Old Dominion Monarchs College Football Pregame Quote, 08/30/2021

First, I just want to say thank you for everybody coming out. I want to say thank you to Window World for sponsoring the Wounded Warriors Luncheon, which is an awesome thing we get to do. I think it’s probably more important this week and over the events of the past week to make sure we’re supporting the military maybe more than ever before. I’m really excited about that. Our team has been working a long time to play in this game and quite frankly, we’re ready to go. These next three, four days are going to feel like it takes forever for our players; I think it’s going to feel very quick for our coaches. In general, just excited to get going, to get an opportunity to play against a great team, great ACC team like Wake Forest. They’re a well-coached team. I couldn’t have more respect for him [Coach Clawson] and his staff. Their offensive coordinator, Warren Ruggiero, I worked with him for a year at Kansas State so I know how brilliant he is. We’re very excited to play in this game.

It’s now time to get back to work, do you feel nervous like players do or is that time that y’all have during coaching?

No, I think the thing that’s going to be different for me is things like this. Right? I mean, filming coach’s shows and doing this press conference and having to do a conference call with the media before the game just things that quite frankly I don’t normally have to do that are new. You know shaking hands before the game and just all the little things that you never do as an assistant. I was one of those guys that, I’d have friends on the other sideline, but I didn’t one time ever say hello to them unless they trudged across the field and said it to me. That will be a little different for me but other than that. Coaching ball is what I love to do and so being able to do this and being able to focus on the games is exciting it’s not nerve racking by any stretch of imagination.

Do you feel comfortable about how your team is setting up right now, going to Wake Forest now?

Yeah I think whether we’re at our first game, in our first year at our first game, or in our 22nd year, I’m going to be a little … there’s going to be some anxiety about how we’re going to play because in college football especially, it’s a new team every year. You don’t have the same, there’s no building on last year, it’s a whole new build all the time. Yes, the culture builds from year to year, but you’ve also got to re-establish that all the time because you have so many new players. You have all the new freshman, now with the transfer portal, all the new transfers and things like that so. Yeah, I’m always going to be a little nervous, have a little of anxiety for the first game of the year. Always, from here until they make me hang up my whistle.

Were you in the booth at Penn State, during games?

I was. This will be my first. There was one year I was not in the booth, our second year at Penn State, I was not in the booth. But other than that, I had been in the booth the whole time at Penn State. I had been in the booth the whole time at Vanderbilt, so that’s eight out of the last nine years that I have been in the booth. When I first started my career, I was in the booth so that’s probably my biggest fear and I’ve joked about it but, I’m going to make sure I get out of the way. I’ve had nightmares of one of the officials running into me. That’s probably my biggest fear and anxiety. I’ve been working on my overall vocabulary to eliminate some of the more colorful language so I can speak to the refs in a little bit more respectful manner. Other than that, I’m excited about it. I think my wife’s biggest thing is she’s going to tell me every day to make sure I’m wearing sunscreen, that’s going to be her big advice. But other than that, I’m really excited about actually being out there in the feel and the emotions of the game.

What’s the best advice you’ve gotten so far going into your first game, from friends, fellow coaches?

I didn’t get a lot of advice. I don’t know if it’s my personality, but people don’t tend to throw advice to me. I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t take it well enough or what it is. I have received a lot of encouragement but there hasn’t been a whole lot of advice on anything. There’s just been a lot of encouragement and things like that from around. I got one from my brother-in-law today. He used to coach and now has moved to back into the real world, which that meant a lot to me because he’s a pretty special person to me. Other than that, it’s been just random people saying, ‚Äúgood luck‚Äù, people who have been here and moved on already. Eric Acciani at Virginia Union (former ODU GA), things like that. They’ve reached out to me so there’s been a lot of that.

UConn also missed last season, we saw what they did last weekend. Do you see similarities between you guys and UConn?

Nope. I’ve never been to one of their practices, don’t know how they run, don’t know how they work in the off season. So, I don’t. I have a lot of respect for Coach Edsall and the things he’s been able to accomplish over his career. I think it’s hard to have comparisons and those sorts of things between any team because every team is different; every team has had to go through different trials and tribulations. Yeah, we both didn’t play last year but maybe we went about it different ways. So, no, and what’s even crazier is I watched only 14 plays of college football on Saturday. We had our own practice, I stayed for a while; I had some family in town, I played cards with my family and that’s what I did instead.

How long do you think it’ll take to knock the rust off?

Pregame, I hope. I hope pregame. I hope we knocked the rust off during practice. That’s the beauty of college football, there’s no preseason, right? You’d better be rip, roaring, and ready to go right from the jump and I think that’s the thing that makes this game so special; is the fact that there is no preseason, there is none of that. You’ve got to go. Your first game is as important as your 12th and I think that that’s the thing that makes this game different than the pro game and something I hope we quite frankly never lose.

What does Wake pose that, something you can maybe take advantage of, and what are things you just go ‚ÄúOh dear lord, I hope that doesn’t happen‚Äù?

I think the one thing Wake Forest does very, very well is they try to not give you too many things to take advantage of. They try not to beat themselves. They’re very ball secure, they do a nice job of taking the ball away on defense. Turnover margin for them is a huge stat. They’re a team that if they get an advantage in a turnover margin, they’re winning percentage is through the roof. But if you can keep it even, or you can have the advantage, you’ve got a great chance to win that football game against them. So that’s something we’ve got to be ready for. Their tempo on offense, they do a great job of controlling the tempo. Everyone thinks they’re fast, and they were the sixth fastest team last year in the country, but they do a nice job of being able to control it and go slower sometimes, faster other times. If you’re just going fast all the time, that’s not hard; because the defensive coordinator gets into a rhythm, the kids get into a rhythm it’s not hard. But when you change speeds, that’s where things get difficult. So that’s something that is something we have to handle. Really on both sides of the ball we have to control the running game. Their stats, they’re 4-15 when they have less than 150 yards rushing over the last five years. Now, that’s not a whole lot of games they’ve had less than 150 yards rushing either. We’ve got to just make sure that we can control the line of scrimmage and do things like that and I think that’s going to be the tale of the game.

I’m not asking who your quarterback is, unless you want to volunteer, but have you picked one?

I have. The guys know. Quite frankly I think sometimes having team things where we know, and maybe other people don’t is kind of a special thing and that’s something that I thought about. Coming down here and telling you guys and then I thought to myself, I don’t want to. That’s kind of where we’re at right now. I get one more secret for one more week. After this you guys will know a whole lot of stuff so I figured I’d keep it in house a little bit longer. The guys have known for a little bit. They’ve done a nice job of handling it, so I’m excited about the way they’ve approached it and the way they’ve handled it. I’m excited about the way everybody has handled it, because it’s shown a lot of maturity for our team quite frankly.

When did you decide?

About a week and a half ago. Guys have done a pretty good job. That trust level goes both ways. I always talk about them being able to trust me, then I’m going to do what I tell them; on the flip side, I’ve got to be able to trust them too and this certainly has shown that I can. That’s probably been the thing that has been the most exciting through this whole thing.

Looking at your depth chart, how important was it for you to recruit well in the transfer portal? You’ve got five guys starting and others who could start.

I think it was important to recruit well in the transfer portal and I think it’ll be important until they stop playing football, or until the rules change. It’s just going to be one of those things that, that’s the way of the world now. You’re going to have to recruit out of there; you’re going to have to recruit well. You’re not necessarily going to have to recruit vast numbers but the guys you do get, you’re going to have to be successful, you’re going to have to hit on, and those guys are going to have to be able to make an impact for your team. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be starters, it just means that they need to be able to contribute and contribute right away. That’s the thing that’s going to be critical from here on out, is gathering as much information as humanly possible and making sure you get the right guys.

On Friday, you’ve got a long day at the hotel. What are you guys planning to do during the day?

We’ll meet. One of the reasons we want to have a long day at the hotel is we want to give the guys a chance to go in there and just get a nap. Some of these hotels we go to are some of the nicest beds our guys are ever going to sleep in all year, so let’s give them a chance to take advantage of them. Sleep is such a key performance indicator and quite frankly I know as coaches we don’t get enough sleep, myself included, although I am steadfastly working on it and I know our kids probably don’t either, but it’s something that we need to have. That’s a pretty big thing. We’ll have meetings. Get some meals in, but a lot of it’s just about being together and just thinking about the task at hand. These are the things you actually remember; these are things I remember from when I played in college. I’ll never, ever forget, we used to have big things of butter on the tables. One of the things the seniors used to do on the first home game, is they would take the butter, we also had ice cream so they would wait and see which guys were going to get vanilla ice cream, and they would switch it with the butter and just they put whatever they had on it and distract the kid, so that one of the freshmen would dig in and just get a big scoop of butter. Which is not good at all, it’s terrible. I had that experience so I know, it’s not a great deal. Those are the things you remember like how people react to those things. You don’t always remember what happened on the first third and seven of the game, but you remember those things and that’s one of the reasons why you want to be at the hotel.

You’ve been through fall practice now. How good is this team in your mind? I know that’s hard to judge because you haven’t played against anyone else.

I think we’re much improved. When I was a younger coach I used to say, ‚ÄúAlright, this is how good we are‚Äù. The older coaches used to always tell you, ‚ÄúDon’t do that‚Äù. You would always think you were smarter than the older guys. Now that I’m one of the older guys, I stopped. I don’t do that anymore; I just try to see how much improvement we’ve made. You can see where your deficient and your strengths lie, but it’s hard to compare from year to year and things like that because quite frankly you also don’t know how guys are going to react once you get into a live game and that’s a different deal. The actual live game, the stadiums going, the lights are on, as opposed to maybe what we do out there on the practice field. Some guys they do totally different things, good or bad. Some guys play a lot better when the lights come on and things like that. I don’t want to have too many of those guys because I don’t believe in that. There are other guys who, the pressure gets to them and they revert to some old habits. That’s why I don’t really try to say where we are but I do think we’ve made some major, major improvements and I think that’s the key.