Old Dominion Monarchs College Football Pregame Quote, 08/28/2023

Coach Rahne: Excited for game week to be here. I know our players are as well. Get a little antsy hitting the same color, going against the same guys. But it’s in preparation for an opportunity like this. Obviously, we’re looking forward to going to Lane Stadium. It’s one of the unique fun atmospheres in college football, so we’re looking forward to that opportunity for us. It’s going to be awesome.

Q. Do you have all your starters picked out?

Coach Rahne: I would say for the most part we do. I think that in the way that college football and football has evolved, it’s not like the old days where it’s like our 11 guys are just going to go out there, right? I mean, you have different packages for different guys and things like that. So there may be a guy who quote unquote, isn’t a starter, who when you look at the end of the game ends up getting more reps than the guy who was the starter. Just because of different packages that you can float out there and things like that. So I think it’s a little bit more than what it used to be with just 11 guys on each side and then the three specialists. It’s a lot more than 25 guys that we probably consider starters, because you can rotate guys in so fast and that sort of thing. But for the most part, I would say we do. There are still probably a couple competitions that are based on how guys are going to practice this week and things like that. But overall, I would say yeah, we’re right at that point where we have them picked out.

Q. You mentioned the game evolving emotionally. Has that changed much when it comes to the first game on the road at Virginia Tech with your players? Does it change from year to year or is pretty much the same emotionally?

Coach Rahne: I think it’s always the same. They get to go out and play a game and I think it stays the same. One thing that we haven’t changed is we have limited opportunities. There’s really not AAU youth football. They play seven on seven and that sort of thing. But even they would agree that it’s not the same. So I think that because we’ve kept that part of it so special, the game is so special. The other thing in college football that we haven’t changed: there’s no preseason, right? So we don’t have preseason games and all that sort of thing. So there is that little extra energy or whatever they can come from from, and getting the opportunity to play a night game in a stadium as historic and challenging as Lane Stadium. I mean, that’s pretty awesome. So we’re looking forward to that too and I think that’ll bring even a little bit more emotion and energy to it as well.

Q. How much have you and Coach Pry communicated leading up?

Coach Rahne: You know, not much at all. I mean, again, I think it’s one of the things that I dislike the most that we play them. A resource for both of us is kind of eliminated, because I think we’re both afraid of saying something that might harm us in the game. I think Coach Huff at Marshall and I are probably similar, right? We probably don’t talk as much as we would. Him and I talk about stupid things, but we don’t talk about football. Where like maybe a guy like Joe Moorhead (Akron head coach), Joe and I talk a little bit more about football, a little bit more about program management and everything because we don’t play each other. And I think that that’s probably the thing I disliked the most is, you only have so many people on this planet that you trust and so to have one that kind of gets eliminated is not always the best thing for us. The other thing is getting an opportunity to play a team like Virginia Tech every year is awesome. Getting an opportunity to play in this stadium and open the season is a great opportunity for our young men to showcase their abilities. So the tradeoffs are worth it, but that’s probably the thing that I dislike the most.

Q. You mentioned that because you don’t talk that much but from afar. Have you and Brent changed as coaches over the years as head coaches? Have you noticed a change in what he does from afar?

Coach Rahne: Well, I don’t know how their inner workings are working. But I know he’s talked about letting Coach Marve, who I have a lot of respect for and he’s very intelligent coach, call the defense and that sort of thing. So obviously, that’s a major change, right? And that’s something that he probably as he witnessed being a head coach for the first year realized, you know, how difficult it is to actually call that there. There are guys who can do it and I respect those guys a lot. I’m not one of them, and I think he saw how challenging it can be to do that. So I think yeah, we’re always making changes. I know I’ve evolved as a coach over my 20 years of coaching. I mean, we all evolved a lot over that time. I think we change from year to year but you know, I think he’s probably made some of those changes as well.

Q. Grant (Wilson), this will be his first start as a college quarterback. You describe the atmosphere of Lane Stadium as unique and fun, but it can be intimidating. How is Grant going to do with, you know, TV, lights, everything, all the pressure that comes with that?

Coach Rahne: As long as those people don’t enter the field, we shouldn’t be intimidated. There’s still eleven guys on the field. Still 53 and a third. Should have fun with it. Right? I mean, this is why you play college football is for these environments. Do I understand that they can get really loud and be a positive for their team? Of course, I do. I’m not naive. I mean, they’re one of the great fan bases in college football. You got to focus on what you can control and what he can control is what’s happening between our 11 and their 11. I think that’s the thing that he’s got to be able to understand and I think he’s mature enough to handle that.

Q. How do you mimic or maybe you don’t, maybe teach the players to just block out the noise completely? But you know, jumping off that question with how good of a crowd that is. How do you mimic that in scrimmages practice anything like that, or do you just tell the players you know, it’s just you in the field?

Coach Rahne: They do a great job of making it really loud at practice and we’ve played a certain Metallica song 427 times already. I think it’ll play another 427. It used to be one of my favorite songs and I’ve heard it a lot now. Yeah. I mean, we’ll play crowd noise, we’ll play their band. We’ll do those sorts of things to try to just, it’s not necessarily to mimic it. I don’t think you can ever mimic it. I mean, I was blessed enough to be a coach at Beaver Stadium for six seasons. And I don’t know what people were trying to do to mimic that. But I can promise you that it didn’t work. So the best coaches would go in there and have opening play to play games. So, I mean, it’s one of those things we got to be able to overcome. There’s going to be times when they’re going to be loud and may cause a pre-snap penalty at times. It’s only a problem if we let it cause two, you know, let it cause three, let it snowball. You got to put your foot down and understand, okay, I gotta concentrate a little bit more and go from there.

Q. I asked you a while back about your connection with Kevin Decker. What led you to him? Just looking at the stats up there.

Coach Rahne: Not only stats, I mean, it was also obviously stats are a huge part of it, because it showed sustained production. But it was also watching tape and understanding like what type of offense I wanted to go to. So that was a huge part of it as well. I think that there’s a number of different things. I heard a lot of good things about him from just random people that I trust. When you hear words like intense, tough, and those sorts of things. That’s always appealing to me. I think we have some similar attributes. So it’s really it’s worked out well. I’ve enjoyed working with him. I’ve enjoyed getting to learn how he operates. And same with all of our new coaches, Coach Huettel has been unbelievable. Coach Williams is a tremendous coach and that’s been awesome.

Q. What are the challenges with Tech?

Coach Rahne: I mean, I think that the noise is obviously a huge part of it. I think another challenge is, the stadium is so vertical, I mean, I’ve been in stadiums that are bigger. The Big House is called that for a reason. But it goes out so much that you don’t feel it as much as you think you would as opposed to Beaver Stadium which is very vertical, like Kinnick (Iowa), which is really on top of you and straight up and down, and even feels more that way once the Children’s Hospital was built back there which even traps it in even a little bit more. So those vertical-type stadiums, they just tend to give you a little bit. They’re a little bit louder. They feel like they feel like the fans are a little bit more part of the game. Which again, I enjoy. I think that that’s what makes the game so awesome. I think that’s what makes that’s why as a coach as a player you choose to play at these places because you get to experience those types of environments.. I’d say that those are the big ones right there and just a passionate fan base. I mean, that’s a passionate fan base who believes that their team should be up there and the top teams in the country and that’s another thing you know, every year I think they think you know this is the year we get it done right. So they’re also a fan base that has great belief in their players and their coaches which is another challenge.

Q. Have you ever seen a game at Virginia Tech, have you ever been there?

Coach Rahne:

Nope. Just watched it on TV. Back when the video game was around, played on that, you know, but no never been there. This will be a new experience for me, so it’ll be awesome. Looking forward to it.

Q. The home teams have won all four games at this point. Does your team feel incentivized or not ‚ÄòHey let’s go and see them pull off a nice, pleasant surprise’?

Coach Rahne: Yeah, I don’t think it changes necessarily based on the prior history of the games. I mean, sometimes you look at those and people always bring those up. It’s like, hey, you know, you guys, not in this particular case, but I’ve been part of some other games where it’s like, Hey, you guys are, you know, 3-1 all-time against them. And then you look at the games and it’s like the last game was played in 1948. And like, I don’t know if our players are real locked into what was happening in World War II and things like that. But even in this one, two, and two, I mean, some of our kids I mean four years ago for some of our kids, it was 25% or 20% of their life, right? I mean, it’s, that’s not a thing that registers to them at all. They’re worried about the here and now and so that’s what I’m focused on too. And we want to get a win not because the away team needs a win in this series, but because ODU needs to go 1-0 this week.