1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Barry Thompson goes more in detail about his coaching style: June 23rd, 10:25am

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

An individualized approach to coachingAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to One-on-One with DP, brought to you by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul, on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticket FM.com. Welcome back to one-on-one, Barry Thompson, the coach sitting in. Folks of Ambition Electric making it happen with Barry Thompson. Barry, I was telling Mark the story that, again, being under bad leadership can take good talent and turn it into bad football. and then outside of that we're driving folks and we're driving folks and driving folks and again on teams that won two and eight two and eight produced 17 military officers because of the stuff done away from the game in spite of bad coaching then I remember calling you when we got into basketball season and I called Barry and I said you aren't going to believe what I just saw and I tried to explain it to him and Barry kind of grasp, okay, it's a little different to them.

Some of the same kids who struggled at football. We get them for basketball in a pretty prominent program, but the program won district titles, but they never won region or state. And they walk out of the gym, and Barry Thompson

text me, he goes, what is that? What is going on? Sorry to interrupt you. There was one kid in particular, but I saw stand out all this personality, and I go, who is that? And he said, that's the tight end on the football. I go, no way.

Like, that's the kid that we would whisper to, like I would whisper, because the lead coaches, they were negative. They weren't, they were disconnected, and I would whisper to them just to get them through the football season because they recognized that they weren't being let. And so the leadership that Barry and I were responsible for was getting them through the season on to greater,

like just to get them through the season. And I would whisper, you're greater than the people who are leading you. Never forget that. Like I want you to live a greater life than mine. I want you to go higher. I want you to do more. And these are, like, think about it.

That I're starting left tackle and our starting tight end both went to Air Force Academy. And the tight end was the best player in the state. And we said that it was our job to lead them to greater than where they were, to keep them true to the game. and in their passion for it. And it happened. You left that program because the players recognized that they weren't being led by the head guy.

And when you moved along, I don't know, a weird thing happened. You go to two schools and they win three state titles. Yeah. Like it's just like it's the craziness. And, you know, the kids are going to Penn and they're going to Virginia and they're going to Alabama and they're going to all these places.

And you go, that's what we're here for is to guide them to the better life by making better personal decisions and not accepting less in their situation and circumstance. Right. And even on those fields sometimes, you'll, the difference is sometimes you'll run into the same, you'll run into something that's not right. But the difference is on those fields, the ones you talk about the winning. The coaches are open enough that when they hear something that's right, they go, okay.

And there's no stubborn to it. Yep. You know, I remember I was at another school, and there was this one situation. And most fields are probably, I probably should have been fired because it was, it wasn't, it was, I was correct. But I did it completely wrong. So we're on an offense just to give an example of how it happens in the good environments I've been in.

This is a team that was rolling through the state and kind of a lower ESPN 100 schedule. Like it wouldn't have taken this squad another season to be like on ESPN, that August game. That's where this was kind of headed. And so they're scoring about 45 points a game. And the head coach, came, and they were two

platoon, and the head coach came and his defensive guy, he came down to the offensive end, and he said, I got this great idea, and, you know, and believe me, it involved taking the ball out of the hand of the best passer in the state, and

passing the ball to the best receiver in the state, and passing the ball to the second best receiver in the state. And that was a former that seemed all wrong to me. So he told it to the offensive coordinator overheard it, and when the offensive coordinator turned, they both

turned and walked away, the coordinator coming to me, I confronted, I stood right there in the coordinator's space, but we're not doing that. And he looked at me, I said, until he comes back and tells me why I want to take the ball out of the best hands of the state

and not pass to the best catching the state, I said, we're not to spend a single rep on that. And the offensive coordinator, who was related to the head coach, looked at me, we paused for a second, and we didn't spend a second on it.

Now, knowing that their conversations that can take place after practice, to the head coach's credit, he never came back at me. But that's the difference on being on fields like that, because it was the right thing. It wasn't needed. It wasn't necessary, right?

And a coach can speak up and say, that's not right, and we're not doing it. right and and you know instead of like hey I'm the boss and you do what I say blah blah blah you know you know what I mean like I'm the head coach and I've been on those fields too one of my favorite one of my favorite

Barry Thompson stories we're on the we're on the bad program and what happened was so the head coach had been a part of a successful program as an assistant and he got the head coach coaching job and he brought along a defensive assistant

coach and cord but he you know he he's a certain kind of guy um he's the prototypical coach football coach you see in movies right he's that dude um kind of basic hard nose a couple of things about him is that like the dude would show of practice with like holes in the shoes and he's supposed to lead us like you you you want kids who are going to air force academies to be followed by a guy who doesn't have the discipline to take care of his shoes and do that sort of stuff but one day we're we're we're this is a scrimmage. And Barry and I were, I was the receivers coach.

He was the quarterback's coach. And we're going through our progressions of how we want things done. And then one of the assistants who was the best friend of the head coach came over and said, I've been doing this 20 years. We don't do that here. And I looked at him. And then I looked at Barry. And the look on Barry's face was basically the thing where,

somebody just peed in your pool. And I don't mean from the pool. I mean standing on the on the edge of the pool. And I did what I do, which was I walked over to that coach and gave him 40 verbal lashes

and walked away. Barry never moved. He was stilled by this. And he goes, what just happened? And I said that was the identification of who we were as coaches and as a program. And Barry and I swore that we would never, ever do what that coach did. And so from that point forward, we coached differently.

The players saw it. The players appreciated it. And as Tomlin said, he runs to coaching. Were players run to coaching too? They do. Absolutely. They do. Right?

Absolutely. Yes. And that's true. That's true in the university level. That's true in the Power 5 level. That in the Big 10, players run to coaches. Guys who are going to coach them. Not guys who are going to placate them.

Because those dudes will get you fired. Those placate dudes will get you fired. It's the coaches that get run to where players who are coachable, they want to be led, they want to be directed. those players are there. Is that still a statement of truth as far as you watching things from 10,000 feet? Yeah, it is. And I guess it speaks a little bit about the intention from a business standpoint.

I was talking to somebody about this field. It was a guy who is beginning to train quarterbacks, and he came up and worked on the camps, and he's been effusive with his praise and so forth, and he was asking me about just my approach. was describing his approach. I said, well, listen, it's real simple with me. I said, when somebody, and I'll take this to the broader point, when in this day and age, when somebody chooses, out of all the options that everybody has to do, chooses to spend their time and the resources

with me, I believe I have an obligation, first and foremost, to make sure that they feel that that time is valuable. And the way that I can deliver that value is I've got to find a way to move them forward enough. We use that phrase a lot. So the fact that I'm teaching them how to throw the football play position is it's really just a byproduct. And it's how I'm doing it, right?

And so when that's done, then all of a sudden you're getting results and players can coming back year after year after year. And like you said, in our area, they have a lot of different choices of where they can go. They don't have to come train with me. They can go somewhere else. They're in college. They have buddies around. They can go do this or go do that.

But they always find a time to come to the field. Come to the field. Come to the field. And yes, they run towards that coaching because when they do show up the field, you know, they will be coached. Like, I don't, you know, about three weeks ago, a couple guys were getting lazy about showing up on time, you know what I mean? And I let them know that, you know, you don't do that over there. Don't do it here to me. I'm a coach.

You know, so, yeah, the players just run to it because they want to get better. One of the things I think that's sometimes misunderstood with players is when they show up for a season, right, they come out for basketball, they're coming out for football. coming out for football, whatever it is. They're there for a reason. They're not just there because they didn't have anything else to do that day. So there's a certain level of commitment that's already there, right, that by them showing up. Yeah.

So then it becomes, okay, so now what am I going to do with you while you're here? Am I going to dog cuss you and tell you what you can't do? Or I'm going to show you what your value is to this thing that we're trying to do, right? I mean, that's a simple proposition. Which way is this going to go? Right? You know, and I just seems to me that the more winning part is to find a way to find their value to what's going on. And that's why I say with a lot of these good coaches, successful coaches,

and I think Coach Tomlin referred to it, you talked about managing the collective. I'd like to hear him talk about a lot more about managing men, but you can see that reflected in that interview. of the men that he has managed, like they're, you know, Ryan's reverence for him. And if you, any of these good coaches that are successful over time, go talk to their players. They, they're bright, they're intelligent,

and they revere the coach because of how he managed him, how he managed their development, how he managed him in the tough times, and how he managed him in the good times, right? That structure, right? that thing that he constantly gave them those guideposts were always true and authentic to them. And when they step outside that, they realize that it's not always like that in the world, but they've been infected with enough of it that they go on and do quality things and their quality people.

And it's, you know, you and I and guys who talk about coaches this way have been blessed with one, two, three people, four or five people who, have been provided that those two things I believe in you and let you know hey this is the right way that's the wrong way and I'm not going to let you do the wrong way because you're too good for that

repeat that please like people miss it and I don't care what you have to take me DP because well this is the thing the two things the two things the two things I believe in you yeah right

and here's the right way and the wrong way And I think too much of you to allow you to do something wrong, right? You're better than this. Go this way. Right. And that's when the, quote, discipline comes in. The discipline isn't just to get you to snap like a, you know, Pavlov's dog. The discipline is to show you that you, the discipline is to continue on this path,

to do these things this way. That's the discipline. And when you veer from it, I'm going to hold you accountable. And I'm going to do my best. get you back on track. I'm going to show you how good that path is, how many bright, sunny things are in that direction.

Right? That's the discipline. And, you know, and it's not the same for everybody, right? You know, the different people, and so you have to sometimes engage them differently to get them to go on the same path. You know, talk about, you know, that one school.

When I had that, that, that, that, that JV team, that the biggest guy on the team, right? I had to go a different path to talk with him. I talked with him in a way that I didn't talk with anybody on the team. Yes, the circumstances different than anybody on the team, but it was all an effort to get him to be a part of the team, you know what I mean? Because that's what he needed. He needed to be a part of that structure and those rules and that.

Those boundaries. First and foremost, you get his priorities in order. Right? You know. The son of an educator. The son of an educator. You know, six foot seven big, you know, we won, you won points every day getting off the bus with this kid. Yeah.

But he had not made the decision to be his best version. And he needed that around him. It's funny too, Barry. We'll throw it to break. It's funny. Today's draft day. And people talk about, and the whole Tomlin thing for me was, very appropriate for today in that when people talk about all the scouting reports and all the things that are happening with these players

but the two things that you talked about that there is an organization and a boss who is today is going to tell these kids I believe in you and that I will guide you with right and wrong if you're willing to follow and I tell you to a player in their pre-draft interviews the decision to draft or not draft fell directly on whether the coach and the organization felt like this young person could come to their organization and follow the boundary to greater. It's just that important. They're all talented, but are they willing to be coached for the greater good of themselves and the organization? We're going to find out a lot of those stories tonight. When people drop, it means the person thought. they knew more than the people who was going to guide him.

And that's a big deal in this thing. Barry will toward the break. We'll come back more. We'll finish up one-on-one. We'll find out what Barry's eating or what he's cooking. We'll do that next. Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to One-on-One-on-One with DP on 937, the Ticket and the Ticketfm.com.