1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Barry Thompson (Fairfax Football Academy): May 5th, 10am

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

What led you to your first college visit?Transfer portal, experience is the important thingAre we losing focus when we ask 17 year olds to make life changing decisionsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the couple Chevrolet GMC Studios. Here is your host, Derek Pearson, presented by Beatrice Bakery, on 93-7 The Ticket and The Ticket FM.com. Let's get to it. Let's get to it on Thursday. One-on-one. On Thursday, brought to you by Beatrice Baker.

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It's on the Twitter. Twitter. The Twitter. So let's bring him in appropriately. The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along.

Swaggering boisterously. His face is weather-beaten. He wears a hooded sash with a silver hat about his head and a bristling black mustache. He growls as he storms the country, a villain big and bold. And the trees all shake and quiver and quake as he robs them of their gold. The autumn wind is a raider pillaging just for fun. He'll knock you round and upside down and laugh when he's left. Conquered and won.

Bring him in. Football coach. Life coach. Best friend, pal, dad. QB. Barry Thompson. What up, D.P.?

What's happening? Barry Thompson. What's up, bro? What's happening? Just got off the field. I'm sitting here in the parking lot. Ready to talk to you for a while. It's, um,

appreciate it. Because you get to help us reset the GPS to reset the direction of thought and conversation. We're going to get into some silliness, so right off the bat. Slurpees or icies or snow cones? No, D.P. You know where we're from. Right. Right.

It's slurpees, man. I mean, clurpees in the summer. It was so funny. We had a hot, kind of like a summer day. Spring is still fighting, you know, but we had a kind of summer like. day. And the first thing I did, I said, man, I need to go 7-11. Like, it's a thing, right? And I thought immediately like, man, you know what, I'd love to have

a slurpy machine at the station. But then I thought that might not be a good idea. Well, it depends on whether you make it a margarita machine and a... Because it would, right? Well, the other thing is, I mean, practically speaking, there's some maintenance involved with those machines. My dad owned a roller rink. He had the icing machine. And, you know, there's some maintenance involved.

So if you get it, make sure he got the maintenance coverage. Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it, right? That we need to be. Now, you bring up your dad in the roller skating ring. Do you remember where you, what's the facility that you skated at here in Lincoln? In Lincoln, it was a Persian auditorium. The headquarters for kind of, it was a big amateur sport, so the ROSRA, I think, and then something called USAC. I think they were both located in Lincoln.

And then the idea, because at the time in, you know, 60s, 70s, in early 80s, there was an amateur sport. There was this attempt to kind of hold the national championships toward the center of the U.S. So the time I was skating, all the national championships either took place at Persian Auditorium in Lincoln or Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas. How did you do here? You know, I think, look, I did well. I forget we're actually won the national championship.

So in my career of skating, I skated both on the artistic side, which was the figure skating, the dance and the pairs and all that stuff. I played hockey when I was little, and then I also skated on the speed side. My first two championships were on the speed skating side, and I'll have to look up whether it was Persian or whether it was World Rogers. Finished first one year and then moved up a class in second. And then after that, my figure skating career took over,

and then right as I was graduating high school, I placed third in what they call the junior men's international competition, which was one level below the seniors. And the significance was at the senior level, that third place finish would have qualified me for a world championship team. But at that point, because I'd been doing everything up into 12th grade, at that point, football took over. You had in the college.

I was still a knucklehead. So I went to college. I wrestled and played football for the first year. And after that first year of wrestling, I said, you know what? I don't love wrestling like that. So finally in my career, for the first time in college, I was down to one sport. I defeated in eight different sports coming up. And I always quiz people.

They can never get it right. They usually miss the gymnastics because I did gymnastics at one point. But, yeah, finally when I got into, after my freshman year, I was finally down to one sport, which was football. It's just time. Well, the first college stop, you think as you travel around the country that you're a pretty good feel for what a place is. And a lot of the recruiting decision or the decision on where to go to school comes from a visit. What was what led you to your first stop, your first collegiate stop?

well I don't remember what order they were in but I remember so I was a tweener and so there were some division one schools that were considering me I remember I took an official visit to Virginia Tech that that Virginia Tech by the way for all your listeners it's not the top 10 Virginia Tech it was a different program at that time but it was still you know Division One program so tech was one of them I think of all places I used my official to Johns Hopkins and then one to Davidson. So two Division I schools, one Division III. And didn't really know what I was going to do. And had used up my officials, I really wanted to get into Brown for some reason.

I've been put on the wait list at Dartmouth. And for Brown, for me, it was a school that I just wanted to go to and I didn't get in. and one day, Mr. Pasadhi, he called me to the office. I met a coach and coached says, I want you to speak to this guy. So he started talking, we went to Washington Lee High School, and he starts talking to me about Washington University. And I was like, well, whatever, but I've used up my three visits. And he says, well, we have this thing called the general fund.

and it's a fund that targets 50 people out of the class that they want to come in. And it's just like an official recruiting visit. They pay your way there and meals and all that stuff. So I made them pay. I could have driven three hours, but I drove the National Airport, called a plane down the Roanoke, had them pick me up and drive me to left. Right. And it was on that visit that I just got this vibe from the campus

and the guys that were playing football. The team wasn't very good. But I just got this vibe that everybody there kind of cared about what they were doing. And to go back for your listeners, I had come through a high school experience, which is pretty good, but not quite as good as it could have been because there was a little bit of apathy with some of the football players. They didn't like it the way I liked it.

As many guys didn't like it as well as I thought we felt short. And one of the things when I was looking at Davidson and considered that versus why. Washington Lee was they had a bunch of guys that were recruited just like I was. Like he was recruited by Florida State. He was that David. Recruited by another name. He was that David.

So I'm like, okay, that's cool, but why are you here? And they couldn't really answer that. And I go, I'm not getting in with a bunch of guys that don't know why you're not. Right. So I chose Washington. Lee, which seems like an odd choice in today's environment where everything was, you know, everything is divisible, right? but I wanted to be at a place where academics were important

and being good at football was important. That was very attractive. And I made the right choice for a couple of reasons. I made the right choice because that team that wasn't any good went on my sophomore year to win a conference championship, first they'd won since 1960-something. And after my sophomore year, my AD called me because there was another AD call around looking for D.

defensive backs and he says, I've got a guy here who can play. And so I contemplated leaving Washington League at that point for Division I. But then I said to myself, well, if I was Division one kind of, you know, in the beginning that school is taking a look at me, now I'm here going into my third year and now Division I's calling me. Evidently, I'm good enough to play Division one. So why don't I just stay here with the guys who are doing with? And if I want to do anything after, you know, I obviously have the talent to do it. So I'm glad I stayed. And the value of these things and the value of that choice, although I was always proud of it,

it really hit me probably about 10 years ago when the teammates started connecting up again, you know. And it was amazing, you know, what they were doing and that I was part of this family. I had been a part of the family all along. I just didn't know it. And so when those coaches talk about four years for 40, it's actually true if it's good. And I wouldn't change the thing. It was a great experience.

What makes it a great experience? Because that's the part that when transfer portal... The people. Yeah, when transfer portal conversations happen, they miss, like, people gloss over the fact that the experience is the important thing, right? Yeah, the experience and the journey is the thing. You know, I'll try to draw an analogy.

There's a good piece of wisdom that says that you shouldn't do things ever for just because of money, and you shouldn't double negative here. Should never not do something just because of money. So to draw the analogy, to make an analogous to what I was doing, you know, I didn't do anything just because of Division I, right? And I shouldn't not have moved just because of Division I. I stayed because that school and that environment had what I wanted, which is I wanted good academics and I wanted guys that were serious about football.

So it was easy for me to say that this is what I value versus, you know, running around saying that I was Division I didn't worry about the competition, I'd always in the summer, you know, had the chance because of our area to run across, you know, Eric Sievers or some guys going to Notre Dame, you know, that was that was not hard for me to extract. So for me, it was the experience. And ultimately, I was too young to understand it. But, you know, I had some wisdom injected into me that it was the right thing to do.

And it had to do with the people. You had coaches that cared and they were characters. Matter of fact, I'm getting together. together with three of the buddies from that class Saturday. They just reached out, kind of like us, hadn't talked in the year, and said, hey, we're getting together. If you can come on, I'm like, yeah, I can make it work. And there's places in this country.

If I was to go to Dallas right now, there's at least three people I can call, like right away, and we're like, hey, why aren't you at the house right now? And these are guys I haven't seen since I was school. and it's just the way it is. I can go to Mass, and I know there's a couple of people I can call there. I go down to Delta, Mississippi, and John McKee will say, come on over, and, you know, it's just the way that it is. So the value of it is tremendous.

Like, that's the good stuff. We're talking to Barry Thompson. And, Coach, this thing with Transfer Portal and the like, just I want to remind folks, I mean, the difference between who people are at 17. versus when they are at 19 versus when they are at 21. The value of student athletes to themselves, to the community, to the universities, and to the programs changes with the young people we're talking about.

We're asking people to make decisions at 17 that commit them for the next four years, not knowing who you're going to be or what you're going to become, and then commit to that for four years as though you're fully formed at 17 years old. and that you also have the resources to make that kind of decision that will affect the next 40 years of your life. Are we losing focus?

Well, you know, there's two sides to the realm. One is the general kind of looking at it from the outside and, you know, what's causing all this and there's all that conversation. But I want to give you, and so we can all have that conversation in there. You know, the coaches make the money, the players have changed, and, you know, their commodities. That's another whole conversation. But let me give you one that maybe young people should consider,

and this comes from me coaching quarterback. The quarterback position, they're trying to become one. And all the other positions on the field, if you think about there's multiple chances for you to get on the field. There's a rotation of running back sometimes. There's definitely a line rotation on both sides of the ball. There's multiple line backers, and if you switch schemes,

and you can substitute situationally and multiple defensive backs and packages that can go in, plus special teams, you know, kickers. There's even kickers, right? You can have a punter, you know, long snappers, right, first short snaps, all multiple opportunities. The quarterback is just one. And so the other thing I want to bring to this

is people jumping in out of the portal is there is a value to stand where you are and fighting your behind off to earn what you want. There's a value to that. Right? And some of that value, whether it's worth it to you,

has a lot to do with the environment that you're in. You're in. Right? So I've had two quarterbacks there that, you know, and that they're getting close to getting their times on the field. But they've had to fight through, right? You know, this kind of working without, knowing where the light, if there was light at the end of the tunnel.

But now they're literally both a snap away and certainly a year away from being Vigas. And they have become different young men through that process. They have become better quarterbacks to that process. And they are fully capable now of taking the keys to the car. Now, hit the rewind machine. if those two had kind of looked ahead and made some assumptions about whether they're going to play the next minute or so, and they checked out and went to different schools,

I'm not sure that they would be the young men that they are now, and I'm not sure that they would be as close as they are to maybe playing after college. So there's a lot more to consider than just am I going to play? right because at some point in your life and this is what we're talking about football the best thing about football is always that it's more than just football at some point your life's going to fight through some crap and if it's a case of you're just looking for the easy way out I don't know that there's a lot of value on that so you got to combine the two and make a judgment yeah because the other end of the spectrum and And there are several places in between the extremes. But the other end of the spectrum is where you can change your life. Yeah, right. Like we're talking about the very nature versus nurture,

where making a decision about where you play ball can help your family, your community, and your life going forward as well. You're exactly right. And let me dovetail. The ability, these two guys, the reason that they've been able to make the decision to stay and fight, is because their environment welcomes. It's not like they're all holding hands. It's still a cold, you know, in one case, right?

You know, it's still a cold big business because he's a Big Ten quarterback, right? It's still everything that goes with that program. But there's enough of that environment, enough of what's being preached and practiced, that at that tipping point, he said, yeah, I'm a stay, right? And on the other hand, smaller school, but SCS program, but there's enough of everything else that he likes about the environment, the school, his major, the place where he is, it'll stay in flight. And the other thing, the third thing, so we have the general conversation, the specific conversation I'm giving, the last component of it, I really think D.P. is that both of these guys are doing this for a bigger reason than themselves. You have to have a bigger, much larger reason than just yourself in order to fight through these things.

Otherwise, you just wind up doing things for money, or you wind up doing things just because I want to play, right? Or I don't like a coach, you know, or I chose wrong and I don't like this. town, right? Yeah. This idea, you know, it was popular a couple years ago, know your why. But you have to understand why are you doing this? Like, what is it for? You know, why are you going to wake up that day and put yourself through this rigorous

schedule? One, because you love it. But even when you love things, it can get tough, right? So then why would you keep doing? Where's your patience coming from? for your patience to come from because it's something really important. I'll quit talking a second. But, you know, imagine the husband and wife.

They love each other. There's going to be times over the years where they don't like each other, you know what I mean? But what makes them both kind of get through that period? Well, they're together for a much larger reason. Typically a family. Or it can be typically for their relationship. They value the relationship. more than they value their own individual emotions.

And their relationship has value to them. But, yeah, if you're going to fight your adversity, you better have a big reason as to why you're doing. Yeah, I think that it's missed often that friction is required for greatness to happen. Oh, absolutely. Like, it just, like, pressure and friction have to happen. And it doesn't mean a specific type of friction or pressure, but it is required.

like something has to move you and make you uncomfortable, whether it's your place and station in life, whether it's the community that you're in, maybe it's the future, maybe it's you're running from the past. But whatever that thing is, it's required to move you. And I was asked to be a project in a book,

and I want to ask you about this when we come back from break, but I'll give you a couple of minutes to think about it. We were asked about the mindset, the mindset of winning. Yeah. And what that means. And as I pondered it, of course, you and I have been several of those situations, but I want to ask you when we come back from break, the mindset of winning and what it means to you. Yes.

We'll do that when we come back. I'll do a tease. It's 3D. That's a good start. We'll be right back with Barry Thompson here on the ticket. Download our app by searching 93.7 the ticket in your app store. You're listening to one-on-one with you. DP on 937 the ticket and the ticketfm.com.