Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #285: Matt Kane-Florida State University

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#285: Matt Kane-Florida State University · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and Field world Juvenile tuned in to our humble servant
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  Mike Cunningham for another extraordinary message for Guild
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  Athletics connections. All right, welcome back to the
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  Guild Athletics Connections Podcast.
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  I'm so humbled to be your host. Mike Cunningham, national
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  business development manager for Gil Athletics and you know,
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  buckle up. That's all I'm going to say on
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  this one. This is going to be a lot of
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  fun. First of all, I've known this
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  guy for a lot of long time. We have a lot of similarities,
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  familiarities and, you know, kind of our career a little bit.
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  And honestly, he's a little bit like my brother from another
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  mother. I really do love this guy.
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  So help me welcome the new head coach.
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  Maybe it's director, I don't know the difference.
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  Maybe we'll ask him of a a team that I grew up a huge fan of, by
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  the way. So it's another, you know, a lot
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  of emotions here. Help me welcome the wise, the
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  wonderful head coach of Florida State University, Mr. Matt Kane.
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  Matt, how are you, Sir? Hey Mike, Thanks for having me.
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  What? What are you?
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  Are you the head coach or the director?
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  And what is the difference? Director of track and building,
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  so the we have a head women's cross country coach so that it's
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  just a stair step question all. Right.
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  A lot of people have a different title when they have other
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  titles for other people. There's a lot of associate head
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  coaches at a lot of different places, previous title,
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  etcetera, so. I just saw someone and again,
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  and this doesn't, I'm not going to say the name, but if you
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  figure out the name, it's not about the person.
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  They were just promoted from assistant head coach to
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  associate head coach and I was like, what's the difference?
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  I, I, I think you know. Living in a corporate world now,
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  I think the difference is this is how we get you a pay raise,
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  which I'm. All for I'm all.
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  Good on that. But it was just like, well,
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  what's the, I don't really know what the difference They both
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  had head coach, you know, assistant associate.
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  What's I don't know. Anyway, how are you, my friend?
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  You, you we're, we're recording this.
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  We're recording this when there's a little bit of a
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  weather going on, but everything seems to be OK in Tallahassee.
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  Yeah, we're all good now. So everything cleared, every
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  electricity appears to be back 100%.
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  So we're all good. We we dodged a bullet
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  significantly, like the last 30 minutes or whatever, there was a
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  shift that probably saved. A lot, A lot of heartache.
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  Oh, man, yeah. Well, there is a lot of
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  heartache going on kind of specifically up in that North
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  Carolina area of I, you know, when I see stuff like that, I, I
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  typically, and I did in this case, you know, e-mail some head
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  coaches like, hey, I'm just praying for you, things like
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  that. But I'm also like, I'm like the
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  last person you really want to hear from.
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  You know, I'm a little bit like, am I just clogging up your inbox
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  because you have a lot more important things to do?
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  So I kind of feel bad sometimes about that.
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  But you know I won't get mad if they don't answer my e-mail
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  within 24. Hours so.
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  Well, Matt, let's dive into this man, you and I have known each
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  other for a long time and I'm just, you know, I've been on the
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  sideline to watch your career and it's been fascinating.
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  I'm super, super excited and happy for you.
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  And you know, for, for a program that, you know, I, I'm from
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  Florida originally and lived in Tallahassee for a while as a
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  young kid. And so it was a big Florida
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  State, obviously, specifically Florida State football fan, you
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  know, and PT Willis and those guys were there.
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  So, you know, to see a good friend of mine become the
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  director, make sure I say Mr. Director is, is really cool,
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  man. It's just, you know, I like to
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  see good things happen to good people.
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  So just really cool and excited for you.
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  And, you know, you and I have talked offline about that.
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  So I just want to publicly recognize that it's a cool
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  thing, man. I'm very happy for you.
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  Yeah, it's it's an honor to be honest with you.
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  There's been some some good coaches that have come through
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  here, you know, some big, some big shoes to fill.
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  But it's also a place where there, you know, there hasn't
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  been a tremendous amount of turnover in the last 40 years
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  either, you know, so and all those guys are still here, You
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  know, Terry Long still in town, Dick Roberts still in town, Bob
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  still in town. So got a lot of watchful eyes,
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  but it's a good thing. Like they're, they're great
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  people, great coaches and and provide some good perspective.
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  Yeah, that's I need to think about the longs being there too.
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  Yeah, that's right. Wow, that's that's pretty cool.
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  Well, let's hop into your story, man.
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  You know, my, I'm a Marvel guy. I really like those Marvel
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  movies and my favorite ones are the first ones, the origin
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  stories that show how, you know, Peter Parker becomes Spider Man
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  and all that. Let's talk about your origin
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  story. Where does Track and field start
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  for you? Oh man, I was track and field
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  started when I was little, like little little like fastest kid
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  in the school, little stuff, you know what I mean?
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  And then you go to like. You know it was a different time
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  as the 80s so you know you would have bought 2 track mates a year
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  back then. You know, you, you run your like
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  little track meet and then you go to see who the fastest kid in
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  town was and then you go your one track meet there and then
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  that was the end of your track career.
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  And then, you know, into the summer stuff.
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  But I did a lot of different sports, football, baseball,
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  basketball, a little bit track and field obviously, and then
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  just kind of navigated myself through that and some of the
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  track stuff just kind of came natural to me.
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  So and coaching the same like I ended up going to Central
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  Oklahoma. I was AD 2.
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  They used to have track and field.
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  They brought back the women's program, but they they canceled
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  the men's program maybe a year or two after I left anyway.
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  But yeah, it was just like a place where I could go kind of
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  developed to get better. I wasn't that good.
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  I was like Oklahoma good but not good.
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  So you see it was a really good spot for me.
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  Coach Parent kind of let me come into the program and and help me
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  develop. And honestly, I had Aga there my
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  junior and senior year that really was really good for me.
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  You know, like I went from crappy to less crappy during
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  that time, so. So back up real quick, go back
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  to high school. You're you're playing a bunch of
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  different sports. You're a guy.
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  You know, I love your passion like you, you're a passionate
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  kind of guy. What as it's with high school
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  and you're deciding what to do, you know, on the next level and
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  you're playing different sports and you're getting experience in
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  a lot of different things. What was it about track?
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  Why track instead of football? Or, you know, you said
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  basketball a little bit, but you know, why, why track?
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  What wasn't that drew you there? I was, I mean, it's kind of I
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  think where people gravitate to things naturally because you're
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  good at it, if that makes any sense.
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  Like, you know, you're on a football team and you're 1 of 11
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  or whatever and you get the ball and you do good things less
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  you're great going to go Division One.
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  You know, like I was just good at football.
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  I enjoyed football. I probably have a football
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  mentality quite a bit. I had some great football
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  coaches growing up, you know, like that was probably an error.
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  A lot of a lot of young guys want to go play baseball too.
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  I love baseball. My son plays baseball.
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  I'm a full time baseball dad. But track was one of those
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  things where I could stand out, you know, like I would go to a
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  meet, I would win every meet I went to, you know what I mean?
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  I think when you have success, you keep having success and you
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  keep having success, you can sort of like you gravitate to
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  what? You're good at and.
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  So it just sort of found me that way.
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  That's kind of how I ended up doing that.
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  It was it was a weird deal. It's obviously a different time
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  where I could play. I actually played a little
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  soccer as well, baseball, soccer and track in the same season was
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  a pretty intriguing, certainly couldn't do that nowadays, but
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  it was made it work. I mean, it's Stillwater.
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  It was a small town, so you can do whatever.
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  When you're looking towards colleges and you end up going to
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  central Oklahoma, what were you thinking of majoring in?
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  What was the life goals like? I'm going to become a business
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  owner, English teacher. What were you thinking at that
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  time as an 18 year old? Oh, believe it or not, I was
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  broadcast major. That's when I started out in,
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  yeah, I started working the TV and radio, have a face for
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  radio. So that works.
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  But yeah, that's what I that's part of the reason I picked
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  Central. Central had a a really good
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  broadcasting department, but it was also, again, it was a
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  different time. I'm from Stillwater.
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  OK State was potentially an option, but they were all
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  distanced back then. And so that was a 110 hurdler,
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  403 hundred hurdler. They kind of let me know I
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  needed to run the 800, which was not really something I was
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  interested in and then Oklahoma was not.
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  And I wasn't good enough to go to Oklahoma, to be honest with
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  you. But also that my dad would have
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  probably murdered me if I went to Oklahoma.
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  So because he's a Oklahoma State fan and we're from Stillwater.
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  So Central was a good natural fit.
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  It had kind of what I wanted to study and and probably the right
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  level for me athletically as well, too.
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  So that's how I ended up there. Was coaching at all a thought?
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  In your head at that point. Not at all.
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  Not at all. It was, it's kind of natural to
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  me, like when I was the best kid on the team in high school that,
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  you know, the kids would come and ask me for advice on the
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  like I felt, and I was a hurdler.
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  I fell into hurdling because my friend hurdled and I was over
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  there just kind of, you know, how junior high practices are,
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  you know, you just kind of hanging out mostly and the
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  hurdler. So I was over there talking to
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  him. And so I'm, I'm going to run and
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  jump over a hurdle. And my coach saw me and was
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  like, Hey, do you want to do this tomorrow?
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  Sure. You know, like, and then I, I
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  won the next day, like my first hurdle race ever.
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  So not that it was any good. I'm sure it was probably 18
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  seconds or something terrible, but but it was definitely a, a
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  situation where like I did just sort of fell into it.
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  So coaching wise, same thing happened when I got to college.
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  There was a lot of people that would sort of gravitate towards
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  the people are more successful and you just got to the point
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  where you're just sort of helping other people because I
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  wasn't, I was good, but I wasn't great.
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  So there was a lot of like coaching that made me better, if
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  that made sense. So.
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  Kind of off topic, but you didn't three-step your very
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  first high hurdle race, did you? Oh no.
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  Oh, OK. I I was about to be really
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  upset. Thank God there was no video.
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  There's probably some threes and fours and fives in there.
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  I just did whatever it took to get.
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  Across the line, yeah, OK. Really competitive so it didn't
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  matter what I was doing and it's my son just started running this
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  past year. I've tried to get him to bow.
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  He's a baseball guy, but he ran like middle school track this
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  past year and he's that same kind of competitive.
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  He has no idea what he's doing, but he put him on a 4 by 4.
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  If he's in six, he'll get you the 1st and just keep you there.
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  Then he has no idea what he's what he's doing after that, but
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  he's just competitive. You know, I was tear about the
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  hurdles and you know, most people who are tear about the
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  hurdles, 5 step, right? It's just kind of a natural.
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  You're not going to three-step, you go 5.
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  I think I took like 10, That's how bad I was.
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  So I was like, dude, if you did three right off the bat, I'll
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  just be upset, man. I can't handle that.
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  Yeah, I I'm certain I don't. I mean, I don't.
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  Have real lucid memories thank God of what 8th grade track
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  looked like, but it was definitely not pretty I'm sure.
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  I kind of you said thank God there weren't video.
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  I kind of wish there was video of me just like a show.
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  Like, I think people think it's a little bit of a, like I'm
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  putting on a little bit when I talk about how like bad I was.
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  I wish there was video to show you that I actually might be
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  underselling how poor of an athlete I really was in the
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  hurdle specifically. Well, I definitely found a
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  yearbook photo of me hurtling and I was from maybe junior or
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  senior year that I wish I didn't.
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  It was not a clinic in technique, I can tell you that.
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  All right. You mentioned so you go to
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  Central Oklahoma, that's funny. And you mentioned Aga that kind
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  of made some changes with you. Tell us a little bit more about
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  that. So yeah, a guy named Chris
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  Weiler, he's not in coaching anymore.
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  He's smart, got out and makes a ton of money.
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  He works. He's senior VP for our bond or
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  something like that anyway. But yeah, he was actually a
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  teammate my freshman year and then he left.
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  He got a real job and then came back and got a master, got an
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  MBA and whatever. Anyway, he was just a guy that
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  was inspirational. He was younger, so we kind of,
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  he was good as an athlete. So we kind of looked up to him.
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  But more than anything, he was just a guy that cared about us
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  and it kept got us out there training and and working
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  together. And yeah, it was, it was mostly
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  about accountability and getting you to work hard and.
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  Stuff like that. It was simple stuff, but it was
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  he was good and the good dude still is a good dude, so.
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  You know, it's interesting that the way you describe that as it
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  being simple stuff. You know, I learned early in
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  coaching you and I probably had conversations about this.
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  You know, young people, they'll never, they'll never say it out
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  loud, but they want discipline, they want accountability.
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  They want to go into programs where coach cares about, like
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  you're talking about with Chris here, cared about you, not just
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  a loosey goosey. Yeah, let's just have fun and do
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  whatever we want. I think young people look
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  forward to that. They're never again, they're
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  never going to say, hey, I want you to be hard on me or hey, I
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  want you to do. And it's not about being hard on
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  you. Actually, I take that statement
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  back, but it is about being disciplined, accountability.
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  A lot of the things that we look for as adults, by the way, in
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  our workforce is. So it's interesting that coach
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  came in there and kind of put that into you and and ducked
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  out, by the way, went out of coaching.
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  So it's not like he was like some lifelong coach that, you
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  know, had learned it. Yeah, I think he was just a guy
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  that it means he's a successful person.
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  And I think a successful people don't want to be surrounded by
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  people that don't want to do the right things.
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  They don't want to, you know, they don't want to be around
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  people that aren't going to hold themselves to a higher standard.
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  And I think that's why he's successful probably and all the
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  different things he's done in life.
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  So I that probably stuck with me subconsciously more than
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  anything else, you know, just having somebody that kind of
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  held a standard, forced you guys to cut without, you know,
• 13:00
  pulling teeth, made you step up without to whatever that
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  standard was so good. And for us it was just a change.
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  Like I loved our head coach. He was a very nice man, but he
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  was, I mean, truthfully, I had a quadruple bypass my freshman
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  year. So he was not ever, you know, he
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  wasn't present a lot and you know, no disrespect to him at
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  all, obviously had real life things happening.
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  So so Chris coming in was was absolutely that breath of fresh
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  air that that we needed, you know what I mean?
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  And like I said, I love Coach parent.
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  He was really, really good for us.
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  But but Chris, like I said, he just kind of brought us all
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  together and it was good. Now I've known you through your
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  coaching career and you're always are a very knowledgeable
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  about the technical side of the events that you coach, So much
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  so that I don't think I've ever told you this personally.
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  It was always intimidating to talk to you.
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  I, I felt fairly good about my coaching level knowledge.
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  Talking to you is always like, oh, in the way you I, I think I
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  was intimidated because the way you express it, it's easy to
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  understand too. You're, you're not talking of,
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  you know, it's not like when Matt King talks to me, I'm like,
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  well, I don't know what the dude's talking about.
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  He must be smart. It was always like, oh, that
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  makes a lot of sense. Why didn't I think about that
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  type of stuff? I leave that to this question of
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  as an athlete through college, what kind of athlete were you?
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  And what I mean by that, Were you the guy who was studying
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  technique? And you know, back then, you
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  know, this is the olden age, Matt, So not a lot of Internet,
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  but like, were you trying to find books or like what what
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  kind like or do you just like going through the motions Like
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  coach says, run, Matt, run. Well, I'll be honest with you.
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  When I got into coaching, well when I was an athlete, the idea
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  of video I practice was foreign, like we didn't do any of that.
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  So I went directly from being an athlete to being a coach, right.
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  And so I didn't necessarily like, well, Chris was great.
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  I modeled a lot of stuff that I did after Chris.
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  It wasn't necessarily overly technical, but I remember
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  getting and I started in junior college and I remember at the
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  time, you know, it was early days of Internet and just
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  information outside of distance running was virtually
• 15:06
  unattainable. You know, like, and I, I think
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  the reason that people are running crazy times over the
• 15:12
  past 20 years and how it looks like an evolution is because,
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  and there's a lot more information and then a lot more
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  people have more information and then you, it's exponential how
• 15:24
  that goes. You know, so in the early 2000s,
• 15:26
  everybody good was in Florida, California, Texas, right,
• 15:29
  because there's high population. So they, they had good athletes,
• 15:33
  saw each other, had to run fast in high school and they got
• 15:35
  better, got better, got better. Well, now that same information
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  has spread all over, you know, 300 million people and everybody
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  is being coached better. Everybody's, you know, like and
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  so it's not like we evolved athletically that way.
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  And so I think it's just puts a high level of competition on
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  you. So what I did in 2099, two
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  thousand was like, I know nothing about the 100 meter dash
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  right in my mind, Like I was like, I don't know how to do
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  what? Like I thought I'm going to
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  coach a kid in this. Then I got to step my game up
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  and that's kind of how I've approached every event that I've
• 16:06
  ever coached is like, I don't want to be the weak link.
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  So I want to make sure I educate myself as much as I possibly can
• 16:11
  in the pole vault, mostly so someone doesn't die in the
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  hurdles so that I could, you know, make somebody be as good
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  as I possibly can be in the 100 meter dash.
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  Like there's got to be more information than what is
• 16:21
  available right now, right? And so I remember literally
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  going to a so stupid going to a Barnes and Noble and looking for
• 16:28
  a book on running that wasn't distance running and striking
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  out miserably, right. And so I, you know, what I did
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  was just kind of trying to educate myself any possible way
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  that I could. I started looking for a variety
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  of different things. And so.
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  I. Appreciate you feeling like I'm
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  a technical person. Like I just strive for
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  information, if that makes any sense.
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  So, you know, I, I found a bunch of Canadian stuff, Charlie
• 16:54
  Francis stuff, Brent McFarland stuff.
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  Brent McFarland was probably a bigger influence on me just
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  because he wrote a book. I was able to find a book.
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  And when I found that book, probably about the time you and
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  I bet I was able to kind of take that information and like apply
• 17:08
  it to what made sense to me. And so you saying that when I
• 17:13
  explained things in a way that made sense is I just try and
• 17:16
  take whatever the science is and apply it in a way that I can
• 17:19
  wrap my brand around. And it's, you know, like in the
• 17:22
  JUCO world, which is a backbone of who I am.
• 17:25
  You know you're practicing in a basketball gym.
• 17:27
  You know you're. For a long.
• 17:29
  Time, you know, not like for a week from, you know, November to
• 17:34
  March, there's a better than a good chance you're in a hallway
• 17:36
  or a basketball gym. And so I had to think, OK, this
• 17:39
  is what they were doing, then start to break, you know, look
• 17:42
  at the energy systems and look at all that different stuff.
• 17:44
  So it was just by necessity to be honest with me, how I got
• 17:48
  where I was going. So like a super competitive,
• 17:50
  this is what I got to work with. I want to get out of here just
• 17:54
  the same as those JUCO kids. Like I wanted to like get
• 17:57
  myself. I wanted to work myself up into
• 17:58
  a situation where I, you know, maybe I could be a Division One
• 18:01
  coach one day. That was kind of my goal when I
• 18:03
  first got into coaching. Maybe I could do some of the
• 18:06
  stuff that I've done. So like I said, just necessity
• 18:09
  so. How did you you mentioned right
• 18:11
  out of college you go into coaching, What, what changed?
• 18:15
  Where did it change in college? Where you go from?
• 18:17
  I'm going to be, you know, Bob Barker, I'm going to go do some
• 18:20
  kind of media thing to I'm going to coach.
• 18:22
  Where did that happen? Well, I did switch my major
• 18:25
  halfway through, to be honest with you, get to like, because I
• 18:28
  made that decision. OK.
• 18:30
  Like I'm kind of like probably about the time Chris got there,
• 18:33
  probably my junior year, I made a decision like, hey, maybe I'll
• 18:35
  be a coach, maybe I'll be a high school coach or whatever.
• 18:38
  So then I, I think I did a semester that was a history
• 18:41
  major because, you know, every high school coach is a history
• 18:43
  major and I actually enjoy history a whole lot, but I
• 18:46
  didn't enjoy that semester very much.
• 18:47
  So I also, and this strikes home more and more, I was like, I
• 18:51
  don't think I can coach high school kids, to be honest with
• 18:53
  you. So I was like, see if I can make
• 18:55
  this college thing work. So I switched my major and then
• 18:58
  started studying things that I thought would better prepare me
• 19:00
  like bio mechanics, so on and so forth.
• 19:01
  So I actually switched my major. I graduated with community
• 19:04
  health and then my master's that I was working on started out in
• 19:09
  in bio mechanics and then I took a high paying job at junior
• 19:13
  college. I think I made 1000 bucks a
• 19:16
  month. And I the rest is history I
• 19:19
  guess. Well, first of all, $1000 a
• 19:20
  month for JUCO back then, that was a lot.
• 19:22
  Holy cow, I did not know you were loaded back then when we
• 19:25
  first met. So what was that first job?
• 19:29
  Butler Community College. In El Dorado, KS.
• 19:34
  And what? Did I was there for four plus
• 19:35
  years or whatever? What did you know about, you
• 19:37
  grew up in Oklahoma, so you're close to the Kansas system.
• 19:41
  Did you know a lot about the junior?
• 19:42
  I knew nothing about the junior college system really before I,
• 19:45
  you know, I, I joined in 2000 at Neosho where we first met.
• 19:50
  But did you know like the the vibrancy of junior college and
• 19:52
  specifically the Jayhawk Conference?
• 19:55
  Yeah, not to the degree that obviously once I got into it, I
• 19:57
  really understood. It was one of those situations
• 19:59
  where I was like, so I was at a division two in a conference
• 20:04
  like our we were in a conference that was we were in the Lone
• 20:07
  Star Conference, which is all Texas schools and we were the
• 20:10
  one Oklahoma school at the time. So even when we go to a
• 20:12
  conference meet, like we didn't know anybody, right.
• 20:14
  And so I knew some of the coaches at Oklahoma State.
• 20:18
  I knew Jill Lancaster at Oklahoma.
• 20:21
  That was about my coaching network, you know, I mean, so I
• 20:23
  was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to need to go
• 20:25
  to junior college to get started or I'm never going to beat
• 20:28
  anyone. You know, networking is, is how
• 20:30
  you move up. So I I was conscious.
• 20:32
  Enough to know that I was going to need to do that like my
• 20:34
  senior year. I started out as Aga at Central,
• 20:38
  just I took Chris's job essentially and then job at
• 20:41
  Butler that next fall. So I was there a year and change
• 20:44
  before I went to Butler. But I kind of knew that this is
• 20:47
  a place where you could go because Barton used to come down
• 20:49
  honestly and whoop up when we were at Oklahoma and we'd see,
• 20:54
  you know, Butler would come. Down like I grew up going to the
• 20:57
  Jamboree in Stillwater because it's like a mile from the house,
• 20:59
  so. I would see Butler all the time.
• 21:02
  They'd always have some Kenyans or whatever that were really,
• 21:04
  really good that we're out there with Arkansas and Oklahoma
• 21:07
  State. So, so I had a little bit of
• 21:10
  awareness, but I, you know, once we got in and I know you were in
• 21:12
  it for a little while, it was like, oh, this is like.
• 21:14
  This is real like this. The Jr.
• 21:16
  Conference was real. There was some really good
• 21:18
  stuff, you know, when you were there, Lance.
• 21:21
  And I mean, Garden City was good back there with Dave and there
• 21:25
  were some good people. When I first got in and I
• 21:27
  didn't, I mean, I got in there and I was about 24 years old.
• 21:29
  I didn't know what I was doing, so you know, but it was.
• 21:33
  Good for me because like I inherited, you know, a bunch of.
• 21:37
  Nice kids that, you know, just smattering and things like I had
• 21:40
  a 65 high jumper. Guy.
• 21:42
  And like a 56 second girl and it's just kind of all over the
• 21:46
  place. There wasn't like any semblance
• 21:48
  of like this is what identity, you know, whatever identity was.
• 21:51
  So over the course of time I was able to develop an identity of
• 21:55
  who I was in coaching there, you know what I mean?
• 21:57
  So it was really good for me. It was probably forced me to
• 22:01
  learn at the right pace, if that makes any sense as a coach.
• 22:04
  The interesting thing that you. Said a lot of interesting
• 22:06
  things, but one of the things that caught my ear there was you
• 22:09
  said you knew you probably had to start at the junior college
• 22:11
  level to work your way up. Whether it's networking,
• 22:14
  knowledge, things like that, that that's a sign of humility.
• 22:18
  Where does that come from? You know, I'm not sure.
• 22:21
  I hear a lot of 2223 year old people who want to get into
• 22:25
  coaching that say, hey, I know I need to learn.
• 22:27
  They say, you know, I need to learn, but I'm going to do it at
• 22:30
  the Division One level right off the bat.
• 22:31
  I'm going to be, I'm going to be the head assistant code at
• 22:34
  Florida State right off the bat. And it's like, bro, you can't
• 22:36
  even spell that. What do you what do you think in
• 22:37
  here? Yeah, maybe.
• 22:39
  Maybe it was the fact that I went to a Division two.
• 22:42
  Maybe that was I was just an OK athlete.
• 22:44
  I don't know what it is behind me.
• 22:46
  Maybe my dreams weren't really big enough or whatever.
• 22:49
  I remember thinking, man, if I can make about $50,000, that'd
• 22:51
  be great coaching. What a great, I mean, and when I
• 22:55
  took that 10, that $10,000 a year job, that was right in line
• 22:58
  with that. But but you know, like, I think
• 23:01
  it was just realistic. Like I knew that I didn't know
• 23:05
  everything. You know, I think a lot.
• 23:08
  Not to knock on younger coaches, etcetera.
• 23:10
  I think a lot of people come in and think that they're going to
• 23:12
  change the world and they have all the answers and all that
• 23:14
  kind of stuff. And I love the energy of it.
• 23:16
  If they could just channel it towards the education part and
• 23:19
  understand the humility part of understanding like, hey, like
• 23:22
  that guy's been coaching for 25 years.
• 23:23
  He's probably, you know, forgot about kids that he coached that
• 23:27
  are the best kid I've ever coached, you know what I mean?
• 23:29
  So, you know, so I've been just kind of fortunate from that
• 23:33
  aspect to just kind of like kind of take things in.
• 23:36
  I always say this a lot. I'm a third kid, so I watch my
• 23:39
  brothers mess up a lot, a lot. So I kind of take from from
• 23:43
  that, like I just kind of watch other people and I'm I'm an
• 23:47
  observer, which I think is probably one of my better
• 23:49
  coaching qualities. Just not saying, just watching
• 23:52
  what's going on around me. Were parents or those brothers
• 23:56
  or anybody else family teachers in education?
• 23:58
  Because you, you definitely, you seem like you would have been
• 24:01
  you at least you least understand the power of
• 24:03
  education. Yeah, well, I think that's part
• 24:06
  of that luxurious junior college job.
• 24:08
  I did my fair share of teaching there as well.
• 24:11
  Kind of blends into my coaching style is that when I was at
• 24:14
  Barton, which was after Butler, I, I wasn't a full time teacher,
• 24:17
  but I was, I was teaching about nine hours each semester or
• 24:21
  whatever. Yeah, my dad is a systems
• 24:23
  analyst, computer guy, not a huge people person, God bless
• 24:28
  him. And my mom is a phlebotomist.
• 24:30
  So like draw people's blood. So I have no idea where, but my
• 24:35
  brothers and I are all different, my sisters different.
• 24:37
  Like we're all pretty well spaced out.
• 24:40
  We're, I don't know, I don't have a good answer for you,
• 24:42
  brother. Yeah, that's.
• 24:43
  Well, we're combinations. I mean, there's little parts of
• 24:46
  of all of that. Yeah.
• 24:47
  That's cool. All right, so talk to us about
• 24:49
  Butler. You know, I think, you know, I
• 24:51
  did one year junior college coaching and, you know, I talk
• 24:55
  about it, how instrumental it was for me.
• 24:57
  Like I still, you know, my favorite meat in the you know,
• 25:00
  I've been blessed to be able to go to a lot of big meats
• 25:02
  throughout the country. My favorite meat is still the
• 25:05
  junior college national meet. You know, I love, I love junior
• 25:08
  college level on the athletic side.
• 25:10
  I love that, you know, these are kids that you know, are getting
• 25:12
  second, third, sometimes fourth chances.
• 25:14
  I know you know me personally, I'm not sitting in the role that
• 25:17
  I sit in as a husband and a father.
• 25:20
  And you know what I do here at Gill and inside the coaching
• 25:22
  community without second, third and 4th, 5th chances.
• 25:24
  Thank goodness people gave me a lot of chances.
• 25:27
  And so I just, I, I look at these kids, I look at these
• 25:29
  coaches. And I'm just like, oh man.
• 25:31
  This is what sport is a is about, you know, it's kids that
• 25:34
  were whether they were overlooked, whether they were
• 25:37
  underdeveloped, whether they had great issues, whatever.
• 25:40
  And they get another chance and they get to move on in the
• 25:43
  educational world. And you know, we've had some
• 25:44
  amazing coaches there. Talk to us about your time
• 25:47
  specifically at Butler and then where you know, maybe you go
• 25:50
  after that as well since it is in the same.
• 25:53
  Well, you know, for me was really educational just from
• 25:57
  that was definitely not my background.
• 25:59
  You know what I mean? Like it was really educational
• 26:05
  for me to kind of take in people's different backgrounds
• 26:08
  where they came from and sort of it it definitely shaped me as a
• 26:11
  coach, like being more accepting and understanding.
• 26:15
  And you know, for me, a lot of times in my early days, I would
• 26:18
  I would gladly admit that like I had sort of a why can't you just
• 26:22
  do this mentality? I didn't coaching necessarily,
• 26:25
  but like, why can't you just go to class?
• 26:26
  Why can't you just you know, And so again, I think it was just I
• 26:30
  started to learn what the actual job was in junior college, you
• 26:33
  know, like that. It wasn't coaching.
• 26:34
  The coaching was like the bonus that the other stuff, you know,
• 26:38
  getting to know them as human beings, holding them
• 26:41
  accountable, doing all the things being.
• 26:43
  The mom, the dad, all the different things that they
• 26:46
  needed you to be outside of the coach was definitely what I
• 26:50
  learned when I was in the like. Absolutely.
• 26:53
  I needed to learn more of that to understand because you know,
• 26:56
  like I knew I needed to educate myself on the XS and OS, but I
• 27:00
  think they're like, it came home that I need to be more educated
• 27:05
  on how to deal with a variety of different.
• 27:06
  Problems because you I mean, I always say junior college
• 27:10
  experience like three years in junior college is 10 years in
• 27:13
  Division One with the level of. Things that just happened, I
• 27:17
  don't know how else to say that, but there's just a high volume
• 27:21
  of. Stuff that comes up on a
• 27:24
  day-to-day basis. So, you know, I think that
• 27:26
  prepared me to kind of like, you know, things happened in this
• 27:29
  job and years ago, OK. And then you work your way
• 27:32
  through it, you know, and so I think that part was really good
• 27:35
  for me there when I, I, I enjoyed my time there.
• 27:38
  Kirk, Kirk Hunter took a risk on me.
• 27:40
  I was, I was nobody at the time. So he gave me a job which I
• 27:43
  tremendously appreciated, and I was able to kind of do some
• 27:46
  things despite the fact that I was competing against Lance at,
• 27:52
  at, you know, and some of the other guys we talked about.
• 27:55
  Luckily Lance took the Arkansas job and that kind of opened
• 27:57
  things up for me a little bit. And I know, you know a lot of
• 28:01
  Lashley. He's a good, very, very, very
• 28:03
  good friend of mine. He hired me at at Barton and he
• 28:07
  told me basically, I'm losing recruits to you.
• 28:10
  There's no reason I should lose recruits to Butler.
• 28:12
  How about you just come over? Here and wear it for me so yeah,
• 28:15
  those. Those those Barton guys had a
• 28:16
  certain attitude. Yeah, they they.
• 28:19
  Backed it. They backed it up, but.
• 28:21
  Yeah, no, I mean, but it was it made sense to be honest with
• 28:24
  you. It was sort of like, look, I'm
• 28:26
  not it'd be easier for me to hire you than keep fighting
• 28:28
  against you. So.
• 28:29
  But also like that's just, that was his personality too, So.
• 28:33
  But yeah, I. Worked for him for a short time
• 28:35
  and then I took over as a head coach there and, and I like it
• 28:38
  again. I think sort of my timeline has
• 28:41
  worked itself out in the the right way for me in that like
• 28:44
  was not ready to be a coach at Barton in 2001, but I probably
• 28:49
  was in 2005. That makes any sense.
• 28:51
  So it kind of worked itself out. And I man, when I got the
• 28:54
  Barton, what I loved about those kids was, and I don't know if
• 28:58
  the kids are still the same way now, but what I love about
• 29:00
  junior college kids in general is that if you give them $30.00
• 29:04
  in a sack lunch and treat them right, they'll run through a
• 29:07
  wall for you. You know what I mean?
• 29:09
  Like they don't need all. Of the stuff to be successful,
• 29:11
  we didn't have a track at the time really that you could run
• 29:14
  30 meters in a straight line. Like, we just didn't like, go
• 29:16
  ahead. Holes in the tribe they've my
• 29:19
  last year we were building it right before I left and so I'm
• 29:23
  happy that those kids have that stuff now, but man, I wouldn't
• 29:26
  trade it for anything. Those I mean that that group of
• 29:29
  people at Barton kind of shave me to who I am like my assistant
• 29:32
  coach Dave working with Lyles and Dave is still there.
• 29:36
  He's the longest tenured head coach in in Barton County
• 29:39
  history, which is. Pretty entertaining to me, but
• 29:42
  but you know, like those kids were just passionate about
• 29:45
  everything. They were easy to motivate
• 29:47
  because they understood what they did or.
• 29:51
  Did not have to go back to they understood what we were trying
• 29:53
  to do. They understood what they cared
• 29:54
  about them. They understood that, you know,
• 29:56
  like, hey, this is this is not hard.
• 29:59
  I'm hard on you, but this is not hard.
• 30:01
  What happens if you don't make it is hard.
• 30:04
  And so, you know, it was, it was a good time.
• 30:09
  One of the aspects of junior college recruiting that, you
• 30:11
  know, I try to stress some people, you know, when you're a
• 30:13
  high school coach and one of your goals is to get your kids
• 30:17
  recruited to what it doesn't matter what division to get
• 30:19
  recruited the next level, that's hard.
• 30:20
  There's a lot of work that. Goes in that.
• 30:22
  When you are a four year college coach, you're always recruiting
• 30:26
  athletes to your program that that's hard that that really is.
• 30:29
  There's a there's complexities to that.
• 30:30
  A junior college coach is consistently doing both.
• 30:33
  They're always recruiting kids to the team and you're always
• 30:36
  trying to get your kids recruited to the next level.
• 30:38
  How did could you? I, I think sometimes people
• 30:41
  think recruiting and quote UN quote, good recruiting is all
• 30:44
  about personality. There there is technique, there
• 30:48
  is philosophies. How did you navigate?
• 30:52
  Because you went straight into the junior college world of
• 30:54
  recruiting on on both those sides.
• 30:56
  How did you navigate, learn, make mistakes?
• 30:58
  How did, how did you handle the recruiting side?
• 31:00
  And you started some international recruiting as
• 31:03
  well, which is its own, but you know, that's different than
• 31:06
  domestic recruiting. Yeah, like it was obviously the
• 31:11
  way I recruited in junior college and the way I recruit
• 31:13
  now, the way I recruited at Oklahoma, etcetera.
• 31:15
  It's all evolved. It's all changed completely.
• 31:18
  You know, in junior college at the time, there was a handful of
• 31:21
  good options that you could go to because so that kind of
• 31:23
  narrowed the playing field. You know, back in those days, we
• 31:26
  could offer that Max. We could offer tuition and
• 31:29
  books, and then we were just kind of trying to make it
• 31:32
  happen. You know, it's so for us it was
• 31:34
  like trying to provide a lifeline.
• 31:36
  You know, I remember we had Ivory Williams at Butler,
• 31:39
  actually, and a lot of people don't know he started out there
• 31:42
  and I went and saw him play football against Adrian
• 31:45
  Peterson. And I was dumb enough to think,
• 31:48
  well, maybe I can get both these guys right.
• 31:50
  So Adrian, Bobby Smith straight to Oklahoma and Ivory was going
• 31:55
  to go to Arkansas and then ended up having to go to JUCO Rap.
• 31:58
  We had football at Butler, so it was an option because he was
• 32:01
  trying to do football. On a track.
• 32:02
  And I remember going to see him in the fall and giving him my
• 32:08
  card and giving it to his mom. And saying hey.
• 32:09
  You, you don't want my card. I guarantee you don't want my
• 32:12
  card right now. You have no dreams or
• 32:13
  aspirations of ever attending Butler Community College.
• 32:16
  But when you need my card, you better have my card.
• 32:21
  And so I need you to like, just put this wherever you need to
• 32:23
  keep it. Whatever.
• 32:25
  My phone rang in August the next year and he was on my campus
• 32:30
  five days later. So it was a lot of times it was
• 32:33
  like I established a little bit of a relationship and I would
• 32:36
  call him about once every two months.
• 32:37
  Hey, how's it going? And then, you know, just the
• 32:39
  smallest amount of a relationship where that like if
• 32:41
  they needed a place to go, I was a windfall for him.
• 32:44
  And that wasn't what I used with everybody.
• 32:47
  But it, you know, you read the room, you figure out where where
• 32:49
  you want to go and where where it's going to take you.
• 32:51
  And so different things like that.
• 32:53
  You know, Tamari Henry was another good one that ended up
• 32:56
  being all right. I think he's been on your
• 32:57
  podcast. So, you know, he was a guy that
• 33:02
  had been out for a year or whatever, needed a place to go.
• 33:06
  I ended up taking his cousin to the, you know, somewhere to go.
• 33:10
  He's all he's ended up like some of what I'm most proud about in
• 33:13
  those Martin days is Romero's jumps coach at South Florida,
• 33:18
  Tabari's now at Alabama. I'm going to forget somebody
• 33:21
  here, Justin Anderson is at Alabama State.
• 33:26
  And I just hired Tony as my supplement's friend assistant
• 33:30
  here. Those guys are on the same team
• 33:32
  together and with Alonzo Edward and Ryan Brathwaite.
• 33:37
  And well, like those, there's some good people that were
• 33:39
  either really passionate about track and field that were there
• 33:41
  or really good at track to build or both.
• 33:44
  It was, it was kind of a good time.
• 33:45
  But yeah, it evolved. You know, I, I tell a lot of the
• 33:48
  guys that started out in junior college coaching when they go to
• 33:50
  Division One, like you're not just recruiting for junior
• 33:55
  college now. Like you got to you got to
• 33:56
  adjust, you got to shift your game, you know, So now you're
• 33:59
  recruiting against me, now you're recruiting against Mouse,
• 34:01
  now you're recruiting at Dennis, now you're recruiting against
• 34:03
  Dwight. Like there's Carol, you know,
• 34:06
  there's some great recruiters, great coaches, great people,
• 34:08
  great auctions, you know, and so I was very much selling myself
• 34:12
  and the pro history of Martin. This can take you where you want
• 34:15
  to go, right? And now here, like you can sell
• 34:18
  the history, you can sell the weather, you can sell the
• 34:20
  facilities, you can sell great top 20 institution.
• 34:23
  You know, there's all these different things that you can
• 34:25
  sell that are a little bit different and you know, so you
• 34:28
  just have to evolve with where whatever school you're at and
• 34:31
  you know what the identity is going to be.
• 34:33
  And it's funny that you recruited Ivory because I
• 34:34
  recruited Ivory at Mississippi State as well.
• 34:37
  And I, I had tell people this a lot because his, I did a home
• 34:41
  visit with him and it stuck out to me because his mom made food
• 34:45
  for us. And that, that, you know, on TV
• 34:48
  and movies, it seems like that happens every home visit.
• 34:50
  That's just not true, at least my experience.
• 34:52
  No one ever actually made food, but Ivory's mom did.
• 34:55
  And it was amazing. Like I was like, cool.
• 34:58
  I was like, you need a second home visit.
• 35:00
  I was like. Coach, can I go visit Ivory and
• 35:02
  his folks again, man? But really enjoyed his family as
• 35:05
  as mine. And Ivory was, was great too.
• 35:07
  I really did. Yeah, good people like Ivory did
• 35:10
  you. And maybe you recruited
• 35:12
  differently. You know, I, I was known as a
• 35:14
  recruiter. But it's not like I, you know,
• 35:17
  evolutionized the the the way of recruiting.
• 35:20
  But one of the things, one of the drawbacks that I had
• 35:24
  mentally, and I think it was looking back, it wasn't maybe a
• 35:28
  little bit during the time, but definitely looking back, I felt
• 35:32
  like I said, the way I always described it was I felt like a
• 35:34
  shark. And here's what I meant.
• 35:36
  What I mean by that is, you know, I, I wasn't, and maybe
• 35:40
  it's different today. You know, we've had Phillip
• 35:41
  Roderick on the podcast at Fort Scott and he, he expressed a
• 35:45
  little bit of a different philosophy of recruiting.
• 35:47
  And that's also it's obviously working for him.
• 35:48
  He's done an amazing job there at Fort Scott.
• 35:50
  Fort Scott was non existent when we were there.
• 35:52
  There was no, but I say non existent.
• 35:54
  Like we did not consider Neosha was not very good at all.
• 35:57
  And we were like, does Fort Scott even have a team?
• 35:59
  And that's so Phillip has done an amazing job there.
• 36:02
  But what I mean when I say he felt like a shark.
• 36:03
  So I was after, you know, I, I, I unofficial, I did not actually
• 36:08
  do this, but I put Lance Brahman's face on a, on a dart
• 36:11
  board and was like, I'm going after Bart because that was just
• 36:13
  my mentality of like, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do
• 36:15
  it to the highest of levels, right?
• 36:16
  And so I, I looked at his team and was like, all right, well,
• 36:20
  it looks like only the top ten kids out of high school are
• 36:22
  going to his team. That's what I need to go after.
• 36:24
  So, you know, I I'd made a target list, the old dice that
• 36:27
  days I'd went and looked at the recruits, right.
• 36:28
  And so I'd start calling the recruit the schools and say,
• 36:31
  hey, you know, basically the first thing I wanted to know was
• 36:33
  I knew they were good athletes. I didn't have to worry about
• 36:35
  that part. I didn't really care about their
• 36:36
  attitude, mainly a little bit some out of naivety, but also a
• 36:40
  little bit out of like, well, you know, if they get a bad
• 36:42
  attitude, maybe I'm the person that's going to help them.
• 36:44
  You know, maybe I'm the mentor for them, but I needed their
• 36:47
  grades to be bad. What I mean by that is, you
• 36:51
  know, they're top 10, they're going to sign with Oklahoma and
• 36:54
  Miami and Florida State. If they had grades, they didn't
• 36:58
  need me to your point about, you know, you don't want my card.
• 37:01
  And so I remember, like I distinctly remember Tiffany
• 37:04
  Ross. I think she ended up going to
• 37:05
  South Carolina. I called her school, I called
• 37:07
  her counselor up and I was like, I'm just trying to find out her
• 37:09
  grades because if she has good grades, you'll never hear from
• 37:12
  me again. And she was like, oh, yeah,
• 37:14
  she's like a three-point something.
• 37:15
  And I was like, oh, and I and I like for me, there was a little
• 37:18
  bit of relief like, oh, I'm like, good.
• 37:20
  You don't, you don't want to go through junior college if you
• 37:22
  don't have to, but if you have to there, there's options.
• 37:26
  So I felt a little like I'd get a, a attraction, you know, the
• 37:29
  old fax days, I'd get a transcript and it'd be 3 point O
• 37:31
  and 18 in the ACT. And it was like, I, well, I just
• 37:34
  throw it away. It's like, well, that kids going
• 37:37
  somewhere. I needed that one point and that
• 37:39
  12.12 ACT And I just, it felt. I don't want to use the word
• 37:44
  icky, but it felt. I don't know.
• 37:46
  Not great. Yeah.
• 37:49
  Yeah, we tried to do, I mean, Bart and I tried to do a little
• 37:51
  bit of a balance, but IA lot of what you said rings true.
• 37:56
  I mean, there was a lot of time you're like that kids going to
• 37:57
  Division One, but somebody's going to take it.
• 37:59
  But I think there was sometimes like because in certain events
• 38:03
  in junior college were a little easier.
• 38:05
  You'd probably trick yourself into a thing thinking somebody
• 38:08
  is worth more than they are at the Division One level than that
• 38:10
  than what they are. You know, like A-150 guy in
• 38:13
  junior college is really good and A-150 guy in Division One is
• 38:17
  got room for improvement. We'll just say so you know,
• 38:20
  it's, it's you know, and so like that was that's a bit of it.
• 38:24
  And we, we would trying to do also is balance the Kansas kids
• 38:27
  and the out of state kids because as you know, like I'm
• 38:29
  sure every, every place had their different stuff, but we
• 38:32
  had semi unlimited money for Kansas kids and no one to give
• 38:37
  it to. And then we had limited money
• 38:39
  for the international kids and the out of state kids.
• 38:41
  And so we would try and find the kids with the diamonds in the
• 38:44
  rough, more so with the in state kids, you know what I mean?
• 38:47
  And so we would try and balance that out a little bit.
• 38:49
  Not that we had a ton, but we had some good kids that some
• 38:52
  good jumpers that we, that we got out of Leavenworth and that
• 38:56
  area and Junction City, things like that, that we would get
• 38:59
  that were solid students that were maybe overlooked.
• 39:01
  You know, there's a lot of kids we would get that would come in,
• 39:03
  jump at 23 feet and leave jump at 26.
• 39:06
  And I agree, and the problem with that is you know Kansas, a
• 39:10
  great state for track and field by the way, when you know when
• 39:12
  he parses out with the population, but has umpteen
• 39:15
  million track programs. So not only do you have all
• 39:18
  those Jayhawk, the JUCO conferences, I mean you got
• 39:20
  great schools, Fort Hays, Wichita State, obviously KU,
• 39:22
  Kansas State. You had a bazillion other
• 39:26
  options for kids in a small. So I agree with you, but it was
• 39:29
  like, oh man, I'm up against thirty other schools just for in
• 39:32
  state if it's that alone. And that's what I meant kind of
• 39:36
  by the unlimited scholarships. It wasn't that, that we had so
• 39:39
  many scholarships is that we there was not going to be 15
• 39:43
  kids every single year from the state of Kansas that we're going
• 39:45
  to pick 1 of 30 schools, right? Like you can make an argument
• 39:50
  that we may have been the best one track and field wise.
• 39:52
  But then again, it goes back to the, is this the best total
• 39:55
  program and everything else that that we had to offer and all
• 39:57
  that kind of stuff. And like I said, it was a
• 40:00
  different experience for sure and it shaped me into who I am.
• 40:04
  It made me a much better coach off the track more than anything
• 40:09
  else was my time and things I learned from Miles even though
• 40:14
  we only worked together for a short time but.
• 40:16
  We lived up basically across the street from each other for four
• 40:19
  years. So like that, you know, he's, I
• 40:22
  mean, that's a that guy's an unsung hero of like he won 31
• 40:25
  national championships, I think during his time in junior
• 40:27
  college as a team. So like that's he's a, he's the
• 40:30
  type of guy that I you give him a football, he's going to win.
• 40:34
  You give him a basketball, he's going to win.
• 40:36
  He's a figure out he's a coach, like a true coach.
• 40:38
  And, you know, I watched him take over a a program in
• 40:42
  Ellenwood High School and. They were not that good.
• 40:46
  I know because my wife was the coach the year before and.
• 40:51
  He took over. That program and like got kids
• 40:52
  out and like that's because he's such an engaging personality.
• 40:56
  He gets all these kids out, then he develops them and he holds
• 40:58
  them accountable and he makes them do things they didn't think
• 41:00
  they could do. You know what I mean?
• 41:01
  Like he just earns them into good athletes.
• 41:05
  That's a skill like I'm always been in all you know, I don't
• 41:08
  know that I'm anywhere near the level of coach that he is when
• 41:11
  it comes to that aspect of coaching when it you know, like
• 41:13
  he just as a guy that. Can get the most out of people
• 41:16
  so. I've made that example, you
• 41:18
  know, and specifically track coaches and Lyles would be one
• 41:20
  of those, you know, there's, there's certainly XS and OS, but
• 41:23
  there's greater to coaching, you know, leadership and you know,
• 41:27
  engagement and things like that. And I, I've, I've always said,
• 41:29
  you know, the really good track coaches.
• 41:31
  And I'm not talking about the XS and OS guys and gals.
• 41:33
  I'm talking about the good they have programs that succeed year
• 41:36
  after year after year, decade after decade.
• 41:38
  You could put them in any sport regardless if they know how the
• 41:41
  XS and OS they could become a Lyles could be a hockey coach
• 41:44
  and I'm pretty sure that hockey team would be pretty good fairly
• 41:48
  soon. First of all, he'd know who to
• 41:50
  hire. He would know how to talk to the
• 41:51
  kids, he'd learn, he'd figure out the XS and OS that'd be like
• 41:54
  4th on his priority list. He knows all the other things
• 41:56
  that he would have to get done and they they'd be pretty good.
• 41:58
  Even though, and I don't know, maybe Laos is a great hockey
• 42:00
  player for all I know, but you know some sport that he doesn't
• 42:02
  know. About I don't think they played
• 42:04
  a lot of hockey in Louisiana, but I could be wrong.
• 42:06
  Yeah, but he went to Kansas a lot, so, you know, they do have
• 42:08
  hockey there in Alabama. It's got a little center of
• 42:12
  gravity, so that might be. I didn't say you had to play it
• 42:14
  really well. Maybe he's a big fan.
• 42:16
  I don't know. I grew up in Alabama where, you
• 42:19
  know, we didn't even say the word hockey because there was no
• 42:21
  hockey back then. There's a little bit now, but I
• 42:23
  have no clue about hockey. All right, so junior college
• 42:26
  before we go from junior college to the next step and find out
• 42:29
  why, talk to me about you had and I think it might have been
• 42:32
  your last year at Barton. Maybe you had just really an
• 42:36
  amazing World Championships and we don't hear those two things
• 42:39
  necessarily together. Junior college coach World
• 42:41
  Championships. But you did something or or was
• 42:45
  really close. You, you, you give me the the
• 42:47
  real skin here from my memory of what some of your athletes did
• 42:50
  there at the World champs. Yeah, it was a it was a pretty
• 42:54
  special year. I remember I'll just kind of
• 42:58
  walk you through how to play it out like so I I had Ryan
• 43:01
  Brathwaite, who ended up winning the world championship in the
• 43:05
  110 hurdles. Alonzo Edward got silver medal
• 43:09
  behind Bolt when he broke the world record and Tabari was
• 43:13
  fourth in the 400 that year. So first, second and 4th.
• 43:17
  I've disowned Tabari for not getting me a clean sweep on the
• 43:20
  models. But yeah, it's fine.
• 43:23
  It was a wild year, man. Like it was one of those
• 43:26
  situations where I remember being in April and feeling
• 43:28
  really, really good about where we were at as a team trying to
• 43:32
  win a national championship. We didn't win that year, by the
• 43:33
  way. We lost South Plains, Blaine
• 43:35
  Wiley and Blaine was an assistant then, but Chris Bean
• 43:38
  was the head Cubs then. They they there was some really,
• 43:41
  really good two or three teams when Lake was also good then
• 43:45
  anyway. But I remember in April and like
• 43:47
  these guys hadn't lost races. And so there was a weird year.
• 43:50
  There was like an extra year or extra weekend year.
• 43:54
  Like, you know, you get those every once in a while.
• 43:56
  There's like, I've got an extra weekend here.
• 43:58
  I don't have anything on my schedule.
• 43:59
  So I heard about a meet happening in Texas, the Longhorn
• 44:03
  invite, and I'm like, I'm going to go down there and see if we
• 44:04
  can get beat. So I literally load up those
• 44:06
  three guys, my wife in a van and we drove down, you know, as you
• 44:10
  probably can attest to, like this was a Coach Kane funded
• 44:13
  event that we went down. To And I was like, let's just
• 44:16
  see if we can lose, you know, like.
• 44:20
  Tomorrow he goes and runs the first race I think and he he
• 44:22
  beats, I think Tyson and Wallace are running the quarter for some
• 44:25
  reason. Lionel Larry was in there.
• 44:26
  He was a defending NCAA champion.
• 44:28
  Anyways, he wins, runs 45 O or whatever and then the next event
• 44:32
  is the 110 hurdles and Ryan Bradbury runs thirteen O 5 and
• 44:38
  crickets. Like nobody even knew how fast
• 44:41
  that was like 17 people in the stands.
• 44:45
  And like Lance Brahman was there, actually was with Steve
• 44:47
  Mullins and a couple other people and Tyson.
• 44:51
  And so then Alonzo Edward comes up to me and was like, Coach, I
• 44:56
  got you, we're fine. We're guy got you.
• 44:58
  I'm like, OK, little kid, man. I would go to battle with him
• 45:02
  anytime. So he's 19 years old.
• 45:03
  He hops in. And the people in the race at
• 45:05
  the time was like Tyree GAIL was really good.
• 45:07
  You would remember he was a JUCO guy that went to Texas Tech
• 45:10
  Gerald Fury was in there, Aaron Armstrong, little Barton guy,
• 45:18
  Mike Rogers, who ended up winning the US ship was in
• 45:20
  there. And Alonso just gets out there,
• 45:23
  just blows them away at 60 and runs 997.
• 45:26
  And it was like, I remember it vividly because Jim Bayonnigan
• 45:31
  called me on like maybe Tuesday after that and was like, I don't
• 45:34
  think you'll ever have a meet that good the rest of your life.
• 45:37
  And I was like, we'll see, you know, like, I hope I have
• 45:40
  something better than that, but whatever.
• 45:41
  So then Fast forward to the World Championships and we went
• 45:44
  124. So I remember calling Jim like,
• 45:47
  oh, that might have happened a little bit better, but it was,
• 45:49
  you know, it was unbelievably lucky, unfelievably fortunate.
• 45:53
  Like everything I was stumbling through how to sort of go into
• 46:00
  the pro world 1 foot in one foot out with, you know, Tamari was
• 46:04
  wanting to continue going to school.
• 46:06
  The other two were very much interested in not going to
• 46:08
  school. So trying to balance that so
• 46:11
  that we didn't do anything we were supposed to do.
• 46:14
  Also getting the races that were necessary for all of them to
• 46:17
  prepare for the World Championships.
• 46:19
  I was, I mean, I was a fan at that point.
• 46:22
  I was very new to how to navigate those waters.
• 46:24
  So it was interesting like for sure.
• 46:28
  How, how did you? It's kind of a two-part question
• 46:30
  1 is that how did you? You know, I hate to say you're
• 46:33
  just a little junior college, but I mean, you're in the middle
• 46:35
  of freaking nowhere Kansas here. Let's be real, you're not in big
• 46:38
  city, not that that's a prereq to coach someone to world
• 46:42
  champs, but the process and going to the world champs and
• 46:44
  usains. I mean that's a whole different
• 46:47
  stage that and how did you and maybe you didn't like?
• 46:51
  I'm trying to put myself in your shoes as a, you know, 20 year,
• 46:55
  26 at this time, your mid 20s at this time.
• 46:59
  It's not 30. Yeah, 30.
• 47:02
  So you're young. OK, Put me as a 30 year.
• 47:04
  That's when I came here to Gil. If I I remember when I got to
• 47:08
  Mississippi State and was working some great, you know, we
• 47:11
  had Pierre Brown, Marquis State. I mean, I had some pretty fast
• 47:13
  kids. You know, Steve Mullins was was
• 47:15
  with us there the next year. Trey Hart.
• 47:17
  I mean, you know, I had some, you know, people that other
• 47:20
  people knew. That's probably the, the prereq,
• 47:21
  right? I was at Ball State.
• 47:22
  I had some really great girls and one really, really great
• 47:24
  girl, but no one knew them, right?
• 47:26
  At Mississippi State, people knew the people that I was
• 47:28
  working with. That's kind of like the colon
• 47:29
  cards. Like, yeah, that's good.
• 47:30
  And I had some, I would say ego's not bad, bad ego's bad.
• 47:35
  I had some bad ego. I had some, you know, feeling
• 47:37
  myself of like I'm, I'm, I'm a thing now.
• 47:38
  Like I'm, I'm better than a lot of people because look at the
• 47:41
  kids I'm working with and all this kind of stuff.
• 47:42
  How did you keep that bad ego in check?
• 47:47
  Or or or did you? You know, I'd like to think I
• 47:51
  did. I probably didn't.
• 47:52
  I don't know, you know, like I, I just, I think in the whole
• 47:58
  process of everything, like you realize how lucky you are when
• 48:02
  you're, when you have success, you know, like how easily it
• 48:06
  could go the other direction. But you know, sometimes when
• 48:09
  you're a little bit naive, you don't know how good you're not.
• 48:13
  And you just keep rolling down the train tracks and see what
• 48:15
  happens. You know, I remember like laying
• 48:17
  in bed thinking, I think these guys could meddle like out loud,
• 48:21
  like in my brain like a month before they got medals, you
• 48:24
  know, but I didn't know anything.
• 48:28
  I'm just trying to like play it out.
• 48:29
  If we do this, if we do that and try and prepare them again, I
• 48:32
  was trying to not screw it up. I didn't want to be the weak,
• 48:35
  you know. And so that was part of me just
• 48:37
  kind of stepping up my game, talking to other people, you
• 48:40
  know, like Lance was a pretty good resource at that time of
• 48:43
  far as like how to navigate the pro stuff.
• 48:46
  And he's always, you know, like without really truly being a
• 48:49
  mentor, we don't really talk talk XS and OS ever really.
• 48:52
  It's more like just people, if that makes any sense, like how
• 48:56
  to navigate the political landscape.
• 48:59
  And Rayna Ryder was a guy that I'd known like he so interesting
• 49:03
  fact. Rayna Ryder was Chris Weilert's
• 49:06
  my GA Chris Weilert's junior college coach in California at
• 49:11
  Riverside. Yeah, that detail.
• 49:14
  Yeah. So I've known Rayna through
• 49:16
  Chris since, I don't know, or something like that. 2000 when
• 49:21
  Rayna was AK State. Anyway, so we had like a a
• 49:26
  little bit of a relationship when I was a Barton, he was at K
• 49:29
  State as well. And so obviously K State was
• 49:31
  trying to recruit and then he went to Florida and again, still
• 49:34
  trying to recruit our kids and all that kind of stuff, so.
• 49:37
  I had a little bit of. Learning how to navigate those
• 49:39
  waters with from the agents and all the different stuff.
• 49:42
  And you know, so like I was, I had no idea what I was doing
• 49:46
  from that aspect. So I was terrified I was going
• 49:48
  to screw that up for the kids. I had more confidence in my
• 49:51
  ability to coach, but I was still terrified I was going to
• 49:53
  screw that up for the kids. So it was just more, I don't
• 49:56
  know that I, I mean, I probably was arrogant.
• 49:59
  I'm sure I was, I sure I still am whatever.
• 50:02
  But I definitely was more interested in not being the weak
• 50:05
  link in the whole process. So I think that's what kind of
• 50:08
  fuels me every time. When I got here and I had Trey
• 50:10
  Cunningham, he was not my fast and still is not my fast hurler,
• 50:13
  but it's his one chance. So I don't want to be the weak
• 50:17
  link. I don't want to be the reason he
• 50:18
  doesn't achieve all of his goals, you know?
• 50:20
  And so I think that's kind of where I get myself into
• 50:24
  situations a lot is I make sure that I'm doing everything I
• 50:28
  possibly can do. And I'm not perfect by any
• 50:30
  means. I screwed up a lot, but I try my
• 50:31
  hardest to make sure that I'm giving them everything they need
• 50:34
  to be successful, whoever it is. I hope I would have learned by,
• 50:38
  you know, my age today, But I tell you, if I'd have had the
• 50:42
  success you had in that first decade of coaching, you couldn't
• 50:45
  have talked to me. I'd have been like, whatever,
• 50:47
  man, where am I speaking to next?
• 50:49
  What book am I writing? I mean, I'd have been, you know.
• 50:52
  I am certain that I was probably not fun to be around on a
• 50:55
  regular basis. But I also look back on it and
• 50:59
  I'm like, how much of me being naive was why we were
• 51:01
  successful? How much of it was me being a
• 51:03
  little bit arrogant why we were successful?
• 51:05
  And I know that I'm a much better coach than I was in 2009.
• 51:07
  Like I know a lot more than I did then.
• 51:11
  And I've had some success since then.
• 51:13
  But I still look back like how much of that was just the right
• 51:16
  person at the right time. And this is kind of how it goes
• 51:18
  sometimes, you know? And I think if maybe a more
• 51:21
  experienced me might have screwed it up.
• 51:23
  I don't know. So maybe I would have been.
• 51:25
  More in tune with how good you actually need to be to win that.
• 51:30
  I would have screwed it up. We need to be doing this.
• 51:32
  We need to be doing that or we need to be doing and driven it
• 51:35
  off the tracks. I just let them go down the
• 51:37
  tracks. Yeah, that, that's a really good
• 51:40
  point though that you bring up. You know, we talk about our
• 51:42
  knowledge levels and naivety and things like that.
• 51:45
  And it's like, yeah, but maybe, well, it's kind of several parts
• 51:49
  to it. 1 is like, well, you know, the combination that
• 51:51
  happened that year in those years were the right
• 51:54
  combinations. So your level where you were in,
• 51:56
  in them. And it's easy to think.
• 51:58
  And a lot of times we do this. Oh man.
• 52:01
  Well, if I knew what I knew today back then, like how good
• 52:04
  they could have been, Well, we forget that the other side could
• 52:07
  also happen. Well, if I didn't know as much
• 52:08
  as I do now today, back then, I could have easily overdriven or
• 52:13
  overthought it. There's a lot of things and they
• 52:15
  could have not been as good that they ended up becoming.
• 52:18
  Well, you kind of nailed one thing on the head too with like
• 52:20
  the it's not just me in that relationship.
• 52:22
  Like Ron, they were not just teammates, they were roommates,
• 52:26
  like junior college roommates, which means you shared a bunk
• 52:29
  bed. So like real roommates.
• 52:32
  And so they were super competitive.
• 52:34
  So the 200 meters was 20 minutes before the 110 hurdles at the
• 52:38
  World Championships. And so when Alonzo got a silver
• 52:42
  and I was like, there's no way. Ryan's not winning.
• 52:44
  Like there's no way. And Ryan like, look, he won by
• 52:47
  point O2 and had to beat Terence Trammell and David Payne and it
• 52:50
  was a lean. Like there was point O2 between
• 52:52
  1st and 3rd. Like it was a phenomenal race.
• 52:55
  But at no point after Alonzo got the medal, I was like, oh, we're
• 52:58
  good like that. I knew because it was that
• 53:02
  simple for them. It's like I'm not getting left
• 53:04
  out. I'm definitely getting a medal
• 53:05
  and it's probably going to be gold because they definitely
• 53:07
  were competitive during that time.
• 53:10
  So you know, those type of things matter.
• 53:12
  You know I. Was going to say and.
• 53:14
  That's like competitive nature. And that's you hit the nail, I
• 53:18
  was going to say, and that's part of the equation that we
• 53:20
  don't think about. Ryan goes to some other school
• 53:22
  with quote, UN quote, a better coach.
• 53:25
  It's not guaranteed that this actually plays out the way we
• 53:27
  know it plays out. It could be, it could have been
• 53:29
  better, could have been worse as well, teammate factor, etcetera.
• 53:32
  Yeah, that's a great point. Great point.
• 53:34
  All right, so. Where do we go?
• 53:35
  You have a banner year, you know if I was in your.
• 53:38
  Chair your shoes. And no one could talk to me
• 53:40
  because I've been the greatest thing since sliced bread.
• 53:42
  You handled a lot better than I would have.
• 53:44
  Where do we go next and why? Go to the University of Oklahoma
• 53:48
  because they gave me a job interview.
• 53:51
  I I honestly had applied it. That was my 17th place Division
• 53:55
  One wise that I had applied in the nine years that I had been
• 53:57
  in junior college and they were the first one to give me an an
• 54:00
  actual interview. So.
• 54:03
  Martin Smith My first question before that is, does Dad still
• 54:06
  talk to you? Because you talked about if you
• 54:08
  went to Oklahoma, Dad wouldn't even talk to you.
• 54:10
  Yeah, when I got the job he literally said I'm really proud
• 54:14
  of you, but if you wear that shit in the house, sorry, you
• 54:18
  wear that. Shit in that.
• 54:20
  We're gonna have a problem. You could be the OU coach out
• 54:22
  there, but inside this house? And that's.
• 54:25
  Yeah. So it's really funny because
• 54:27
  he's not really a sports guy, but that it's, I don't know,
• 54:30
  it's the whole thing. If you live in Stillwater, I
• 54:31
  guess it's the whole thing. So I took the job in Oklahoma.
• 54:36
  Martin Smith, who I love, gave me an opportunity.
• 54:41
  That staff there, by the way, like I talked about this when I
• 54:43
  was hiring my staff here. Check this out.
• 54:46
  So Martin Smith just win the Hall of Fame.
• 54:50
  Brian Blue trick, arguably the best throws coach in the
• 54:54
  country. Jeremy Fisher, great jumps
• 54:57
  coach, works out at the training center.
• 55:00
  Dana Boone, head coach at UCF, phenomenal job.
• 55:04
  I actually talked about what a great job she when she put her
• 55:06
  staff together at Texas State. If you look at the staff she put
• 55:08
  together there, Keith Hurston, Greg Watson, my man Giles at
• 55:14
  Oklahoma. I mean, like I respect people
• 55:16
  that have that put those Staffs together myself.
• 55:22
  I'm forgetting somebody. But I mean, if you just look at
• 55:24
  that staff that was there like it was Martin did a phenomenal
• 55:28
  job of piercing together. He would call journeyman.
• 55:31
  You know, it's just a little bit of an interesting.
• 55:35
  That's Martin was a lot interesting, but but he he
• 55:38
  definitely pieced together a really, really high-powered
• 55:42
  staff. Before their time, yeah, I think
• 55:45
  Brian had already done a lot of things and Jeremy was on the
• 55:47
  come up and Dana, same thing. She's done a great job as a head
• 55:49
  coach, you know, So, you know, it was a lot of fun, but it's so
• 55:53
  but it was new, you know, I went from being a head coach to being
• 55:56
  1. So I was that was an interesting
• 55:58
  experience for me too. So I was the one new guy on the
• 56:01
  staff. It was my first time in Division
• 56:03
  One as an athlete or as a coach, So I was taking it all in as
• 56:06
  naive I did, you know, probably real dumb shit there.
• 56:09
  So just from a interacting on a staff, knowing what to do,
• 56:14
  following, you know, directives on my boss, all the, you know,
• 56:16
  there's a lot of different things, but I had fun there.
• 56:19
  Like it was home ish for me. Had some success there.
• 56:23
  Ronnie Ash transferred in. So I, I'd forgotten Ronnie had
• 56:27
  transferred in. And earlier you said something
• 56:30
  that kind of surprised me. You said Trey Cunningham was not
• 56:35
  your fastest hurdler. And, you know, I'm a little bit
• 56:37
  biased towards Trey because, you know, same last name.
• 56:39
  We're both from Alabama. This third one's a little hard
• 56:42
  to say. We're both hurdlers.
• 56:44
  I was, I hurdled a little in high school, so I just count
• 56:46
  myself as a hurdler. That's where all the it's all
• 56:51
  different. After that, he's way faster,
• 56:53
  better looking, much better person than I am, yadda, yadda.
• 56:56
  So I just thought Trey was your fastest guy, but you mentioned
• 56:58
  Ronnie transferred in and earlier you talked about Ryan
• 57:00
  was one of those two. Your fastest hurdler?
• 57:03
  Sort of a technicality. So technically, I guess 13 OO
• 57:08
  when legal is is my fastest with Trey 1298 I think was like a 2.1
• 57:14
  or something Insignia and then Ryan was Ronnie and then Ryan
• 57:18
  ran like 13 O five with like a 2.2 in Texas back when that was
• 57:23
  nobody even realized how fast I was that day.
• 57:25
  But but yeah, it was. I mean, you know, like, the wind
• 57:29
  is actually kind of hurts rather than helps once you get over
• 57:32
  about 1.5, but especially when you're going that fast.
• 57:35
  But anyway. But yeah, like, obviously I
• 57:37
  think with Trey, I mean, not to, you know, jump ahead
• 57:42
  necessarily, but he's definitely the most consistent guy I've
• 57:46
  ever worked with as far as that goes.
• 57:48
  Yeah, I think I went back and looked and this is very much a
• 57:51
  compliment towards Terence Trammell.
• 57:52
  Not a detriment, but like it's a compliment to the year that Trey
• 57:56
  had that like Trey's 10th fastest time that year was
• 57:59
  Terence Trammell's 10th fastest time of his life.
• 58:03
  And Terence Trammell is a guy I hold in great regard as hurdler.
• 58:05
  It was a tremendous career. I don't 678 I don't have any
• 58:08
  silver medals he got or whatever.
• 58:11
  You know, he got second to Ryan that year in O 9, you know, and
• 58:14
  and anyway, so like certainly Trey is the most consistent of
• 58:18
  all the people, particularly that 2022 year.
• 58:21
  Yeah, certainly. You know, as us hurdle guys,
• 58:24
  tans Trammell, we bowed to, I mean, no, which, you know, a
• 58:27
  little bit of a tangent. Here.
• 58:28
  Especially if you're our age. Terence and and Alan were the.
• 58:31
  Guys, you know, and that's what I was surprised is going to be.
• 58:33
  We'll get back to Oklahoma here in a second.
• 58:36
  I was surprised, you know, I'm a huge Grant Holloway fan as well,
• 58:39
  obviously, you know, from his coach Mouse and Grant's just
• 58:41
  like a super nice guy, a lot like Trey actually.
• 58:44
  I'm always amazed that when these athletes like actually
• 58:46
  know me and interact with me because I'm like sure, I don't
• 58:49
  do anything for you know, I don't coach anymore.
• 58:50
  I'm not an agent, whatever. You're not trying to get shoes
• 58:52
  from me, those kind of things. But Trey and and Grant both have
• 58:55
  been like excessively nice to me both online and in person, which
• 58:59
  blows me away. But Grant's, you know, just
• 59:02
  recently ran the most sub thirteens ever, and that's
• 59:05
  surprised me. I know he's been good and all,
• 59:07
  but you know, I grew up with Alan and Terrence and my gosh,
• 59:12
  of course I'm blanking. But you know the who's who of
• 59:14
  hurdling. And I was like, wow, Grant
• 59:17
  already. Like, it just surprised me.
• 59:20
  Well, he's, he's been, I mean, Grant's been at the top world
• 59:26
  ranking number one for what, 5-6 years now, which is rare in this
• 59:31
  event. Like if you if you peel it back
• 59:33
  from before Grant, everybody had a really good 18 months.
• 59:37
  Like if you really go back, look at the previous world champions,
• 59:40
  there were barely any defending world champions, you know, going
• 59:43
  back to Ryan and before Ryan. And you know, there's a lot of
• 59:47
  guys that had really good, they're good careers for sure.
• 59:50
  But they were really hot for 18 months.
• 59:52
  And Grant's been able to stay at the top for a really, really
• 59:55
  long time. So, you know, it's a hard guy to
• 59:56
  not respect. He's a good, he's a good dude
• 59:58
  too, like, you know. I, I think that's The thing is
• 1:00:02
  I'm getting older because when you just said he's been world
• 1:00:04
  ranked number one for 5-6 years, I'm like, no, he just graduated
• 1:00:07
  college last year. Like that's what surprised me.
• 1:00:09
  And it's like, Oh no, he has been out for five to six years.
• 1:00:12
  It just surprises me, you know? All right, well, let's get back,
• 1:00:17
  get back on track here, pun intended.
• 1:00:20
  And we left off with Oklahoma. So you just got to Oklahoma.
• 1:00:24
  You're the new person on the staff.
• 1:00:26
  This is your first. I'd never, no, I'm not even
• 1:00:28
  going to say it that way. This is your First Division one
• 1:00:30
  job. How, how did how did you
• 1:00:33
  acclimate to the, you know, new recruiting, new everything?
• 1:00:36
  Yeah, it was different. Like it was not only was it my
• 1:00:38
  first job, but it was Division One wise.
• 1:00:41
  But I I wasn't a Division One athlete, you know, So like
• 1:00:43
  everything was wildly different for me, you know.
• 1:00:45
  So you always have this like in your mind what it's going to be
• 1:00:47
  like and then you get on a staff and it's different, you know,
• 1:00:51
  like it it always is going to be a little bit different.
• 1:00:53
  But it was it was great. It was educational for me.
• 1:00:56
  I had some good people to to learn from.
• 1:00:58
  It was a little bit of AI mean the staff was organized in a
• 1:01:01
  little bit different way. So it's kind of a lot of
• 1:01:03
  independent people working together, if that makes any
• 1:01:06
  sense. Like, you know, Jeremy had his
• 1:01:08
  group and Brian his group and Dana had her group and what kind
• 1:01:11
  of me coming from junior college, that was easy, you
• 1:01:13
  know, because I just had always been doing my own thing.
• 1:01:15
  And then we kind of all came together when it mattered.
• 1:01:18
  Got a bunch of really good coaches.
• 1:01:19
  So that that model kind of worked, you know what I mean?
• 1:01:22
  And you know, it was good. Like Martin is Martin.
• 1:01:26
  Martin is a Hall of Fame character and Hall of Fame
• 1:01:28
  coach. I love him.
• 1:01:31
  You know, like he's he, he could be a challenge, but man, I I
• 1:01:34
  love Martin. And so, you know, I learned a
• 1:01:36
  lot from him about just general coaching.
• 1:01:39
  I learned I actually really enjoyed watching his training
• 1:01:43
  sessions, to be honest with you. Like I just kind of found some
• 1:01:46
  of the stuff that he did really interesting in in his training.
• 1:01:49
  I would watch these guys not run very fast in training and then
• 1:01:52
  all of a sudden run really fast in a race.
• 1:01:53
  And I was always enamored by the fact that they could run 51
• 1:01:57
  second three hundreds and somehow run 357 or whatever.
• 1:02:00
  You know, you're like, it's like a women's time in my mind and
• 1:02:06
  but they're going out, you know, breaking floor when breaking
• 1:02:07
  floor was still the deal. So it was a lot of stuff.
• 1:02:10
  And I thought he was also really interesting and innovative for
• 1:02:14
  an older guy that was doing a lot of plyometrics and core and
• 1:02:16
  different things that I that I did not expect from an old
• 1:02:19
  school distance coach, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:21
  So, but he was he's a brilliant guy.
• 1:02:22
  So he was a good he was got to work for.
• 1:02:25
  Him now that I think about it, because I'd forgotten the Martin
• 1:02:28
  connection between you and I as well.
• 1:02:29
  I think I helped set you up to get that job.
• 1:02:32
  And what I mean by that is one of my like I Revere Martin Smith
• 1:02:37
  is when I was at in Yoshio. So after my first season before
• 1:02:40
  I actually, you know, because of Martin, I went to Ball State.
• 1:02:44
  He was, he was hiring a Sprint turtles coach at Oregon and I
• 1:02:48
  did and you know, this is very pre, I shouldn't say pre
• 1:02:51
  Internet, but you know, early days Internet e-mail, things
• 1:02:54
  like that. I, you know, I thought that'd be
• 1:02:56
  the greatest job in the world. And I had, you know, no common
• 1:02:59
  sense that I was not ready for that job, but I just blitzed
• 1:03:01
  him. Everybody that I knew, I asked
• 1:03:03
  to send a referral, a reference. And one day in my office in
• 1:03:07
  Little Ocean, New Kansas, I get this, you know, and I didn't,
• 1:03:10
  you know, we didn't have a caller.
• 1:03:11
  Idi just got this. I don't know what number this
• 1:03:13
  is. And I answer and he goes, you
• 1:03:15
  know, Hey, is this Mike? This is Martin Smith from
• 1:03:17
  Oregon. And I was like, holy crap.
• 1:03:19
  And he was like, Hey, he goes, I feel like I have to interview
• 1:03:23
  you for the job. Do you know how many people have
• 1:03:26
  called me e-mail? And I was like Oh my God, it
• 1:03:28
  worked. And so I.
• 1:03:30
  Don't think I'm like a very Martin thing to say.
• 1:03:34
  He he interviewed me and and I realized the mistake I made
• 1:03:38
  learning later about Martin and, you know, kind of holistic track
• 1:03:40
  and field team. And, you know, he ended up
• 1:03:43
  hiring some guy named Steve Silvey.
• 1:03:45
  So I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm sure he had to go to a
• 1:03:47
  second choice for me and went to Steve, I guess, But but I
• 1:03:51
  probably helped him understand. Oh, these JUCO coaches are
• 1:03:55
  probably pretty good. So when you were interviewing,
• 1:03:57
  he's probably like, oh, this guy, I get it because I, I
• 1:03:59
  interviewed Mike Cunningham. So now I I get that.
• 1:04:02
  Yeah, Yeah, that's probably what it.
• 1:04:05
  Was so talk to us about Oklahoma.
• 1:04:07
  You know, I remember watching from the sidelines.
• 1:04:10
  I remember, you know, we saw each other in Texas, Texas
• 1:04:12
  relays one year and stuff a fun time.
• 1:04:15
  You you seem to have acclimated really well quickly.
• 1:04:19
  I was from there. So that partly was a bit of it.
• 1:04:22
  That was part of the draw. Well, first of all, you gave me
• 1:04:23
  an interview, which is which is a big draw.
• 1:04:25
  And second of all, I was from there, had some, you know,
• 1:04:28
  family stuff going on. So it was actually a really good
• 1:04:30
  time for me to go closer to home and things of that nature.
• 1:04:33
  So, you know, it was good. I was, I was only there like 18
• 1:04:37
  months to be honest with you. Like it was fun.
• 1:04:40
  We were, we were good. The women did a really nice job.
• 1:04:44
  You know, I think they finished fourth my last year there.
• 1:04:47
  Like Dana and Brian were a big part of, you know, like they
• 1:04:51
  were a massive part of making all that happen and they they
• 1:04:55
  scored a lot of points and made a lot of happy.
• 1:04:56
  It was a lot. So it was a lot of fun.
• 1:04:57
  It was kind of like the early days, a lot of those throwers
• 1:04:59
  that Brian had that kind of went on to make Olympic teams and and
• 1:05:02
  stuff like that. It was kind of need to get to
• 1:05:04
  know those people and and whatnot.
• 1:05:05
  And from my end, you know, Mookie Salaam kind of emerged
• 1:05:10
  from nowhere. He was an Oklahoma kid that his
• 1:05:13
  freshman year before I got there, I don't think he made a
• 1:05:15
  Big 12 final. And then his next year he won
• 1:05:19
  the 100 and 200 in the final. Following year he was, you know,
• 1:05:22
  national champ indoors and ran 99 and whatever, you know, So
• 1:05:25
  like it was kind of fun to kind of see that progression with
• 1:05:28
  him. But there's a bunch of other
• 1:05:29
  guys that were there. Couple guys followed me from
• 1:05:31
  Barton Startlers and a quarter mile at Romero followed me from
• 1:05:35
  Barton to to Oklahoma and yeah, it was good.
• 1:05:40
  And then, you know, kind of Alabama just sort of happened.
• 1:05:44
  I've known Waters for a very long time through recruiting and
• 1:05:48
  a variety of other things. And he got hired at Alabama and
• 1:05:52
  it's Alabama. I don't know.
• 1:05:53
  So like, I just, you know, hopped in a in a car and found a
• 1:05:57
  new place to live. You know, I you mentioned Mookie
• 1:06:01
  and what I thought about immediately for him because we
• 1:06:03
  talked about with Tabari and Romero.
• 1:06:06
  Here's another guy that went on to coach track.
• 1:06:10
  I mean, that's. He's coaching at Oklahoma right
• 1:06:12
  now. Yeah, that that to me is a
• 1:06:13
  pretty big hallmark for a coach. You, you know, I would say
• 1:06:17
  99.9%. Well, maybe for you, 99% of your
• 1:06:21
  athletes are not going to go on to pro or if you're high school,
• 1:06:23
  they're not going to go on to college.
• 1:06:25
  Most don't. But they're all going to go on
• 1:06:27
  to be moms and dads and business owners and coaches and teachers.
• 1:06:32
  And you have AI mean for people who have they must have had some
• 1:06:36
  kind of good experience with you that they thought, oh man, I I
• 1:06:39
  want to be that I I'd like to go coach try.
• 1:06:41
  That's a big deal. Yeah, I hope.
• 1:06:43
  I mean, I I there was a time in junior college when, I mean, I'm
• 1:06:49
  going to get the number wrong, but it was something like 10 or
• 1:06:51
  11 kids or kid. They weren't, but they were kids
• 1:06:54
  in junior college. There were 10 or 11 coaches in
• 1:06:57
  in junior college or Division One that I had coached at that
• 1:07:01
  at Barton. They were on the same team
• 1:07:02
  together. So, you know, that's pretty
• 1:07:05
  impactful to me. Like it's it just means that
• 1:07:07
  that time that we had there was really special was, you know,
• 1:07:10
  it's impactful in their life. That's the real job that I
• 1:07:13
  figured out when I was in junior college, you know, is, is
• 1:07:15
  understanding the opportunities that we're able to provide those
• 1:07:17
  kids. That was that I didn't realize
• 1:07:19
  when I was 23 years old, that was what the real job was, you
• 1:07:21
  know, But yeah, like it's it's kind of awesome to see now.
• 1:07:25
  It was, it was great to see Muki go back to Oklahoma because
• 1:07:27
  that's, you know, that's where he's from.
• 1:07:29
  But to get an opportunity there, you know, it's kind of I'm happy
• 1:07:33
  to see to go to to Alabama because I was at Alabama.
• 1:07:39
  Waters was with him at Texas A&M.
• 1:07:41
  There's a lot of you know, that's kind of how this works.
• 1:07:44
  But but also for him to get an opportunity there also with
• 1:07:47
  Blaine Wiley, who was we're very close friends.
• 1:07:50
  That was my arch rival at South Plains when I was a Barton.
• 1:07:53
  Like we had a mutual love hatred, probably like we were we
• 1:07:56
  were good probably because of each other.
• 1:08:00
  You know, like when tomorrow in 44 seconds, but Toy Williams ran
• 1:08:03
  44 seconds. You know, those type of things
• 1:08:05
  were happening in junior coach at the time.
• 1:08:07
  So yeah, it's good to see all those guys getting opportunities
• 1:08:10
  and and you know, they put their own, they they probably take a
• 1:08:13
  little bit of what we were doing and obviously they make their
• 1:08:15
  own way and it's, it's exciting, kind of gross.
• 1:08:19
  How did you, you know, I'm thinking about like as assistant
• 1:08:23
  coaches and you know, probably the majority of us, I think this
• 1:08:25
  is would be a proper statement. The majority of us in the in
• 1:08:27
  coaching careers are going to be assistants for their whole
• 1:08:30
  career. And then that's nothing's wrong
• 1:08:32
  with that. But with that, if you go through
• 1:08:36
  different programs or what not, you're going to different head
• 1:08:39
  coaches that have different priorities, different
• 1:08:41
  personalities. Now I'm on the outside looking
• 1:08:43
  in here, but I know a little bit about Martin Smith.
• 1:08:46
  I know a little bit about Dan Waters and I and I had this
• 1:08:48
  distinct memory after you got the Alabama job.
• 1:08:51
  I visited pretty recently after that, like maybe the first
• 1:08:54
  semester I think. And I remember sitting in your
• 1:08:56
  office and you and I said, Hey, so how's it going with Dan?
• 1:08:59
  And I knew Dan from recruiting, you know, Neosho and you know,
• 1:09:02
  things like that. So I knew Dan, you know, cursory
• 1:09:04
  that way as well. I've got to know him a lot more
• 1:09:06
  here lately in the last few years and have a lot of respect
• 1:09:08
  for him. But I said, Hey, so how's it,
• 1:09:11
  you know, under Dan who? And I think I'm ever saying who
• 1:09:14
  is a Pat Henry disciple, meaning he learned a lot from Pat Henry.
• 1:09:17
  And I, you know, I've heard, you know, stories not mean that in a
• 1:09:19
  negative way about Pat his, his leadership all positive.
• 1:09:23
  And I remember you, you reached up and you grabbed this binder
• 1:09:26
  and it was a thick, thick binder.
• 1:09:28
  And I immediately said, oh, yeah, I had that at Mississippi
• 1:09:32
  State, you know, all your school policy.
• 1:09:35
  Yeah, exactly. I said, oh, yeah, I had that
• 1:09:39
  too, Matt, you know, Mississippi State school rules and HR and
• 1:09:43
  you go, oh, no, no, no, no. This isn't from the university.
• 1:09:47
  This is from Dan. So knowing and I don't know,
• 1:09:51
  this is where I say I don't know.
• 1:09:52
  You know, I'm on the outside, I don't know, Maybe Martin did
• 1:09:53
  that as well. But what I'm really getting here
• 1:09:56
  is how do you how did you navigate different head coaches
• 1:10:03
  and even you know it with Bob there at Florida State?
• 1:10:05
  How did you navigate different head coaches who had different
• 1:10:07
  personalities, different priorities, different maybe
• 1:10:10
  expectations of you and your group?
• 1:10:12
  How do you, I'm going to say, navigate that, but still stay
• 1:10:16
  true to who you are as a coach and your own style and things
• 1:10:19
  like that? Yeah, that's a great question.
• 1:10:22
  Like it's, it's, they're all very different, like Martin and
• 1:10:27
  and Bob are have a lot of similarities.
• 1:10:29
  But if you if you were to know Martin Bob as people.
• 1:10:32
  They're wildly different, but like they're the way their
• 1:10:35
  management was actually semi similar.
• 1:10:37
  And then obviously Dan was way on an opposite end of the
• 1:10:39
  spectrum. So it went from kind of loose,
• 1:10:42
  you're kind of the captain of your own ship to we only have
• 1:10:45
  one captain and this is what we're going to do it and this is
• 1:10:47
  what we're going to do it. And I found value in all three
• 1:10:49
  of them, to be honest with you. Like I think that I hope that I
• 1:10:53
  can blend all three of them into somebody that's really good.
• 1:10:57
  But I think that, you know, I learned a ton from Dan about
• 1:11:00
  recruiting. I learned a ton of Dan about
• 1:11:02
  organization perspective. Sometimes I didn't always
• 1:11:05
  appreciate it as much as I probably should have.
• 1:11:08
  I can tell you, I understand him a lot more in the last two
• 1:11:11
  months than I did maybe 10 years ago, but really good.
• 1:11:16
  And that's been good to me over, you know, over the, you know, 10
• 1:11:19
  years since I left or whatever. But it's, it's definitely
• 1:11:23
  really, when you look at it, it's two guys that'll be
• 1:11:26
  definitely Hall of Fame guys, probably 3 Hall of Fame coaches
• 1:11:30
  that I got to work for. So I would be in idiot to not
• 1:11:33
  learn from them and I would be an idiot to not, you know, kind
• 1:11:35
  of figure out what I could take from them that that I could be
• 1:11:38
  find useful to myself. So I have that book back there
• 1:11:40
  that I still have. I did pull the Alabama part out
• 1:11:43
  of the binding, But, but I, I used that as like a sort of a
• 1:11:47
  framework for how would I take some of this and, and, and use
• 1:11:50
  it for what made sense to me. As you said earlier, you know,
• 1:11:54
  talking about coaching in a way that makes sense or whatever.
• 1:11:58
  So I take the, the organizational part of, of what
• 1:12:00
  Dan was like, which I'm sure he got from Pat and Dennis, nothing
• 1:12:04
  to work with Dennis. But I, I, it's hard for me to
• 1:12:06
  still separate those guys, you know, from an organizational
• 1:12:10
  standpoint. I I think that, you know, like
• 1:12:11
  when I go to track meet at LSUI, just look around and I think
• 1:12:16
  this is the best practice facility I've ever seen in my
• 1:12:18
  entire life because Dennis is a meticulous guy that has
• 1:12:21
  attention to detail like none other.
• 1:12:23
  You know, I never expected the hell out of that.
• 1:12:24
  So you know, like those are the type.
• 1:12:27
  Of things that. I kind of just kind of try and.
• 1:12:30
  Garner. From other people that I'm
• 1:12:31
  around, and sometimes it's not just the head coaches like it's
• 1:12:33
  assistant coaches. I've watched the way Brian
• 1:12:35
  operated, Jeremy, Dana, you know, I worked with Miguel,
• 1:12:38
  Paige, Dick Booth. Those are very wildly different
• 1:12:41
  characters, but they all brought something different to the
• 1:12:45
  table. Doug Reynolds.
• 1:12:46
  I mean my God, I worked with Doug twice.
• 1:12:48
  I convinced him to work with me again.
• 1:12:50
  Then I think he had enough with kids.
• 1:12:52
  But no, Doug is like one of my all time favorites and his like
• 1:12:56
  calm demeanor was probably something that I have tried to
• 1:13:02
  move closer towards in my especially my head coaching.
• 1:13:05
  So, yeah, I, I sometimes wonder, you know, I talk a lot about how
• 1:13:12
  are we preparing our assistant coaches to become head coaches
• 1:13:15
  one day? And, and I think about that
• 1:13:19
  organization and attention to detail.
• 1:13:24
  I just remember, you know, Dan one time gave me a, a really
• 1:13:28
  extensive tour of Alabama, showed me all the way through
• 1:13:31
  football and everything like that.
• 1:13:33
  And I told him the story of Pat Henry.
• 1:13:36
  The first year we did nationals was at his indoor, he's now
• 1:13:40
  former indoor facility. And so before the meet started,
• 1:13:43
  you know, I just wanted to just check in with Pat.
• 1:13:45
  You know, it's Pat. I Revere Pat.
• 1:13:46
  You know, he's a legacy, right? And so I was like, hey, Pat,
• 1:13:49
  how's everything Like, I don't want to bother you.
• 1:13:51
  I mean, you know, you are you do you know, not only are you
• 1:13:53
  hosting, but you know, you're trying to win the thing and you
• 1:13:55
  know that kind of stuff. And he looks at me and he goes,
• 1:13:58
  Mike, you see this box right here?
• 1:14:00
  And it was a box that had nothing to do with Trek
• 1:14:03
  equipment. So I was kind of like, oh, man,
• 1:14:04
  does Pat think I did that? But like, you know, I was kind
• 1:14:06
  of wondering where this going? He's go.
• 1:14:08
  He goes, now we're going to put a skirt around it.
• 1:14:10
  But this is where the bugler is going to do the national anthem.
• 1:14:15
  And I'm not sure it's tall enough.
• 1:14:17
  These are the things I'm concerned about the
• 1:14:18
  presentation. And I was like, like, where is
• 1:14:21
  it? It's a little bit like, man,
• 1:14:22
  Pat, I have nothing to do with that.
• 1:14:23
  But it helped me kind of get a little bit of an insight of
• 1:14:26
  like, oh, this dude is thinking of literally everything.
• 1:14:31
  And Dan gave me the story of like when that facility opened
• 1:14:34
  up, I think they hosted, was it big tools or I see whatever.
• 1:14:38
  I think they hosted conference that year.
• 1:14:40
  So like say again. They were in the Big 12 back
• 1:14:44
  then. Yeah, Big 12, yeah.
• 1:14:46
  And I think it literally opened like weeks before or something
• 1:14:48
  like that. And, you know, Dan said he was,
• 1:14:51
  you know, working to, OK, we got to host and we're trying to win
• 1:14:53
  and yadda, yadda. And Pat was like, hey, the
• 1:14:55
  stanchion's outside for like how the people get into the ticket.
• 1:14:58
  They're not set up right. He was just like, what is this
• 1:15:00
  guy talking about? But he himself then was talking
• 1:15:03
  about I had to learn like, oh, everything matters.
• 1:15:06
  And if everything matters, then everything will matter.
• 1:15:08
  So it was, it's just fascinating.
• 1:15:09
  So to me, like I think about what these guys have learned,
• 1:15:13
  you know, Pat, Dennis, Dan, like that's the kind of things I wish
• 1:15:18
  at like USTFCA and stuff like Dan would present, Hey, here's
• 1:15:22
  how, you know, maybe you'd call it the Alabama way.
• 1:15:24
  The Waters way is what it really is, you know, because he's he's
• 1:15:26
  certainly tweaked some things that Pat has thought him so that
• 1:15:28
  other people see. Oh, if I.
• 1:15:30
  Want to be a head. If I want to be a successful
• 1:15:32
  head coach, I might need some of these principles that Dan has
• 1:15:36
  has learned and and now, you know, mastered for himself.
• 1:15:41
  Yeah, like, I think it's a simple principle.
• 1:15:42
  I don't know that Dan never ever said these words.
• 1:15:44
  But to me, I always just took it as like, if we want to be taken
• 1:15:46
  seriously, we have to take ourselves seriously.
• 1:15:49
  As is what? You know, like, if we want and
• 1:15:51
  we can, you know, there's a lot of things to complain about for
• 1:15:53
  sure, if you want to complain. But like, if we want to be taken
• 1:15:56
  seriously, we have to present ourselves to administrators in a
• 1:15:58
  way that we can be taken seriously.
• 1:16:00
  And attention to detail is a big part of that.
• 1:16:02
  And, you know, figuring out a way to get people on your team
• 1:16:05
  to have that same attention to detail is a challenge, you know,
• 1:16:08
  but it's something we all got to do.
• 1:16:10
  That's a great point. So how was your time in Alabama
• 1:16:12
  and how was it hanging out with Nick Saban?
• 1:16:15
  Oh, it was great. You know, we sketch beers on
• 1:16:17
  Thursdays before the game go over film.
• 1:16:20
  No, he was great. Obviously.
• 1:16:23
  It was great to live in his world, but no, my time in
• 1:16:27
  Alabama was was really good for me from a coaching perspective.
• 1:16:30
  It was really good for me from you know, like I really enjoyed
• 1:16:35
  the people we had on our staff. Like we all kind of came
• 1:16:37
  together and I felt like it was AI mean Dick obviously had done
• 1:16:42
  everything already that we all aspired to.
• 1:16:47
  And then, you know, we had kind of myself and Miguel and, and,
• 1:16:52
  and Doug like kind of on the rise, if that makes any sense.
• 1:16:55
  You know, like we were continuing to grow together and
• 1:16:56
  challenging each other and we just all kind of clicked, even
• 1:17:00
  though we were from wildly different backgrounds and
• 1:17:02
  whatnot. So, you know, it was, it was a
• 1:17:05
  lot of fun from that aspect that we were not a good team,
• 1:17:09
  frankly. I think you would, you're pretty
• 1:17:11
  familiar with that. It was a unique blend of a
• 1:17:15
  difficult challenges of, of taking a men's and women's
• 1:17:18
  program that were separate and putting them together.
• 1:17:20
  So they had different leadership styles that they were each
• 1:17:23
  accustomed to and then Dan being 1/3 leadership style, which was
• 1:17:27
  completely different from the other two.
• 1:17:29
  So we had different problems with different groups and things
• 1:17:31
  of that nature. But what I would say about all
• 1:17:35
  the entire coaching staff is we were coaching our asses off with
• 1:17:37
  those kids, you know, like trying to get them better and
• 1:17:39
  trying to, you know, close the gap.
• 1:17:41
  And, and we frankly were, we were blast in the SEC, you know,
• 1:17:45
  like, so it's not even about that.
• 1:17:47
  We weren't that good, but it was the SEC for crying out loud.
• 1:17:49
  So we had a long ways to go. I'm really proud of the work
• 1:17:52
  that we did there, like getting him off the ground and getting
• 1:17:54
  some things going. And I think we got we were six
• 1:17:57
  in the nation that maybe my third year there or something.
• 1:17:59
  So you know, it was good and I enjoyed working with those guys.
• 1:18:04
  That was a whole lot of fun and kind of continuing to grow as a
• 1:18:07
  coach and all that. We had some success.
• 1:18:09
  I mean, DeAndre Batson was was quite good.
• 1:18:12
  Obviously he was a big part of that 6th place team.
• 1:18:14
  I think he won the national championship in the two and got
• 1:18:16
  third in the 60 and then Ramona virtual that kind of came out of
• 1:18:21
  nowhere in the 60 and won the national championship out of
• 1:18:24
  lane 2 and then went on to win it.
• 1:18:26
  You know, the 100 and broke the collegiate record was at that
• 1:18:29
  time a long standing collegiate record at seven O 8 or whatever.
• 1:18:33
  But you know, there's there was things like that going on a lot
• 1:18:36
  of fun. I kind of got back into coaching
• 1:18:39
  little distance when I was there.
• 1:18:40
  Had some some guys around 1:45 had a girl around 2O2 that were
• 1:18:44
  like, I think the two O2 girl around like 214 at at junior
• 1:18:47
  college, you know, so there's a lot of like fun coaching that we
• 1:18:50
  got to do because we weren't very good.
• 1:18:53
  And so we were taking risks on people we thought could be good.
• 1:18:55
  So it was a little bit of we got to coach, if that makes any
• 1:18:59
  sense, you know what I mean? And you know, it was it was just
• 1:19:02
  a different time. It's fun.
• 1:19:03
  It was a lot of fun so. Besides coaching, I, I remember
• 1:19:06
  this story. I'm pretty sure it was Dan.
• 1:19:08
  I, it was either you, Doug or Dan.
• 1:19:09
  And I think it was Dan. We were sitting together at the
• 1:19:13
  Crossflex for a meet, might have been nationals or something.
• 1:19:16
  And he told me about the number of home visits that you guys
• 1:19:23
  did. So this is a little bit like a
• 1:19:25
  like a asterisk of be careful what you ask for, think you
• 1:19:31
  want, meaning like you think you want to work in the SEC or even,
• 1:19:34
  you know, Big 12 etcetera. And you know, if you think you
• 1:19:37
  from the outside in, you look at, you know, you said Alabama
• 1:19:39
  was not a very good team, had some good athletes, but not good
• 1:19:42
  team. And you think, you know, from
• 1:19:44
  the outside, you think, oh man, I could make that better so easy
• 1:19:46
  by doing X or Y or Z. And then you get into the muck
• 1:19:50
  and figure out what it is. I can't remember the number, but
• 1:19:52
  it was, you know, I did quite a few home visits when I coached
• 1:19:55
  and it was a number that blew. Well, we had 106 official visits
• 1:20:04
  that year between the men and the women like we brought onto
• 1:20:07
  campus and we had unofficial visitors and all that other
• 1:20:09
  stuff. I think we signed something like
• 1:20:10
  54. I do remember we signed 32 on
• 1:20:14
  signing day and a football signed like 24 or 25 and they
• 1:20:19
  were like what in the world is going on here?
• 1:20:21
  Because they were very unaccustomed fax machine day.
• 1:20:23
  They were very. Unaccustomed.
• 1:20:25
  Near the fax machine outside of themselves.
• 1:20:27
  So I think by doing that, I think that opened up our
• 1:20:31
  relationship with football and I opened up our relationship with
• 1:20:34
  other sports because they were like, oh man, these guys are
• 1:20:36
  working, like working, working. So you know, and like we got
• 1:20:40
  better, like we moved the needle a little bit that day and and we
• 1:20:44
  can continue to get better. And you know, Dan was
• 1:20:46
  relentless. Like my favorite Dan quote is
• 1:20:48
  not always my favorite Dan quote is we're out of money.
• 1:20:50
  Let's get back out on the road and sign somebody.
• 1:20:52
  So, you know, like, I don't think that makes any sense, but
• 1:20:55
  whatever you say about. We'll have to have him come on
• 1:20:58
  and explain that one. Yeah.
• 1:21:00
  Explain that you probably didn't even realize he said that stuff.
• 1:21:02
  But yeah, but no, he was good like he was, he was demanding
• 1:21:06
  and it was it was good. It was really good for me to
• 1:21:08
  like kind of see the flip side of it because I mean.
• 1:21:10
  It's a tough conference. It's.
• 1:21:11
  How you have to be to to get a team, you know, at the top of
• 1:21:15
  the podium, you know, you got to, you got to be relentless and
• 1:21:17
  you got to have a vision and a dream.
• 1:21:19
  So and then absolutely had the vision and had you know, for for
• 1:21:24
  what Alabama could be and he's done a an awesome job so.
• 1:21:27
  Were you still on staff? Or if not, you certainly had a
• 1:21:30
  hand in this, you know, through building it up when they won the
• 1:21:33
  SEC championships. No, no.
• 1:21:36
  And I had a tiny hand. I don't.
• 1:21:37
  I wouldn't say I had a hand in that.
• 1:21:39
  No, that I'll be honest with you Like it was I think 2 years I
• 1:21:43
  went because it was an A&M indoors thing.
• 1:21:47
  Maybe I went to Nationals after they went anyway, but it was it
• 1:21:51
  was Blaine did a really nice job and I think DM might have still
• 1:21:53
  been there. There was a handful of my
• 1:21:56
  people, but like Blaine was probably the bigger driving
• 1:21:59
  force behind from a Sprint perspective behind that.
• 1:22:02
  So I remember the only part I would say I had a point is we
• 1:22:06
  like we got them off the ground so they could get good recruit
• 1:22:08
  to that and be better than I was, yeah.
• 1:22:09
  Yeah, I I appreciate your perspective of like, not many of
• 1:22:12
  my kids, but you're right, it doesn't happen in one year.
• 1:22:15
  It takes a take a base to continue to grow.
• 1:22:16
  And I just remember seeing Dan at nationals and I was like,
• 1:22:19
  hey, congratulations, man. And Alabama doesn't win the SEC
• 1:22:22
  champion. I mean, they just don't look at
• 1:22:23
  the history of who wins the SEC championships in Alabama has
• 1:22:27
  never done it. So that's a big deal.
• 1:22:29
  That may be as much as, you know, in the continued success
• 1:22:33
  he and his staff has had and, you know, top fives and things
• 1:22:35
  like that. And Nationals, I still think
• 1:22:38
  maybe winning that SEC is the best job because that's hard.
• 1:22:43
  Yeah, I mean, I could have a whole conversation on the the
• 1:22:45
  SEC Championship being harder than NCAA sometimes.
• 1:22:47
  I mean, I know that that's whatsoever.
• 1:22:49
  But I think there's just a culture A-Team atmosphere.
• 1:22:53
  You know, you got 30 guys there as opposed to maybe 15 guys
• 1:22:57
  there when you're trying to compete for, you know, so you
• 1:22:58
  got your boys there a little bit like this NC environment is just
• 1:23:01
  different, which you can never understand until you're in it.
• 1:23:03
  But if it was fun like that and by the way, I didn't want to
• 1:23:06
  take away from like it wasn't just blame that like Peyt was a
• 1:23:08
  huge part of winning those championships.
• 1:23:10
  Dan had some business runners that were doing some things.
• 1:23:12
  I know Doug had some really good throwers.
• 1:23:13
  So they had a they were had a really good team during that
• 1:23:17
  during that time and they still do.
• 1:23:19
  I mean like what they got going on right now is is really good.
• 1:23:23
  It's amazing. It's awesome.
• 1:23:24
  Yeah. That SEC me, you know, I was in
• 1:23:26
  it before Mizzou and Texas A&M. It got a lot worse when those
• 1:23:29
  guys came in. We just had Brett Halter on the
• 1:23:31
  podcast and I was like, man, you guys came in as like, I just
• 1:23:34
  made it worse and going now, you know, your old boys Oklahoma are
• 1:23:37
  in there and Texas, dude, I I don't think I was talking to a
• 1:23:41
  friend of mine at one of those two schools, so I won't name who
• 1:23:43
  it is, but I was like, dude, it's just no fun.
• 1:23:47
  I would not have. No way, man, no way.
• 1:23:50
  So, OK, so Alabama and where do we go?
• 1:23:55
  You're becoming a little bit of a journeyman now here.
• 1:23:57
  So we're we're, you know, by the way, I'm pointing thumbs when I
• 1:24:00
  say that that was my yeah, that was my.
• 1:24:02
  MO as well What? Happens from Alabama.
• 1:24:05
  Where do we go? OK, So I just kept having
• 1:24:09
  people. I mean, that's a good problem,
• 1:24:10
  but I kept having people turn pro.
• 1:24:12
  And so I had an opportunity where I was able to kind of go
• 1:24:16
  out on my own a little bit with a little help from Adidas and
• 1:24:20
  they were able to sponsor me a bit and and have a group.
• 1:24:22
  And so I kind of relocated to the Austin area and had a pro
• 1:24:28
  group for a bit and enjoyed that time too.
• 1:24:31
  It was really that was good from a coaching perspective in that I
• 1:24:36
  was able to slow things down and do them probably the right way.
• 1:24:40
  Like I felt like I really developed my craft as 100 coach
• 1:24:43
  and a hurdle coach, etcetera, because I think it's it's easy
• 1:24:47
  to have this excuse. You know, when I was in junior
• 1:24:49
  college, I'm coaching 50 people or whatever and like there is
• 1:24:51
  legitimate the legitimacy to the I just don't have the time to do
• 1:24:55
  the things I maybe know I need to do because I got 50 kids,
• 1:24:58
  right. I can't I can't coach all fifty
• 1:25:00
  of them the way they need to be. But we all they all ran fast and
• 1:25:03
  they all got better and they all improved, But it was all you had
• 1:25:06
  to coach in a way that it was a volume coaching situation.
• 1:25:09
  Whereas when I had the pro thing and I had about, you know, on
• 1:25:12
  average about eight people that I'm working with, It's my only
• 1:25:15
  job and I don't have to do paperwork and I don't have to do
• 1:25:17
  all the other stuff. I could really dial in on video
• 1:25:20
  and I could really dial in on making sure that we approached
• 1:25:23
  the way we coached in a different way, ankle stability
• 1:25:26
  and hips and all the different things that I needed to take the
• 1:25:30
  time to do. And I've always been kind of my
• 1:25:32
  own strength coach. And so I was able to dive into
• 1:25:36
  that, but even more and kind of fine tune some of the stuff that
• 1:25:39
  I had already been doing and get better with that.
• 1:25:42
  So I think I've become a better coach during that time.
• 1:25:44
  From a Nexus and perspective, I don't know that I was, I felt
• 1:25:48
  like my college coaching time has made me a better culture
• 1:25:51
  person and a better relationship person.
• 1:25:53
  I felt like that time as coaching the pros was really all
• 1:25:56
  about the individuals so that it became more about the technical
• 1:25:59
  aspect of things and, and, and whatnot.
• 1:26:01
  So it was fun, it was great, it was educational.
• 1:26:05
  I mean, I went six continents and I don't even know how many
• 1:26:07
  countries 50-60, you know, just for track and field.
• 1:26:10
  So I got to travel, help people have some success at the world
• 1:26:13
  level and. It was fun.
• 1:26:16
  You know, like, eventually, like, I don't want to rush
• 1:26:20
  through that time because I had a lot of fun and I really
• 1:26:22
  enjoyed it. But family reason slash I like
• 1:26:27
  had an itch for college. I'm an idiot.
• 1:26:29
  So I had an itch for college track and field, you know, like
• 1:26:32
  I had young kids at the time and I was out of the country about
• 1:26:34
  100 days out of the year. So that was always weighing in
• 1:26:37
  the back of my mind as I got older and I started to miss
• 1:26:40
  softball and baseball and all those little things.
• 1:26:43
  And honestly, Bob just sort of reached out at the right time
• 1:26:47
  for me and kind of drew me back. Florida State was a place that
• 1:26:50
  like, I mean, a lot of people see as like the job.
• 1:26:53
  So I have stumbled into being the director, head coach or
• 1:26:58
  whatever at one of the best jobs theoretically and in the NCAA
• 1:27:02
  for than a lot of people spend. So even as a as a coach that was
• 1:27:07
  doing well financially, basically my own boss and a lot
• 1:27:10
  of things that people aspire to, I would describe the Adidas job
• 1:27:13
  probably as my dream job. But if I was going to go back to
• 1:27:17
  college, it was like, this is now interesting for me because
• 1:27:21
  of Florida State, because of all of the other things that it has
• 1:27:24
  to offer that I was always felt like this is a place where you
• 1:27:27
  can be good. You know, this is a place where
• 1:27:29
  you can be successful. I'm not afraid of the SEC by any
• 1:27:33
  means, but I'm not in the SEC. So you can have high levels of
• 1:27:36
  success and develop people at the same time.
• 1:27:39
  I think there's an important part of that element of having a
• 1:27:42
  trap program. There's a lot of, I mean,
• 1:27:43
  there's a million different things that'll make it sound
• 1:27:45
  like a Florida State sales pitch, but it definitely did a
• 1:27:47
  lot of draw for me to Florida State at that time.
• 1:27:51
  Still is, obviously. So that's kind of, you know,
• 1:27:54
  like I, I enjoyed the pro thing, but I was, I'm always been kind
• 1:27:57
  of a college coach at heart. Yeah, that drove me back to to
• 1:28:03
  Florida State and then Bob and all the different things.
• 1:28:06
  There there's a bit of a fallacy that as you go up in levels and
• 1:28:10
  you know, you get to define that however you want, that things
• 1:28:13
  get a little bit easier. Like I, I remember when I
• 1:28:15
  coached high school, I really wanted to coach college because
• 1:28:18
  my fallacy, my, my myth was, oh, coach college.
• 1:28:22
  I get to pick who I coach. You know, in high school, I just
• 1:28:25
  take whoever comes to the team in college, I get to, I get to
• 1:28:28
  go out and pick. And you know, then I realize,
• 1:28:30
  well, you don't always get the true, you know, they don't
• 1:28:32
  always want you right. And I remember, you know, when I
• 1:28:35
  went from Ball State to Mississippi State, So from the
• 1:28:37
  Mac to the SEC, you know, I think most people say, OK, that
• 1:28:40
  was a a step up. And I remember thinking, oh man,
• 1:28:43
  it's going to be so much easier at Mississippi State.
• 1:28:45
  Like when I when I called people at Ball State, I had explained
• 1:28:48
  where that was, who that was. You know, those when I call from
• 1:28:51
  Mississippi State, they're going to know, you know, we play on
• 1:28:53
  Saturdays. They're going to automatically
• 1:28:54
  know who Mississippi State is. And I, and I've told the story
• 1:28:58
  several times. I remember my first recruit was
• 1:29:01
  the national 400 meter indoor record holder for high school,
• 1:29:05
  Elsie Coleman. And we started having a good
• 1:29:07
  rapport and I was like, hey, so who all you know besides us, who
• 1:29:10
  are you going to visit? And he was like, Oh yeah,
• 1:29:11
  Florida, Usci think Texas and oh, and Baylor.
• 1:29:16
  And I was like, oh crap, I've got to beat Mouse.
• 1:29:20
  I've got to beat Los Angeles to Starkville.
• 1:29:25
  Oh, I got to be 4 by 4 U 400 meter.
• 1:29:27
  U be like, oh, this didn't get easier.
• 1:29:29
  This got harder. I I think maybe sometimes people
• 1:29:33
  think going from college to pro track coaching would be easier.
• 1:29:38
  You, you, you name some things that a lot of people would find
• 1:29:40
  attractive. Oh, instead of 50 kids or even
• 1:29:42
  20 kids, you got 80. By the way, those eight are
• 1:29:46
  pretty high level. They're not pro for no reason.
• 1:29:48
  They're already a pretty high level.
• 1:29:52
  You mentioned something that, you know, you and I talked about
• 1:29:54
  offline a couple weeks ago and I don't think I, you know, I never
• 1:29:57
  coached pro, so I definitely have no experience here.
• 1:30:00
  You mentioned something that kind of I never realized and you
• 1:30:04
  just kind of mentioned it there too about the time away.
• 1:30:07
  Because I would think, you know, I've always said the difference
• 1:30:10
  between middle school, high school, college and pro Trek is
• 1:30:12
  the number of times you compete. Middle school you compete a
• 1:30:14
  billion times, high school 100 times, college much fewer.
• 1:30:18
  We don't have those Tuesday, Thursday meets, things like
• 1:30:19
  that. The pros, good Lord, we, you
• 1:30:21
  know, we like to complain that the pros never compete, for
• 1:30:24
  crying out loud, you know, so let's meet.
• 1:30:26
  So I would think, oh, well, Matt, you were probably at the
• 1:30:29
  house a lot. You were, you know, at the
• 1:30:30
  track, you know, but you mentioned you were on the road a
• 1:30:33
  lot. Tell me a little bit more about
• 1:30:34
  that. Well, OK, so basically there was
• 1:30:37
  times it was fantastic where I was, you know, walking my kids
• 1:30:41
  to school in the morning and then going to track training and
• 1:30:44
  done with training and picking up my kids from school.
• 1:30:46
  And, you know, I'm home, home and I was home.
• 1:30:48
  I was watching a little bit of video, but I wasn't making
• 1:30:50
  recruit calls and I wasn't having to do all the other
• 1:30:52
  things that you're used to doing right.
• 1:30:53
  So there was times for six months where I was absolutely
• 1:30:56
  the best dad I've ever been. You know, just around a pretty
• 1:30:59
  decent husband. One day I'll get good at that.
• 1:31:03
  We'll, we'll ask her. That I'm not.
• 1:31:05
  Your word for that? You know, like, then, you know,
• 1:31:10
  like indoor would come around and then, you know, we had
• 1:31:12
  varying levels of pro. So some people needed to run
• 1:31:14
  indoors to kind of establish themselves.
• 1:31:16
  So then, OK, they may need a little help.
• 1:31:18
  So I go over with them for two or three weeks.
• 1:31:20
  And, you know, like if you think about a pro and that one person,
• 1:31:23
  yeah, they might only run three times, but I might be over there
• 1:31:25
  with three people and there may not be at the same place, but I
• 1:31:28
  might be in for seven meets during that, you know, three
• 1:31:32
  weeks span. So I'm bouncing from place to
• 1:31:34
  place or whatever, but I'm gone from the from the US for a
• 1:31:37
  while. And then I come back and then we
• 1:31:39
  start doing the other things that we're doing.
• 1:31:40
  And then, you know, the Diamond League has stretched itself from
• 1:31:43
  now it's freaking April to September.
• 1:31:45
  But at the time, it was May to basically early September and
• 1:31:49
  you have to be ready to run all the time.
• 1:31:51
  And I think, you know, with that, one of the things that,
• 1:31:54
  you know, say this, for anybody that wants to be a pro coach and
• 1:31:57
  anybody that if there's an athlete listening that wants to
• 1:31:59
  be a professional athlete, you have to understand it's the NCAA
• 1:32:02
  Championships on a Tuesday, followed by the NCAA
• 1:32:06
  Championships on a Saturday, followed by the NCAA
• 1:32:09
  Championships on a Wednesday the next week.
• 1:32:11
  You got to be able to run at your best against the best all
• 1:32:16
  the time. And just because it's April
• 1:32:18
  doesn't mean you can work your way through it.
• 1:32:20
  You don't get 7 races to get ready.
• 1:32:22
  You got to be ready all the time.
• 1:32:24
  And it's that level of the ability to run really well next
• 1:32:28
  to somebody else. That's what I mean by the
• 1:32:30
  incident final. So it's like you go around 994,
• 1:32:32
  you can run 994 in Jacksonville in April and 2nd place is 10 O
• 1:32:38
  8. Cool.
• 1:32:39
  But can you run 994 when somebody else is running 979 and
• 1:32:44
  four other guys are running 994? You know, like, can you do that
• 1:32:47
  job? Can you do that, give that
• 1:32:49
  performance all the time? And so, as you said, it should
• 1:32:54
  get easier. But guess what?
• 1:32:55
  Everybody else is as good a coach as you are.
• 1:32:58
  Everybody else is as good at athletes as the people that
• 1:33:00
  you're working with and sometimes better.
• 1:33:03
  And so like you would think it would get easier and some parts
• 1:33:06
  of it did get easier, but really like the stakes are higher, the
• 1:33:09
  talent is higher, you have less margin for for error.
• 1:33:12
  You got to be on point all the time.
• 1:33:14
  So I mean, but just like in college football, moving up to
• 1:33:16
  professional football, you know, hitting a 95 mile an hour
• 1:33:19
  fastball versus consistently hitting a 98 mile fastball that
• 1:33:22
  has completely different spin rate and angle of spin and all
• 1:33:25
  those different things. As you go to the pros, every
• 1:33:28
  single pitcher that you face for 162 games is good.
• 1:33:32
  Versus college game. You're playing 50 games and you
• 1:33:35
  know, you might see 5 Ballers, you know, so it's the same
• 1:33:39
  thing. That's that's a great way to put
• 1:33:40
  it about how it's the NCAA final on Tuesday and then you go on
• 1:33:44
  Saturday and do it again and, and, and a completely different
• 1:33:47
  country. It's China and then it's France
• 1:33:50
  and then it's South America, you know?
• 1:33:53
  Yeah. And you, you might have good
• 1:33:54
  travel, you might not, you might have the luxury of, of massage
• 1:33:58
  therapists, you might not. You, you know, there's a lot of
• 1:34:00
  different things. And, and man, there's not a
• 1:34:03
  whole lot of middle class on the, on the circuit.
• 1:34:05
  There's, there's a lot of people that are really well taken care
• 1:34:07
  of and there are people that are happy to be there, you know,
• 1:34:09
  and, and they don't show you that in the scorecard when they,
• 1:34:12
  they line up, you know what I mean?
• 1:34:14
  So it's not a terrible life, it's a great life, but it's not
• 1:34:20
  the easiest life that you can imagine for sure.
• 1:34:22
  So like I, it was for me. I was a coach.
• 1:34:24
  I just got from place to place. But from an athlete's
• 1:34:28
  perspective, it's it's hard, man.
• 1:34:30
  You know, one of my good friends, I've known him since he
• 1:34:32
  was 1617 years old, is Justin Gatlin.
• 1:34:35
  And I've really enjoyed his podcast Ready Set Go.
• 1:34:38
  And he, you know, one of the things that strikes me when he
• 1:34:41
  when they have a conversation about whether a kid should GoPro
• 1:34:44
  or go to college, you know, out of high school or go to college
• 1:34:46
  or should I stay in college or what it's like coming out of
• 1:34:49
  college to GoPro. One of the things that he
• 1:34:51
  repeats a lot. Pardon me, I thought he'd repeat
• 1:34:54
  a little bit of what you said about like, Hey man, every meat
• 1:34:57
  is a killer. Like they are coming to get you,
• 1:34:59
  you know, every meat, right. But he, and he says that, but
• 1:35:02
  one of the things that they talk about a lot is with the travel.
• 1:35:05
  It's like, oh, and there's different foods.
• 1:35:07
  Like I, I remember the first couple times they said it was
• 1:35:09
  like, Oh, that's, you know, it's funny.
• 1:35:10
  But then he kept saying it over and over for every example.
• 1:35:12
  And I was like, Oh, I guess I never realized, you know, you,
• 1:35:15
  you do get used to a certain type of food and, and there is
• 1:35:18
  different foods again in China and Europe and things like that.
• 1:35:21
  So, and not to mention obviously the jet lag, you know, time
• 1:35:25
  differences and things like that.
• 1:35:27
  So it is, it is a little tougher.
• 1:35:28
  It looks from the outside very awesome and sweet.
• 1:35:31
  Like, oh man, you get to go to Shanghai and run and experience
• 1:35:34
  all this culture and it's like, yeah, man, you're there to get a
• 1:35:36
  job done. And hopefully it doesn't take
• 1:35:39
  more than nine point something seconds.
• 1:35:40
  And we know the difference between 9.7 and 10.7 by the way,
• 1:35:46
  is a snap. So, yeah, it's, it is wild that
• 1:35:51
  that part of it is where, again, that middle class would come in
• 1:35:55
  handy. Like if you're happy to be
• 1:35:56
  there, you might not be able to eat off the, you know, off the
• 1:36:00
  reservation, as they say. Like you might be just eating
• 1:36:02
  the free meal that they have for you and you don't have a control
• 1:36:04
  over that food. And it's probably not.
• 1:36:06
  Whereas if you, you know, you're making a little bit more of
• 1:36:08
  your, you're not afraid to wander down the street and find
• 1:36:10
  the thing. You got to go look for it
• 1:36:12
  sometimes. I mean, literally it's having
• 1:36:14
  this conversation this this morning with the girl that just
• 1:36:16
  wants to go like this is part of the process that you had to get
• 1:36:19
  ready for so. Yeah, that that's what struck
• 1:36:21
  me. I mean, Justin obviously very
• 1:36:22
  successful. So I'm like, oh, Jay, you could
• 1:36:24
  have whatever you want. It's like, oh man, he's
• 1:36:25
  struggled. So gosh.
• 1:36:26
  If he's he's struggling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:30
  But as much as you want or maybe can get into this, you know, as
• 1:36:34
  an assistant coach on a program, your pressure, not only
• 1:36:39
  internally, obviously, you know, you want to do well, but you
• 1:36:41
  have pressure from your head coach, you know, hey, I need you
• 1:36:43
  to produce. Hey, I'm expecting this many
• 1:36:45
  points out of you at conference nationals, whatever.
• 1:36:48
  When you're the head coach again, you have your own
• 1:36:50
  internal pressures, but maybe you have pressures from your
• 1:36:53
  oversight and from your AD of like, hey, we're investing so
• 1:36:55
  much money into the program. We expect this performance at
• 1:36:58
  conference nationals, etcetera, on on the elite level.
• 1:37:02
  So you're working for Adidas. Where do I, I, I could imagine
• 1:37:07
  pressures coming from both sides like an athlete looking at you
• 1:37:09
  like, hey man, you better get me straight and get me going here.
• 1:37:13
  And maybe from a tell me where the pressures come from as much
• 1:37:17
  as you can or want to discuss that.
• 1:37:19
  Yeah, No, it's fine. I'll be honest with you.
• 1:37:22
  My internal pressure was probably greater than any
• 1:37:25
  pressure I felt from anywhere else.
• 1:37:27
  I mean, I, I, I have 0 bad things to say about the people
• 1:37:32
  that were supporting me at Adidas.
• 1:37:34
  I mean, they were fantastic and good people and gave me
• 1:37:37
  opportunities and continue to like, I mean, they signed Trey,
• 1:37:40
  you know what I mean? Like and have left and right
• 1:37:42
  where he's at. I've always had good
• 1:37:44
  relationship with those guys. I think they do a phenomenal
• 1:37:46
  job. And but they also, I, I think
• 1:37:51
  they also knew, I understand the expectation if you're getting
• 1:37:54
  medals in the sport or you're not doing your job, like that's
• 1:37:57
  how we're judged, right? Like you break a record, win a
• 1:38:00
  medal, If you're not continually winning medals or like make it
• 1:38:03
  look like you're going to win a medal, then they have to move on
• 1:38:07
  to the next guy. You know what I mean?
• 1:38:08
  Like you can get 4th and, and they're, they're comfortable,
• 1:38:10
  you can get 6th and they're comfortable with where you're at
• 1:38:12
  as long as they're not paying you world record money.
• 1:38:15
  You know, like if you've got a guy that they think is there and
• 1:38:18
  he's performing at that level, they're pretty happy with where
• 1:38:20
  they're at. They would obviously, like you
• 1:38:22
  see Dojin as an athlete, we'd like to see you get this medal
• 1:38:25
  and they like to reward all that kind of stuff.
• 1:38:26
  But that's how we're judged, you know, like if you've got medals,
• 1:38:28
  life's a little easier on that circuit.
• 1:38:31
  When you don't have medals, it's a little harder for your agent,
• 1:38:33
  it's a little harder for you, it's a little harder for your
• 1:38:34
  coach. You know, that's just the truth
• 1:38:36
  of the business. But you're right, it comes from
• 1:38:39
  both sides, you know, And then, like I said, if I put my
• 1:38:41
  pressure on myself, then no amount of pressure that an
• 1:38:44
  athlete puts on me is going to be too much.
• 1:38:47
  But I, I told you from the beginning, like I, when I got
• 1:38:50
  into this whole thing, like I never wanted to be the weak
• 1:38:52
  link. So that's kind of been with me
• 1:38:55
  the entire time. So I've, I've been fired before,
• 1:38:58
  but by an athlete, you know, so like they felt like I was a weak
• 1:39:01
  link and they needed to go do something different.
• 1:39:02
  And that's absolutely acceptable because they, they have one
• 1:39:06
  chance at this thing, you know what I mean?
• 1:39:07
  So like, it's totally fine that they had to go find something
• 1:39:11
  that they felt like was going to be a better fit, you know, and
• 1:39:14
  that's just part of the business is what you got to do because
• 1:39:17
  they, they are their own business.
• 1:39:18
  So they have to be able to make sure they manage it at the level
• 1:39:21
  they need to manage it at and find someone that they feel like
• 1:39:24
  take them where they want to go. So.
• 1:39:27
  Knowing knowing there's a a lot of factors that play into this,
• 1:39:31
  but do you you know, I believe consistency is key.
• 1:39:34
  Meaning, you know, if you get a kid for four years under you and
• 1:39:39
  you've built up, you know, freshman, sophomore, junior,
• 1:39:41
  senior year and and they have the ability to GoPro.
• 1:39:44
  I I think your 5678 is is vitally important that you're
• 1:39:48
  stacking the things that that coach is doing.
• 1:39:50
  Again, knowing there's a lot of factors around.
• 1:39:52
  Do you think should a kid, these are 22 year old people now, so
• 1:39:57
  should have these these people really consider staying with the
• 1:40:03
  coach that quote UN quote got them there?
• 1:40:05
  Or is it best to go find a professional?
• 1:40:08
  I shouldn't even done air quotes there because I mean, there are
• 1:40:10
  professional coaches. What do you generally think?
• 1:40:12
  Again, knowing there's a lot of factors that play into it.
• 1:40:15
  Probably probably a unique perspective because I've been on
• 1:40:17
  both sides of it. You know what I mean?
• 1:40:19
  Like I so I can see those. So that I'm probably going to
• 1:40:21
  give you a middle of the road answer.
• 1:40:23
  It's a kind of a case by case situation.
• 1:40:24
  I think that there as a business decision, you could see where a
• 1:40:30
  Nike or an Adidas or a new valve or whoever it is has invested
• 1:40:34
  money in an athlete. And so they need a known
• 1:40:37
  commodity to make sure that that athlete performs at the level
• 1:40:40
  somebody that they can also have an interest in communication
• 1:40:45
  wise and otherwise to be able to have a conversation about what
• 1:40:48
  is this kid doing? What is this man doing?
• 1:40:50
  What's this woman doing that are they going to be where we need
• 1:40:53
  to be? Are we holding holding them
• 1:40:55
  accountable? Can I hold you accountable to
• 1:40:56
  make sure you're holding them accountable?
• 1:40:58
  So I understand that business model and why it works.
• 1:41:00
  It's a trusted commodity. You roll with it, etcetera.
• 1:41:03
  The flip side of that is, and again, this is probably where I
• 1:41:09
  would lean the other direction is like relationships and
• 1:41:11
  coaching are a huge, like absolutely huge.
• 1:41:13
  And like if we talk about the psychology being 80% of it, the
• 1:41:17
  physicality being 20% of it, a lot of the time, why would we
• 1:41:21
  switch the coach? Because you know that there's
• 1:41:24
  some psychology that coach knows that athlete better generally
• 1:41:28
  than most people do because you spend so much time together, you
• 1:41:31
  know, the buttons to press and not to press.
• 1:41:33
  So there's a lot. So there's certainly an argument
• 1:41:35
  to say, hey, man, if it hadn't broke, you know, don't fix it.
• 1:41:38
  I think that a lot of times certain companies are are
• 1:41:42
  willing to kind of leave it there until it's not working at
• 1:41:45
  the level that they need to have it work at it, then they need to
• 1:41:48
  have that conversation. So I think each each shoe
• 1:41:50
  company kind of has a different philosophy.
• 1:41:52
  I don't want to go into the details of each of those.
• 1:41:54
  So it sounds, you know, negative towards any company, but at the
• 1:41:58
  same time, you know, they have. I understand the why for most of
• 1:42:01
  them and I think it's case by case, truly, I feel like if the
• 1:42:06
  athlete feels strongly enough about it, it's their job, it's
• 1:42:09
  their career, they should have A and what they're doing, not the
• 1:42:13
  coach, not the agent, not the athlete, but they have to, you
• 1:42:17
  know, when you're a 20 year old kid or a 22 year old kid that's
• 1:42:20
  being offered money, you make one misstep and all of a sudden
• 1:42:24
  you make a lot less. And so it can be difficult to
• 1:42:27
  navigate those waters. I wouldn't want to write a
• 1:42:30
  playbook today because I would probably screw somebody up.
• 1:42:33
  So don't follow my playbook. But but definitely I wish there
• 1:42:37
  was a little bit more maneuverability within that so.
• 1:42:44
  Do kids when they're when they have the lead in choosing a pro
• 1:42:49
  level code, you know, outside of college, and maybe it's not
• 1:42:53
  initially outside of college cuz maybe it's Morgan assigned at
• 1:42:56
  that point, But do do they do they actually like interview a
• 1:43:00
  coach and talk about like and ask and maybe they have no clue.
• 1:43:04
  You know, you know, not every kids coming out of school with a
• 1:43:06
  bio mechanics degree and things like that.
• 1:43:07
  They just, you know, you're an athlete.
• 1:43:09
  We've talked about this where athlete being an athlete is a
• 1:43:11
  very selfish pursuit. That's not a negative meaning.
• 1:43:14
  Everything coach tells me, I'm trying to figure out how does
• 1:43:16
  that work for me to make me faster or jump farther or
• 1:43:18
  whatever. That's a selfish thing, which
• 1:43:20
  that's what you got to be to be an athlete, certainly to be an
• 1:43:22
  elite athlete. Are are they did?
• 1:43:24
  Did they interview coaches and ask the questions like, well,
• 1:43:27
  how do you let's use that 100 meter example.
• 1:43:29
  How do you train sprinters? You know, are you a run 400
• 1:43:33
  meters till you die during the fall or are you a speed?
• 1:43:35
  But you know, there's a lot of different ways of doing this and
• 1:43:38
  there's been successes in a lot of different ways as well.
• 1:43:40
  But do they get to that minutia or are they more, hey, so can I
• 1:43:44
  like, is Matt cool? Like can I work with Matt?
• 1:43:46
  Like you know? It's a combination of those
• 1:43:49
  things, man. Like I've had interviews where I
• 1:43:50
  was like, no, this is not going to, you know, personality wise,
• 1:43:54
  I could tell this is a no for me or whatever.
• 1:43:56
  I've had interviews with people where it was, hey man, how come
• 1:43:59
  you're not asking me this question and I'll just ask them,
• 1:44:02
  How come you haven't asked me this question?
• 1:44:03
  Is this not important to you? I think from watching you from a
• 1:44:07
  distance, this should be the question that you're asking.
• 1:44:11
  Then you see where that goes. And but yeah, there are, and
• 1:44:15
  that happens they either set up by a shoe company or set up by
• 1:44:18
  an agent or like, I can't get into the details of, I mean, I
• 1:44:20
  don't know all the details of every single situation.
• 1:44:22
  But usually there's, you know, you get in front of one or two
• 1:44:24
  people, they find someone that they want to go.
• 1:44:26
  Like I've had people reach out to me that were in college that,
• 1:44:30
  you know, like Josh Seller was at Michigan.
• 1:44:35
  I'm good friends with Steven. He was looking for a different
• 1:44:38
  environment, different weather, different training climate and,
• 1:44:40
  you know, want to train with Trey or whatever.
• 1:44:42
  So he, I don't know who else he reached out to, but he reached
• 1:44:45
  out to me. We had a conversation, we
• 1:44:47
  clicked, it was good, he moved on here, you know, rest is
• 1:44:49
  history. So that is generally how that
• 1:44:51
  happens. You know, then you have to have,
• 1:44:53
  OK, who's their agent? You have to work that deal out
• 1:44:55
  and figure out if they're with a shoe company or not.
• 1:44:57
  And, you know, all of that kind of stuff happens.
• 1:45:00
  But yeah, that's, that's kind of the insurance and out of it.
• 1:45:02
  I think if you can figure this is like recruiting, if you can
• 1:45:06
  figure out what you are missing or if you can work with this
• 1:45:08
  person or the personality works well, then I think you put
• 1:45:12
  yourself in a situation to have a better chance of success and
• 1:45:16
  that's about all you can do in the game.
• 1:45:19
  So, yeah, it seems like it really struck me when you talked
• 1:45:23
  about the, I keep saying the kid, we're so old, Matt, the kid
• 1:45:28
  is their own business. You know, one step away.
• 1:45:31
  You go from making a lot of money to making a lot less of
• 1:45:33
  that money. So you should be very invested
• 1:45:36
  in all of the aspects where you're training, who you're
• 1:45:38
  training with, the coach that you're with, the support staff
• 1:45:42
  and team that you surround yourself with.
• 1:45:46
  And I know I've heard it from the other side where, you know,
• 1:45:48
  a league level per level coaches are like, yeah, who we bring
• 1:45:51
  into this table is important too, because one bad apple can
• 1:45:54
  spoil it all. And so they're just, it just
• 1:45:56
  struck me like, oh man, there's so much more that goes into this
• 1:45:59
  than I really thought of. I know when the on the college
• 1:46:01
  that you know, I've been there and I've recruited and that
• 1:46:03
  seems I don't know a degree or two less because like I need
• 1:46:08
  every of one of those 18 to 22 year olds like in any if one
• 1:46:10
  doesn't pan out, well, that sucks.
• 1:46:12
  I hope I didn't invest too much money, but we can still be a
• 1:46:14
  good team. I don't know, just seems extra.
• 1:46:17
  Did you ever consider becoming an agent?
• 1:46:21
  I don't know that I'm built for that necessarily.
• 1:46:23
  I think they're, you know, probably naively like like every
• 1:46:27
  23 year old coach, I, I had all the answers to think I could do
• 1:46:30
  this or that or whatever. I don't want to say I can ever
• 1:46:32
  do the job better. I think that I could provide
• 1:46:35
  some value in some form of being an agent.
• 1:46:38
  I don't know if I'm a great negotiator, but I definitely
• 1:46:40
  think that from an athlete perspective, maintaining an
• 1:46:45
  athlete's needs out there, some things I think I could do a
• 1:46:47
  really, really good job with. You know, like it's, it's
• 1:46:51
  something that Trey and I joked about before he ever had an
• 1:46:53
  agent a long, long time ago, like him wanting to be 1
• 1:46:57
  potentially down the line. I think that in some ways could
• 1:47:01
  probably do a pretty good job. But again, until you get into
• 1:47:05
  it, you never really know. Like I've been pretty, pretty
• 1:47:07
  fortunate. Like I, I don't know how many
• 1:47:09
  agents I know, probably 80, I don't know.
• 1:47:12
  But you know, and I've been around some pretty darn good
• 1:47:15
  ones that have been able to treat their clients well, things
• 1:47:19
  like that, so. I'm surprised there hasn't been
• 1:47:21
  that. I know of a like a hybrid client
• 1:47:23
  coach, you get both ends. I don't know.
• 1:47:26
  It feels, feels like, I don't know, maybe maybe that's a
• 1:47:27
  conflict of interest. I don't know.
• 1:47:28
  But it just seems like. Wow, Yeah.
• 1:47:31
  Yeah, it would be interesting. It'd be interesting.
• 1:47:34
  Last question before we get back here to Florida State.
• 1:47:37
  You know I told you. Told you about, you know, myths
• 1:47:39
  and myth busting. One of the things that I fight
• 1:47:43
  and argue against a lot, you know, there's coaches and it's
• 1:47:47
  getting worse lately as we talk about Power four and the 45
• 1:47:53
  scholarships and, and the Super conferences and all this thing.
• 1:47:56
  There's this myth that, you know, coaches don't want to
• 1:48:01
  develop anymore. And, and typically the
• 1:48:04
  definition of developing in that an example of what they're
• 1:48:07
  talking about is they don't want to take a guy like you, the head
• 1:48:10
  coach of floor state. You don't want to take a 1090
• 1:48:13
  guy and make them a 10/2 guy. That seems like developing.
• 1:48:16
  And I think anybody would say, wow, that's, that's really good.
• 1:48:19
  And so the, the, the argument is like, oh, you don't want to
• 1:48:22
  develop. You just want that 10 two kid
• 1:48:24
  off the portal internationally, you know, right out of high
• 1:48:28
  school and you know, ready to plug and play and automatically
• 1:48:33
  do good. And my argument always back.
• 1:48:35
  And you know, I have had some experience with this of working
• 1:48:38
  with, you know, some 10 flat kids and stuff like that where
• 1:48:40
  it's like, oh, you know, if you take in that example I gave, if
• 1:48:43
  you take a 10/2 kid, which that's that's fast, especially
• 1:48:45
  out of high school or whatnot, and you make them A10 flat kid.
• 1:48:49
  So you know, on paper only a .2 difference where in that other
• 1:48:53
  example is .7, it's like that that's developing.
• 1:48:55
  And by the way, that's really hard to take a 10/2 kid to A10
• 1:48:59
  flat kid is hard, just like 10/9 to 10/2 is hard.
• 1:49:03
  So there's no easy in this. What do you, you, you, you when
• 1:49:09
  you're an elite coach and, and even through a lot of some of
• 1:49:11
  your stops up to today, you've gotten elite kids, like really
• 1:49:16
  good kids. You've you've gotten kids that
• 1:49:17
  already ran sub 10 and your job was to make them now to run 99
• 1:49:21
  or 98. And there's a lot of steps in
• 1:49:23
  between those 99 and 8-9 eights. Obviously.
• 1:49:26
  Talk to us about developing and maybe you you're going to agree
• 1:49:30
  with these other guys where it's like, Oh yeah, man, if I'm not
• 1:49:32
  taking an 11/5 to 10/2, what am I really doing here?
• 1:49:34
  Talk to us about developing, developing elite athletes.
• 1:49:37
  What does developing elite athletes look like?
• 1:49:42
  OK, So this is a probably this is a first of all fantastic
• 1:49:46
  question. There's about 17 different
• 1:49:47
  levels of this answer that I'll probably give you, but I think
• 1:49:53
  that with anything in life, if you go all in on one decision,
• 1:49:57
  there's no going to be not going to be substance behind what you
• 1:50:00
  do. So if you're only developing,
• 1:50:02
  you're going to run into trouble because they may not develop
• 1:50:05
  fast enough, right? And then you get yourself in
• 1:50:06
  trouble because you don't your team's not quite good enough
• 1:50:08
  yet. If you only go in the portal,
• 1:50:10
  your culture will struggle. That's the truth.
• 1:50:13
  Like if you're only in the, you're bringing people in,
• 1:50:15
  they're a short timer. I like, I, I find value in a, in
• 1:50:18
  a person. And I know it's maybe I'm old
• 1:50:21
  where you come into a place because you really felt
• 1:50:23
  passionate about going to Troy or you feel passionate about
• 1:50:27
  going to Florida State or you felt passionate about going to
• 1:50:30
  the University of Oklahoma. Like you really wanted to go
• 1:50:34
  there. They had a coach that you vibe
• 1:50:36
  with or whatever, but that more importantly was a place that you
• 1:50:39
  wanted to go to school and they had a good track team.
• 1:50:42
  And you wanted to be part of that track team because you had
• 1:50:44
  a championship mindset and you wanted to be part of that.
• 1:50:47
  And so when I look at developmental people tying all
• 1:50:50
  of that together, I look at developmental people that I, I
• 1:50:54
  have to see something on video that I can work with, right?
• 1:51:00
  But then that gets you in the door for me to have a
• 1:51:02
  conversation with you and in the conversation with you and your
• 1:51:05
  family and everybody else, I have to figure out if you have,
• 1:51:08
  if I'm going to take a risk on you from a developmental
• 1:51:10
  perspective, I need to make sure that the mind is where it needs
• 1:51:13
  to be. And what I mean by that is you
• 1:51:15
  can be a 12 flat girl and have a championship mindset and you can
• 1:51:21
  have it be an 11 one girl and not have a championship mindset.
• 1:51:24
  Like you can have a certain level of talent, but you don't
• 1:51:26
  have what's between the ears to get you where you need to go.
• 1:51:29
  And for me, we are never going to be on the same page if you
• 1:51:32
  don't, if you're not willing to have that mindset of dedication,
• 1:51:35
  you know, taking the distractions out of your life,
• 1:51:38
  doing all the different things that are necessary for you to be
• 1:51:40
  good. That's the championship mindset
• 1:51:41
  of that wanting to be good, wanting to be positive, wanting
• 1:51:44
  to be in the right environment. So I'm willing to take a risk on
• 1:51:47
  that developmental person, quote UN quote, if they have the
• 1:51:49
  mindset to go with it. You can't just sign every 11/8
• 1:51:52
  girl that comes along and expect her to become an 11 two girl,
• 1:51:56
  because if she's not willing to work, if she's not willing to
• 1:51:59
  buy in, if she's not dedicated, there's a million, she may just
• 1:52:02
  not have the talent to do it either.
• 1:52:04
  But like, you know, you got to find some things that are going
• 1:52:07
  to set yourself up for success. I'll give you a perfect example
• 1:52:11
  because it it, you know, can lead us down a variety of
• 1:52:14
  different paths. Days of the friend is the school
• 1:52:16
  record holder at Florida State in the 100 meter dash.
• 1:52:19
  She ran 1094 into a .1 OK, she ran 1169 in high school and in
• 1:52:27
  two years she ran 1094. She also ran 1088 with a 2.2
• 1:52:31
  right. She was a 2378 or 80 or
• 1:52:34
  something like that. 20 three 8200 girl one time and she ran
• 1:52:38
  2234 in two years. That's development, right?
• 1:52:43
  But that's a combination of development and what you talked
• 1:52:45
  about development and development.
• 1:52:47
  So in year 1 she had a huge leap to 11 flat from 11/6 and she had
• 1:52:51
  a huge leap to 22 I think 6 from 23/8 whatever.
• 1:52:56
  And then the next year she made that second leap, which is now
• 1:52:59
  she's running 10-9. She's able to do that next to
• 1:53:01
  people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:53:04
  And so, you know, like, but when I saw her, she did something
• 1:53:08
  special for two steps. That was it.
• 1:53:11
  And I was out of meat. I saw her and I was a ton of
• 1:53:13
  other coaches and I did my damnedest to make sure nobody
• 1:53:17
  knew who she was and nobody knew that I was there to see her.
• 1:53:20
  I was like, I like that. I thought her dad and I talked
• 1:53:23
  to her dad to dad had a championship mindset.
• 1:53:25
  And you know, like, so we went down that path where I started
• 1:53:29
  recruiting a girl from Lincoln, NE to Florida State because she
• 1:53:33
  had that something, you know, you know, and so you got to find
• 1:53:37
  the right person for the right bit and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:53:40
  So, you know, you figure out the situation that's going to work
• 1:53:44
  for you. And so I'm I'm a developmental
• 1:53:47
  coach. That's why I came back to
• 1:53:47
  college. To be honest with you, I've
• 1:53:49
  always felt like I was a developmental coach.
• 1:53:51
  I think part of that is I was a walk on athlete, you know what I
• 1:53:55
  mean? And so part of that is also how
• 1:53:58
  I motivate kids. Also, how I kind of have been
• 1:54:01
  able to get kids to buy in is that I, my only true talent is
• 1:54:07
  evaluation of talent. Like I, I'm a pretty good coach,
• 1:54:11
  but I, I can see things that other people can't see.
• 1:54:14
  And so I can put myself in a situation to make myself look
• 1:54:17
  like a probably a better coach than I actually am.
• 1:54:19
  So I can see what I can fix. I can see what I can get out of
• 1:54:22
  them. I try and make sure I get the
• 1:54:23
  right person in so that when we work together, I'm set for
• 1:54:27
  success, you know? So I I think some of the issue
• 1:54:32
  comes up from. So you gave a great example
• 1:54:34
  there of the young lady who ran 1169.
• 1:54:37
  Let's just call it 1170, right? Because you're not.
• 1:54:39
  You're probably not really your PR, you know, unless you she.
• 1:54:42
  Definitely ran a lot more 11 eights than she.
• 1:54:45
  Then she ran 11 seventh even. Yeah.
• 1:54:46
  So, so I think the issue comes up is people see that example
• 1:54:50
  and say, hey Matt, look what you did with this 11711 a girl.
• 1:54:54
  Now take that other one. Here I got another one.
• 1:54:56
  And by the way, I think this one's better.
• 1:54:58
  You know, she she's stronger in the weight room or you know, she
• 1:55:01
  also runs the Porter or whatever.
• 1:55:03
  How do you answer that? And it may be the part of that
• 1:55:06
  evaluation. You know, not everybody's going
• 1:55:07
  to have those two steps in that example, those kind of things.
• 1:55:10
  Yeah, that's that's the hard part, because then then it
• 1:55:13
  borderlines. When you're talking to a coach
• 1:55:15
  here, you're talking to a dad or a mom or whatever.
• 1:55:17
  Where you, you don't want to insult anybody and you don't
• 1:55:19
  want to say, you know, but it definitely there's 11/8 and
• 1:55:23
  there's 11/8 And so there's 11/8 and built right, there's 11/8
• 1:55:28
  and hits the ground right. And so I sort of try to gently
• 1:55:33
  explain what I'm looking for and how they hit the ground and how
• 1:55:36
  they don't hit the ground and, you know.
• 1:55:39
  For. The way, the best way I try to
• 1:55:41
  describe it, so that I put the onus on me and not on them not
• 1:55:43
  being good enough for in my eyes is that I know what I'm good at
• 1:55:47
  fixing and I'm not good at fixing the thing that I need to
• 1:55:51
  fix with that athlete. And so I'm not telling you she's
• 1:55:55
  not going to run fast. I'm just saying I might not be
• 1:55:57
  the guy to get her to run fast. I may not be the guy to get him
• 1:56:00
  to run fast because I've never had success fixing that problem.
• 1:56:05
  That makes sense. So like I'm more than willing to
• 1:56:07
  put it on me. Like, hey, nice, I can't, that's
• 1:56:09
  not what I do, right? And so whereas with that other
• 1:56:12
  girl, she fit what I did and she actually was able to, I knew I
• 1:56:18
  could fix the things that she didn't do well.
• 1:56:21
  And when I brought her in, she was able to adapt to that.
• 1:56:23
  And then you can, you know, go into the, the mindset of all
• 1:56:25
  that other stuff with it too. But you know.
• 1:56:30
  Yeah. And here's my concern when
• 1:56:32
  people say, you know, these kids, these 11/8 kids, they're
• 1:56:36
  not getting the opportunities to work with, you know, the Matt
• 1:56:39
  Keane's and Mouse Holloway's and Carol Smith Gilbert's because
• 1:56:42
  they don't, they don't, they never say they don't see they
• 1:56:46
  don't have the time to do it, Meaning, you know, they got to
• 1:56:49
  get good fast. You only have four or five
• 1:56:50
  years. That's not a lot of time, right?
• 1:56:53
  And today at least, and maybe we'll get into this, there's so
• 1:56:57
  few scholarships. It's like, man, when you miss on
• 1:56:59
  a scholarship, boy, it's it's toast, man.
• 1:57:02
  But my concern is like my argument is always like, Hey,
• 1:57:06
  that kid might not be able to go to Florida State or Miami or
• 1:57:11
  whatever school they want to go or Troy think, you know, I
• 1:57:14
  forget about the number one school sometimes right off the
• 1:57:17
  bat, but there are other great options.
• 1:57:18
  And and and I don't, and I'm not saying like, oh, there's other
• 1:57:21
  great secondary options. What I mean is go look at what
• 1:57:25
  we call it the G5 level. Go look at D2GO look at D3.
• 1:57:28
  There are a lot of it. Like go look at nationals.
• 1:57:31
  It's fast. These kids are stinking fast on
• 1:57:34
  any level, right? And, and, and, and here's what I
• 1:57:38
  don't like is this circle is they'll say at the same time,
• 1:57:42
  well, all those schools are getting poached like Florida
• 1:57:44
  State's stealing the best Troy University kids, southeast
• 1:57:48
  Louisiana kid Sam Houston. And it's like, OK, well,
• 1:57:51
  they're, they're poaching them. Maybe, you know, I don't like
• 1:57:53
  that word poach, by the way, but they're they're those kids are
• 1:57:56
  transferring, but they're transferring because they're now
• 1:57:59
  fast enough to fit in that program.
• 1:58:00
  Maybe. But how they get that fast?
• 1:58:02
  They got there because of the great coaches at Sam Houston,
• 1:58:04
  Southeast Louisiana, Troy, the examples that I gave there.
• 1:58:07
  So it's like, so they're getting developed.
• 1:58:09
  I don't understand how there's not room for development when
• 1:58:11
  they are getting developed. I just don't like this
• 1:58:14
  doublespeak that's happening right now.
• 1:58:16
  And, and it's blaming, that's what it really is.
• 1:58:18
  It's blaming every side. And I just think that's so
• 1:58:21
  unfair to, to everybody involved, The high school kid,
• 1:58:23
  the high school coaches, the G5 coaches, the power fours,
• 1:58:26
  whatever. It's just a, it's a, it's a
• 1:58:28
  weird like attacking mechanism that we have when it's like,
• 1:58:31
  man, the kids that are at the end of the day, and you, you
• 1:58:36
  alluded to this, they have to have the God-given talent to run
• 1:58:38
  that no matter how great of a coach you are or how much of
• 1:58:41
  your championship mentality that you have as an athlete, if God
• 1:58:44
  didn't give you the ability for that young lady to run sub
• 1:58:46
  eleven, it wasn't happening. So you got to have that first
• 1:58:49
  and foremost. And it feels like when you look
• 1:58:52
  at the depth chart of each of our events, the people who have
• 1:58:56
  the God-given talent to run the really fast times are getting
• 1:58:59
  there. Certainly there's some people
• 1:59:00
  that aren't making it because of a lot of other different
• 1:59:01
  factors, but it feels like we're hitting at a pretty high batting
• 1:59:04
  average baseball dad. So it feels like the system's
• 1:59:08
  working. Yeah, you know, like there's,
• 1:59:11
  there's so many layers to that man.
• 1:59:12
  Like I, I, I think that for me personally as a junior college
• 1:59:16
  coach, as a division two athlete, as a developmental
• 1:59:19
  coach, as whatever, you know, obviously I think again, it goes
• 1:59:23
  back to like sometimes the relationship is the most
• 1:59:24
  important part of the coaching. It's, it can outweigh the XS and
• 1:59:28
  OS sometimes the relationship is maybe not strong enough to keep
• 1:59:31
  you from going to the other bigger, shinier school that you
• 1:59:34
  want to go to because in your DNA that's something you've
• 1:59:37
  always sought after, right? That's, and that's totally fine.
• 1:59:40
  Like anybody that goes into the portal for me, like, like if
• 1:59:44
  they're in our program and they decide they want to go in the
• 1:59:45
  portal, like I'm totally fine with that because it, it feels
• 1:59:49
  like they need something that they don't feel like we're
• 1:59:52
  providing. And that's their perspective.
• 1:59:54
  It's their life. It's what they want to do.
• 1:59:55
  I had a young man come in my office yesterday and say, hey,
• 1:59:58
  man, he was very uncomfortable. Like coach, I appreciate you.
• 2:00:02
  I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to go into the
• 2:00:03
  portal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
• 2:00:05
  And I'm like, OK with, you know, you're graduating in May or
• 2:00:08
  excuse me, in December, right? He said yeah, I want to.
• 2:00:10
  I want to apply to different law schools, OK.
• 2:00:15
  Yeah, man, like that's not an uncomfortable situation for me.
• 2:00:18
  I'm fully in support of that. And if you're not planning on
• 2:00:20
  going to law school at Florida State, what do you want to do?
• 2:00:23
  And then that sparked the whole conversation on he wants to do
• 2:00:25
  contract law and he potentially wants to be an agent.
• 2:00:27
  And I was like. Well, it turns out this is a
• 2:00:30
  good time to have a conversation.
• 2:00:31
  But he was a very professional kid and like I'm wholeheartedly
• 2:00:34
  in support of whatever he needs to do, even if he was a guy that
• 2:00:37
  was a sophomore that was trying to go to another school in our
• 2:00:40
  conference. Like if that's where he feels
• 2:00:41
  like he needs to be, fine, you know what I mean?
• 2:00:45
  It's OK to break up with your girlfriend.
• 2:00:47
  It's fine to break up with your girlfriend.
• 2:00:50
  That's the kind of story we need to hear more of, Matt.
• 2:00:52
  And what I mean by that is all we hear about this.
• 2:00:55
  I don't understand the hatred of the transfer portal and what I
• 2:00:59
  say that is kids were allowed to transfer before the transfer
• 2:01:02
  portal. This is not a new thing.
• 2:01:04
  I don't I don't understand like why the transfer portal is the
• 2:01:07
  evil thing. But you hear the story of, well,
• 2:01:09
  these kids don't have to be held accountable anymore.
• 2:01:12
  They can just jump ships soon as Matt yells at them, they can
• 2:01:15
  just go. And certainly there are some
• 2:01:18
  kids like that. By the way, those kids still
• 2:01:19
  existed back in 1990 and 2000, etcetera, before portal.
• 2:01:24
  But also kids like that example you just gave there that sat
• 2:01:28
  down in front of you and said, Hey, coach, which you know,
• 2:01:31
  thank you. I'm like, they let you know in
• 2:01:33
  advance instead of you just finding out because you looked
• 2:01:35
  at the portal the next day or whatever.
• 2:01:36
  Like those things are happening. We, we like to demonize this
• 2:01:40
  whole thing like every kid is just able to just, and by the
• 2:01:43
  way, we think that every kid is transferring.
• 2:01:44
  It's like, man, they're not not every kid.
• 2:01:46
  I I look at rosters, I talk to coaches every day.
• 2:01:50
  Certainly a certain segment or transfer and maybe it's more now
• 2:01:54
  because it's in the culture a lot more, but it's not this new
• 2:01:58
  epidemic in my opinion. I don't know.
• 2:02:00
  I just I sit from the outside. So I know I miss a lot of
• 2:02:02
  things. Yeah, like there's a lot of
• 2:02:04
  people in the portal, man. Like, it's, it's wild.
• 2:02:06
  I think it's like, you know, it was always happening before, but
• 2:02:10
  it was always like a secret, right?
• 2:02:11
  Like, you didn't know. You're like, wait, she's looking
• 2:02:15
  to. Well, some of the people we've
• 2:02:17
  had. In our on our team, I mean, I've
• 2:02:19
  signed out of the portal. You know, Tyra Wilson was at the
• 2:02:21
  University of Texas. Alexander Webster was at Oregon.
• 2:02:27
  I cold call those girls. They had no interest in coming
• 2:02:29
  to Florida State at the time. You know, like had that been the
• 2:02:32
  old days, they would have gone somewhere else because they had
• 2:02:36
  an in their idea of where they were going.
• 2:02:37
  They would have contacted those two or three schools.
• 2:02:39
  That's where they'd have gone. Right.
• 2:02:40
  See that? That's another, that's another
• 2:02:42
  myth right there, Matt. I hear that every kid that's in
• 2:02:45
  the transfer portal already knows where they're going.
• 2:02:48
  So to me again. I don't actually.
• 2:02:50
  I mean, I don't, I don't like this.
• 2:02:52
  Because that also indicates that coaches have already talked to
• 2:02:54
  him, which I I don't. I refuse to believe that is
• 2:02:56
  happening every time. Yeah, I hope not.
• 2:03:00
  But, and I don't want to get into that, but no, no, there's
• 2:03:02
  probably some layer of that. There probably was some layer of
• 2:03:04
  that 10 years ago, so. There was before, yeah, that's
• 2:03:06
  that's on time. I don't think it's it's more
• 2:03:08
  because of the transfer. Yeah, I think it's the same, I
• 2:03:10
  think, but I but I think where it opens it up more and I don't
• 2:03:13
  mind the portal as much. So I can't be a hypocrite about
• 2:03:15
  it. Is that like like I said, I I
• 2:03:17
  got those girls were at the good programs.
• 2:03:19
  I was able to get them to come and they got a lot better.
• 2:03:22
  I mean, Tyra Wilson ran 55 seconds last year and she was
• 2:03:24
  running 61 seconds before. And Alexander Webster went 1270
• 2:03:29
  and she was 13 O 13 three pretty consistently, you know what I
• 2:03:33
  mean? I don't think that either one of
• 2:03:35
  them thought about coming to Florida State before they had a
• 2:03:37
  conversation with me, you know what I mean?
• 2:03:38
  And so sometimes having that portal has opened it up where
• 2:03:41
  you can find the right person, the right fit, the right coach,
• 2:03:44
  the right program for you. That was gonna either have the
• 2:03:46
  patience or be demanding enough or whatever it is that they were
• 2:03:50
  missing. Great.
• 2:03:51
  Coaches at Texas. Great coaches at Oregon, great
• 2:03:54
  programs, great facilities, great everything.
• 2:03:57
  But sometimes you got to find the fit that's right for you and
• 2:04:00
  you know, so there is where a portal is a good thing.
• 2:04:02
  So I can't say the portal is a good thing and then turn around
• 2:04:04
  and say it's a bad thing and you shouldn't go there.
• 2:04:07
  I think we're a lot of coaches getting theirself in trouble is
• 2:04:09
  it's only a bad thing when it negatively effects them, right?
• 2:04:13
  You know? But it's a great thing when I
• 2:04:15
  can go put, you know, poach somebody off the.
• 2:04:17
  Well, I think the the biggest negative that happened was we
• 2:04:22
  gave it a name. It used to just be kids
• 2:04:25
  transfer. Now it's the portal.
• 2:04:27
  So now we have this entity to blame.
• 2:04:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, trust me, I'm as bad as
• 2:04:34
  anyone. The grad school portal opened
• 2:04:36
  yesterday on that thing, and that thing was on fire
• 2:04:41
  yesterday, that was. In the Amazon, you know it is.
• 2:04:47
  It was interesting to me the way you said it earlier that it's OK
• 2:04:50
  to break up with your girlfriend.
• 2:04:52
  And, you know, when you said that, I started thinking like,
• 2:04:54
  oh, you know, I was in love with my high school sweetheart and
• 2:04:58
  she's a great person. Thank God I did not marry her.
• 2:05:02
  Thank God I found my my wife. And, you know, and, and I think,
• 2:05:06
  you know, when you said it like that, because I think a lot of
• 2:05:07
  us could think about past relationships of, you know, the
• 2:05:09
  ones we thought were the one or whatnot and they were not the
• 2:05:13
  one. And we found the the one later
• 2:05:14
  on. When you think about that in the
• 2:05:16
  school setting, it's like, oh, because you know, recruiting to
• 2:05:19
  me is a little bit unfair. The the song and dance that we
• 2:05:22
  do with recruiting, you know, when we bring them on and we,
• 2:05:25
  you know, the steak dinners and all this stuff.
• 2:05:26
  And it's like, yeah, you know, just letting you know, this
• 2:05:28
  ain't real life. We eat steak, steak and lobster
• 2:05:30
  every night. Maybe at Florida State, you guys
• 2:05:32
  eat steak and lobster every. I don't know, but but then you
• 2:05:35
  get on campus and it's like, OK, well, now real world, you got to
• 2:05:37
  go to classes, you got to, you'll be, you know, expect to
• 2:05:39
  be a practice at XY and Z. You slip up, I'm going to, you
• 2:05:42
  know, hold you accountable, things like that.
• 2:05:43
  You you're not holding anybody accountable during a recruiting
• 2:05:45
  visit. But when real world comes in, so
• 2:05:48
  you'll learn a lot more and and you probably aren't talking a
• 2:05:50
  lot about training necessarily during recruiting.
• 2:05:53
  So then you get in there and to your point, you you get there
• 2:05:55
  and like, oh man, this style is not working for me.
• 2:05:58
  It's not, that's not how I'm supposed to become a better
• 2:06:00
  sprinter, jumper throw or whatever.
• 2:06:02
  We'll break up with your girlfriend and go find the one
• 2:06:05
  that is supposed to be and hopefully it works out.
• 2:06:06
  And by the way, it doesn't always work out.
• 2:06:08
  The next girlfriend is not always the right the right one,
• 2:06:11
  or you did leave the one you're supposed to be with.
• 2:06:13
  But yeah, and I also get it and I also get it, you know, sitting
• 2:06:18
  in your seat too, there's pressures for you head coach and
• 2:06:22
  assistant coaches to perform. And when the kid that was really
• 2:06:25
  good for you leaves, it's like, well, that was AI was going to
• 2:06:28
  be a good. I was going to get a an Atta boy
• 2:06:30
  this year because of how well this person was going to do.
• 2:06:32
  And now they're gone. That sucks.
• 2:06:33
  I got to go do it again. So.
• 2:06:35
  Well, I, I think there's two layers of that too.
• 2:06:37
  It's like you can look at it like, man, I just lost 20 points
• 2:06:39
  at the conference meet or I lost the guy that like was the heart
• 2:06:43
  and soul of what we do. You know what I mean?
• 2:06:45
  Like not just the points, but like he's the guy that was like
• 2:06:48
  really held it together. And sometimes you can see that
• 2:06:51
  don't realize until it's gone. But there's there's different
• 2:06:54
  layers of that when you lose somebody.
• 2:06:56
  But it does hurt when you when your girlfriend leaves you and
• 2:06:59
  it hurts when you when that happens or whatever.
• 2:07:02
  But like, I think when the, when the kids are looking to go to
• 2:07:06
  another spot, I think the biggest thing that I wish that I
• 2:07:09
  could tell all of them whether they're looking at me or they're
• 2:07:12
  looking at somewhere else is like, man, you got to be honest
• 2:07:15
  with yourself about what you really need the second go round
• 2:07:17
  because you don't want to have to do this a third time.
• 2:07:20
  Because it's, I mean, from an academic perspective and
• 2:07:23
  everything else, like you can't really transfer that much.
• 2:07:25
  So it's not a good thing. But really honest with yourself
• 2:07:29
  about what you're looking for, you know, and, and I find that
• 2:07:32
  that is not always the case when you're when you somebody, they
• 2:07:36
  tell you they want something, then they end up going somewhere
• 2:07:39
  and you're like, yeah, that is exactly the opposite of what you
• 2:07:41
  told me you wanted. But best of luck, you know?
• 2:07:44
  Yeah. And it's all about, you know,
• 2:07:46
  being true to yourself and finding out exactly what you're
• 2:07:48
  what you're trying to get to happen.
• 2:07:49
  Yeah, yeah, I, I, I painted a very anti on the recruiting
• 2:07:54
  spiel there. I just went on coaching side,
• 2:07:56
  like, oh, you're not really being yourself.
• 2:07:57
  You use steaks and dinners. By the way, the opposite side is
• 2:08:00
  true too. When you're the recruit, when
• 2:08:01
  you're the of being recruited, you're not 100% truthful either
• 2:08:05
  in what you're telling you're it's the same song and dance.
• 2:08:07
  We deal with the private sector of interviewing candidates as
• 2:08:10
  well. You know, that candidate is
• 2:08:11
  always like, well, what does Mike actually want?
• 2:08:13
  So let me act like that when in reality, I really just want you
• 2:08:15
  to be yourself. And if you're not the right, if
• 2:08:17
  I don't think you're the right for the for the fit for the job,
• 2:08:19
  I don't want to hire you. And by the way, that's a good
• 2:08:21
  thing for you because if you can't be yourself when you get
• 2:08:24
  on on base here, when you get on on, you know, we call it campus
• 2:08:28
  campus here. And it's like, oh, wait a
• 2:08:29
  minute, Mike doesn't like me because you're now showing your
• 2:08:32
  true colors. And it's like, we could have
• 2:08:34
  done this back in the recruiting bus and you'd be much happier.
• 2:08:37
  And I would too. So it's both sides.
• 2:08:39
  It's recruiters and recruiting that that I wish there was a way
• 2:08:43
  to take it down to a level and be real with each other.
• 2:08:46
  I think. I think there'd be less
• 2:08:47
  transferring. I really do.
• 2:08:49
  I do too. I think if you, if we, I mean, I
• 2:08:53
  hate to say this out loud, I think if we could do less.
• 2:08:55
  On the visits. If we could do less blitz and
• 2:08:57
  glamour, if there was different things, I mean, I don't know
• 2:09:00
  what you cut back, but like if we could only do certain things
• 2:09:04
  on visits, I think the kids would maybe make a little bit
• 2:09:06
  different decisions about what they want to do.
• 2:09:09
  But, you know, we're in the recruiting arms race
• 2:09:12
  essentially, so no. It's.
• 2:09:15
  You know, track. It's a good.
• 2:09:16
  Point with football and basketball and all that kind of
• 2:09:18
  stuff so I don't think we're ever going to go back the other
• 2:09:20
  direction but I have found and you know whatever I I do better
• 2:09:26
  with the women particularly like I I've gotten away from the
• 2:09:29
  football weekends. You know, that was such a big
• 2:09:32
  deal for us at Alabama for odd reasons.
• 2:09:34
  You know what I mean? Like I can't say that out loud,
• 2:09:38
  but I had no better experience for me watching a football game
• 2:09:40
  than than there. Florida State's amazing and it's
• 2:09:44
  unique and you know, Osceola and Renegade and the whole thing.
• 2:09:48
  But as a football fan watching those games and I was spoiled.
• 2:09:51
  We won three out of four national championships when I
• 2:09:53
  was there. So that was that.
• 2:09:54
  But but you know, that enjoyment of being able to do that.
• 2:09:57
  But I've gotten away from that, like kind of on the women's side
• 2:10:00
  and got more, less for the party and more bringing people on a
• 2:10:04
  Saturday night, Sunday, Monday or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
• 2:10:07
  Because they get to see what everyday life looks like.
• 2:10:10
  And if you talk to somebody on the phone or in a Zoom call or
• 2:10:13
  whatever in a home visit and you drop that nugget of like, hey,
• 2:10:16
  would you want to come on a regular time or do you want to
• 2:10:18
  come for the show? You know, then you learn who
• 2:10:21
  they are and then you learn who mom and dad are too.
• 2:10:23
  Sometimes mom and dad are like, we are coming for the show, You
• 2:10:26
  know, like dad's always wanted to watch a band of football game
• 2:10:28
  or a Florida State football game.
• 2:10:30
  That's an underlying reason why they may be coming for the
• 2:10:34
  visit. And then you realize, oh, well,
• 2:10:35
  maybe I need to be working mom more or maybe I need to
• 2:10:38
  establish a relationship. Yeah, whatever.
• 2:10:40
  You know, you learn about everybody.
• 2:10:41
  They reveal themselves slowly through every recruiting
• 2:10:43
  conversation. So.
• 2:10:45
  But I've had more success signing people that are on the
• 2:10:48
  women's side at least, not coming on the on the glitz and
• 2:10:50
  glamour weekends. They've been coming on the meat
• 2:10:52
  and potatoes weekend, so to speak.
• 2:10:53
  And, and I think we reveal ourselves better there too,
• 2:10:58
  because there's more time for the kids to kind of spend a
• 2:11:00
  little bit of time with them, like with the team, if that
• 2:11:04
  makes any sense, because there's less, less moving parts, so to
• 2:11:07
  speak. And again, everybody's going to
• 2:11:10
  find their own thing that works for them in recruiting, too.
• 2:11:12
  Yeah, I always wondered, like how many kids are, you know,
• 2:11:15
  taking visits to Hawaii or to University of Oregon or USUS LA
• 2:11:19
  just to be at La? Like how many are just like, oh
• 2:11:21
  man, I've never been to Lai just want to go and check out what LA
• 2:11:25
  is. So I'm not really interested in
• 2:11:26
  going that far. Maybe they're from Florida, but
• 2:11:28
  it's like, well, they're going to pay it for it too, by the
• 2:11:30
  way, so I'll do it, you know. Yeah, I always wondered about
• 2:11:33
  that. Yeah.
• 2:11:34
  Not many people were had that same attitude to come to
• 2:11:36
  Starkville. Just putting that out there.
• 2:11:39
  And we were like, you know, you want the glitz of Hammer Stark
• 2:11:41
  Vegas. To that, to that point, man,
• 2:11:45
  that this all kind of does tie together that first year at at
• 2:11:49
  Bama with that whole group. We all work pretty good coaches
• 2:11:53
  and we were working our butts off or whatever, but I think we
• 2:11:55
  brought 14 official visitors on one weekend.
• 2:11:59
  The LSU, Alabama, I think it was like 3 or 9 to 6 or whatever is
• 2:12:04
  one of the greatest skins I've ever been to, like LeBron,
• 2:12:06
  everybody, all the stuff was going on or whatever.
• 2:12:09
  There was 100,000 people that didn't go into the game.
• 2:12:11
  Like the environment was unlike anything.
• 2:12:13
  I've heard that this past weekend was similar or whatever.
• 2:12:18
  We didn't. We signed one kid out of that
• 2:12:19
  group. Like everybody wanted to come.
• 2:12:22
  They were coming for the football game and they were
• 2:12:23
  coming for the environment. They were coming for the fun and
• 2:12:26
  we had superstars. I mean, I don't want to name the
• 2:12:28
  names they would like. There's probably 3 Olympians on
• 2:12:31
  that visit, but they were coming for that.
• 2:12:35
  They were coming for the visit, not to look at at our school at
• 2:12:39
  that. Time so it's it's it's tough.
• 2:12:41
  I don't want to get in. I want to move on, but you know,
• 2:12:44
  I do kind of push back when people talk about, you know, O
• 2:12:48
  Oregon has it so easy. Texas has it so easy.
• 2:12:51
  Florida State has it so easy out.
• 2:12:53
  Everybody wants to go to Alabama football game, but it's like,
• 2:12:55
  bro, there are so many every one of those programs, every program
• 2:12:58
  has things that they have to get over on like like that that are
• 2:13:02
  tough, whether it's admission standards, whether it's oh, the
• 2:13:05
  kids only want to be here for the Alabama LSU game.
• 2:13:07
  They're they're not really coming to recruit.
• 2:13:08
  They're coming to it's a free weekend vacation and they're
• 2:13:11
  going they're already thinking about it.
• 2:13:12
  Every school, every single one. You go look at the top ten at
• 2:13:15
  NCAA's this year and think that oh man, they're they're the
• 2:13:18
  rich. They keep getting richer.
• 2:13:19
  Each one of those has something tough to get over it.
• 2:13:23
  It really is. It's not just simple just
• 2:13:25
  because you're an LSU and FSU whatever, or Texas.
• 2:13:28
  It's not easy just because it's that there are, by the way,
• 2:13:31
  those are all recruiting against each other.
• 2:13:32
  So you're already trying to beat the other good guys and gals
• 2:13:34
  that are coaches out there so. And I've I've run into people on
• 2:13:38
  the circuit and they were like, coach, that was my favorite
• 2:13:40
  visit I ever took. That didn't sign with you?
• 2:13:44
  What the hell? You know, like I can't remember
• 2:13:48
  what I did and I still wasn't good enough.
• 2:13:52
  I loved everything, but I ain't still.
• 2:13:54
  There it's like, it's like it clips into being married
• 2:13:56
  basically. It's like I'm doing my best
• 2:13:58
  here. I'm I'm trying.
• 2:14:01
  Well, let's move forward to Florida State.
• 2:14:03
  You already mentioned, you know, a lot of the things that jury to
• 2:14:06
  Florida State both personally and professionally.
• 2:14:09
  And he spent quite a few years there, quite a few fun years as
• 2:14:13
  an assistant coach with a lot of good people.
• 2:14:15
  You know, I knew a lot of the assistant coaches that have been
• 2:14:19
  through the program here in the last, you know, 5-10 years.
• 2:14:21
  They're great people, great coaches.
• 2:14:23
  And now you find yourself in the big boy chair.
• 2:14:26
  You're you're in the head coaching seat there.
• 2:14:28
  And things have so a lot of things change when you go from
• 2:14:32
  this, you know, when the assistant becomes head, when
• 2:14:33
  that title changes, a lot of things change there.
• 2:14:36
  But things have changed a lot in the NCAA as well.
• 2:14:40
  You know, we won't get into specifics, but specifically in
• 2:14:43
  the ACC and, and obviously, you know, recently there was a
• 2:14:47
  article about a meeting that the Ohio State AD had with the Ohio
• 2:14:52
  State Board of Trustees. And one of the first things he
• 2:14:55
  said was is everything changes every 30 minutes.
• 2:14:58
  So like, you know, like almost like by the time I finish my
• 2:15:01
  talk with you Board of Trustees, I, I could walk out of this room
• 2:15:03
  and it'll be different. And it really struck me because
• 2:15:05
  I'm like, man, you know, if the, the state AD is saying that, you
• 2:15:09
  know, a lot of power, a lot of money, a lot of things run
• 2:15:11
  through Ohio State. So how are you staying
• 2:15:16
  adjustable, being adaptable to the changes that are happening,
• 2:15:20
  Things that are, I'm going to say might be happening.
• 2:15:23
  You know, we think things are happening, but they might not.
• 2:15:25
  We don't really have a lot of clarity.
• 2:15:26
  How are you staying adjustable? Oh, and by the way, at the same
• 2:15:29
  time, still trying to do what you really enjoy, being on the
• 2:15:32
  track, coaching young people. Yeah, man, that's a lot of
• 2:15:38
  layers to that too. I like your questions because
• 2:15:41
  they made me think like, as you're asking the question,
• 2:15:42
  like, you know, what does my day-to-day look like?
• 2:15:45
  And so I, I certainly inherited a program that has a lot of
• 2:15:49
  history at a very odd time in not just the NCAA, but track and
• 2:15:55
  field, right? Like roster changes, right, Like
• 2:15:59
  17 and 45, that's supposedly happening.
• 2:16:02
  Does that mean scholarships? Does that mean we're getting
• 2:16:04
  scholarships? Not every school's different.
• 2:16:06
  Nobody knows what we're doing. There's a lot of like what are
• 2:16:09
  you doing? What are you doing trying to get
• 2:16:11
  that information share with your administrators, get their
• 2:16:14
  administrators are talking to administrators probably and
• 2:16:16
  getting ideas, I would assume about where that's gonna go.
• 2:16:19
  And so we're just, like you said, new information coming
• 2:16:22
  down at all times specific to Florida State.
• 2:16:26
  I, I have a great job, you know, like it is challenging every
• 2:16:30
  single day. I was excited for the challenge
• 2:16:33
  of becoming a head coach again because of the things like, I
• 2:16:37
  feel like I have the energy to push us back to where we need to
• 2:16:41
  be, if that makes any sense. Like it's a, it's a relentless
• 2:16:43
  challenge every single day of trying to get people on board to
• 2:16:47
  do things internally differently.
• 2:16:49
  Then maybe we did it for the last 20 years.
• 2:16:51
  And so, you know, Bob laid a great foundation of, of success
• 2:16:55
  here and, and he did things the way he wanted to do them.
• 2:16:58
  You know, I'm like, and he had a lot of support here.
• 2:17:01
  And any adjustment to that, whether I need more from
• 2:17:04
  somebody or less from somebody is new because everybody had
• 2:17:08
  worked with him for 5/10/20 years, however many years
• 2:17:10
  they've been here, because he's been here just about longer than
• 2:17:12
  anybody else. So there's unique challenges in
• 2:17:14
  that. There's unique challenges in the
• 2:17:16
  expectation of what I want from our program, where I want our
• 2:17:21
  program to go, how I want us to get back to winning national
• 2:17:24
  championships and competing for national championships on men's
• 2:17:26
  and women's side and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:17:28
  So it's been, you know, a unique time to do all of this all at
• 2:17:32
  once. It's fun, it's challenging.
• 2:17:35
  You know, when I got to Florida State, we had really, I mean,
• 2:17:40
  there was good people here. So the kind of backtracking on
• 2:17:42
  that, like Dorian Scott was here as the throws coach, Keith
• 2:17:44
  Hurston was the was the jumps coach.
• 2:17:48
  He's now at Texas Tech Kelly was our women's distance coach.
• 2:17:53
  He did a really nice job. You know, and then Bob myself, I
• 2:17:57
  feel like I'm forgetting somebody else.
• 2:18:01
  And then, you know, there's then COVID happened and there was
• 2:18:04
  some evolution within our program because of for a variety
• 2:18:06
  of different reasons. And, you know, Dorian took a
• 2:18:10
  job, Kelly got out of coaching, Keith took a job.
• 2:18:15
  I was actually interviewing for another job.
• 2:18:17
  And it was like, I I'm going to stay, you know, like I'm going
• 2:18:20
  to, I'm going to stick this out, whatever.
• 2:18:23
  And so then we, you know, our staff evolved again.
• 2:18:26
  Oh, yeah, I forgot. My God, I forgot Rick, the guy
• 2:18:29
  who I kept on staff from before. Phenomenal coach, does a great
• 2:18:32
  job with the men, you know. And so, you know, that evolved.
• 2:18:37
  Then the staff kind of changed. Doug Reynolds came back with me
• 2:18:42
  or come back from being a head coach to come back into
• 2:18:44
  assistant coaching because I think he was looking for
• 2:18:46
  something a little bit different there as well, You know, and
• 2:18:49
  then life happens there too. Chance's job opens.
• 2:18:53
  That was one of the first jobs he ever had.
• 2:18:55
  That's where he met his wife. He goes over there, you know,
• 2:18:57
  all these different things keep happening.
• 2:18:58
  Our our staff keeps evolving and, and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:19:01
  So that kind of led us to kind of where we are now with, with
• 2:19:05
  me taking over and, and bringing in the staff that I have here
• 2:19:09
  now. And, and no, it's good.
• 2:19:11
  It's exciting time, you know, for with all that.
• 2:19:14
  Well, you, you segwayed me perfectly into my last question
• 2:19:17
  as we wrap up here today, Matt, as you, you know, stare down the
• 2:19:21
  2025, you're you're in the middle of the 2024 cross country
• 2:19:24
  season. I have to publicly say to you,
• 2:19:27
  man, I'm so proud. You've always been this guy.
• 2:19:29
  And honestly, I think this might be, I don't know if you would
• 2:19:32
  say this or not from the outside at least.
• 2:19:34
  Maybe this is a little bit of the Martin Smith influence,
• 2:19:35
  meaning, you know, I think of Martin Smith is a very holistic
• 2:19:38
  track team guy. He didn't want just distance
• 2:19:41
  runners. He wanted sprinters, jumpers,
• 2:19:42
  throwers, hurdlers, etcetera. So you, you know, you've always
• 2:19:46
  been a little bit of the you're the Sprint turtles guy, but
• 2:19:48
  you're always like, hey man, our cross country team did good,
• 2:19:50
  great, great job. Now as the head coach, I see you
• 2:19:53
  doing that even more, which I think it's, it's even more
• 2:19:55
  important now in in the role that you're at today.
• 2:19:58
  But as you are in 2024 cross country season, as you're
• 2:20:01
  standing in the 2025 indoor and outdoor season, what's got you
• 2:20:05
  excited, whether it's. The kids, the coaching staff.
• 2:20:09
  I mean, you know, you put together your first full
• 2:20:10
  coaching staff here, the schedule.
• 2:20:13
  Do you have a certain meet circle?
• 2:20:14
  What's what's got you excited man as you stare into the future
• 2:20:17
  here? I'm excited about my staff.
• 2:20:20
  I'm excited about the the people that I was able to assemble
• 2:20:22
  here. I think they they bring unique
• 2:20:24
  things to the table some some that I retained from the
• 2:20:28
  previous staff. And some people I brought in
• 2:20:31
  some people that, that we all have some sort of
• 2:20:34
  interconnectedness. It's it's some fashion.
• 2:20:37
  But I think in passing we were talking before, they all bring
• 2:20:42
  something different to the table outside of coaching, something
• 2:20:45
  unique, something, some value as I see it.
• 2:20:48
  In in different ways. Tim Cawley was a head coach for
• 2:20:52
  10 years, right? I know you know him really well
• 2:20:55
  and like he brings a different perspective for me as a first
• 2:21:00
  time Division One head coach. He's got 10 years head coaching
• 2:21:02
  experience. He was very interested in going
• 2:21:05
  back to being an event coach. So you know, like he brings
• 2:21:09
  some, you know, some ability to kind of keep me like on the
• 2:21:13
  right path, if that makes any sense.
• 2:21:15
  Tony Davis is going to come in and help me in the women's
• 2:21:17
  sprints. He was at New Mexico State, he
• 2:21:20
  was one of my athletes at Barton.
• 2:21:22
  He was on the team with those guys in, you know, like and was
• 2:21:27
  like he's that he was that guy that maybe didn't run that fast,
• 2:21:30
  but everybody loved Tony. That makes any sense.
• 2:21:33
  So like the value that he provides as a team guy is
• 2:21:38
  phenomenal. He's made his way in coaching on
• 2:21:40
  his own. You know, he broke a couple of
• 2:21:41
  my national records of Barton when he was there.
• 2:21:43
  So I love that, you know, he's a Barton guy and that's at my
• 2:21:46
  heart. So you know him.
• 2:21:49
  Luke. Luke Bryant, not Luke Bryan, the
• 2:21:51
  country Western center, Luke Bryan with the guy that does a
• 2:21:56
  lot of different things. He was an athlete at Oklahoma
• 2:21:58
  when I was there, so I got to know him and then he was at
• 2:22:01
  Texas State. He was at the University of
• 2:22:03
  Texas. Like he, he was a fundraising
• 2:22:05
  guy in addition to being a coach.
• 2:22:06
  And so in the IO world, we got to have different ideas and
• 2:22:10
  different ways of things and different connections.
• 2:22:12
  And, and he, he's a relentless recruiter and, and great dude.
• 2:22:16
  He does a nice job. You know, I, I kept Rick because
• 2:22:18
  I've always valued what Rick's done, like from a distance on
• 2:22:21
  the other side of the track, if that makes any sense.
• 2:22:23
  I think he's a great man. The the kids respond really,
• 2:22:26
  really well to him. And you know, we're kind of Co
• 2:22:30
  opting, working together in the sprints now a little bit more on
• 2:22:34
  so that we're kind of streamlined with the way that
• 2:22:35
  we're doing things, which is a unique thing.
• 2:22:37
  And I think he's taking on that new challenge and he's doing a
• 2:22:40
  great job with it. And Cody's done a really, really
• 2:22:43
  nice job of kind of rebuilding our women's program.
• 2:22:46
  Like Kelly had things going. We had a couple of coaching
• 2:22:50
  changeovers and and. When you have coaching
• 2:22:52
  changeovers, you sometimes lose the recruiting.
• 2:22:54
  So Cody's come back and re established that she's done a
• 2:22:58
  really nice job and and they're on the way up.
• 2:22:59
  Like I I feel like they're going to be ranked here very soon.
• 2:23:02
  They're receiving votes now, as they say, so I'm excited about
• 2:23:05
  that. But you know, backtracking about
• 2:23:07
  the other part is I like to be around.
• 2:23:10
  People that have that championship mindset and I want
• 2:23:13
  that in every event that we have.
• 2:23:15
  So I go to I was at the trail this morning with the distance
• 2:23:20
  runners and you know, seeing how their runs going, things of that
• 2:23:23
  nature. I go into the weight room with
• 2:23:25
  the men's sprinters and the you know, like I kind of hang out of
• 2:23:28
  the jumps practice from time to time.
• 2:23:30
  I like to go to throws practice. It's all by design because I
• 2:23:36
  think it's the most important thing is for these kids to know
• 2:23:38
  who I am. You know, like it's it's easy to
• 2:23:41
  be a head coach and get stuck that this is your event group,
• 2:23:44
  right? Like I, it's all my event group,
• 2:23:47
  so I have to have some hand in everything that we're doing.
• 2:23:51
  I think that leadership is allowing those coaches to coach,
• 2:23:55
  but I can just still be at practice sort of like hanging
• 2:23:58
  out, getting to know them away from just how far they throw or
• 2:24:03
  how far they jump or how fast they run.
• 2:24:06
  And if I can establish that relationship now before we go on
• 2:24:09
  the road, when we're on the road and we have to go to war, they
• 2:24:12
  know who their leader is, they know why they're going to
• 2:24:14
  battle. They know what we're all about.
• 2:24:16
  And it, it goes beyond a team meeting.
• 2:24:18
  It goes beyond rah, rah speech and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:24:21
  So if I'm going to truly lead these people, that's what I'm
• 2:24:23
  excited about. If I'm going to truly lead these
• 2:24:24
  people, then I get to get to know them better.
• 2:24:26
  And I feel like why I had the most connection with my teams at
• 2:24:29
  Barton was because there was 2 coaches, 60 kicks, you know what
• 2:24:34
  I mean? Like I was coached about 50 of
• 2:24:35
  them and Dave was coaching about 8 to 10 of them, you know, So it
• 2:24:39
  was like and I, we were around each other all the time and it
• 2:24:42
  was like one voice, one vision, one goal.
• 2:24:45
  Truthfully, our goal was to win, but our, our goal was really to
• 2:24:48
  get out of there. And, and everybody's like, was
• 2:24:51
  their goal was to like get to the degree, get to the visual,
• 2:24:54
  get a degree, change my life, those type of things.
• 2:24:56
  What that's what I mean by get out of there, you know, so like
• 2:25:00
  I'm, I'm excited about that aspect of the program and and
• 2:25:03
  what I can provide hope to find value for those kids from that
• 2:25:08
  perspective. You know, I think there's a
• 2:25:10
  difference between performance and leadership.
• 2:25:12
  You know, performances when we over index in that rah rah
• 2:25:16
  speech, you know, the night before the conference meet or
• 2:25:18
  you know, the random team meeting rah rah, you know,
• 2:25:21
  before we start fall practice. And then there's leadership
• 2:25:24
  being involved in all aspects of your program, meaning, you know,
• 2:25:28
  I know what's going on in the throws group, I know what's
• 2:25:31
  going on the distance group, etcetera.
• 2:25:34
  And I think I think consistency happens on the leadership side.
• 2:25:40
  You can get some acute bumps in performances and what not in in
• 2:25:44
  the performance side when you're the raw, raw guy.
• 2:25:46
  I mean, I've, I've seen some amazing speeches that, you know,
• 2:25:48
  made me cry a little bit, to be honest with you, and maybe want
• 2:25:50
  to run through a brick wall. But that high emotional it, it
• 2:25:53
  comes down crashes a lot more when you can build your base up
• 2:25:56
  and then build that trust of the leadership.
• 2:25:59
  I think that's where, you know, some some longer term successes
• 2:26:02
  occur. So I'm I'm proud to hear that
• 2:26:04
  from you on, on how you're building the team.
• 2:26:08
  Yeah, man, I like I I'm not A to say I'm not a rah rah guy like I
• 2:26:13
  am a plant a seed, let the seed grow, cultivate the seed six
• 2:26:18
  months later. You know, like I think a team
• 2:26:21
  meeting that I have that sounds insignificant to a kid in
• 2:26:24
  September. If I'm able to reference that
• 2:26:26
  team meeting and something I said that they hopefully was
• 2:26:29
  impactful, or more importantly, if those kids are able to
• 2:26:32
  reference that and remember what I said or they're talking about
• 2:26:34
  it, even if they're making fun of something that it might have
• 2:26:37
  said, like they heard what I said.
• 2:26:39
  And then when I go back to it, it was laying a foundation for
• 2:26:42
  what we're going to do, You know, tying all of this whole
• 2:26:49
  conversation together. When I first got to Oklahoma, I
• 2:26:52
  was, you thought maybe I'm not arrogant.
• 2:26:55
  I was arrogant. So I got to Oklahoma.
• 2:26:56
  I just won a world championship, just got a medal, and I walked
• 2:26:59
  into Oklahoma and I was going to change things.
• 2:27:00
  I scored four points in the sprints the year before I got
• 2:27:03
  there at the conference meet and I walked in and sat down at my
• 2:27:07
  very first meeting and I told them we were going to win the
• 2:27:09
  Big 12, which they hadn't done in years, and that we were going
• 2:27:12
  to do it because we were going to make it happen.
• 2:27:15
  We were going to score points. We were going to do this.
• 2:27:16
  The people in the room are going to make this happen.
• 2:27:18
  And also by the way, we've got 3 recruits that we're bringing in
• 2:27:21
  that are going to come here and they're going to help us win,
• 2:27:23
  right? Like I just told them what was
• 2:27:24
  going to happen and I told them it was going to come down to the
• 2:27:27
  four by four and we were going to be ready to have a four
• 2:27:31
  before. And I don't know what they ran
• 2:27:32
  here before, but it wasn't good. And Fast forward, we scored 48
• 2:27:36
  points at the conference meet in the sprints.
• 2:27:38
  We won the conference championship.
• 2:27:39
  It did come down to the 4 by 4. And it came down to a point
• 2:27:43
  where I had to pick between one of two guys, right?
• 2:27:49
  And then I did another thing, which I do a lot is tested one
• 2:27:52
  of the kids. I said, hey, man, I'm not going
• 2:27:53
  to run you. I'm going to run this guy
• 2:27:54
  because whatever. And the kid looked like he was
• 2:27:58
  going to punch me in the face, right?
• 2:28:01
  And as soon as it looked like he was going to punch me in the
• 2:28:03
  face, I was like, are you mad? You know, like, are you pissed
• 2:28:06
  at me? Yes.
• 2:28:07
  Good. That's what I want.
• 2:28:09
  You're. Off.
• 2:28:10
  You're on. Let's go.
• 2:28:11
  We talked about this four months ago.
• 2:28:14
  Let's go do your job, and then we go out.
• 2:28:17
  We won. You know, life is good.
• 2:28:19
  But it wasn't that I gave him this massive raw speech.
• 2:28:22
  It was that I told him what the expectation was.
• 2:28:24
  I planted the seed. I was able to back it up.
• 2:28:26
  So I had to just make it up. Like I actually had a vision for
• 2:28:29
  where they go. And then if we can reference
• 2:28:31
  that, cultivate that seed later, that's more what I'm, what I'm,
• 2:28:37
  what my leadership style looks like probably.
• 2:28:39
  Well, what I just learned is next time I see you just
• 2:28:42
  punching the face and you're going to love me, you're like,
• 2:28:44
  oh, that's it, Mike. That's the attitude I want.
• 2:28:47
  I want people to be that passionate.
• 2:28:50
  I, I want somebody. If I take you off that relay, I
• 2:28:52
  want you to be mad at me like it's OK.
• 2:28:56
  It's OK to break up your girlfriend.
• 2:28:57
  It's OK to be emotional. It's OK to be a little bit
• 2:28:59
  pissed off. It means you care and that you
• 2:29:02
  want to be good, which means that you and I are going to
• 2:29:05
  align on a lot of things if that's the case.
• 2:29:08
  That's right. Well, you and I have aligned on
• 2:29:10
  a lot of things, my brother, and today was great, man, I'm so
• 2:29:13
  grateful. Thank you for your patience with
• 2:29:15
  all the hiccups that we've had. Hopefully no one listening even
• 2:29:18
  tears or sees hiccups. Maybe they just think it was a
• 2:29:20
  streamline. This is one of the more
• 2:29:22
  technical difficulty ones that I've had and it was all on me,
• 2:29:26
  but so I appreciate that. And really, Matt, you know, and
• 2:29:29
  I expect nothing less from you because I've known you for so
• 2:29:31
  long, you know, really grateful for, you know, your openness and
• 2:29:34
  your authenticity. You know, I think that's how
• 2:29:35
  we're going to you know, my goal with this podcast, you know,
• 2:29:38
  these long forms, really going in deep to journeys here is to
• 2:29:42
  help rise up the profession. And I want to really
• 2:29:45
  professionalize the profession of being a coaching, of being a
• 2:29:48
  track and field coach on all levels, high school, college,
• 2:29:51
  everything in between, because I think you deserve it.
• 2:29:53
  And I think I love, you know, Dan's talk about, well, if we're
• 2:29:57
  going to be taken seriously, then we better take it serious.
• 2:29:59
  So that that's how I think about track and field coaches.
• 2:30:02
  I'm like, man, if we're going to take track and field coaches
• 2:30:04
  seriously, well, then we better be taking some stuff serious
• 2:30:06
  here. So there's different aspects,
• 2:30:08
  obviously with the equipment, but also through, you know, my
• 2:30:10
  advocacy for track coaches. So anytime and it happens a lot.
• 2:30:14
  I'm really, you know, proud of a, a, a lot of the men and women
• 2:30:17
  who've joined us on the podcast. There's a lot of openness and
• 2:30:20
  authenticity. And again, that's what I expect.
• 2:30:22
  So I, I appreciate when people bear that out and I think it
• 2:30:25
  moves us forward. They're going to be people who
• 2:30:27
  are listening right now that hear this story and they, they
• 2:30:30
  make a decision. They make a decision of, oh, you
• 2:30:32
  know what? I do need to step my game up as
• 2:30:33
  a coach, not just in the X's and O's.
• 2:30:36
  I, I know how important X's and O's are.
• 2:30:37
  Certainly you got to know how to coach, but there is so much more
• 2:30:41
  to the profession of coaching track and field.
• 2:30:43
  And that's what I want to continue to rise up.
• 2:30:44
  And I think your, your story and your journey is a part of that
• 2:30:48
  process. I've got a long ways to go, but
• 2:30:50
  I appreciate. Them and thanks.
• 2:30:51
  Yeah, yeah, that just means we're not completely old.
• 2:30:54
  I love that. That's a good thing.
• 2:30:55
  That's a good thing. That's a good thing.
• 2:30:57
  Well, Matt, thank you again, man.
• 2:30:58
  You know, the most important thing, most valuable thing you
• 2:31:00
  can give me is your time. I'm really grateful for for your
• 2:31:02
  time here. And thank you guys for
• 2:31:04
  listening, man. I hope you I hope you took some
• 2:31:06
  Nuggets here, man. I really kind of think of and
• 2:31:08
  I've heard feedback about this that people are listening, you
• 2:31:11
  know, not always in your car, don't do this in your car, but
• 2:31:13
  they're taking notes. Take notes of what these men and
• 2:31:16
  women who join us here in the podcast talk about because
• 2:31:17
  there's there's a lot of hot takes that are really important
• 2:31:20
  in on the college level. It's continuing to evolve.
• 2:31:23
  Every 30 minutes it's changing. So we're going to change
• 2:31:26
  together and and get better. So thank you for being here.
• 2:31:28
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again and
• 2:31:30
  have some fun. Thanks guys.
• 2:31:35
  If it goes to appreciate the coach the ones that point people
• 2:31:38
  most every season leads a voice of reason speaking the growth
• 2:31:41
  you got to prep before you carry the load ice coffee to the soul.
• 2:31:45
  For those of us who stay on the go proper handoff to stay in the
• 2:31:47
  zone which you packing for the road.
• 2:31:49
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying your
• 2:31:52
  toe. It ain't practice if you're
• 2:31:54
  perfect Saint Clair. It can't happen until you listen
• 2:31:56
  with both is you can't mentor without a mentor here of
• 2:32:00
  experience. You can reinvent those years
• 2:32:02
  Every plan's got to stand and deliver to and the price
• 2:32:05
  sacrifice can you give up you. It's a choice and the fight not
• 2:32:08
  a win or lose. It's not a ploy boy device.
• 2:32:11
  Y'all can make more moves. It's not about how to it's all
• 2:32:14
  about why you don't know till you know who you are inside
• 2:32:17
  6,000,000 waste of time choose none.
• 2:32:19
  So y'all cross finish line the work ain't done so we learn from
• 2:32:22
  the experts but y'all got to put in the leg work guilt.
• 2:32:25
  Athletics use the network. It's all about connections put
• 2:32:28
  together for the profession to where every track coach could be
• 2:32:31
  blessing.