1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - The local connection Husker Football has with the small towns of Nebraska (Guest Ron Brown) - February 26th, 2025

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

The local connection Husker Football has with the small towns of Nebraska (Guest Ron Brown) - February 26th, 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. You want to know guys, huh? In your face!

10 o'clock at night. night and we we hear we here we have a again it's it's a blessing to be able to have these conversations and I'm thrilled about it 402 464 56685 is the sart of Hammond text line you want to be a part of what we're doing reach out uh hit a what's up or hey coach or whatever way you want to greed to greet us uh we would appreciate uh you can follow on the live video streams facebook youtube x and alo channel 964 Shout out to Dan Swanson and the fine folks from Canopy Street Market. They always look out for us.

Greatly appreciate that. If you haven't gone, Harrison, let me tell you, on Tuesday, they make, so they have their own kitchen. So they make all their own meals. Oh, yeah. I've had the preset meals. They're fantastic. Right. They do.

They make the, right? They make the clean pre-made meals that morning that go on the shelf. And then on Tuesdays, they have Taco Tuesday. and for $1.75 each, you get fresh tacos. And to tell you there is a line out on Canterbury Street, like every worker finds their right down to Canopy Street. Look, I was like, wait a minute, $8. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Hey, man. I'll be in that line next week. You know, you said a thing, right? You know, they got fountains drinks. They got sodas. They've got, again, the premium meals if you want something else. you can go and get. They make wings every day.

They make fried chicken meals every day. They got salmon sometimes. They got salmon, salmon mashed potatoes, vegetables. I mean, they will keep you healthy. If that's what you want, if you want to go the other route, they can do that too.

So the fine folks at Canterbury Shoe Market, we thank y'all for what you do. Greatly appreciate it. It is my wonderful, wonderful honor to welcome in our guest tonight. I call him legend. He is Coach Ron Brown. Coach, how you doing tonight?

Hey, D.P. Good to see you again. Good to be back. You know, good to be seen. Your wisdom has gained traction. And folks are starting to poke at you, right? You're starting to get those, hey, coach, heard you out of the ticket. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. It's interesting in your mind. Is Lincoln a small town? It's a growing town. You know, when I got here, it seemed a little bit like a one-horse town, but it's far from that now to me. It's expanded and it's much larger than I thought it would ever be.

Yeah, it's a thing. To find that out and then to have one of the top 10 programs, football programs in the country. That's amazing. And, you know, I was just talking about it with some guys. in the past, you know, just the ability to have some of the athletes that we've had come to this university, first of all, that were born and bred in this state. But, and then even to convince kids from the coast and different places around the country and even outside of the country to come here, it means that there was something, I think,

really good happening with people. I mean, because it's really hard to draw people from that distance or that kind of caliber of folks without something being of a high quality. So I was asked this back in January. I was in D.C. And there were a lot of folks there for the inauguration. And Maryland was hosting the Huskers in basketball. And there at the game was Governor Pillon and his staff.

And got a chance to, we put our noses together for a minute. And he asked me a question that I now want to ask. you when people ask you about Nebraska and about Lincoln specifically but Nebraska's what's the first thing that comes to mind? For me now that I've been here the way I've been here for all these years it's a land of milk and honey and what I mean by that is that like the guys that I grew up with back on the East Coast would never, they would never understand, and they didn't understand why I stayed out here so long. They said, what you're doing out there, man? What's, what is out there? You know,

that kind of stuff. And they're ignorant to what, what's really here. And I, and I'm not talking about, you know, metropolis or all these exciting things. I'm talking about the quality of people and the assignment that I feel like the Lord has given me to be involved with such high quality people. That in the recruiting and then the actual work, right? The recruiting and the work of developing once they get here. So there's, it's several facets to it. One, introducing strangers to this fine town and this program, right? Usually that's done by introducing them to the good people that we think exist here.

then, right, then confirming the good people, right? Because you got to sell somebody to get on a plane or get in a car and come to Lincoln, Nebraska. That'll take some work, but you know how to do that. Then once they get here, there has to be a quality of person that exists here in large number for folks from other places to come here and feel, one, at home, two, comfortable, three, the ability to grow while here. Well, you know, for me, D.P., honestly, when I got here, and this is why Nebraska is so unique,

we don't have pro football with the only Division I team in the state. The troops kind of rally around this university, and it's sports teams, and I was a part of that, you know, being on the sports team. But, you know, the greatest privilege I had was going out and spending time in the homes of these farmers and ranchers. I remember I went out to Hyannis, Nebraska, early in my career here. And we were recruiting a young man named Terry Conneely. And while he was still, I think maybe he had just arrived in college, I went out to Hyannis, and I hung out with his dad, Marty Caneely.

I think that was Marty on his ranch there. And then I've had the privilege of doing that at a variety of different places across the state of Nebraska. And it's amazing. I always say to myself, wow, these people pack up on Saturday afternoons and they come to Memorial Stadium. They drive hundreds of miles to come to Memorial Stadium. But I can see the connection now

because while I was spending the night there in those homes and they would take me out on their tractors. And I would say, you know what, every kid that comes to play for us ought to, there ought to be an assignment where they have to stay with somebody who lives on a ranch or grows up on a farm, and then they would understand why this program has been so good for so many years. Saying that out loud,

it's been implied for a very long time, right? that this is, it's just different. It means more. And all those, all the, all the, all the, all the quirky cliches. But the reality is that for me coming here, I had to trust what my heart told me and then what people told me about Lincoln, Nebraska. And they say, listen, there's enough of the stuff that you're comfortable with in downtown. But then there's enough stuff on the perimeters.

drive down the road, get lost, and find how much good people exist here. And I went, man, that takes a lot of trust, right? Like, you know, that takes a lot of trust for me to go, listen, I saw children in corn, I had all sorts of ideas, right? I got, I had things. But coach, you had somebody who called you and said, hey, I need you to be a part of my program here.

I need for you to become part of the fire. here and then gave you the permission responsibility and the tools to be you under his tutelage and under his watch. If I asked you about Coach Osborne and what makes him that person for you, why you trusted him, what is your answer to that? I believe the answer is that coach osborne and um i got to see that early on way back in the 80s when i got hired here valued he valued every person that that that i've ever seen him around and that's one of the reason why people always say how did he remember my name two years later you know i had only met the man at one time i think he really highly values people and because he values the people he

values small towns. And because he values small towns, he allowed a person like me or others on our staff to go out. And I think I've been to about every single town in the state. I was going to. That was my next question. That literally is my next question was what's the smallest town you've been to? Like what's the place where you, when somebody says like if you want to go to the

corners of Nebraska to recruit somebody, what, where's that place, Coach Brown? You know, there was a guy who played fullback for us back in the 80s named Kenny Kaelin. And I forgot, if Kenny's listening right now, I'm sorry, I forgot the name of your town, bro. But I think it's the smallest town in Nebraska. Oh, man. I think it's population maybe 40 or something like that. 40 people. Like, it was 41 the night you got there and it went down quickly.

But I love these people. And, you know, not that they needed any special help from me, but I do think that the Lord assigns us different places on this planet. And, you know, for some people it's overseas, and for some people, it's, you know, in major cities. And for some people, it's in a major rural area. And I believe that that was the assignment God had given to me. It was to be just one who shares the love of Jesus Christ with people who happened to live in a sparse populated state, particularly outside of the two cities, the major two cities, Lincoln and

Omaha, and to really spend some quality time with the people in these small towns. Not that they needed some special thing from me, because I've gleaned at least as much as they have, perhaps. But I feel like I was called to be a missionary to rural Nebraska in many ways. and football was kind of the avenue to do it. Could that, do you think that that Nebraska was unique in that, so unique in that, that we know of some programs where that wouldn't fly. Where that wouldn't fly, that kind of thinking, that kind of belief, that kind of faith, that kind of boundary wouldn't exist,

wouldn't be allowed because quite frankly there were other things that were more important than that. And that's weird to me, but we can say that out loud. Well, you know, I was thinking about it because like in the offseason back in the 80s and in those early 90s, I remember our offensive staff would get together every day. And we'd watch film. We'd just watch cutups of all of the plays that we ran and we started talking about new things and what do we want to do. Here's the new, well, we've got to replace this offensive linemen or that receiver or whatever it was.

and we did it all the time every day. But from time to time, I would get some speaking engagements to speak out in Hianus or, you know, Ainsworth or wherever it was across the state, Scott's Bluff. And I would look at Coach Osborne, and I try to feel him out a little bit. And I'd say, coach, I'm getting, you know, these, you know, invitations. What do you think about me being able to do these?

I mean, I could try to spit him on the weekend. He said, well, when do they need you, Ron? He said, well, one of this is like on a Thursday night, another one is on a Wednesday. And if I could hit two at a time, he said, oh, absolutely. Go ahead, Ron, go. Just make sure you come back. That's all. Come back at some point.

We'll still be here. But he was very flexible and open about that. More than I thought that a big-time college coach would be at that time, you know. And nowadays, you know, you can. there are other ways to get your message out there through technology and so forth. But back then it was just, I got in the car, the old-fashioned way and just drove, you know, and I would drive hundreds of miles across the state. I was going to ask what that number is.

How many miles you thought you drove on a monthly basis trying to get football players for the University of Nebraska? Well, yeah, you know, part of it was getting football players, but even in the off-season. And back then, you know, the recruiting season wasn't as long back then. You know, there was many more gaps in the schedule. Now it's like, you know, recruiting kind of lasts a long, a long time. But back then, even apart from recruiting, there were times when people wanted me to come speak at the local civic group or the church or this, that, and the other. And so I got to know the state.

And then, of course, our football camp really was helpful. We didn't have satellite camps back then. So everything was here in terms of our football camp. But we had kids from all over the state come in, and Terry Caneli was won, eight-man football, way out there in high-hannis, Nebraska, as we got to know him, and kids like that. And Coach Osborne back then was making sure that, you know what,

we're treating every Nebraska kid like they were super important. We didn't know where we were going to offer them or not, but everybody was a recruitable guy up until the point where we weren't able to recruit them anymore. Well, you look until there's no reason to look, right? And you're not wasting time. You're not wasting their time. You're not wasting your time.

The rosters were much bigger than two. And so now you have to be way more selective. It's very different. One of these conversations, not tonight, but one of these conversations, one of these hours, I'm going to get into the 105 versus the 155. I'm going to get you, but it ain't going to be night so you can exhale. I'm not going to do that dance. We were talking to the legend.

Coach Ron Brown, director of players, support and outreach at the University of Nebraska for the football program specifically. How do folks find you for these speaking engagements

and what's your preferred way for them to reach out? Because you're not a big social media guy. So, you know, is it the old, are folks still snail mail writing letters and calling landlines to ask? Believe it or not,

I still get that. I do have a personal assistant. She and her husband have for 35 years helped set up my schedule, speaking engagements and things like that. So that's real helpful for me. Yeah. You know, so they contact them.

And through them, I get when, hey, such, such, such a date. And that's how it's worked. The title speaks loudly, but I want to ask you specifically, your favorite thing about being the director of player support. Like the, and we'll get to the outreach because that's a whole other thing.

think. Yeah, and I'm now, I still do some of those things. Okay. But now I'm back on the field. You're a fullbacks coach or whatever it is. Part returners and fullbacks. And I assist the running backs coach. I'm going to have you recruit me as a part return. We're going to have that conversation. I need to pick your brain on how, what that thinking process would be like. It's a dangerous job, D.P. But that's what, but that's, that's a thing. We'll, we'll get to that. But the, the on the field versus off the field, it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you are moved 60, 40, 70, 30 for the off the field.

The people and the person and the faith that they're working from and that you're working from seems to be more out front. than the 40 plus years of football, right? Yeah, and I think, you know, we didn't have titles back then for all those things, but, you know, each of us, and this was very different. Back in the 80s, the assistant coach here at Nebraska had a chunk of stuff that the average assistant coach around the country didn't have. I mean, where I came from before back in the east, nobody even knew who the assistant coaches were.

Here in Nebraska, everybody knows who they are. And you can really, you have the latitude to do what you will with that. But for me, I thought it was a land, like I said, it was a land of milk and honey, and it was great opportunities to get together with people who like-mindedly wanted me to share my faith in the Lord with them at their church or their community. community or go in town and bring some players with me and let's do a clinic for middle school

kids, football or basketball. And what a great way to get to know people. I mean, what a way to use the platform to connect with what people are interested in in the first place. And now you're getting into the heartbeat of these communities. It was a great educational thing for our players, but for me too. and just to develop friendships along the way. And that's one of the reasons why it's been hard for me to ever want to leave here.

I love staying. I've turned down so many jobs in the past, you know, over the years, so many places to go. And they always told me every three years, you've got to get out, you've got to keep moving, blah, blah, blah. But I just kept saying, Lord, is it time yet? Is it, you know, and I've always remembered this verse in the Bible, Colossians 417, where the apostle Paul tells, he says, you tell Archipus to make sure he fulfills the ministry that's been started by the Lord.

And I had to ask every single time, hey, they want you to be a coach over here or it was an NFL opportunity here or another, whatever. And you know what? I said, Lord, are you done yet? And I always had to ask that question. And I've always found myself having an enormous desire and have an enormous appreciation for the people in Nebraska.

People felt like even some of my friends thought, oh, you've probably slowed your career down. I said, you know what? So what, man? I'm doing the Lord's work, and I love the people, and I love football, and I'm able to do it all still. It's always an interesting line. When that love shows up loudly as it does with you, that passion and belief and celebration and all those things that come into play, and that you maybe,

and I'm open to being corrected in this, biggest cheerleader on this coaching staff is Coach Ryan Brown. Like your job is literally, you pick up pieces that other coaches often miss. And that's not a slight to anybody. That is that people, when they identify your strength, they find a way. You end up, your strength ends up in their path.

In their moment of weakness, your strength is a thing that people seek out. You know, I think maybe the reason that there's some level of truth to that, not that anybody else has failed. No, that's not what I would say. But I think I've had a good seat. You know, I've had a chance to work for some pretty amazing people. I think about all the coaches that I had a chance to work for. I've worked for maybe eight different head coaches here at the University of Nebraska.

I came here. Bob Devaney was our athletic director. I got to know the late Bob Devaney, the great Bob Devani. I sat in his office every single day. He'd call me in every day. Hey, sunny boy, come out. Come on. And I've great appreciation because I've been able to serve under so many smart people.

And I've learned a lot. So a lot of people think, well, you need to be, you should be this, that, and the other. And I think, well, you know what? I like the seat that I've been in. And I like the different roles that I've had. And even though I didn't always understand always what to do. And if I was doing it well or not, I just kind of felt like, you know what, I keep learning things. I've had a good seat.

I've observed things. I could write 1,500 books on 1,500 different people because I've seen so many different things. I'm not going to do that. Why not? Why not? Why not? Because I've got to get my own book right.

You know what I mean? But I've learned a lot from people along the way. See, I'm going to accept that with the addition, with the plus to it, that if you simply chose to say thank you to a number of these smart coaches, that would be a great book. If you were to pick 10 lessons learned

from these smart people, that's another book. If you would explain your 10 greatest theories of faith and how they play out on the football field, that would be a great book. So when you say we can write all these books, I say that, yeah, it's a thing that needs to be done because there's so much, one, being appreciative,

being grateful to have these people put in our path. Like I look fully for every opportunity to say thank you to people who want good for me, who show good for me, which is a whole other thing because not everybody wants to show good for you. people that have influenced me in a positive way, those people who took their lessons and allowed me access to them, which is a whole other level of strength, when somebody says, here's my weakness, don't repeat it.

And to me, you are a person who has gone through. Listen, you went through early friction in life. You went through your successes. You have found yourself at the fork at many a row. many decisions. And there's always people who want to hear how you made that choice. What happens at the fork in the road? What happens when friction shows up?

Especially a different kind of friction, right? And Coach Brown, your encyclopedia, not for do what I did, but just consider this. your ability to just say consider this is such a unique talent and I just think I can pretty much say

Husker fans would love to hear your stories well you know even the other night I mean we've had so many things like I went to the team Jack dinner and you know Jack Hoffman was a great inspiration to our football team

but 10 years ago and the SB award that he won for the, you know, the spring game. And, and, of course, that, that young man went through some real, real difficulty. His, his dear mom, she's lost her husband, and now she, she's lost her, her young son, a courageous family, a tremendous family. But I had the opportunity. Kenny Bell had invited me, and I was able to sit with Kenny and, and I saw Rex Burkhead

there, and I got to know those guys. but I was fascinated to get the opportunity to hear Kirk Cousins speak. And so this is what I'm talking about. When I listen to Kurt Cousin speak, it wasn't an easy topic for him. I mean, he was questioned. It was a Q&A, but he was questioned, and it wasn't a bad question or anything, but, hey, we all heard that you got demoted this year, you know. You lost your position this year.

and he turned that friction into a mouth load of traction. I love using the term friction to traction because he did a great job. You could see his humility. He's been an all pro a couple times, but people have kind of forgotten that now. Now he's kind of a forgotten entity, or he's a loser or a failure. And he could have been soured about it, but Kurt Cousins gave a great message. And, you know, I talked to a few people about it, and we all agreed. So I get these golden opportunities just from being in this jurisdiction, just in this space, where I get to hear things like that.

I get to compartmentalize that into the portion of my brain that it needs to go in as a sponge, you know? And whatever comes in that sponge, when you squeeze that sponge, that's what's coming out. And so I love those kinds of opportunities. And I look for that. And I've been able to have that here at Nebraska's in so many. ways with so many different people. And I will go to break, but I do want to say this before we go, that it is kind of the, the, it's the coronation part that that keeps happening to you.

Because he wouldn't put that on you if you weren't the right person for you. I think that's an amazing statement to have so many good people, choose you, choose to be around you, to choose to listen to you, and to give you access. It's an important thing. We'll go to break. We'll come back. I'm going to ask Coach Brown. Players aren't, they're like kids.

You're not supposed to have a favorite one. You're not supposed to have a favorite one. But I'm going to ask Coach Brown if he has a player whose journey was so cool to him. From the recruiting to some moment on the field, right? That Coach Brown just went like, I've been telling you. I've been telling you. And then he has the moment. We're going to ask Coach Brown about his favorite player when we come back to one-on-one.

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. Welcome back, one-on-one. We're going to go to midnight tonight. I think Chancellor's going to come back in from the road. He's going to do it via remote. Yeah, stream. Okay, he's going to stream in.

Nicely done. Nicely done on the road handling his business. But I am with the legend, Coach Ryan Brown. and we've been talking. Coach, it's the thing that I think most coaches figure out how they want their group or their team or their culture to run. And for me, I always chose, I was telling you, I chose, the best player is the easiest one to choose. The hardest worker, easy to choose. Smartest, the high IQ player, easy to see, easy to know.

then you need a kid that loves it the most. And those are the kids in Nebraska football lore, there are walk-ons who just simply wanted to be a Husker football player more than breathing air itself. It was that important. And sometimes in that case, those players find a way to excel. And as a coach,

there's certain ones that you just root for harder. You can't help it. Coach, is there a player that you rooted for, harder than the others and then he had his moment and you got to celebrate and rejoice. Yeah, there were there were a number of moments like that with just a variety of people. I remember Ryan Held was a walk-on player from the state of Kansas and Ryan got a got a chance to get in the national championship game against Florida. We were beating Florida pretty good and we got him in the game and he went down there and made

some blocks down the field that were really good, particularly for a late game that's already been determined, basically. So I remember things like that, but I think there's, there is a guy, and I've shared this with you before on air, DP, but I think it's worth it again. Sometimes we think about the guys that maybe we recruited and got the know for a long time or whatever. This particular kid, Richard Bell, was recruited by George Darlington, our defensive Blackfield coach when I came to Nebraska here in the late 80s, George was recruiting Southern California, and Richard was from the greater Los Angeles area.

And he came here under a poor recommendation from some of the people at his school. Richard is, he's not smart enough to get it done. He probably won't graduate. He won't be what you really want him to be. But if you guys like him, okay, take him. Well, we took him. Coach Osborne decided to take him. Richard got here, and when I got here in 1987, Richard was a sophomore.

He was the fifth string wingback. So his chances of playing in games were not great. The fourth game of that year, we played South Carolina, and they came in here with a great team. They had a receiver named Sterling Sharp. Going into the Hall of Fame. Yeah, they were loaded. They were a great team.

They had nearly beat us the year before in 86. Richard was one of those guys that, though, coach, you know, I'm telling you, he was a guy that was a coach's dream because he was the kind of guy that said, look, a coach, let me pass out the pencils when we do the written test, and let me hand them back off to you. And he wasn't, you know, he wasn't trying to nuzzle up to me or anything like that. He wasn't trying to seek playing time doing that. He was a servant, and he was trying so hard.

He was the guy that would stay after with me every night, and he wanted to learn a new word in the dictionary. and we'd go through the entire A through Z every single night. And he was the one who was stay out after practice and work on his blocking and work on his catching and his second level releases and all these things. And really, nobody seemed to give him a chance. We knew he was a good athlete, but he was our fifth string wingback. So we're playing South Carolina, fourth game of the year.

We're behind. And I think we're down like seven to nothing. And we've been sputtering around. We're in the second quarter. We have the ball on our own 20-yard line. We lost four wingbacks in the first two quarters. So guess who's number five? Hello.

Richard Bell. Dana Brinson got hurt, Von Shepherd got hurt, Hanley Hawkins got hurt, you know, right down the list, and now here comes Richard Bell. And we decided, okay, we're going to see if we can put one in the end zone before halftime. We got the ball on our own 20,

and we lined up. We had four wide receivers, and we ran what we call double takeoff. And all four receivers were to be down the field running verticals. And one of those, the inside receivers, would get the opportunity to break it in the middle of the field if the middle of the field was open. Richard Bell ran a perfect route. Our quarterback, I think it was Cleet Blakman. It might have been Steve Taylor, but I think it was Cleet Blakman, hit him in stride for an 80-yard touchdown run right before the half.

And DP, I'm telling you, That kid started for the rest of the year. He not only started for the rest of the year. He went on to become an all-conference player. He was drafted in the fifth round by the Pittsburgh Steelers as a third downback, played in the NFL for a while. And by the way, he was still interested in making sure that when we did test day on Thursdays,

that he would get to pass out the pencils in the paper. He never lost his service attitude. You know, we always talk about, you know, servant leaders. That guy was truly a servant leader. Coach, I don't know if you can see it, but we, Harrison put the picture up on it. He put the, just went down, but you go, I didn't even see it, man. Wow. But that was, that was one of my, I think,

maybe my all-time favorite play at Nebraska. And, and I, I just couldn't help but root for the kid. I love all those players, all the hundreds of players that I coach here at Nebraska. But I was really rooting for him because everyone had counted him out. And he was the fifth street guy going to that game. He became a starting player. And our starting punt returner, our starting wingback for the rest of the year and went on to have a great college career and an NFL career. It's always interesting that we find these people and it takes really lightning in a bottle for the path to clear itself. Yeah. And I jokingly say that the

only way I own a radio station was here in Lincoln, Nebraska. It, like, everything had to move out of the way, and there was just tree after electric wire, after everything that would get in the way of this thing happening. But as you said, sometimes you get called to a thing. And here's this young man that by most metrics, he's out of his, he's out of his lead. He's in too deep of water. And here it is.

that somehow through work, through training, through development, all those things that when the time came and the moment was present, he was right. But, DP, that leads me to something. Like, I'm going to ask you a rhetorical question. If you were getting ready to run the 100-meter dash, and you're in high school and you're a state finalist, and you want to win the gold medal,

and you had a swollen ankle, would you be favored to win? the 100 meter dash? No. I don't think you would. I think it'd be hard to win the 100 meter dash if you had a swollen, throbbing ankle. But I also believe this, DP, if you've got a swollen ego, it's going to be hard for you to maximize your God-given talents. You're not going to be a champion for very long. And even if you do beat out everybody and become a champion with a swollen ego, it won't last long because the Lord will humble pride. Pride goes before destruction.

And not only that, even if you achieve those things, it will never satisfy you. That's why people who are proud, egotistical, strut around like it's all about them, they can't even enjoy the good things that happen to them. How often is that the case? Especially now in this social media age of, let me show, you me, me, me, me, let me brand, let me brand. In the recruiting, as a matter of fact, most young people in high school believe that that's how they get recruited,

which is not true. It's literally the opposite, but you can't tell them that until you get in front of them, and they burn too many opportunities. How do you handle that with a recruit, a potential recruiter, a potential husker? You know, over the years, I've always recognized and appreciated when a coach went into a home and leveled with that young man and the family. It didn't go in near Kiss and Tail.

They went in there saying, look, there's some things you've got to keep working on. I've studied the film, and you need work on this, that, and the other. But this would be a wonderful place for you to develop these things. Because let's not go on pretense. Let's go on the reality of the situation. And you know what? You may lose a few here and there, but I noticed over the years that we gained a lot of parents.

And you know what? These parents begin to think, I think I can trust these coaches because they're not in here flattering my son. They're in here telling him the truth. And you know what? It's a breath of fresh air, to be honest with you, because everybody comes in here and flatters.

Because we're trying, we think that flattery will win the day. But it won't win the day. Well, it doesn't win you what you want to win. Like the thing that you can win that way, it really is valuable as you think it is. That's right. Because how you get that kid is how you're going to have to keep that kid. And it just doesn't work.

So honesty and being able to point out some of those things, and I always felt like if you went in there without a whole lot of exclamation marks and you were dealing with front and center, you know, sometimes even a dry sentence that leads a person to realize, hmm, he's telling me something that I don't get to hear very much. It kind of stings a little bit. Does he not like me? No, no, no, no. Here's what we want you, but here's what we can do.

Here's what we think you have to improve on. And here's how we're going to operate in that room, rather than, well, look at you did here. and you did this and you did this. It's just not real. That's not how you're going to coach that kid. And if you do coach that kid like that, then he's not going to really develop. He's not going to develop and he's also going to keep you from developing other people.

He's going to affect how, because other people are going to see you, they're going to see how he's treated, they're going to see what his responses are. And if he's saying that thing, that expectation out loud, he's also going to say it in private. And it's going to come back and haunt you. And it's going to be a thing. thing. We'll go to break again, but here's what I want to, want to set the table.

Sometime, we're going to do this again Saturday morning. Coach Brown, I'm going to challenge you if you're up for the challenge. We'll go old school. It's mission impossible. Mr. Brown, your mission if you choose to accept it would be having coach Brown's recruiting class. The things that parents who are, listening to these shows, players who are listening to these shows.

It could be an uncle who has a nephew who's a pretty good high school player. It could have a niece who's a pretty good volleyball player. And they've never gone through the recruiting process. The things that you think are important. The things that you think, and it could be a wide range of, you know what, probably two on the list is your academic consistency. your cultural consistency, your work ethic, how you communicate. I think asking you for a list of five, but I think 10 is actually the right number.

Ron Brown's master's class on how to be recruited by Coach Brown. And it's just Coach Brown. Like, it doesn't have to be anybody else. Again, these are the fighting, fighting Ron's of Brown University. and you can make whatever list you want. And nobody can be mad. I'll say this in advance. It's the thing I say to my buddy.

There's no change you get it wrong because it's your list. But there's zero change you get it all right because everybody wants to hear what they want to hear. I had the privilege of recruiting some great players here at the University of Nebraska. So I think we could have some fun stories of yesterday year of those guys that went into those processes. Yeah, we'll do that on Saturday.

We'll get into the master's class for recruiting. We'll close out this hour. of one-on-one when we come back to the ticket. You're listening to One-on-One with DP. Brought you by Canopy Street Market on 93-7 the ticket and the ticketfm.com. That is fantastic. There's a town of one.

Wow. That is fantastic. I can see that. I can see Ron Brown as a sheriff. Justice of the Peace. He's a teacher. He's a. He's the law.

Like he's got the one star. Like he's got the one star in town. Hey, baby. We don't judge on nickels and noses. You know what I mean? Oh, Harrison. Harrison did some homework. He found out what town that was.

Harrison, what did you find out? Yeah, it was Westerville, Nebraska. And he was probably, it was around 40, but today it's 17. Kenny Kaelin. How do you like them apples, baby? Westerville, baby. 17 people in the town. That is spectacular.

I don't know. I've learned this thing about being here that the numbers that seem low to me, I have to remember I'm not a small town kid. So all the numbers seem weird. What was your graduating class? How big was your graduating class, Harrison? 40 and we were big. 40 was there.

Yeah, Hardington, Nebraska, 1600 town population. We're a Russ Huckstein's from. Did you play? Yeah, I played everything. I mean, competing with 20 guys. Right. So you played eight man? We played 11.

You played 11? Yeah, we're still playing 11, man. The Harrington Public, so we had the private school, Cedar Catholic was right. At Hardington Public played eight men because they were just short, like my last two years in high school. They dropped down to eight. And then you played, you played center on basketball. Yeah, I was the six-two, stretch five. That is fantastic.

Coach, we haven't had the chance to ask you about the high school career that led you to getting out of town. but talk about young Ron Brown as an athlete one of these weeks one of these hours we will talk about the family that loved on you the most but you as you as an athlete when did you know what I got something

and this is going to get me out of this town I think when I was young I could outrun a lot of the kids in my neighborhood and community and you know especially a football I played a lot of baseball.

I started to get better in basketball. Yeah, you know, you start to see things along the way. But more than just even the ability was the interest. Like, I couldn't stop looking at it. You know what I mean? I watched every college game on TV, every game. I remember O.J. Simpson and all those guys running back in the day. O.J. and Gary Beban.

Gary Beban at UCLA and quarterback. Oh, yes. I mean, I can go into major detail about it. out games in those days. I was so interested, D.P. I'd never missed an NFL game, watched all the NBA games, and then I'd go outside and play. And I would go out on the playground if nobody else wanted to play, and I would play a whole

football game by myself, me and a ball. That's how I got a ball to myself. That's how I got my broadcast start. Really? It was that Sunday morning. We'd go to church. I'd come out. Redskins were going to play at 1 o'clock.

Get out of church at 12. I would go out front. And whoever the Redskins were going to play that, I'd do. I would play the game by myself and I played every position and did the play by play. Yeah. I was exactly right. Yeah. I'll bet you did that. Were you the audience too? Oh yeah. Oh, I made the crowd noise. I made the crowd noise. I did the official, like, especially if I threw a pass to myself for the game winner and dropped it, penalty. You know something's wrong with that kid. You know what I mean? That kid is destined for sports.

Oh, man. Oh, yeah. I was just a good. a strange kid in the neighborhood. There was no question about that. Who were your sports heroes growing up? I love Jimmy Brown. And my dad liked it. You know, we grew up in a black community, DP, and it was great segregation in football

and in college athletics then. I remember watching the 1969 Texas Arkansas game. There was nobody that looked like me. And, you know, I jumped up at my dad. I said, man, I was mad. I was 12 years old. I'm like, what is this? You know?

Confederate flags flying everywhere. And you know what I found out later, about 70% of the households in America were watching that game. Because we love sports. And I don't blame America for watching the game. I do blame America for not letting people who look like you and I into those schools to play and coach. I mean, that was bad. That was wrong. But we've come a long way since that.

And like I said, I've had a good seat. You know, I had to ask some. tough questions back then, and I got some tough answers. People couldn't answer these questions the way I thought they should be answered. But I had a good seat. Is Jim Brown the best football player to ever live? Man, I think he's the greatest runnerback ever to live. And because of that, I think, in the way they gave him the ball so many times, yeah, I think he would be in the top three, I think, of greatest football players ever. My opinion. That's going to be a conversation we have. Again, I keep making notes for these conversations. But I can tell you, Jim Brown is the

greatest football player to ever live. The greatest defensive player is Lawrence Taylor. And the third best offensive player, the third best player ever, Jerry Rex. Okay. Yeah, there's so many, there's so good ones. Yeah, we'll put it in there. Those are three good ones. All right. Chancers coming up next. Coach Brown and I would do it again Saturday morning. So, stay tuned on the ticket.