What's happened is all recruiting has changed. By the time you were ready to offer scholarships, the University of Texas was already done (recruiting). Georgia was done. Florida was done. All of the big schools were done. We had to change our program and our philosophy. |
When coach Bryant called me, I really could only catch every third word. He was hard to understand, especially on the telephone, because of his accent. |
When you haven't played, you can't afford to miss any time. He needs to be out there. |
When you're 17 years old, you're just thinking about girls. |
Will we get them? The percentages won't be high. But you have to let them know you want them. We're showing them we have a strong interest. |
With his ability we're going to look at him at both spots. We haven't done anything yet, but just watching him last year I think he can help us at both places. |
You don't want to recruit a guy who has to change two, three planes to get here. You can get on a plane in Chicago and get here (directly). You can be in Dallas or Houston and fly right here. That's a different recruiting than asking a player from Pennsylvania. He has to stop in Chicago and change planes. You don't recruit Pennsylvania. You don't recruit to Tidewater Beach because the kid from Virginia has to fly to Atlanta first. But the kid from Atlanta can fly non-stop. I look for cities where it's a non-stop flight. |
You have to be ready for anything. Working hard is the one thing you can control. |
You make your biggest improvement your second year and I think we're going to make a leap. |
You miss a week, you go to the back of the bus. He didn't look like how he did when he left. Everybody is ahead of him. I'm ahead of him. You can't miss a week and not be able to run and then try to be where you were. It's not going to happen. The best thing is he's very conscientious. I didn't say unconscious. But he's about one-third as good as he normally is. |
You've got to stop their weapons and they have weapons everywhere. You have to have all weapons accounted for. I think we're ready to go. |