Latest / Boundary Corner Podcast / Road to Glory

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Road to Glory · Boundary Corner Podcast

0:27
Music. And welcome back to the Boundary
0:47
Corner Podcast along with my partners, Ryan Siegler and
0:50
Jonathan Talley. I am Curtis Wilson and we are
0:53
brought to you by the Main Street Pharmacy in Blacksburg,
0:58
VA Doctor Jeremy counts himself. If you haven't seen Jeremy, he's
1:01
got a new local podcast. Check it out with him and Paul
1:06
Van Wagner again, three O 1 S Main St.
1:10
Main Street pharmacy. Fellas, been a couple weeks.
1:13
How's everybody doing tonight? I'm doing glorious, man.
1:18
I'm doing real good. Had a good day.
1:21
Got in the office today, got to see some folks hang out a little
1:24
bit, play a little little Mario Party with the family tonight.
1:28
So it's been a solid day. Better than I deserve.
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That's what I always say, man. I've been ripping and running
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with with baseball and we actually have baseball and
1:38
basketball going on right now, but getting ready for a cruise
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so we are packing and cleaning and doing all of that.
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So glad to be back though. Absolutely.
1:50
Tally, I'm with you. We, we, we, we head on vacation
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next week for a few days. I am like probably 2 days behind
1:59
you as far as getting ready to go.
2:04
I mean me, me and Tally were joking.
2:07
We're joking just before we got on here.
2:08
It's like 15 bags of laundry before we get out of the house.
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It's the honest truth, Brian. You know you're going to go
2:16
through the same thing in a few weeks when you head to
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Gatlinburg. It's coming up, man.
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It's coming up my pump man. I, they, they Dominion sent me
2:23
my my tickets today. So I was printing out the
2:26
tickets and getting all that stuff ready to roll.
2:28
So it's going to be a good time. Oh, yeah, I got to go.
2:31
I got to go ahead and address the new, the, the hat that we
2:33
got on tonight. So there we go.
2:35
Or anybody else. My daughter graduated high
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school. We didn't know if she was going
2:40
to make it. She did make it.
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Now I'm joking, but she's getting ready to go to getting
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ready to go to college. She is going to my alma mater.
2:51
She'll be headed to Jacksonville State.
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So her and my wife went down to orientation and decided to get
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me a new Jacksonville State hat. I kind of feel old because it
3:03
says Jacksonville State dad. I don't feel like I'm supposed
3:06
to have a, a kid going to college.
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You know what I'm saying? I still feel like, feel like I'm
3:11
young, like I feel like me and Kevin's supposed to be partying
3:14
in Nashville, in Crystal, but. Hey man, you know sometimes you
3:20
got to embrace it a little bit, right?
3:22
Like so. Yeah.
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It's like one of those things where I can't do it like I used
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to, but I can still, I can still throw down when we when we need
3:29
to. OK, I like that.
3:31
I'm alright with that. Exactly.
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And, and you know, Nashville is, you know, believe it or not,
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we're under 100 days before Nashville happened.
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Try not to think about it. Stop bringing it up.
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I mean, the summer flying through right now it's it's it
3:46
finally got hot, humid. You go outside, I look out my
3:50
window, I can still see a little bit of daylight left.
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So it is that time of year and you know, all sorts of fun
3:56
stuff. But hold on, I got hit this one.
4:00
I don't know who this is. I'm going to tell you.
4:03
Some days I feel 25, some days I feel.
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Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that.
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I feel pretty good lately, though.
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I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll give myself that.
4:12
I agreed. I.
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Agree, I'm in my prime. Don't say Brian that, because
4:18
Brian is he, he's on the precipice of a of a number in
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the next day, a few weeks here. It's true.
4:26
You you catch up for a few months.
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I got, I got 18 days, man. 18 days well, it's also been a fun
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time for us because of what we got to do yesterday and and for
4:38
the second time we got to do it it was an absolute blast so
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without further ado, we're going to go ahead and roll the tape
4:45
and we'll. See y'all in a little bit.
4:48
See y'all in a little bit. Podcast listeners, it is our
4:53
pleasure for the second time to have Head Coach Brent Pride join
4:57
us. Coach Pry again?
5:00
How? Are you?
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I'm good, man. I'm good.
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You guys stole me away from the hustle and bustle of the the
5:07
daily routine. I got like a stack of papers
5:10
just high on my desk. So thank you.
5:12
Always glad to switch it up for you.
5:14
Glad to do it. Yeah.
5:16
Definitely glad to have you back coach.
5:19
Same. Well, coach, we know it has been
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just a little over a year since we last talked, but we got a
5:25
bunch of stuff we want to ask. And again, we really appreciate
5:27
you taking your time to speak with us and Hockey Nation Today,
5:31
and I'm going to start here. So back in May, we got to clink
5:35
a few drinks together, saw you out at the Tailgate tour here in
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Richmond, at Hardywood. And obviously you went up to
5:41
Northern Virginia. You've had chalk talks all over
5:44
the state with high school football coaches.
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We know next week you're heading over to hotel.
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Is it, is it that Hotel Rolling Oak next week, Big event there
5:52
yet? The women's clinic that's taking
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place in the offseason. So the season ended, spring
5:57
ended, you ain't stopped. But how important is it to have
6:02
these fan and donor engagement events in the offseason?
6:05
Then? What's been your favorite so
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far? Well, first of all, it's super
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important. I mean, that is what Virginia
6:12
Tech's about giving back, right? This is a two way St. in my
6:18
opinion. We asked for this, the fans to
6:22
support us. We asked for the community to
6:25
support us. We asked for the coaches in this
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state to support us. So in order to make that ask to
6:33
me, we got to give back wherever we can.
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And we know we had a four day youth camp.
6:38
We had our first annual women's clinic.
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You know, we've got six or seven high school camps.
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We've had countless chalk talks across the Commonwealth.
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We always have an open door policy for high school coaches
6:50
in the area. You know, it's it's awesome,
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it's rewarding. And and that to me is right for
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Virginia Tech and it's definitely right for Brent
6:59
Pratt. Your favorite one?
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Your favorite one? I don't know, that's tough.
7:09
I'm OK watching those first through 5th graders run around
7:13
and wear our staff out. Nice, I said.
7:16
Normally you get $20.00 an hour for that.
7:19
That's right. That's.
7:19
Right. The only problem was we had 200
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of them. Yeah, well, coach, we, we see a
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lot of videos of of you, you guys and the staff, you know,
7:30
preaching, you know, competition and perfecting the little
7:33
things. But we also see you balancing
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out some fun on and off the field.
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So my question to you is, who is the ringleader on staff that
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kind of is involved in getting those activities together?
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I'm going to tell you everybody's got a pretty good
7:48
sense of humor and everybody we have a staff that understands
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balance is important and it and it starts with me, to be quite
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honest, I can't be the head coach I need to be if there's
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not some balance in my life. I've seen too many guys trend
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downwards because it's all they do, you know, it's, it's all
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they are. And, and that's not the case
8:11
around here. We pour into this thing with
8:13
everything we got. But we take time, you know, for
8:17
staff golf outings, for family events.
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We do a lot together. That's, you know, Blacksburg's a
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small community. Nobody lives more than 1012
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minutes from one another. So we get together and celebrate
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birthdays and anniversaries and but yeah, we got some good one.
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I mean, Sean Quinn, he's our staff foodie, so he's always
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thinking outside the box on what we can do from a food standpoint
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or restaurant standpoint. But.
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We got a good group of guys that that enjoy working together,
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enjoy being buddies. It looks like y'all always out
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there having a good time. I know y'all do some like late
8:55
days from time to time and things like that.
8:57
So it looks like there's always some something going on to kind
9:00
of break up the monotony of the work, right?
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And that that helps, that helps with that competition piece too.
9:05
Because like, if you can have that balance, you can go a lot
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harder when it's time to work. I don't know how you can be on
9:11
your A game all the time if you don't take time to decompress
9:17
and and put your mind and thoughts somewhere else.
9:20
I don't know how you you maintain a game like to be at
9:24
your best for your players, for the rest of the staff, because
9:28
when you out of here for a day right now, June, if we if we if
9:31
we wanted to, it'd be really easy to work every single day in
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the month of June. So because you have camps and
9:40
official visits all weekend, so we take Wednesdays off.
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Nobody works on Wednesdays and usually Tuesday about 3:00.
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Right now they're looking for that message for me that says
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clear out of here, guys, you know, just so that when we come
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back, I mean Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we're good.
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You know we can be who we need to be, love.
10:01
Hearing that. Yep.
10:03
Yes, Sir. Yeah, I'm, I'll, I'll pivot it
10:07
this way because this is a little, this kind of goes into
10:10
some of the camaraderie stuff and the coaches personalities.
10:14
And I'm not sure if you've been asked this by any other
10:16
publication or podcast or anything you've been on.
10:19
Have you been gifted any Cheetah adorned apparel by Coach Jones?
10:27
Scary thing is, I think my wife has.
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I know this. We've gifted him some Cheetah
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apparel. There we go, There we go.
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I'll also say this, there's not one article of clothing in his
10:43
wardrobe that doesn't contain some type of cheetah print on
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it. Just leave it as that.
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It's either outward or it's lighting, right?
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It's somewhere in there. It's he's got to represent.
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I like that. We got a little bit of that
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cheetah, you know, love going on though.
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I mean everybody feels it a little bit.
11:00
So somebody will show up with a cheetah socks on or cheetah
11:03
shirt or you know, but when he shows up in a three piece
11:07
cheetah suit, that's when you know.
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I know it's about to be a good night.
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I mean, that's like, you know, you're going to national
11:15
championship. Game nice, but coach we as fans,
11:20
there's been a lot of uniform talk and I I know you don't you
11:24
you might not know a lot about the program up there with you
11:26
being the head man. So I was just going to say if
11:29
you did know anything about that and you want to talk about that,
11:32
we, we're, we're open to hear anything about any uniform.
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The thing I would tell you is this, you know, my roots, you
11:43
know, when I was here, you know what things looked like.
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Also know that I was at Penn State for nine years and you
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know what those units look like. And I think you have a sense of
11:55
kind of what I'm about and what I believe about this place.
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And, and you know, it, it's just it it was time to kind of, you
12:03
know, let's let's dive into it. And, and it was a cool exercise
12:07
to bring the former players on staff into a meeting.
12:11
And let's have a discussion about what what we would would
12:13
we like for the uniforms to look like?
12:15
What did you enjoy wearing? What did you hate seeing on
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your, you know, like, honestly? That's important too.
12:23
Just as important as what you like, what you don't like.
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Yeah. And, and then the next meeting,
12:28
the equipment staff and and the OPS staff, they literally had
12:31
all these PowerPoints with these different combinations.
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Do you like this one? Yeah, we like the top, not the
12:36
bottom. Not OK then.
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And they mixed and matched it. OK, So you like, well, no, we
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don't like that Shoot. I mean, it was like I was with
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my wife, you know, out at the mall.
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I mean, but we finally got to a pretty good place and well,
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it'll be exciting for everybody, I think when we when we roll
12:54
those out. Tally coach, I think Tally's
12:57
going to request. Can we get that PowerPoint at
12:59
some point so we can see all the combinations y'all had in mind?
13:05
I'm going to go this is kind of leading into the spring ball
13:07
conversation. We'll get him back in here in a
13:09
second. But I I was thinking about the
13:11
offense and this year. What unit had your attention the
13:17
most going into spring and why you?
13:21
Know, I think obviously the quarterback position, just you
13:27
know, how we evolved there. I think needing the O line to
13:35
improve as the year went on and and feeling good about that.
13:39
You know, there's a lot of tension on those guys.
13:43
We were excited about the receivers and that kind of
13:48
proved true for us. You know, we felt pretty good
13:50
about the group because year previous, you know, it was one
13:55
of the major concerns we had. So I think being able on the
14:01
defensive side of the ball to win more one-on-one battles.
14:04
We had to do that. That was a a real focus going
14:07
into the season. Are we going to be better, you
14:11
know, up front at doing that? And and you know, I say up front
14:14
and really the front 7, as much as we pressure it's it's one you
14:18
know, you can create one on ones, but then you got to win
14:22
them. You know, you got to win enough
14:23
of them to to make it count. So.
14:27
Yeah, I know when we had coach Price on earlier in the
14:31
offseason, he was like, you know, as as coach Barr was
14:35
getting to the the defensive call, he's like, I want, I want
14:37
to run man. Let's run man.
14:39
I want to get after the quarterback.
14:40
I want to be disruptive. And looks like, you know, you
14:43
guys kind of started moving that direction as as 23 went on.
14:46
So it's it's good to hear that, you know, with retooling some of
14:49
the interior defensive line, that kind of that mode is still
14:53
moving forward. And as you said last last time
14:56
you were on, you know, that the emphasis was wide receiver.
14:58
And seeing that come to fruition, I know was kind of big
15:02
for you and I'm sure kind of made you feel good about about
15:05
the direction that you took last offseason and then you know, the
15:08
game plan for this offseason. Yeah, absolutely.
15:11
I mean, I'm very proud of the work that Coach Minds has done.
15:16
I think, you know, it's good and bad, right?
15:18
I'm proud of it. But then that gets all this
15:20
attention from these other Staffs around the country, guys
15:23
trying to hire him. But he's done a great job not
15:28
just developing in that room, but do recruitment at the high
15:30
school level and the transfer portal, you know, So really
15:34
we're hitting on all cylinders right there and it shows.
15:37
It's the most competitive room we have on the football team.
15:41
Love hearing that telly you got back man.
15:46
Hey, can y'all hear me? I'm still freezing a little bit.
15:48
We can hear you now. Go with that question you had
15:50
before we before you got locked out.
15:54
Yeah, so I was going to ask. I said we've been talking about
15:56
clothes for a few minutes there and we ain't want to harp on it
16:00
too much, but we do want to know how can we get our hands on that
16:03
hunger, That hunger drills T-shirt.
16:05
You got that three seven question mark shirt.
16:08
How do we get our hands on that coach?
16:10
You like that one? Yeah, I like that one, man.
16:13
I like that one. That's a great one.
16:15
Imagine standing in line and that's all you see from
16:17
everybody in front of you, you know?
16:20
That I'm just saying if y'all put that out, let's.
16:23
Make a little money on that one. What size are you?
16:26
Talking about a 3X. All right, you got a 4X coming
16:31
your way. You the man, don't send Brown or
16:35
Curtis one. They don't deserve it.
16:40
It was that when when when y'all showed those shirts back in
16:42
February, it was like you said, I like that thing because y'all
16:46
line them up. Where do we want the question to
16:49
be? What do we want the question to
16:50
be? And let me ask this because you
16:53
talked a little bit about that defensive side.
16:55
Well, you lost a lot of good veteran players last year,
16:57
Norrell Pollard, Mario Kendricks, but you know, you
17:02
went back in to the portal, you and your staff.
17:05
Because I know it's not just you, it's everybody and Aeneas
17:09
peoples, Copeland and Gilliam. I mean, are those guys, did they
17:16
just fit in like hand in glove when they first came in?
17:20
Yeah. And it, you know, it's a credit
17:22
to the obviously the staff and our efforts in the recruitment
17:26
learning a lot. We knew a ton about Aeneas, a
17:29
ton about Kelvin, a ton about Kumari.
17:33
Just made too much sense and you can never have enough depth on
17:37
the D line. You can never have enough depth
17:39
to D tackle. And you know, to lose 3 good
17:43
players there that were experienced and gave us a lot of
17:46
value last year to be able to go out and get 3 great job, you
17:53
know, by the staff and great job by those kids, you know,
17:57
recognizing what they can, how they can impact our program.
18:01
And then, you know, then dicing on the cake, you go get Curtis
18:04
Perry, who's a swing guy, placing strong side in placing 3
18:08
technique. He's got three years left.
18:11
You know, you're just in a good shape situation.
18:13
Kamari Copeland has two years, Kelvin Gilliam has two years.
18:17
You know, Aeneas was all ACC last year.
18:21
So we've we've helped ourselves there.
18:23
You're always trying improve, right?
18:25
You always want to be better than you were.
18:27
And we had a pretty good group in there that did some good
18:29
things and we have a chance to have upgraded at that spot,
18:33
which is tough to say with the way Pollard and and Rio and
18:37
those guys played. Yeah, that I mean, it's really
18:40
impressive looking at at what you guys are do able to do with
18:42
that position in the offseason. I mean, and the way you talked
18:45
about it, the way they're kind of staggered, you know, you got,
18:48
you got Aeneas, who's all ACC got, you know, kind of a, a good
18:51
one year left for you. And then you got the other guys
18:53
that are kind of staggered there that can give you 2 to three
18:56
good years in the program. So that that's important too.
18:59
And yeah, I think, you know, when you think about this
19:02
offseason, a lot of it's kind of been about managing the hype
19:06
that's kind of behind the program, right?
19:07
Because the, you know, last year it was about, you know, building
19:11
it back. You know, we we were trying to
19:13
build something and now it's about kind of managing hype.
19:15
What's been your approach to keeping the team hungry and kind
19:19
of recalibrating their focus for bigger goals in 2024?
19:23
First of all, we have plenty of weaknesses, you know, and, and
19:26
we work like hell to identify them to to improve on them.
19:31
Not that we don't want to build on strengths.
19:33
We do that as well. But you know that we had a lot
19:36
of noise when we were one and three, a lot of chatter and we
19:39
had to talk about how it doesn't mean anything.
19:41
We know the team we can be and and so that doesn't change good
19:46
noise, bad noise. You know, it, it doesn't, it
19:50
doesn't impact who we are, what we need to do.
19:54
You know, we're just into the third phase of our offseason.
19:57
We we phase one's the winter phase Two's the spring phase
20:01
three's the summer phase four's pre season camp.
20:03
So we still have a ton of work in front of us that we have to
20:08
come out on top of to be the team that we can be.
20:11
Yeah. Definitely, definitely.
20:14
And coach, I'll, I'll pivot a little bit to this.
20:17
We've had Kyron on and we've had you on great kid.
20:20
You know Noah's family as well. And I know you've talked about
20:24
him, you had to talk about him a lot.
20:25
But the question I'll ask you is what part of his growth from
20:29
last year when, when you got him are you excited about now you?
20:34
Know he's really he's gained a tremendous amount of confidence,
20:39
rightfully so. And I think that the respect
20:45
level on this team is really high for Kyron, the way he
20:51
works, the way he approaches games, the way he handles
20:54
adversity. And then lastly, from a skill
20:57
set, just the ability to to throw into tight coverage and,
21:02
and, and be able to put that ball where our guys can catch it
21:05
and they can't. You know, when it's a tight
21:08
window or or there's good man coverage and he's improved a
21:12
bunch and that accuracy piece, so very proud of the offseason
21:16
he's had. Yeah, yeah.
21:18
And I'm going to switch gears just a little bit because I'm
21:21
actually stealing somebody else's question, I believe.
21:24
But I know you got Curtis Perry that's coming in there with me
21:28
being an Alabama, Alabama native and him being an Alabama kid.
21:33
No tongue about him, man. He comes from a a great high
21:36
school and their run that they had in high school, I think they
21:40
went 1415 and O and he may have ended his senior year with about
21:45
23 sacks, which was ridiculous. So again, new ton about him.
21:50
So just was going to ask you a little bit about kind of how
21:53
that came about or how you feel about him being able to pull him
21:56
into that defensive line room. Yeah, First of all, I have a lot
22:03
of relationships in Alabama for a variety of reasons.
22:08
Ton of high school coaches recruited down there a bunch
22:11
when I was at Louisiana Lafayette, when I was at
22:13
Memphis, when I was at Vanderbilt, when I was at Penn
22:17
State as the DC. And we won the Big 10 and had a
22:20
stellar unit. 3 starters on our defense were from the state of
22:24
Alabama. So we knew a lot about KP.
22:28
And you put that high school film on and it's easy to see how
22:32
we ended up in Alabama. He's explosive.
22:35
He's hard to block. He's got a ton of twitch, you
22:39
know, so and then then what's the challenge to get to know him
22:43
and to get to know his mom and to feel better about him fitting
22:46
our locker room. And now we weren't sure all the
22:49
way through the weekend till the end.
22:51
You know, I love asking him those tough questions.
22:53
Tell me about your relationship with Coach Saban.
22:56
You know, tell me, tell me why you leaving?
22:58
Tell me, tell me about the D line Coach what?
23:01
What are some things that you got to do better?
23:04
Let me ask you this, KP, how are you going to handle walking in a
23:07
brand new locker room as a transfer when you first walk in
23:11
that D line room? Like how are you going to handle
23:13
that? You know, are you going to be,
23:15
you know, cocky and arrogant? Are you going to be, you know,
23:18
have humility? Like what's it going to look?
23:19
You know, you just get into all that with those guys to make
23:22
sure they understand because they could be really talented
23:25
man, but they don't handle that transition and we got great kids
23:30
instead of guys like Fuga and these guys Kanay stiff arming
23:34
these guys because they coming in to compete for their job.
23:38
You know, they embrace them. It it makes our room better,
23:41
their talent and then the level of competition.
23:45
You know, everybody around here has done a great job of putting
23:48
the team first. That's awesome.
23:52
That is awesome to hear, Coach. It's awesome to hear that you
23:55
have you've created that culture where it's embracing.
23:59
It's not I don't want you here. It's we need you here and we're
24:03
going to be honest. We saw, you know, you see
24:06
reports out everywhere, but it seems like you and the staff
24:09
went very aggressive post spring portal with all the offers.
24:13
When do y'all start formulating that and how far ahead?
24:17
Is it in the window or is it one of those things it never stops?
24:22
Yeah, I say this. I mean, we're going to be
24:24
aggressive because at the same time we're hitting that portal
24:28
hard with offers. I'm meeting with each and every
24:32
member of our football team and you just don't know what
24:36
curveballs you're going to have to hit.
24:38
Was somebody that we're counting on going to walk in and leave
24:43
and take more money somewhere else?
24:46
You just, it was somebody going to leave, you know, because they
24:50
want to play more, they want to be a starter, but they're a very
24:55
important backup for us. So, you know, you have to be
24:58
aggressive to be able to fill needs if they show up.
25:01
So we're we're going to be aggressive with offers.
25:04
But we also knew, and we didn't have many spots unless attrition
25:09
occurred, it wasn't expected, which that didn't really happen.
25:12
So that's why there was only the, the, you know, the three
25:15
late ads. Let me ask this, just thinking
25:19
about the, the, the spring window of the portal, how much
25:22
harder is that window to kind of identify targets and make sure
25:27
that, you know, the guys that are on your roster, you know,
25:30
stay, stay at home versus that bowl season window where it's a
25:34
little bit little bit wider and you know, it's post season.
25:37
So there's a little bit more, I don't want to say more to pick
25:41
from, but I guess more options out there.
25:43
Yeah, there is. I mean, it's, you know, there's,
25:46
it's a little bit harder to navigate in December because
25:49
there's so many candidates. You know, the other piece for me
25:54
is you just have to be that much more careful when you're dealing
25:58
with guys that don't get to participate in spring practice.
26:03
That's that's key when these guys have to be able to come in
26:07
and learn it through the summer without pads on, you know, but
26:13
you know, and, and there's always decisions about hanging
26:17
on to a scholarship and is there a walk on on your team that's
26:21
deserving, you know, versus going out.
26:23
We don't want to be a group that that just takes a good, you
26:27
know, player out of the portal because he's he's a good player.
26:30
We want to feel needs out of the portal.
26:33
Otherwise, those scholarships are invested at the high school
26:36
level. That makes sense.
26:39
And I, and I love hearing that and you're thinking about, you
26:43
know, you're, you're always big on relationships.
26:45
I'm sure that's that's just the biggest, biggest piece of it is
26:48
making sure the fifth fits right and that you know, that
26:51
relationship is there where you know everyone is going to get
26:54
out of the the situation what they want to get out of it.
26:57
So I, I don't ever take for granted what our players have
27:00
been able to do. I mean, we have guys, we all
27:03
those guys return all that retention, guys that could have
27:08
gone in the NFL or gone somewhere else and made more
27:11
money. And I don't want to take that
27:14
for granted. I don't want to be greedy.
27:16
I don't want to push the envelope to where we lose that
27:20
from our team right now. Our guys have been super
27:23
unselfish and team oriented. And if you start making, you
27:28
know, kind of irrational decisions and, and, and you
27:31
start bringing in guys that don't belong in your locker
27:34
room, you're going to lose that trust.
27:36
You know you're going to lose that aspect of it.
27:40
Yeah, we're building that culture.
27:41
There's been guys that have spent time here on official
27:44
visits and at the end of the visit, as talented as they were,
27:48
we couldn't do it. You know, it just wasn't right
27:50
for us. Yeah, I mean, you know, culture
27:54
goes both ways and you know, you're building that that trust
27:58
in the locker room too. So being able to maintain that
28:00
while you're also trying to improve your roster, I'm sure
28:03
that's a that's a tough balancing act sometimes, but it
28:07
seems like you're you're doing pretty well thus far.
28:09
Let's pivot a little bit to another guy that that is kind of
28:13
a new ad here for the spring post spring Caleb Spencer,
28:17
Virginia Kidd returns from Miami.
28:21
You had 100 snaps or so last year, valuable special teams
28:24
reps and things like that and seems to be bringing that
28:27
position versatility that you talked about from a from the
28:30
defensive back position. Have you and Coach Marv kind of
28:34
landed on what room he's going to start at in fall camp?
28:37
Yeah, he's going to start out with at the star position, but
28:41
he's demonstrated already. I I think he'll have, you know,
28:45
a good opportunity to help us, you know, at will and maybe one
28:49
day at Mike. He's a he's a physical looking
28:53
kid. He's got some twitch to him.
28:56
Got a good build. I mean, he just, you know, you
29:00
know, and again, another guy that we knew a lot about, right,
29:03
a Richmond native that had gone somewhere just like CGI.
29:08
Hope the message getting is getting out there.
29:10
You don't have to go outside the state, you know, to get what you
29:15
want. I mean, these guys are coming
29:17
back home just like APR did. You know, you go off to a a
29:21
program that perception wise may offer you more, but you end up
29:26
finding success back here in the Commonwealth of Virginia Tech.
29:29
And, and that can be, you know, it's APR, it can be KG, it can
29:33
be, you know, all these guys will be Caleb Spencer.
29:36
These guys have been able to come back and have success.
29:40
Yeah, that's that's. That's something I can see you
29:42
continue to preach. And it also shows relationships
29:45
because you clearly, even though they're elsewhere, I can tell
29:49
your value in relationships with people that mean something to
29:52
them, which makes I'm sure the transition significantly easier.
29:56
And you had one more, and we don't think about it, but Colin
30:00
Shealey, who was all the way over at UCLA, he's actually a
30:04
Maryland kid, right in Tyler Bowen's home state.
30:07
How big was it? Not only was their relationship
30:11
with Tyler or maybe when he was at Kent State and how crucial is
30:15
it that helped bring him on, but how crucial is it having another
30:19
quarterback in that room? You know, Collins, a starter at
30:22
Kent State and had significant reps as a backup last year.
30:24
How big is that for that room? Yeah, he he fits what we were
30:29
looking for. I mean, we hit a home run.
30:33
When you're going out there trying to find a backup
30:34
quarterback and you can sign a guy like that, you know, he fits
30:38
our offense. He's a, he's a great young man.
30:42
He's 23 years old. He's regional.
30:45
He knows a ton about us. We knew a ton about him in high
30:48
school. We had coaches on staff at Kent
30:51
State. We had coaches on staff at UCLA,
30:55
you know, spent a a big long weekend with him and his family
30:59
and his girlfriend and really a good fit for us.
31:03
Excited about what he brings to the program.
31:05
There'll be a package for him that helps our offense.
31:08
It's it's somebody else that can do things with the ball in their
31:11
hands. Got got to love to hear that and
31:17
and also it's you guys like I feel like the whole staff
31:21
there's y'all know somebody on every staff and again, it's that
31:24
constant. That's what it is relationships,
31:27
finding someone who knows and to have that quick conversation.
31:29
I love hearing that. I tell you what I mean, you're
31:33
right. And part of it is that our staff
31:36
is approachable and genuine and friendly.
31:41
That's what was right for me. That's what was right for
31:43
Virginia Tech. And that, you know, that bleeds
31:46
out there. I mean, these guys are
31:47
relational guys. They got buddies everywhere.
31:51
Yeah. And I mean, we've, we've, yeah,
31:53
we've had some of the staff on obviously you last year and some
31:56
of the other guys. And that's the take away that I
31:59
have from every conversation I've had with your staff is that
32:02
they're genuine. They're people, people.
32:05
They, they, they love to talk, they love to get to know folks.
32:09
And they're just really approachable and down to earth.
32:12
And I think that resonates across the board.
32:16
Resonated at Hardywood with me and Brian.
32:18
You know, we talked to you a couple minutes.
32:19
We spent 15 minutes talked in the coach Brewer and coach just
32:22
chit chatting with them. It was it it it felt easy.
32:26
So I loved hearing that, yeah. You know, I, I appreciate you
32:31
saying that, Brian, that I mean, that's, that's who we are.
32:35
And that's been really impactful into the relationships with
32:39
these players, with this community, with the Letterman,
32:42
with the high school coaches. It's been at the core of of how
32:46
we're doing this. Yeah.
32:50
And, and, and it's definitely, you know, I think it's paying
32:52
dividends and, and I think everybody sees it so well done.
32:56
Yes, Sir, we're going to we're. Going to, we're going to flip it
32:59
back a little bit. Let's talk a little 2023 and
33:01
this is actually a, a question that our, our buddy Sheldon kind
33:04
of dropped in here. You wanted, wanted to get your,
33:06
your take on this. You know, a lot was made and you
33:09
already brought it up a little bit with the start with one and
33:11
three. From the outside, everybody
33:14
seemed like guys were, you know, even when the, the first few
33:17
games, the losses came, no one was finger pointing, no
33:20
infighting, none of that. Everyone had their heads on
33:22
straight and kind of worked to get better.
33:25
Did you notice that too? And how do you feel the group
33:27
responded collectively to that adversity?
33:30
Yeah, I tell you, it brought their brotherhood even closer
33:33
together. You know, rather than go this
33:35
way and and start blaming one another, they they did this and
33:40
that was critical. When I was getting over the
33:42
hump, they stayed together. They kept investing, you know,
33:47
we did a nice job of, of encouraging them, showing the
33:50
positives, talking about the positives.
33:53
This is the team we can be and we eliminate a few weaknesses, a
33:58
few mistakes here and there and, and this is going to look
34:00
different. And they just bought in and the
34:03
staff persevered and stayed, stayed the course and trusted
34:07
the process. And, you know, we were able to
34:09
turn the corner. How do you feel?
34:11
You feel like that's a reflection of the culture that
34:13
you that you built with the staff?
34:15
Or is that just something that you with the the mindset of the
34:20
this these players and those specific unit that that you're
34:23
working? With I, I think it starts with
34:24
the staff. You know, it's it's, it's what
34:27
these guys are made of. It's what they believe in.
34:31
I can't be in every room all the time.
34:33
I mean, these guys are trusted assistants that carry forth with
34:37
the messaging and the narrative and the values of the program,
34:42
you know, and, and it goes back to recruiting the right
34:45
families, the right young men that are looking for this.
34:51
They want accountability that you know, that they want, they
34:55
understand hard conversations, they want mentality.
34:57
They want, you know, the competitive environment, you
35:01
know all those things. Well, that's a big part of it,
35:04
right? It's identifying the right folks
35:06
for you. Well, well, coach, we know
35:10
Travis jumped in there. We know you're a busy.
35:12
Man, and you edit that out or is that going to be part of the
35:15
podcast? Tell Travis he's going to be
35:16
part of the podcast. Travis just trying to get some
35:18
airtime, years of all that airtime, but now he's kind of
35:23
scheme, he can't stand it. I thought, you know, you got to
35:25
tell Travis we're going to keep him in just because he's done,
35:28
he's done us so many good favors.
35:29
So we're going to keep him in there just so he gets that
35:31
FaceTime. But, but coach, we, we, we know
35:35
you're a busy man. We appreciate you taking, you
35:37
know, 30-40 minutes out of your day to sit with us, have a few
35:40
conversations, Tally, Brian, anything else you want to ask
35:43
before we? Let coach.
35:45
Yeah, I'm going to let Coach. Yeah, I'm going to let Coach get
35:48
out of here. I'm going to just say I know
35:49
he's got a bit of a homecoming headed back to Nashville.
35:53
That's about two hours away from my home, so I know you're going
35:56
to be all business. So I'll take care of the
35:57
partying for you. Y'all just get ready for the
36:00
game and I'll take care of everything else Coach.
36:03
Yeah. So you'll be there, Nashville.
36:05
Before so it's going, it's going to be a good time in Nashville
36:07
for sure. Definitely.
36:09
We appreciate you taking your coverage.
36:12
Really, Sir, thank you. That's what you do for.
36:14
The Hokies always Sir. Thank you and looking forward to
36:16
talking to you again sometime. Yes, Sir.
36:18
Awesome guys. Thank you.
36:20
Thank you. All right, So we will take a
36:23
quick break from Main Street Pharmacy and our digital
36:27
partners. I can probably save you a lot of
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money and I can take a lot better care of you.
36:33
That's pretty much it. My name is Jeremy Counts and I'm
36:36
a pharmacist. I own and operate Main Street
36:38
Pharmacy here in downtown Blacksburg.
36:40
My brother's a pharmacist, I'm a pharmacist, my uncle's a
36:42
pharmacist, my dad's a pharmacist.
36:44
I remember he would give me M and Ms. to count in little pill
36:47
counters. It's just something I've always
36:48
done and I'm just lucky that what I know so well is something
36:52
that I can do and feel good about it and get back to people.
36:56
Pharmacies are your frontline defense.
36:58
Pharmacy's job is to make sure you're getting optimal care for
37:01
the lowest price possible. Also, we take the pressure off
37:04
of emergency rooms. I'll tell people immediately
37:06
when they need to go to the doctor, or I'll tell them if
37:08
they just need a cream over the counter.
37:10
If there's something that isn't commercially available, if it's
37:13
something that's not available in a certain strength or a
37:15
certain form or anything like that, we'll make it.
37:18
Tailor made medications. Some of those options save
37:20
people a lot of money. What motivates me?
37:22
I get to take care of people and live in Blacksburg.
37:24
That's all neat. As we take a quick break, we'd
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37:48
Now back to the episode. All righty, so we are back and
37:53
before we talk about the interview and a couple things
37:55
that caught our ears, I'm going I want to throw this one up at
38:00
CJ put this out here. This is this is pretty cool to
38:02
see about coach Pryor right here when he retired from the
38:07
military sending something like that.
38:09
I mean, we, we, we've, we've talked to him now twice and that
38:13
legitimately seems, you know, like who he is, right, as far as
38:19
it goes. Again, we said it on the on the
38:22
interview, like genuine, down to earth.
38:24
The whole staff's like that, but it starts with the head whistle.
38:28
He's creating that culture and it's trickling down to everybody
38:30
else. And it's not just, you know,
38:35
them feeding off his energy, but also he picked the right people
38:37
to be around too. So I mean, that's that's huge.
38:41
And you know, we got a little sentimental one there.
38:43
Let's get a little funny one here.
38:49
Riley Oh man, right. I already know what to say to
38:54
that. I.
38:55
Mean that that is the highest order right there.
38:57
I mean it, it doesn't get, I mean he put Prince on there so
39:00
oh God, it's Prince and then everybody else.
39:04
So, you know, if he's up there in that category, that's saying
39:07
something. Absolutely.
39:08
You ain't gonna throw MJ in now. It's Prince, then MJ, and then
39:12
everybody else. Like, how about that?
39:13
How about that? How about this?
39:14
We didn't got Andretti fired up tonight, man.
39:19
Are you ready for some football? We're ready for some football
39:21
8080 days or so and I'm going to do this one just because that's
39:28
the first thing I want to talk about because that one was a
39:31
late AD and we got more than I thought we were going to get out
39:34
of coach on that one. So now, now y'all heard it from
39:39
the head man of how this thing was framed.
39:41
A we talked when this thing wrapped yesterday, the first
39:44
thing we three said each other. That was pretty cool.
39:47
He was bringing in the guys on the staff who played there and
39:51
said what do y'all think that's like again, that's it's like
39:57
like that's awesome. Like that's the first thing you
39:59
do because you think back currently on the staff right
40:01
now, JC Pearson, mid 90s guys, then you got ADB, then you've
40:09
got. ADB wore the, in my opinion, the
40:12
best uniforms we've ever had. Find a picture of it.
40:17
You talking about the ones with the?
40:18
With the piping. With the piping, yeah.
40:22
So what are you tally? We're going to I'm going to
40:24
pitch it to you is your question.
40:26
What what do we, what do you think we're getting, man?
40:27
It's. Going to be a traditional look,
40:30
you know what I'm saying? The only thing that makes me a
40:31
little bit nervous is because, like you said, you know my
40:34
roots. It's probably not going to be a
40:37
lot of variants, you know what I'm saying?
40:42
You may get a alternate jersey, you may not, you know what I'm
40:44
saying? That's what makes me a little
40:45
bit nervous. But we got to get rid of them
40:48
shoulder stripes. So I mean, if we go with a
40:51
traditional jersey and it looks clean, it looks good.
40:53
I'm fine with that. It's just got to look good.
40:56
Like if you're going to stick with it, then you got to make it
40:58
look good. So I think they got, I think
41:00
they'll get it right though. Give me some orange in there
41:03
somewhere. Yeah, we need an orange.
41:06
I, I want to, I want to, I know we're going to get traditional,
41:08
but I want unique traditional. I don't want like cookie cutter
41:12
Nike. What at like main template stuff
41:15
that you've been seeing like, you know, I know Baylor got like
41:18
some of that stuff and a couple other school.
41:20
Like I don't want the cookie cutter type stuff.
41:23
I want something that is definitely either distinctly
41:26
throwback or something new that's kind of a combination of
41:31
some of those classic looks we've had.
41:33
I don't want to just get a cookie cutter like you know,
41:35
first tier Nike template and and roll with it.
41:39
Well, it's, it doesn't seem like it was that way, especially with
41:43
the PowerPoint. I mean, and if they're sitting
41:45
there, what combinations work well together?
41:48
I mean, there, there were obviously we know in the last
41:51
few years there's been an orange.
41:52
There was an orange and I believe the 90s, I can't
41:55
remember which game it is, but there was an orange in the 90s
41:58
as well. So, but I, I do think the
42:02
stripes are gone. And I and I and Tally, we said
42:06
it. I don't know if we said it on
42:08
the air, but we said if you go with this, the classic maroon, I
42:13
know we all like the one thing that is good.
42:15
Now, I do like the hokey stone numbering on the thing.
42:19
I like that. But as long as Tally what we say
42:24
on the arms. Baby yeah, if they if they put
42:26
the orange numbers on now on the on the maroon jersey.
42:29
Taliban 10. Taliban 10.
42:31
Off. I'll be all right with that, but
42:33
but I got no confidence in Nike. That's my problem.
42:39
Brian talks about, you know, no cookie cutter and stuff like
42:42
this and it's fucking Nike, you know what I'm saying?
42:46
Like what have they done for us? That's what I'm thinking about
42:49
so. Ain't done much lately, man, I
42:50
thought I'll give you that one. And you know, when we when we
42:53
think about it, we also saw last week, I think it was last week
42:57
or early this week the Mike Vick put out that might get some
43:03
orange on the sleeves. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool.
43:06
That'd be pretty cool. Well.
43:07
I I don't know if you meant the numbers or if you meant like
43:10
kind of that that tie rod look that he wore a few times and in.
43:15
The the only reason I think it'd be cool is because I just ain't
43:17
seen it, you know what I'm saying?
43:18
Like give me something I kind of want something like nobody else
43:21
has, you know what I mean? Like something just unique, not
43:25
nothing crazy. Don't give me no Maryland
43:26
bullshit. Like I don't need no flag on the
43:29
helmet looking like AFL team or nothing like that.
43:33
I'm just saying give me something unique.
43:35
Though I think, I think what we can see is like you picture and
43:37
you start snapshotting stuff. We have enough classic vibes
43:41
from different eras that if you if you mesh them in a certain
43:46
way and you put like the the the orange sleeves, But if you had
43:50
the outlining with the hokey stone sevens with the right
43:53
shape, like you can bring certain elements together where
43:57
and if they do, it would be it looks classic, but it's got
44:01
enough fresh vibes to be like like this hits like this hits.
44:05
It's it's not only it's it's classic, but these little
44:08
elements make it like you say, Tally.
44:10
It's got to be a little different.
44:12
So hopefully this is before August so tally can get his
44:18
order and be wearing it in Nashville soaking brine as well.
44:22
So let let's roll along. And you know, we got a few
44:24
things we that caught our ear about the players.
44:27
And I want to start with Curtis Perry first, because Tally, you
44:32
know, you, you and coach had a little conversation about him
44:35
back and forth. But the thing that caught my ear
44:39
and as soon as he said it, like I'm like, what'd he say?
44:42
I had to go back and listen to a second time.
44:44
When he mentioned strong side defensive end.
44:48
He said that his words, not mine, not me speculating, not us
44:52
speculating. With the with the loss of CJ
44:56
McCray for pretty much the summer and probably a lot of
45:00
fall camp, to have somebody like Perry stature tally you, you saw
45:07
that kid play. Obviously you've got download on
45:09
him. That could be a massive upgrade
45:13
for the defensive end depth man because there's three good
45:16
players there already. You had him.
45:20
That's what it is, man. It's just all about depth, you
45:22
know what I'm saying? It's about competition, it's
45:23
about depth. What's always held us back.
45:26
One person goes down and you it's a significant drop off
45:31
after that person goes down. So it seems like now we're
45:34
bringing in people that are, you know, depth pieces, but also
45:38
like these people could stand up, you know, could step up and
45:41
play a a big role. You know, like even even when we
45:45
go, you know, not to just jump forward, but even when he we
45:49
talk about Spencer, you know, he's had significant snaps at
45:53
Miami. You know what I mean?
45:54
That's a power 5 school, power four school, whatever you want
45:57
to call it nowadays. But you know, seeing the field
46:00
at those schools or, or or even going against, you know, that
46:04
kind of competition in practice and being able to, you know,
46:07
have some kind of success. Again, we see what APR done.
46:11
I ain't saying everybody's going to come in and do exactly what
46:14
he did, but sometimes you just need a shot, you know what I'm
46:17
saying? So it'll be interesting, man.
46:20
I'm excited about it. I'm excited to see the kids
46:23
compete this year. But also I'm excited just to
46:29
for, I'm excited for somebody just put up the game.
46:33
What's the game when it's coming out the 19th?
46:37
Yeah. We ready, Robbie.
46:40
Let's get on it. Fuck yeah.
46:43
I think Robbie's making a special purchase just for that
46:45
game. So he.
46:46
Is he? Is Ron?
46:47
What did you think about the Curtis Perry comments from
46:49
coach? Man, you know, I think the
46:53
biggest thing for me is that he's always talking about, you
46:59
know, that position flexibility and, you know, having a guy that
47:03
can play outside, play inside, you know, play a little strong
47:06
side DN play some 3 technique, always going to be a guy that
47:12
can get after the passer. So I think, you know, regardless
47:15
of where you're lining them up, you're going to get some type of
47:17
production, especially in those second and third down
47:19
situations. So having another guy that you
47:22
can put in that rotation, you know, you're going to want to
47:25
go, you know, at least 2 lines deep, sometimes 3 lines deep.
47:30
The more you can kind of mix and match guys at those different
47:33
positions, the better. So getting getting a guy that is
47:37
has some position flexibility there and creates a lot more
47:42
depth like Tally said on the defensive line, that that's
47:45
nothing but good things, nothing.
47:46
But good things. And the and the go back to the
47:49
to the defensive line too. I mean, it's all about matchups.
47:53
Like it don't matter. It does matter what you do this
47:57
year. But I'm saying before any game
47:59
is played, every team's going to put on the tape and say we got
48:04
to block him, We can't double. We going to have to try to
48:08
double him. So that gives somebody else an
48:11
opportunity to, you know, the flash.
48:14
So sometimes it's it's a collective unit, you know what
48:17
I'm saying? Having somebody who has a big
48:19
year like APR, you got it. That's what we've been missing.
48:22
We've been having, we haven't had somebody who teams have to
48:25
game playing for, you know what I'm saying?
48:28
Especially like on defensive line.
48:30
Well, hold on, it's two down. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
48:33
So, yeah. Well, so now you got more than
48:37
one. So who do you double?
48:39
You know what I'm saying? So some of these, yeah, some of
48:42
these guys who are going to be plugged in are going to reap
48:46
some benefits because they just may be faster or better than
48:49
that man in front of them. And they don't have an
48:50
opportunity to be schemed against because people's might
48:54
be getting schemed against. So APR might be schemed against.
48:57
So it's just seeing Burgos come off that end.
49:00
I don't know too many people who are going just you know what I'm
49:03
saying, man, handle him one-on-one.
49:06
You know, if if he's just told just go get the ball, you know
49:09
what I'm saying? So.
49:11
And the other part about that is even if they say, well, you
49:14
know, he's shown some flash, let's keep the running back in,
49:17
let's keep the tight end in. And the next thing you know,
49:20
you're rushing for you dropping 7 on the back end and it's like
49:24
it's a seven on three-game because you playing Max protect
49:27
because you're worried about everybody up front.
49:29
It's like like, OK, y'all have to do something different
49:35
because we got 7 people back there.
49:37
Three people ain't gonna be able to get uncovered quick.
49:40
So yeah, the other thing Coach seemed pretty jacked about and
49:43
actually, and now that he said it is the interior defensive
49:47
line, the way it's set up really the next 3-4 years, you know,
49:51
people's this year. Copeland and KG still got two
49:55
years of eligibility. Here we go like that's a room
49:59
like I I know we were worried about it now because of the
50:02
moves they made in every since it's like.
50:06
You upgrade that, you upgrade that line.
50:08
Upgraded it and hoveled it like it ain't like it ain't like 3-1
50:12
year rentals right? Yeah, because I mean, we, we, we
50:16
got rid of guys like guys that were moving on.
50:18
It was all three guys at one time.
50:20
And what you brought in now you got those staggered over the
50:24
next three cycles. And I think that's going to be
50:26
huge and that's going to pay a lot of dividends because it
50:28
helps backfill that position as well.
50:32
When it comes to high school recruiting, you don't have to
50:35
worry about, you know, I think and that's the problem we got
50:39
with, I don't want to talk about the old regime too much, but the
50:41
problem with the old regime a lot of times was that we would
50:43
load up on one position in one cycle and then we kind of do
50:48
that again with another position in the next cycle.
50:50
And that's that's when he end up with, you know, wide receivers,
50:55
transfer wide receivers transferring out in, you know,
50:57
12 scholarship running backs like that, that that's how those
51:02
things happen. And then it also is how, you
51:04
know, we needed, you know, a COVID year and a couple medical
51:09
red shirts so that we actually had a defensive line last year,
51:13
right. And so, you know, things like
51:16
that are are how you get into that situation and things that
51:19
Coach Pry and Coach Price have done the last two off seasons is
51:23
how you get yourself out of it. 100% on that last piece that
51:32
again, I had not read anywhere. If y'all had read somewhere or
51:36
if it was out there and I just missed it in the last few in the
51:40
last month or so. Spencer, he's seeing as a
51:45
linebacker starting at star. Might work at will, might work
51:49
at might. I, I knew he was doing, he was
51:53
working in at linebacker some at Miami.
51:56
Like you saw some ribs there up and back.
51:59
But I think everybody, I think kind of assumed we were looking
52:03
at it as safety #1 because it was a need #2 because coming out
52:06
of high school, that was his position, right?
52:08
So, but I can, I can see where he would do that.
52:13
And I can also see where if he's playing that star, you could
52:16
also use him at potentially some nickel as well and give
52:20
yourself, you know, a situation where you don't necessarily have
52:23
to do a ton of substitutions when you get into those third
52:27
down situations. Yeah.
52:29
True mini what, 6 to 200 pounds, 210 lbs so mean good size, good
52:36
frame. But again, it goes right back to
52:40
competition because when you look at that star position and
52:43
you look at the athletes that they have that now, I mean, you
52:47
don't have to compete for a plan.
52:48
You don't have to compete for some playing time.
52:50
So that's what you want though, you know what I'm saying?
52:53
Like you got to have that and you got to have some versatility
52:56
in all these places because it's football.
52:58
Somebody's going to have to take a playoffs, somebody's going to
53:01
roll an ankle, you know what I'm saying?
53:03
So as many as many athletes as you can put on the team that can
53:08
help contribute the better. Yeah.
53:11
And I think we had talked about it when we had, you know, some
53:14
folks on after the spring that you know, I think our concern
53:18
was, you know, I think front end level.
53:22
You know, we were we were not concerned about the front end
53:24
level play of the safeties. We were concerned about the
53:26
depth when we locked. We looked at some of the other
53:29
linebacker position, particularly Will.
53:32
I think we were worried about who's going to be, you know, one
53:36
of those rotational pieces. So you know, this is going to, I
53:39
think help with that between him being the star, potentially
53:42
working at will some. So that's when we're going to
53:45
add to that depth and add to the guys that they can put out there
53:49
and and potentially be, you know, counted on for significant
53:52
snaps in the game. Well, it tells you 2 probably, I
53:56
think maybe they what they saw with Caleb Woodson and Gabe
53:59
inside too, right? Even though he mentioned he's
54:02
going to get some run at them at Mike and Will.
54:04
But he there were two guys playing star that those two
54:07
young guys we know Woodson can play.
54:09
He showed it last year and by all accounts of what we saw and
54:13
heard from practice, Gabe looked good at * but he also went
54:17
inside and played some will. So is this one of those things
54:20
where coach is looking, saying I see Caleb and I see Gabe inside,
54:27
Chianti's gone next year. I could see Caleb being Mike
54:30
before it's all said and done. So that's I think that's where
54:35
it's kind of trending is that you're going to kind of see
54:38
what's and continue to slide further inside into that mic
54:43
role. You're going to probably see
54:44
Gabe once he gets a little bit more weight, be kind of be Kelly
54:48
Lawson's kind of shadow. And because he's got a very
54:50
similar frame, just a, you know, not quite as as as long, but
54:56
very similar frame. I think you can see him sliding
54:58
in at will and then, you know, we'll see what happens with
55:02
Caleb Spencer and where he ends up in the in the shuffle there.
55:07
Absolutely anything else that caught y'all ears, eyes while we
55:13
were talking? Because this is the second time
55:16
we got with the coach and y'all, we aren't prompting the answers.
55:21
We we have the questions we want to ask.
55:23
He answers them the way we want to answer them.
55:26
But he he threw some shit down like like, whoa, I again, I
55:30
don't, he just told the three guys.
55:34
Yeah, well, I know what caught my ear.
55:36
What? Was that?
55:38
He going to send me one of them motherfucking shirts out of my
55:43
ear. So, so when y'all send me one of
55:46
them shirts on, I don't want nobody to be in your feelings
55:50
because I'm up in there. I ain't talking about y'all.
55:54
I'm just talking about in the in the Twitterverse.
55:56
Everybody out there in the world.
55:58
If you see me. Entirely walking with one of
56:00
them there's. No, I'm part of the staff.
56:02
I'm up in there. Let me get one of them shirts,
56:06
Coach. Oh my gosh.
56:08
We'll, we'll see if that comes to fruition.
56:10
He's got your mailing address now, so.
56:11
Yeah, I'm trying to get that thing, man.
56:13
Oh, that, that that would be absolutely sick.
56:15
Sick. All right, well, we got just a
56:17
few more things to hit here before we before we call it a
56:21
night in an early night for us, by the way, an early night.
56:25
But one thing I just wanted to talk about real quick.
56:27
I know you all saw it announced a couple weeks ago.
56:30
Tyrod Dwayne Brown going to the Hokie Hall of Fame, I mean.
56:34
Well deserved. Well deserved, those two guys,
56:38
absolute studs. You know, Dwayne, the first
56:42
round pick still playing 16 years in right here from
56:46
Richmond and Tyrod, I mean, three time champion in the ACC,
56:52
the ACC player of the year, his senior year.
56:56
It it, it, it just Harkins you back to again, We we, we keep
57:00
saying like guys like that, that's how you get back.
57:06
That's how you get back. You got to have guys like that.
57:08
And those guys were leaders. Dwayne Brown came in as a tight
57:12
end and converted, which I still make the joke to Brian, which
57:17
Kurt Newsom then thought he could make every single pipe in.
57:20
He brought in a offensive lineman.
57:22
It'd be like, what's this guy? He's 62220.
57:27
He got a game. 88 lbs need to be thinking about it.
57:30
We can do it. Though some of them he got there
57:34
though. So I mean, I'm I'm not going,
57:35
you know, I'm not going to give him too much of a hard time.
57:38
But like, like you said, man. Dwayne Brown, Tyrod Taylor,
57:42
absolute legends of that era, so well deserved across the board
57:46
for both of them. And obviously both of them
57:48
still, you know, productive in the league.
57:50
So I think that's that's a credit to their longevity.
57:53
And yeah, I think with with tie Rod, obviously everybody knows
57:58
how we feel about tie rod and I know a lot of Hokey nation feels
58:01
the same way. Just a special talent, special
58:05
person. So couldn't happen to a better
58:08
person. Yeah.
58:10
I'm going to tell you this, man, I ain't going to get real.
58:12
You know, I ain't going to get real deep on it tonight because
58:15
we ain't had a whole bunch of banter on Twitter about it
58:19
lately. But when we talk about the the
58:24
stars don't matter, do matter scenario all the time.
58:28
I'm going to tell you something when you go back and you look at
58:32
a tape or tie rod playing quarterback.
58:35
That's why you want a 5 star. That's what that's what I ain't
58:41
saying. You got to get a whole team full
58:42
of them. But we got to, I think now that
58:48
Pry and his his staff have been recruiting pretty much at a high
58:51
level from what I see. You know, people's calm down a
58:56
lot on what we said, but like we was making everybody's got to be
59:00
Cam Chancellor, Everybody's got to be Dwayne Brown.
59:03
You can have some Cams and you can have some.
59:05
Well, first of all, you can't. You ain't going to have none of
59:07
them like they were themselves, you know what I'm saying?
59:10
But I'm just saying you got to get some players that's sure
59:15
hits like Tyrod, you know what I'm saying?
59:18
And Tyrod doing Tyrod stuff is what made that team go.
59:21
Now they had a lot of pieces on there, but every now and then
59:25
you got to have that player that you just like David Wilson, you
59:29
know what I'm saying? Like this is a can't miss like I
59:32
did. This is what we need.
59:34
Like that's what we've missed for a long time.
59:36
And I was, I just thought about it because I went back and seen
59:39
some some tie rod highlights and I'm like, who else?
59:43
Who else could make that play? Nobody.
59:45
You know what I'm saying? Who, who, who's going to make
59:47
that so? And he was.
59:50
Always doing good like he was. He was so good at protecting the
59:53
balls and just making plays while, you know, not, not not
59:57
turning the over, not not doing anything outside of the
1:00:01
framework of what was right for that given play.
1:00:04
I think that was. That was what was always great
1:00:07
about him is that he never got himself in trouble trying to be
1:00:10
too much of A hero. But he was just such a gamer.
1:00:12
He was making plays all over the place.
1:00:15
Yeah. And, and, and that's happening
1:00:17
slowly. I mean, I think last year to
1:00:19
think about it like Caleb Woodson, I know we've mentioned
1:00:21
him 3 * 4 Times Now, Caleb, because Caleb was right at that
1:00:24
four-star level. It's like he's going to be a
1:00:26
good player. He comes right in.
1:00:28
He's looking good his first year and then I take that back.
1:00:33
He looked absolutely yoked on the field.
1:00:35
He won't even in school yet, right?
1:00:37
Then he comes in, he plays significant reps, plays defense,
1:00:41
plays special teams, make some plays, and then he looks more
1:00:45
yoked this year and he's playing even at a higher level in a
1:00:48
spring ball. And that's what it is.
1:00:50
You start looking at it Tally. I know we don't always look at
1:00:52
stars, but it's like, look at that kid right at a four-star
1:00:55
party playing good. And the reason I said that is
1:00:59
because we started to, you know, when you start to look at the
1:01:02
roster, you see some of those high level kids, you know what
1:01:06
I'm saying, coming in at wide receiver or, you know, at
1:01:10
quarterback, Like even when you look at Kyron, like Kyron with
1:01:14
no scrub. That's why I keep telling people
1:01:16
like, if you go back, Kyron was a high level player coming out
1:01:20
of high school. And so us seeing him do the
1:01:23
things he's doing is like, to me, once you see somebody, you
1:01:27
know, on film, you're like, all right, this he just got it.
1:01:31
Like that's what is what it is. So yeah, they do get some of
1:01:34
those ratings wrong. But when you see somebody and
1:01:37
they just got it, it's like, OK, that's that's what we've been
1:01:39
missing. So and and you.
1:01:41
And you mentioned that well what happened just to I think it was
1:01:44
a few weeks ago they came out 247 always does the blue chip
1:01:48
thing. Doug Bowen wrote it text over
1:01:51
10% blue chips which. That's crazy.
1:01:55
Yeah. That's crazy compared to what we
1:01:57
came from the war criminal Justin.
1:02:02
Matter of fact, let's talk about this for a minute.
1:02:05
Where is Justin? Where is Justin?
1:02:08
Sid Sid with 10 Sid with eight figures in his bank.
1:02:12
He is. Still spending his buyout man.
1:02:15
So I don't know, man, they used to, you know how they used to
1:02:17
have on the old movies and stuff where people were selling the
1:02:20
snake, snake oil and like, you'll go back to get your money
1:02:23
back and they'll have like the little cart that has the
1:02:26
propellers on it that it'll take off.
1:02:27
That's what he did. Like he, he took up shop and he
1:02:32
was gone and nobody's heard from him.
1:02:35
I don't know, man, it was the, it was the, you know what it was
1:02:38
like the movie inside, man. It was the greatest crime ever
1:02:40
committed. Damn that dude.
1:02:44
Justin. Justin Aloysius Fuente.
1:02:49
Aloysius man and, and let's talk about it though, because you,
1:02:54
you talked about, you know, the, you know, stars versus no stars
1:02:58
and all this stuff. And I feel like, I think we kind
1:03:01
of went through, I say we collect the, I feel like the
1:03:04
collective fan base kind of went through a period where we were
1:03:06
like, I, I got to try to explain what's going on here because
1:03:11
something ain't right. But the only thing I can do is
1:03:14
hope that every damn three star we're pulling in is Cam
1:03:17
Chancellor. Yeah.
1:03:20
Well, the thing The thing is, is like, you know what I'm saying?
1:03:23
Yeah, a little bit of success and stuff like that, and we
1:03:26
ain't got to go all back through it.
1:03:27
But it's like for me, like it was a learning lesson for me.
1:03:31
So I'm paying attention to my guys.
1:03:34
That's like boots on the ground, you know, now you got some crazy
1:03:38
people that be talking some crazy ass shit.
1:03:40
But like people that I trust, you know what I'm saying?
1:03:43
Even during that time they was like, you know, I got to give,
1:03:45
you know, people like Don V shout outs, you know, being, you
1:03:48
know, from the area and say, well, I got coaches here and
1:03:51
this is what they saying. And I'm like, man, this like
1:03:54
some of the stores just was so unbelievable.
1:03:55
I was like, it's no way that he said that or he done that.
1:04:00
Yeah, he was doing it. He was doing it so.
1:04:03
Shake your damn head all right real quick y'all.
1:04:06
We did land a recruit this week, Sheldon Robinson, 88, ranked
1:04:13
A24762185 from Woodbury Forest where we have never had any
1:04:21
recruiting success. So that's a, that's a UVA
1:04:24
pipeline, baby. Man, just going there, taking
1:04:26
the lunch money. I just want to let Tally know
1:04:29
this is a big this is a big check for Tally.
1:04:32
Patton, Narduzzi and Pitt did offer this safety.
1:04:36
So that mean he that mean he can play some fucking defense
1:04:40
because Narduzzi be he'd be grabbing them boys from
1:04:43
everywhere and they'd be hitting Narduzzi be running that
1:04:47
defense. I had to give him his prop man
1:04:49
there. You go see there, there's
1:04:50
certain people, there's certain teams that if we get an offer on
1:04:54
with my two guys here, if I just mentioned that offer, it's like,
1:04:57
Nope, good. I don't care.
1:04:59
I like this right there. What I like, what I liked about
1:05:03
that, which I haven't done a whole bunch of like video gazing
1:05:09
or anything like that, but what I did like about that kid is
1:05:11
like he posted himself in hokey stuff a long time ago.
1:05:17
So again, it goes back to the people.
1:05:20
This boots on the ground that says a lot of these kids love
1:05:23
tech, man. A lot of these kids want to, you
1:05:25
know, go to Virginia Tech, but they just weren't made as if
1:05:29
they were wanted there. You know, they just, they
1:05:32
weren't made to feel like they was wanted there.
1:05:33
So it's good to see that the the coaching staff has, you know,
1:05:38
kind of put a priority on that and, and started going and
1:05:41
recruiting kids who who want to play their regional kids.
1:05:44
So that's awesome. Did you get a chance to see any
1:05:48
tape run? I, I looked, I didn't really see
1:05:50
a whole lot out there, but I'm going to continue looking.
1:05:53
But I I don't really have any any takeaways at this point.
1:05:58
Other than 6 to 190 lbs. Yeah, the the all, all the
1:06:01
measurables look good. All the measurables look good.
1:06:05
Kid ran some track as well and I don't know what this means but
1:06:11
sub 11 and 100 meter dash is that good for a 6 foot 290 LB
1:06:18
guy I mean. That's pretty good.
1:06:20
Yeah, that's pretty good. We sub eleven yeah all right,
1:06:23
let's 1097 so. Let me.
1:06:26
I mean short, short of, you know, under 10 is elite, so.
1:06:29
Yeah, I'm 10's elite. Where's where's 11 for?
1:06:31
Where's under 11 for a football player?
1:06:33
So yeah, anything else floating y'all's boat?
1:06:36
Y'all want to mention we already got some stuff off Tally's chest
1:06:38
so that that's good before he gets down to the Caribbean and
1:06:41
starts having his drinks. Yeah, man, yeah, Tally.
1:06:45
What do you call it? The the same they made for you?
1:06:48
You sent it a few weeks ago to us.
1:06:49
Oh, shoot me. Well, they just, they just was
1:06:51
calling it the tally. That was it.
1:06:53
Tally. Yup, I don't know what it was
1:06:55
but I'm going to see if they can recreate it.
1:06:58
Damn. Right I'm.
1:06:59
Going to come back I ain't man listen I'm going I'm going to be
1:07:02
out there like Rick Ross. I ain't going to have no shirt
1:07:03
on. I'm going to be living the life
1:07:06
buddy enjoying myself, so if we get some recruits, y'all write
1:07:11
them down somebody post blue face for me I'll see it when I
1:07:15
get back we. Got you, We got you.
1:07:17
We got you all right. If nothing else has broken
1:07:20
tonight, that is going to wrap up this episode of the Boundary
1:07:24
Corner Podcast brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts in
1:07:31
Blacksburg, VA at the Main Street Pharmacy.
1:07:35
I am Curtis Wilson. Ryan Siegler.
1:07:37
Jonathan Talley. Visit boundarycornervt.com to
1:07:42
listen to all the episodes, check the merchandise, shop out
1:07:45
all that fun stuff. Don't forget to follow us on
1:07:47
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all I ain't said this
1:07:51
in a while. I forgot how to say it y'all.
1:07:54
We're on all the major podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Apple podcasts.
1:07:58
To listen to us there, check out our buddy Jason Long website
1:08:02
jasonlongmusic.com. You can see where he's playing
1:08:05
down in the New River Valley. Also all of his new music and
1:08:08
all that fun stuff. Boys, it's it's summer, we
1:08:13
aren't as getting together as often, but I love talking to you
1:08:17
Tally. Enjoy your vacay.
1:08:19
See you. I'll see you next week, man.
1:08:21
Yes, Sir, Poker. Night you enjoy yours too, Ted,
1:08:23
that Bucky's up when you go there.
1:08:25
Will do buddy. And as always, fellas, let's go.
1:08:28
Okie. The.