a system where you could develop your guys. And of course we have a new staff and it's a new conference and there's a lot of new stuff through it.
Well, let me pull this at you then, because before the season started, the Clemson coach tell me who he is, you know, the football coach Clemson.
I just lost his name, Dabas Whenie doubles win.
So he's one of the guys that doesn't like the transfer portal. I'm not sure how well he's doing it, drove next day, but out of the game, no exactly, And everybody could have says, well, you're gonna need to do it to compete. Well, he's doing okay, and maybe it's a one off. But but and let me go there, so so do you think the nil And this is an obvious, stupid question that people are going to be paying off a lot of money to win the games, and not all athletes win games because you can You
talked about development. If you're a good coach and you can develop players, you can still compete with the people paying off their kids.
I think just look at Texas A and M. You don't have to look any farther than that. You could pay and you could recruit, and you could do all this stuff. Good point, but it wasn't a good mix.
It just wasn't.
Don't blame the coach. That coach didn't get off the bus at college station and become a bad coach. That was a good coach, and it just it was the next it's the wrong guys. And that's the crapshoot that you take with us transfer portal. You know, you know every year you've got a good Now Tommy Lloyd is doing a great job of managing that and making these guys play together. And yes, we have some issues we can get better at and anything. And he'll be the
first guy to tell you he's he's super. He's just a really good dude. And and but it's a it's a different it's a different beast that we're trying to manage here. Guys like Nick Saban decided, I don't need this anymore. I got enough money, I got enough friends, I got enough national championships. Bam bam, I don't need this anymore. Dobbos in the heart of his career, and he's going to make the adjustment. He's not just a great coach, he's one of the best motivators that we
have in the game. And he's not afraid to surround himself with other good people and pass the credit along. I mean, look at his uh, look at the guys that he's already spawned in.
His coaching career. And he's going to be fine. And Clemson believed.
Clemson has the resources, they're going to be able to play in this game.
But you just can't do it by yourself as a coach.
As much as you'd like to look at everybody's film, as much as you'd like to negotiate personally with these kids and spend time with the middle of the room, that you're you're not trying to sell their parents anymore.
You got to sell You got to sell it to their agents, no question.
Well look at Tony Bennett, a guy fifty five years old, very successful, had his bumps and bruises as well, but a lot of life left in his coaching career, and he says, yeah, I think I'm done and we're not here. You know, Dave Rubio has retired because Candrea is gone, and they're older obviously, but you know, why deal with it?
I'm out of here. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you.
On almost every one of those cases, I know those guys personally, age was not a factor in any of their decisions. Right, those guys could still coach. I mean they're great guys personally. But those guys you mentioned, they're great coaches. But then again, you get to look at the guy at Indiana and all of a sudden, where'd he come from? Well, the system played into his skill set.
He's a good coach regional football, Yeah, a really good coach, and yet he knows how to manage that transfer portal plus mix it in with the guys because Indiana is in a school that can go out and get thirty guys on the nil.
They're not going to do that.
But what they can do is they can get some key guys they could work in the development, and they could mold that into a really good, solid team that's in every game.
My old saying is, hey, if you're going to win the big game, you got to be in the game, in the game, in the fourth quarter.
Right now, let me ask you another quick thing, because one of the criticism that Brendan is getting is that he's a nice guy.
We all can say that he's a nice guy. Right.
He's not a fiery guy, and maybe he's behind the scenes, but we haven't seen it. I think you're a pretty good guy. I haven't really followed you on the field and how you show up on the field. Right, If you're a fiery guy, good guy, they respect you. I'm a believer that you have to have some kind of pain in the neck and I want to use a different word, but I'm on the radio to be a very good coach, because that's how they're going to respect you.
They're going to run through walls for you, coach. They're going to do things that you if you sit there and just kind of just sit there, or motivates however you motivate, but you're on the right track.
Let me just rephrase that a little bit. There has to be some sort of mistake about you to be the head coach. It's not a secret thing, it's not something it's just something that the players buzz about, something they do. I think in my case, it's a lot of I make a promise, it's done, I get it done. They do their part. I do my part, and I'm real reliable when it comes to that. And at the same time, I think I'm a disciplinarian. There's certain things that we're going to stand for on my teams and
you have to develop that. And it's a little bit different in every school. When I went from Sabino, where we frankly we won too much. That sounds strange, but my interest in coaching kind of waned when I was there because, I mean, guys, we were nine out of ten years we were.
In the semi finals of the championship game and we.
Were averaging forty to fifty points in the first and second round of the playoffs. That's too easy. There wasn't enough of those games. I go to Pema College and it's all different. We got to scrap for every single thing.
I loved it.
I loved every part of it. Well, that's kind of point.
It doesn't happen by and I'm not trying to blow smoke with you, because it doesn't happen by accident.
You were doing very well. They must have.
You must have had something, some kind of magic where they play their ass off because either you're a paint of the net coach behind the scenes.
You know what I'm same ding.
You have to respect you. I say this a coaching clinics all the time. Look up on that scoreboard, moms and dads, look up on that scoreboard. Fans show me where it says nice guy points.
You don't get any. You don't get any, don't get any. And but but at the same time, you have to win the locker room. That's just no question.
That's part of coaching. And it doesn't matter the sport, it doesn't matter the level. You have to win the locker room. So there is that balance, there's that mystique that you can create. Listen, I could get my lineman when I was coaching at Pima. I'd get these three hundred pounders. I'd go into the offensive line huddle, and I could get them crying. You could ask Kevin Amanan, and he's the principal now Sabino High School and he was my offensive line coach. Hey, co coach, how do
you get them to do that? They were scared the death of you. They weren't scared the death of me physically. I'm five to eight, one hundred and fifty pounds. These guys were sick three six seven.
Here's here's what I would think, and we gotta go take a break. They didn't want to disappoint Jeff Screw.
I'd like to think that I really would, But you know who knows. You have to talk about that's my that's my theory.
And we'll take a break and go to the other side and get breaking news from Henry here in a second.