1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Coach Ron Brown (Director of Player Support & Outreach at Nebraska) - March 1st, 2025

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

Coach Ron Brown (Director of Player Support & Outreach at Nebraska) - March 1st, 2025Advertising 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 heart of Lincoln America, a 93-7-a-ticket and the ticketfm.com. Here is your host, Derek Pearson, brought you by Canopy Street Market. Boom. In your face on a Saturday in Lincoln, Nebraska, appreciate you hanging out here on 93-7 the ticket. grateful. And it's a beautiful morning. Crisp, crisp is what my grandmother would call it. 402, 464, 5685 is the, start our hand-me and text line. If you want to be a part of what we're doing, be a part of the conversation, you can. Hit us with the what's up. How you doing, busing,

coach, good morning, whatever you want to say. And we will include you in the conversation. You can also follow us live on the video stream, it's Facebook, YouTube, X, and Allo, Channel 9 61. And you probably should. He is a walking medical miracle. He is kind of a North Star for how we're supposed to take care of ourselves. And it's humbling to sit next to this gentleman, you know, several times a week because I have to do better. I have to do better. He is the legend. Coach Ron Brown. Coach, how you doing this morning? I'm good, but you know, you got to look below sea level. And the C level is S-E-E level, right? You know, my toenails hurt.

I'm sitting here, man, it's 68 years old. Everything hurts. Isn't that just the way, like, he just go, listen, you know, you try to tell people each day is a blessing and to try to look at it that way specifically so that I go into that day refreshed and refreshed. today is 22,862.22-862. That's how many sunrises, sunsets, opportunities, blessings I have in my life, chances to get better, chances to get smarter, to meet new people, to learn new information,

learn new lessons, and honor new blessings. So I keep track of that each day. This is the only 22-862 I'm ever going to get. All right. So let me ask you a question. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. How many times? in those 22,000 plus days as the sun really risen. Each and everyone. Amen. Each and every. Each and everyone, it's another thing.

I have a shirt. I used to say that to my players, that no matter what stresses you carried into your debt, no matter what friction you encounter, no matter what thing you've given worry to, no matter what thing that you had doubts about, nothing, not one thing has ever defeated you. You're undefeated. If we're able to have this conversation, you are undefeated, you are blessed, and you are good, go and do good. Like it's always,

and the players, it was like, if you're struggling, you're struggling, it's okay to struggle. That's right. It's okay to struggle. Embrace the struggle. We talk about the friction, and we say that friction happens in sports, sometimes we'll call it chaos. And it's another thing that, you know, basketball speak or football with my receivers that when friction happens, slow down. And friction ceases to exist. If you just pause and then use that as leverage to advance forward and up from wherever you are. Yeah, I like that. Right?

Like don't let, listen, there are people. that they talk about, man, I'm hustling, I'm grinded. Don't, no, no, don't grind. Crush. Grinding means you, you've allowed friction to hold you in a certain place and speed. And it is in the crushing that you start to advance and you can move forward and up. Yeah. And I've heard the Navy SEALs say this all the time.

You don't rise to the occasion. You fall back on your training. And I think there's, you know, one of the great things that I know my dad did growing up, was the training of you just don't get your own way. And you're not going to sit around this house. It's not going to be just about your feelings. There are love demands that you rise above just your needs and you move into the world of other people.

So anyhow, I've always loved that attitude. I haven't always accepted it. I've had my many, many, many moments of selfishness. But I do believe that that is an accurate statement. we don't fall back. We fall back on our training. We don't rise to the occasion. Well, we push that everything that you love requires action.

It requires action. And every action requires love. The two are so finitely connected that in every great moment of your life and in our existence, love and action met and got busy. No doubt. It's the thing, right? And you say, don't fall back. Hey man. Pause.

What is the friction? What's it keeping you from doing? What are you trying to do? And now what do you know to do? What do you know to do? Yeah, I agree with that. I think love does create initiation. And that's true of whether you're coaching or whether you're taking care of your family,

whatever it is that you're doing. But I know if I truly say that I love somebody, I'm going to create some level of initiation. to exemplify to be a doer of that love. Yeah, it's required. Like, literally, I can say that I love a thing. I can say that, you know what, I love football. I love football.

But I have to show. I have to be active in it. Tell players all the time, don't tell me, you know, it's that thing you get from parents, but he loves the game. Yeah, but is he active in loving the game? Is he doing the work when nobody's looking, right? When I'm not, when Coach Brown isn't there,

is he loving the game at the same level as the people he's competing against? Yeah. It's always that line to parents. Listen, Johnny and Teddy, both of them love football. One of them is actively loving it a little bit more. And here's how. Yeah. You know that Coach Kay's story about Kobe Bryant,

you and I have shared this before, but about him saying that, look, man, if we're going to win the Olympic gold medal, we got to hit standstill three point jump shots, we've got to hit our free throws. And Kobe Bryant was the only guy on that U.S. Olympic team, according to Coach Kay, that stayed after every single day

and took a thousand standstill three point jump shots every day on his own. And he say, well, that's grueling. But see, you don't run through a brick wall for someone or something unless you love it. You don't do it out of hate. You don't do it out of revenge. You don't do it out of, you know, look at me. you do it out of love for something that exceeds you to that level. And so that's,

I always thought that was a great metaphor, great speech, reminder of, you know, not only basketball, but in everything you do. It's constant that in those great spaces, and again,

love without action, you can't be great. You can be good. Love is good. Love is good. Being active is good. It's to be great, they have to be done together.

And just, And it has to be consistent. It has to be consistent. From the text line, we have a question for you, Coach. It says, what was the separating factor when recruiting all-star running backs that you did? And that's a part of our conversation today is we're going to go to the professor, Professor Brown's recruiting master's class and break down some things on what this thing that is. And if you're a parent and you have a young person that's going through,

this process, get a pad and pet. If you're an athlete and you have question, get a pad and pet. Because today I want to, in this hour, I want to take you through some of these things that Coach Brown has been through. Now, let's start with running backs, since that's the, that's the text that we have. What are you looking for? What are the things that separate those that you choose to be a part of your squad and those that you do not? Well, I just want to go back. back, you know, even before whatever position that it was that we were recruiting and so forth, when I first started in the early 1980s in the Ivy League school that I played at and then eventually coached at, you know, we didn't have athletic scholarships to give in the Ivy League.

We had to go out all over the country because we had to recruit nationally to find not only kids who were good enough to play at that level, but also smart. enough in terms of the classroom stuff. And so I had to do a lot of research. And so I had to develop some habits that I didn't normally have DP. You know, I'm just thinking, oh, boy, what do I do now? I don't know what to do with it. They've asked me, I'm like a 10-year-old kid. They've given me the keys of the car to drive in the Indy 500. I'm seeing right. Go. I don't know. Hey, hey, Ryan. Ready? Wave the flag. Go. What direction? Go where they're going. I'm in my mid-20s and I'm barely older than, barely older than a lot of

kids that I'm recruiting. Yeah. You know, let me, let me give you a few thoughts that I had. Okay. Over the years, first of all, like later on, when I had children, I had my oldest daughter was being recruited, not in sports, but in acting and musical production and, you know, dancing and singing and all of that. Well, it's a little different than college football.

You don't have all these coaches circling around and calling her every night and all that kind of stuff. But the first thing I wanted to know, D.P., was not how are they recruiting her, how are they treating her? Who is she to them? In other words, I'm looking for somebody to look at her, not just as a recruit, but actually as a whole person. So that was the first thing on my list when I went out and recruited was, boy, I mean, did these kids and as mom and dad and the people surrounding the young man know that I care about him? And how do I care about them? I mean, I really don't know him yet.

How can I say, oh, I love you, you, this, that. You know what? I got to figure out a way how to get to know this kid. So I made a pact with myself that every single day I was going to be writing letter after letter after letter. And I know this was a little before the, you know, the phones and all that, the texting and the call. But you know what? We were allowed calling, but I wrote handwritten letters. I wrote at least 100 handwritten notes to every kid I was recruited.

So every single day, FedEx was up there at the university. And I was, whether it was at Brown University or whether it was at University of Nebraska, they were coming and getting letters from me to dish out. And I was sending letters not only to the kid, but mom and dad and some of the other people, the coach and so forth. But the handwritten letters, there's something about a handwritten letter. even today in today's day and age of technology, when you have to literally look at the person

that had to write things on that envelope, they have a return address, you have to open that envelope, somebody is written down, it might be one page, it might be eight pages, I don't know, but there was something that went into that.

And that's what I did every single day. And you know, when you have a FedEx letter that goes out, you want it there overnight. So almost every day, a lot of these kids were getting a letter from me to their family in some way or some form. Where I was getting to learn about them

and they were getting to respond to me as well. The next thing that I thought was really important we've already talked about today is what's below SEE level. I was recruiting a young man named Mike Brown years later when I was here. Mike was a great safety out of Arizona. And, you know, there were over 100 scholarship offers for him.

But I had to figure out how do I connect mom and dad to this equation. So he had a little bit of a difficult family situation. His mom and dad were divorced, and they were both remarried. Mom and her new husband and Mike lived in Arizona, but dad and his new wife and his little brother lived in Florida. So when you're recruiting, and you, you know, a lot of times a staff might just say, well, he's in Arizona, so just make sure you get there a lot, which I did. I was out there every week to see that young man, but somehow, some way, I had to get to dad because Mike had told me, and I saw it below SEE level, that his dad was really important, even though he lived with his mom.

And so I had to figure out ways to get to Arizona and Florida in the same week so that dad would be updated with Nebraska football just like mom would. And that was extra work. But again, that comes from, wow, this is really important to this kid. At the end of the day, we ended up getting Mike Brown. And usually the way the system worked, the rules worked, is when you saw the kid that day, let's say I went to see Mike out in Arizona on Thursday, I had to see mom, dad, or any other relative on the same day. So here I am flying miles and miles and miles.

I'm hitting Mike Brown early in the morning and then I'm flying like crazy all the way back to Tallahassee, Florida to see dad. And I get there by 9 o'clock at night just to see him for maybe 30 minutes. So it goes back when you go, when you start looking at people in, and it's not just about a convenience thing for you, but you really start to fall in love with some of these kids. You start to realize, man, this is really important to this young man that his dad is involved in this process. Now you, it's like, I'm starting to fall in love with this kid.

I'm going to break down the wall to go see dad. In other words, it leads to extra work. So I believe that when you are loving these kids the way we should be, it's going to be like, well, you know what, I'm willing to go that extra mile. Our work ethic is going to highly increase. So those are two things that really hit me hard in the process. And the other thing, the last thing I want to say is that sometimes it doesn't pan out. sometimes you're going after a kid.

I remember when I got here in the 80s, I was recruiting a defensive lineman from McAllister, Oklahoma. And Coach Osborne put the rookie in the state of Oklahoma. That was not going to be easy to go down to Oklahoma and get a kid because we're all in the same conference then in the Big Eight. So I went down to recruit this kid in McAllister. No player from Oklahoma had ever come and played in Nebraska scholarship kid read out of high school.

Well, as I'm recruiting him, this kid, I was going against a guy. Remember Houston Nut? Houston was an assistant coach at Oklahoma State at the time. The kid's parents had gone to Oklahoma State. So Houston felt like, I think I got this one made. Kid was a good defensive lineman. I'm saying I'm going to battle him. I'm going to fight him.

I don't care, man. I'm not going to let this coach outwork me. I'm going to give it my very best, whether I get the kid or not. But, again, it couldn't be just about Ron Brown. It had to be about that family, that kid. Well, as we were going through the process, we ended up on signing date getting the kid. I remember this was back in the days when the assistant coaches could be out on signing date and show up at the house just in time, 7 o'clock in the morning with the papers in here.

And I beat Houston nut to the doorstep that day. Anyhow, that kid signed with Nebraska that day. But sadly, D.P., just a couple months later, he was diagnosed with leukemia. And so now he's fighting for his life at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. They're looking for a proper bone marrow match and so forth and nothing's happening. And I end up going to the hospital to see the kid. He had signed with us. He was excited about it, but we weren't sure he was going to ever play again.

And as he's laying in the bed there, you could see that it was going to be tough. I talked to the doctors. I knew the doctors. And Coach Osborne, we continue. to keep his scholarship. We didn't drop him. We kept the scholarship offer to him. It didn't look like he was probably ever going to play again. But yet, this is what Love does. Love says, I'm going to come visit you anyhow. Love says, I'm going to be with mom and dad and you as you're going through this anyhow. And when I was there, you know, there was a Christian bookstore right next to that hospital

in downtown L.A. there. And during a break in the action there, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I walked over there and I found a Bible and I brought it to young Victor Starchmas. And I had the opportunity to share with Victor that day. We talked about death. We talked about life. We talked about the reality. He was optimistic, but he wasn't real sure. That day, you know, DP, gave his life to the Lord Jesus Christ.

He trusted him as his Lord and Savior. And that kid had tears flowing down his face. He had this incredible, exuberant smile. And that was the last time I saw Victor. Victor ended up dying shortly thereafter. But I look back at all that, man. And I say, well, is any of this a waste? No.

And so I'll close with this. I know I've given you a long answer, but I'll close with this that in the recruiting process, it's really important that I believe that I leave a deposit of what our school represents, about who I represent. and mostly I want to see that young man pointed to the right direction. And so we went to that funeral. It was myself and Coach I was born, Miltonifer, offensive line coach, and Houston Nutt, who didn't get the kid.

He was there at the funeral. So I just sum it all up by saying, man, I just want recruiting to be about a wholesome, integrist process where we actually care about the kid more than we do our own recruiting stats. we keep saying in these hours that it is more important to choose good over the game and choosing those opportunities to enhance to leave it better than we found it. And if you keep doing that, you build a legacy and that's how you become a legend.

We'll throw it to break and come back more with the legendary coach. Ron Brown, breaking it down on a Saturday on 93-7th ticket. Download our app by searching 93.7 a ticket in your app store. You're listening to one-on-one with DP on 93-7 the ticket in the ticket FM.com. You're listening to one-on-one with DP. Brought you by Canopy Street Market on 93-7 the ticket and the ticketfm.com. He is coach Ryan Brown. And we're in the recruiting master's class of,

from one side, from the coaches side, who they have to be, who they need to be, who they want to be, and then from what they're looking for in their young people and how those relationships happen. And it is a statement of truth, Robert, and correct me if I'm wrong. But in my mind, it's a statement of truth that recruiting is relationships. Yes, I believe it is very much relationships. And I would say this, too. And over the years, I've seen the media evaluate recruiting and recruiters by a kind of a two-month or three-month, maybe one-year process. And I've always said to myself, that is ridiculous.

I mean, honestly, I do. I say, really, what you want to look at? You want to know who the best recruiters are? who recruited this guy, who recruited that guy, who recruited this guy, who recruited that guy, maybe five or six years later. Let's say that they went to the NFL, they were great talent, they had great careers, who recruited that guy, who recruited Grant Woodstrom, who recruited Mike Brown, who recruited Johnny Mitchell, who recruited Michael Booker, who recruited this guy, this guy, this guy,

and you'll see that a lot of the same names show up. You may have three or four guys on the staff, their names keep showing up. Well, they're probably your best recruiters, but you don't. That's like saying, you know what, we've got a steak that we put on and we've cooked it for about one minute. It's a big thick steak and now it's time to eat. No, it's not time to eat yet. You don't know how good that steak was until you've cooked it all and everybody's eating. You know what I mean?

And it puts some muscle on our bones. Then you say, oh, that was a good steak. Same thing with recruiting, I believe. I don't think, you know, you give awards out and all these honors and they had the best recruiting class and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, four or five years later, you realize maybe 80% of the class was a bust. So I just don't understand how we evaluate. I think you have to look over the long haul. After a while, you begin to see some really good results to show up.

And then you ask those recruiters or those teams and so forth, hey, what do you guys do to do this? Because, hey, you seem to be on track here with the follow-through of these recruits. It may have been a two-star guy or a three-star guy that you're recruiting. It ended up being a four- or five-star. Well, that's the right recruit. You got the right guy. He ends up being a really good player and going on to do great things. I'm often fascinated.

Before I got here, I treated college recruiting as fantasy football. Because there's a star system that makes people mentally lazy without understanding what the star system is. And somebody will, hey, Coach Brown, there's a two star, there's a three star, there's one star. Where, what star is integrity? What, what star is heart? What star is family? What star is willingness to get in the film room and work? What star is hustle?

What star is, hey, I'm willing to go to the, to the gym one more time than the person I'm to meet with? What star is your ability to go to bed on time? What star is nutritional value? What star? Like you, for an outsider looking in, it's mentally lazy to think you have an understanding for what any football staff wants a need as a player

who is a part of the recipe for their culture of football more than the people, the coaches who do the recruit. Yeah. And, you know, DPI, I, you know, DPI, it's not an easy job. It's a tough job. But one of the things that over the years I've always felt like was I wanted to look at more than just a highlight reel as well.

I wanted to see some of the bad plays. I wanted to see some of the plays where he could have taken a playoff versus really going after it real hard. You want to, again, that sea level thing, going underneath what we see, even on film. Film is important. Being at games and watching live is really important, but being able to study a guy when things are a little bit out of sync form

or it's a play away where he doesn't have to hustle very much. You learn a lot about a person by what they're doing when no one's looking, but you also learn a lot about a person what they're doing when everybody's looking. Those are, I mean, but that was the depth of, of, of, of, when, when I came up with the idea of a recruiting show and just asking you questions about the things that matter to you and the things that you've experienced, because it is not what the average fan or family thinks it is. Yeah, and it's not evaluated that way. I mean, some of my buddies, way back in the day, they used to be on all these calls and so forth. and who's recruiting this and who's doing that. I'm saying, you know what, buddy?

I told one of my buddies, I said, you need to get rid of all that stuff. I said, you're not going to know anything until four or five years down the road. I said, I mean, I remember one time years ago, there was one coach who got, he got selected as the recruiter of the year, and he had got maybe three guys from an area or something, and they looked, they were pretty good high school players. I think by October, all of them had left. said, well, he's got a nice award there, but you've got no players. They're gone.

We call that. From the high school coach side to the collegiate level, that's me telling Coach Brown, this kid's popcorn. It's popcorn. Look, it's convenient. It fits a need, but there's no nutritional value, and it's not really going to help you long term. And, you know, to be on the fair side of things, you don't always know. I mean, it doesn't mean that coach was wrong in recruiting those kids. I'm saying is that there were media awards giving out to that coach before the meat was cooked. And see, that can influence a whole lot of people. So a whole bunch of people saying, oh, this guy, this guy, five star, four, star, three,

you know, whatever it is, we got all these ratings. and we're rating way before it's time to rate, is what I'm saying. I think the recruiting side, and this is the beauty of having this conversation with you, is asking the thing that you look for in a player or a person to be in your program. Now, there are filler recruits, you know, guys that fill a need. There are guys that can change a program. But I think it's almost as important, the players that you turn down, because program, again, the program changes.

And then they're program killers who you put a whole lot of resource and time and energy into. And there's simply no way for the return on investment to be worth it for Coach Ron Brown. Because you have a different standard, a different need, a different way of doing this. And you have to make sure that nobody comes in and negates the good work you've done. Yeah, and, you know, D.P., I just remember while you were talking, I was just thinking, yep, he's hitting something that's striking a nerve because back in the early 90s, we were recruiting Cordell Stewart out of Louisiana. It was a great player. Yep, probably the best. Slash was special.

Best run pass option type quarterback in the country. We were running the option then, but he could throw the ball. He proved that he could be a good dropback thrower and so forth. but as we recruited Cordell, we liked him, and he was a kid that had a lot of good things going for him. But we got our eyeballs on another kid that nobody would have suspected that we would ever want to recruit named Brooke Barringer out of Goodland, Kansas. And I happened to be recruiting that area. And so I went down to see Brooke. And then he came up to our summer camp, and Coach Osborne really fell in love with him and just said, man, this guy's, he's every bit as big as Cordell Stewart, probably not as,

quick and athletic, but he's pretty close, and he's a pretty good athlete. But a great throwing arm. He had an NFL arm, no doubt. But anyhow, as we went through the process, Coach Osborne leaned toward Brooke, and we decided we're going to go with Brooke. We had to wait on Cordell. We weren't quite sure we were going to get them. Brooke was not highly recruited, and we chose Brooke Marringer.

And I think there were a lot of people that said, what are you guys doing? I mean, you've used up your quarterback spot. For this, you had a chance maybe to get Cordell Stewart, but you know what? We looked beyond just what we saw on the outward. We looked interiorly. And we also had the kid in camp, which was helpful because now we got to know him and so forth and see him up live. Well, at the end of the day, they both come here.

Tommy Frazier comes here. Now everybody's saying, well, you know, look at Brooke. But then Tommy Fraser gets hurt. And now it just so happens that Cordell Stewart, goes against Brooke Barangar in 1994 for the biggest regular season game of the year. This is going to determine who's going to be a national championship. And Cordell Stewart had already thrown the Hail Mary to win the Michigan game early in the year. And they had the Heisman trophy winner, Rashad Salam with them.

They had a great defense. Westbrook at receiver, Ray Caruth. They had a bunch of freaks. Yeah, bad. And now here's unknown, Brooke Barangar, you know, now having to lead the troops. I'll tell you what, that kid put on a show. We beat them. I mean, it was just a butt weapon.

And you know what? I look at that and I go, wow, I'm so glad that I'm in a program that looks, I mean, obviously, you've got to recruit talent, no question. But it also looks underneath, below sea level. And we saw something really special with Brooke Barrenker. And he was obviously instrumental in that year and us winning a national championship. What made him, and he is so deeply. entrenched in Nebraska football lore for a variety of reasons in several moments.

But behind the scenes, behind, you know, below sea level. Yeah. What was the thing that made Brooks so great? You know, there were a lot of intangibles about him as a young man. You know, his dad had died when he was a little boy. You know, he's so he's grown up with a little bit of that trauma, but he wasn't highly recruited. He comes to Nebraska.

and then the best option quarterback in America comes to Nebraska while he's there, Tommy Frazier. So now he's sitting the bench. Brooke is sitting the bench for two to three years. And then Tommy gets hurt. And Brooke now gets a chance to do the thing that he always wanted to do. And he does it. It's amazing. His confidence level is grown and he helps lead us to a national title.

But honestly, DP, his business. best year wasn't 94 when he was a junior helping us win and win the Miami game in the Orange Bowl to win a national title. His most outstanding, I think, demonstration of who he was inside was the next year his senior year. When Frazier beat him out for the starting position, they both had one year left and Brooke hardly played that whole year. He did not create mutiny in that locker room. He went around the state. He poured into people. He took on a whole new life. as a new Christian. He was just excited about his faith.

It hurt him that he wasn't starting. So he's a real human being like all of us. And it probably felt like, man, I don't know if anybody believes in me, but he kept at it. He made everybody on our football team better by the way he showed up each day, unselfish and a giver.

And I'll tell you, when he was still going to be probably a third or fourth round draft pick in the National Football League, unfortunately died in the plane crash the day before the NFL draft. But you know that all of that put a light on what was inside of that kid. It wasn't just his physical ability, which he had quite a bit of. It was who he was inside when the chips were up and when the chips were down. He handled the test of both prosperity and adversity with tremendous grace.

Yeah, I think that thing in recruiting and making those choices with young people, that how you are when things aren't going your way is almost always as important as who you are when things are going well. And I love the fact that, you know, as a staff, that's what we were looking at as well. We weren't just looking on the outward ability. We have notable examples such as that that show us that we were looking underneath the hood. It wasn't just a pretty car sitting in a driveway. We lifted up the hood and see if that car was really going to run under all conditions.

It is just vital and it's why I wanted to have this conversation with you. And again, I apologize in advance. There's no way we can get to everything that I want to ask him or that he wants to support us. But we'll do it again next week. And that's how we do it. We'll throw it to break. Come back. We'll finish up this hour with the legend Ron Brown here on 937, The Ticket.

Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to one-on-one-one with DP on 93-7 the Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. You're listening to One-on-One with D.P. Sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. It has been a quick hour. That's kind of how it works when you're talking to Ron Brown. It breaks it down for you and giving the insight and information. Coach, you've recruited several positions.

And I know in the development of different positions, it's just easy. to get some kids at different positions recruited. But on the coaching side as a recruiter, is there a position that causes some greater friction and trying to figure out who can play for you and who can't? Well, you know, I think you always want to get the right guy at quarterback. I mean, that's always a big thing. I've noticed over the years, like when I first got here in the 80s,

a lot of my receivers, I had the wide receivers, the tight ends and the wingbacks, a lot of those guys, the wide receiver type guys, the wide receivers and the wingbacks, they were all like former quarterbacks, former running backs,

guys that could play DB. They were guys that were multi-dimensional, fast, quick, powerful kids that could play a variety of different positions. And that's kind of, you know, when we recruited, we looked at them positionally,

but we were very open to having them, you know, maybe move to the other side of the ball or move to another position. You know, you look at Tony Veeleyn, for example. Tony Veeleyn was a great quarterback in high school. Cluster Johnson was a really good quarterback in high school. Those guys came here. You know, they started off at the quarterback position, but then they got flushed out.

You know, a cluster came with me as one of my wingbacks and was a really good player. Tony Veelein went to the safety spot, became a great player, and played in the National Football League for, for a while. So, you know, I think it was just getting, making sure you had the right kind of kid in there that was athletic. And then you find out kind of when he gets here, kind of where you can disperse him. Well, some of that appears to be, and I've said this to Cluster's face, Cluster was just a football player. What position he ended up at almost was a matter of circumstance. Well, I went out on a limb, and I've told Clester this.

numerous times when we were trying to figure out, what do we do with Cluster Johnson? I raised my hand up. I was a young receiver coach. I said, let me have Cluster Johnson. I would take Cluster Johnson in a minute. Give me. Because we got the itty-bitty committee out there. And they're good blockers. They were terrific blockers. But I said, we could use a big guy in the slot to handle some of those nickel bucks that were playing out there at that time. And I said, Cluster's a powerful kid. And he was terrific. I mean, he was really an unsung hero. He didn't get probably the credit. on our national championship teams, but he was a really good player. Who was who that that leads me to this?

Who is clusters? Give me another cluster. Somebody that is undervalued in the in the championship runs that simply they fit a very specific need for for Huskers to have the success they did. Well, you know, I think Terrell Farley was a different guy. It's hard to say should he be a defensive back? Should he be a linebacker? Who is he? But I think our defense had enough flexibility.

They did a really good job, but spraying him around, and allowing him not to be so regimented that he couldn't do the great things that he did. Plus, we got him on special teams. He was a great blocker. You know, he blocked punts and Phil goes and all kinds of stuff. But I think the flexibility to move those guys around. Treve Albers was a guy, you know, who's a very good player. But when we got his hand on the ground in his final year,

that's when he really started to take off. Sometimes, you know, it takes a while to find out where does this kid really fit and what system will fit him really well? And sometimes it's just a tweak here and a tweak there. And then you've just unleashed a bomb, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, the whole thing, you mentioned Farley. And my knowledge of Farley as an outsider looking in was athlete, athlete, athlete, athlete. but then it became when you look at his film

Thoreau Farley was a cerebral assassin that guy saw the game play out in front of him at a much slower speed than anybody else like the game slowed down for him he was like oh this is going to open up that's going to be my lane I'll get there that's where it's coming that's the leverage that you take somebody had to be an amazing coach

to identify that Well, I thought Charlie McBride and Craig Bold did a really good job of figuring out where does Farley fit. How do we fit him? And they gave him some latitude. He wandered around out there sometimes and he'll took that gap, that gap, you know, but it was, there was a rhyme to the reason. And then he had like what you're saying, he had that kind of that six cents, man. He really had a good football mind out there in terms of what to do to make a play. Yeah.

And I always said I wish somebody. had found Farley and let him be their Wilbur Marshall. Like, because Wilbur, Wilbur wasn't a big, he wasn't a big backer, but he could run and he liked violence. And it was a certain thing.

And it's interesting that you said, Tread putting his hand in the dirt, because some scouting reports from that day almost preferred him standing up. Well, you know, he could have done both, but I think,

I think, and just like Grant Westram, when we recruited Grant Westram, I remember I was in the, I was recruiting Grant Westrom. And, you know, when we moved, we told Grant, we're going to go to a four-man front and where you're not going to be a guy that's sometimes standing up and coming, sometimes you're standing up and you're dropping. No, you're going to have your hand on the ground as a true defensive end.

And I think that's, that was really integral in the recruiting process for him. And he, he decided that he could trust us that way. We put his hand in the dirt and he was, he was something. It is, I think it's an underscored. tribute that needs to be said for the coaching staff of those Husker teams for identifying, one, to manage, recruit, manage, and develop that depth of players, that depth, that huge quantity of quality players to get them here and then manage them, right? Because again, in most programs cluster would be the guy.

He would be guy number one, right? But no, here, it's a thing, right? I'm impressed by what that coaching staff did because you guys managed that staff at an elite level. Well, you know, and I think we're about that now. I think we look at athletes and you always want to try to figure out where can they best help the program and yet be integrity with them about, you know, here's how we recruited you. But, hey, how about this? I mean, it's been, I've appreciated the way we've been doing things now. And I do see that back in the day that we were able to get over the hump sometimes

with just one or two guys doing something different than what they had been doing. Maybe then how they were recruited, we just made a slight adaption here or there and away we went. It is, again, it is an honor to have you poor. to the pool of knowledge and information, the historical reference for all of that. And then eyes forward and giving Husker fans something to look forward to in this football program. Because if you're carrying this love and this knowledge into this year's program,

they'll be all right. They'll be all right. Coach, thank you. Once again, we'll do it again Wednesday. If you have time, don't go anywhere. A wrap session with O number nine, Taylor made. Steve Taylor. We'll take over the microphone here on 93-7 the ticket.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.