The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Big Noon Conversations: Chip Kelly on Creating Offensive Schemes & why There’s No Crying on the Yacht

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

This week’s episode of The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations features FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt sitting down in Westwood with UCLA Head Coach Chip Kelly. Coach Kelly begins by detailing why he thinks college football is as good as it has ever been and why “there’s no crying on the yacht.” The pair discuss Kelly’s influence at the forefront of offensive schemes in the sport and how that was actually born out of necessity. Coach gets into his concerns about college football becoming too transactional rather than transformational for the players before closing with what he loves most about his job. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's no crying on the yacht. Like, we're on a yacht. Like, we could be a lot worse. There's no crying on a yacht. We practice every single day right there, and that is the Mattel Children's Hospital. And whenever we have a player talk about, things aren't going good or just take a peek across.

You want to talk about realistic. This sport's never been to better place. Most influential people in the sport talking about the sport globally. This time on the Joel Clashio's Big Noon Conversation, coach of the UCLA Bruins, Chip Kelly. Chip Kelly. Chip Kelly, head coach of the UCLA Bruins.

Thanks for sitting down, man. I really appreciate it. I've been excited to talk with you about this for a long time. Well, we get to talk about football, so I'm excited too. That's right. The series has been going great. We've just been talking about the sport, and it's a sport that I love dearly. I have for my entire life.

It's one of the things I'm so fortunate to be able to work in it. I know you feel the same way. I'll just open it up with this first. What's going right with college football right now? I think there's a lot of things going right with college football nowadays. I think this story is always the players. And if you get an opportunity to meet the players, so if you get an opportunity to meet Zach Charbonnet,

that's what's right about college football. I can attest to that. If you get a chance to meet Bryce Young or Will Anderson or whoever those guys are, when you hear their stories and listen to what they've overcome and what they've done to get to where they are, that's what it's all about. I've always believed the main thing is the main thing,

and that is the student athlete. And if we keep the main thing, the main thing, then we're going to be okay. But we think the world is kind of falling down around us. But if you look at every part of history of college football, the other things have always gone on. There was the SMU scandal in the 70s, and the transfer portal started a long, long time ago.

It seems like it's at the forefront now. And I told the story when we were, at Fox is that fielding hurry up Yost in 1896 played a game at West Virginia against Lafayette. He stayed and then played for Lafayette and beat Penn and then transferred back to West Virginia. He went on to be one of the all-time greatest college football coaches and one of the all-time greatest ADEs that actually started the NCAA. But they had transfer portal issues in 1896. So what's going on now?

Is it something that has to be cleaned up? Yeah, we understand. But if we keep talking and focusing on the student athletes, then that's the thing that always impresses me. Because there's some impressive young man in this game. You and I have talked before and you brought this term up and I've stolen it in many conversations with people around the sport since. As you said, listen, two things. One, our sports never been better and two, these are champagne problems. When you're dealing with excess, when you're dealing with the players are too popular, how do they monetize their name,

image and life. Those are good problems rather than your sport is dying. Yeah. And our sports, certainly right now, it is as good as it has ever been, period. Coaching wise, I think it's, I mean, every week, everybody can coach. And I don't know if it's the advent of the internet, and people's more access to film. But there are great coaches at the high school level. There are great coaches at the junior college level. There are great coaches at Division 3, Division 2, Division I, the NFL, it is amazing to watch how many good coaches there are out there and how many people are learning from other people. So I think schematically, everybody has gotten better as a football team. And I think now you add to it is that how well these kids are getting

coached at the high school level. So their transition to college is, wow, these guys can, they can make that jump, you know, because they're doing some things at the high school level. Now you're just like, wow, I didn't know you could do that. And hey, let me study their film. Like, that's a pretty good scheme. And what are those guys doing? So I think because of the coaching has gotten so much better, I think the players have gotten that much better. And that's what when we talk about, there are issues.

You know, I'll give you a new one. Is there, we talk about here all the time. There's no crying on the yacht. Like, we're on a yacht. Like, we could be a lot worse. There's no crying on a yacht. We practice every single day right there, and that is the Mattel Children's Hospital.

And whenever we have a player talk about, you know, things aren't going good. you know, just take a peek across. You want to talk about realistic and what we're talking about and what we get to experience on a daily basis and what some families are going through right now in terms of what's going on from a life experience, that's where you can figure out.

That's why I say this sport's never been in the best place. There's so much we've already touched on now that you've touched on. So let me try to break it up. Let me dive back into schematics and then we'll touch on the other things. I would argue, and you would probably deflect and give credit elsewhere. I would argue that you were at the forefront of innovation

and schematics and football, really at every level, but certainly at the college level. And what you guys were doing at New Hampshire and then what you brought to Oregon changed college football, the tempo, the ingenuity in terms of how you practiced, when you practiced. It was all new. And that's all anybody could talk about was what you were doing at Oregon. My first question would be, where did it start? What was the genesis of your kind of schematic foundation to football? Yeah, I would argue because I always argue. If you weren't in the room with Amos Alonzo Stagg and Newt Rockney, then you stole your idea from somebody. Because somebody has done what we're doing now. I knew you would deflect. In the past. So it's how do you put it

together so it fits best for your team. So you view what you did as more of taking puzzle pieces and fitting them together. Just taking different puzzle pieces. How do I make this puzzle picture work for us? Yeah. You look at Tim Tebow than what Urban did with Tim. Unbelievable. Single wing football.

We were doing that in the 30s. Notre Dame ran the box back then. You look at some of the stuff we did. It was Dutch Myers in TCU in the 50s. So this has been the cyclical part of the 30s. part of the game where we can go back into the history of the game and say, hey, how do we do it? Now, back then, I would say everybody was married to a system. Sure.

And this is our system. This is what we do. Now I think people are more of, I'll do some of this and then some of this and some of this. Because what all great coaches do is what can we add that's going to help this team this year and this game? Sure. Not we run a system. And if it's not part of the system, then we're not going to do it. I think everybody has a sprinkling of everything.

Everybody runs some power, everybody runs some RPO's, everybody runs, but I think the coaches that are the best are the ones that can match it to the personnel that they have. But, you know, I grew up on the East Coast. I was in the old Yankee conference, and we got to play Delaware every year, and it was a thing of beauty to watch a Tubby Raymond Delaware football team with unbelievable players like Rich Gannon

moving up and down the football field, and it was pretty. It was buck sweep, to waggle, to trap, to option, to empty, It was a million different things, but it all fit into their system. And so you can kind of watch and observe how they did it. And then it was just adapt. And really, for us, it all came from, we were an eye formation team. We were a young Penn State.

Our head coach was a tight end at Penn State under Bill Bowes is his name. Under Joe Paternal. Joe Paternal was his position coach. We dressed like Penn State. We were Penn State. We were in the eye. We were tough, hard-nosed and we were physical. And then when we transitioned, as I transitioned to the offense corner,

we didn't have any fullbacks. So it was born out of necessity. It was born out of necessity. Is our third wide out better than a fullback? He is. Well, then how do you run the ball without, you're going to have the wide out play fullback? So, but if you move him out of the box, maybe a linebacker steps out with him. So by formation, you've moved him, but you're still running similar plays.

So it really became from necessity, but it's still understanding the schematics of 11 on 11 and how can you affect people 11 on 11? And then that became the fun part. Like, what can we do with our players to give them a chance to be successful this way? How about when you look around, I would argue a lot of coaches are unwilling to take those steps. There's a fear factor of like, there's an uncomfortable nature. And yet you were willing to do that. How do we run power with three wide receivers?

A lot of coaches would say, you can't run power with three wide receivers because you have to have X, Y, and Z. And you've got to have the kick out and you've got to have a full back or at least an H-back in there. and your willingness to say, well, why not? Yeah. How did that evolve? Well, I've always said why not. I don't know if that had anything to do with football, but I think your job as a coach is to create an environment

where your players have an opportunity to be successful. Sure. And then get out of their way and then say, we're in the solution business. If you're a really good football coach, you're really good at solving problems. Here's our issue. How do we solve it?

Let's move on. And I don't think we're married to what do other people think if we do. this. You know, I've always said, I'm not governed by the fear of what other people say. So you may like what we do, you may not like what you do. We really don't care. Our job is to try to put our players in the best position we can. And I think maybe that experience for me because we weren't in the limelight, we were at New Hampshire. So we didn't have a rabid fan base and message boards and all those other things at that point in time. Maybe

that would have been different. Maybe I would have been different. I don't know. But our job was to win each week. And it was, that's all we thought about. Like, what are we going to do to win? And that was our overarching goal every week. It's going to take this to win, then let's do it. Where do you think it's going, schematics? Like, do you sense a trend right now? Because there was a big trend, like everyone had to go fast. And then everyone wanted to go tempo. And there was a few outliers, right? For a while, it was like, only Stanford would get in there and just like run it. But now, like, it's hard for me to predict where it's going, because everyone does, like you mentioned earlier,

a little bit of everything. I don't get caught up as much as what is the trend. Okay. It's just is what they're doing can be implemented into what we do. And I'll give you an old Joe Paterno, Penn State, Frannie Gander, and all those guys. If you add, you have to subtract. Because you can't like everything. Well, and you can't execute everything.

Because you can't execute everything. There's not an unlimited amount of time. So it'd be like, hey, this is good. And then this is good. And then this is good. And I always have thought of, I remember, Frannie Gantner telling us that, the old long-time Penn State offense coordinator to say, that's great. If we're going to add it, let's just look right now at what we have. What are we taking out?

And then it makes you really think about what your scheme is. Well, let's take out that. Well, I really kind of like that. Okay. Well, then let's take out, I really kind of like that. Well, maybe we're good. Maybe we don't have to add this, that this shiny new object that we saw yesterday that we kind of liked as we start to add it.

And I think if you're conscious of knowing how many and what we're really conscious of, how many reps do we get during a week where I feel comfortable enough or we feel comfortable enough that when we run it on Saturdays, we've given our players an opportunity to be successful running it instead of, I can't believe they screwed it up because we ran it in a walkthrough on Tuesday. You know, that's on us. That's on us. That's bad coaching.

You know, when we call something in a game, we feel like our players have executed it to a point where we're going to be successful when we do it and not because of lack of reps. You know, I think that's one of the advance of tempo is maybe you don't do it in games, but you got to do it in practice so that you get enough reps to be successful in whatever schemes you're running. Yep. So the student athlete, we go back to the student athlete. I agree with you, by the way. I think that not only coaching, I think players, you talked about it in terms of high school players being more ready than ever. And I think that that's the case as well. Like these guys have also specialized a lot sooner, you know, in some degree.

Now, we can argue whether that's good or bad for them developmentally, you know, from an athletic standpoint. But truth be told, the quality of player right now is better than it's ever been. Like, we've got really good players. And it's increasing. I made the big argument about this. With NIL, we're having guys that would have been mid-round draft picks that say, you know what, I can probably make the same amount of money as I would in my first year as a fourth-round draft pick by staying in school. And so we're entering into a phase of college football where I call it the golden era of football. We're going to have more good veteran players than ever before because they're more willing to stay in the sport.

Because of that, when you look at right now across the landscape, like players, players, rights, where are we? If you just took a snapshot of what the players have, what they get, how they can move around their freedom, where do you sit with that? Yeah, I'm all for it. I think we let 18-year-old kids make decisions and so many other aspects of their life, but for some reason in college football, we say they can't. I mean, you played baseball. So you made the decision that I'm going to go play professional baseball. Like you're a professional at 18 years old. And no one has an issue with that.

But they have a huge issue with it in football, which I just don't understand that. We don't have an issue with it in the military. You know, I've been fortunate in my career to take a couple trips overseas and visit our troops and I'm watching 18-year-old kids on the deck of the USS Eisenhower and 137 degree weather landing planes, a million dollar equipment that we're going to be. We've entrusted to an 18-year-old, but we don't think a kid should get NLI money because he has to pay taxes.

Like, people argue that. Well, you can't give those kids a lot of money. You know, they have to pay taxes on it. Like, do you know, there are 18-year-old kids across this country that pay taxes all the time? Baseball players had to do it. No one ever said baseball. I can't believe they're drafting kids in baseball at 18.

But in football for some reason, we've kind of wrapped our arms around it. I think what we have to teach these kids, though, with freedom and freedom of choices, has to come disciplined. You know, you have to be a pretty disciplined individual when you get a lot of freedom on your side because you just can't run around and say, hey, I've got a ton of money,

I'm going to blow it on this, I'm going to blow it on this. Well, it's not going to last very long. Yeah. And that's a very tough lesson for some kids to learn. But I think they should have rights. And then our job is to educate them with those rights, what to do. You know, we're in the education business.

So how do we educate our kids? How do you handle, if you have an NIL deal? How do you handle time commitments? You know, how do you understand you're here on a scholarship? You can't be out on a photo shoot when we're practicing. Things that you kind of think are commonplace. But that's our job is to educate them. But I'm all for the freedom that the student athletes have now.

And they should because the other students do. If you're in you sing or you're a talented musician, like no one ever worries about how come this person's doing this. It's just some reason, for some reason in our sport, and more in football than the other sports. Yeah. We kind of wrap our arms around it like they can't handle it. I think the kids can handle it, but it's on us as coaches and institutions to educate them on how to handle it. So I've talked about prior, and I even had a conversation with Coach Sabin about this during the series, about the nature of agreements and contracts.

You have one with UCLA. I have one with Fox. You know, like everybody, like you said, in the adult world, the kid joins the military. I decided to go sign and play pro baseball. It was, there was a two-way contract, right? So there was freedom to a point because there was responsibility as well as recourse. Yeah.

And there are some. And I'm starting to find myself in this camp that sees the, the lack of recourse when a kid can get invested in by NIL dollars, maybe even through collectives, and that can be a different conversation, you're going to pour into his development as a student, as a person, his health, all of that, you know, pour in, pour in, and then he can just pull the rip court at any moment and just be out. And like, does there need to be some framework where there's more recourse or more responsibility for that player once he's been invested in like that. Yes, I think so. But if there's not, then don't complain about it. Like these are the rules

that we have at this point in time. And then if they do it, our job, whether a kid's here for one day or kids here for four years, is to make it a great experience for him. Sure. And if a kid says, I think I want to go to transfer, well, where do you want to go? How can I help you and assist you that. Because when it's all said and done, are we helping young people achieve their goals? And if they believe it's somewhere else, then it's somewhere else. That's okay. You know, I think people get hurt by that, that we've invested so much in them and then they're leaving. Well, okay. Coaches leave too. You know, is Fox the only people you work for? No, but I have an exclusivity. Yeah. Right. So it's like, I can't. I would have a non-compete.

You may not have had. You would have to pay UCLA a lot of money if you just left on a whim. Right? So that would be the recourse. You know, like where's that recourse for a player? I don't know. I think what has to happen is that the NCAA has to figure out what we are. So are we going to pay them? Can I interject? Or some entity. Yeah.

Whether it's the NCAA or not, some governing body, whether it's an overarching football body, someone has to decide and say, like, here's some framework. Yeah. This is what we are. And if there is framework, as long as a framework is applicable to all schools. in all student athletes, it has to be uniform that way. But the one thing I would caution the student athletes about is that if you do get involved in some type of collectively bargained agreement

about monetary figures, I'm all for it. But there hasn't been a collectively bargained league in any sport that doesn't have a draft. Right. So you no longer get to choose where you go to college. You didn't choose, who drafted gym baseball? San Diego, Padres. I'm excited.

If I'm right I get to go to say yeah with the part right. There are other kids as I get drafted where? You're a Southern California kid you're a Colorado kid you're like I'm going where but that's the deal you know Do we want to go down that path and that's the question that's the really the biggest to me the biggest hurdle are we going to I think the student athlete should be paid how do you do that and then how do you disperse that is it? All freshmen make certain amount sophomores juniors juniors seniors all those other things? Great, but are they now? employees and if they are employees are they at-will employees if a kid misses a kick on a Saturday can he be cut on a Sunday you know do we want to go on that path I think that's the question where the amateurism port is slowly the air is leaving the balloon yeah

and I think everybody understands that what's the best course forward I don't have that answer I think the student athletes should be compensated how that works out I'm worried about getting first downs right and I think that's above us not Not that I don't care, I care of mentally that they should be taken care of, but it's, it's, I also know my say as a coach and it's, I don't think people understand head coaches don't have, when it comes to NCAA issues, it goes to the athletic directors and really to the presidents before, they'll take our input, but very rarely is, hey, coach Saban said this, so we're going to do this.

They're going to take Nick's opinion. Some people, and I would take Nick's opinion too, but there are some of us that they're not going to even ask us questions, they're just going to tell us what we're doing. Isn't it fascinating, too, like, there's no other sport where the head coaches have this amount of, and it's not even that they're say, it's just that whatever they say has so much weight behind it because of the lack of structure. Right? In the NFL, coach says, like, hey, I think this rule should be changed.

Everyone's like, whatever. Yeah. And there's owners. There's a committee. Competition committee. College football is totally different. Yeah. You know, it's like every time anybody that's won the national championship or has had

success or as a prominent coach in our sport. Every time they say something, I was like, why don't we do that? You know, and it's certainly unique to this sport. Because of the lack of governance, that's my argument, right? When you create a vacuum, this is what you get. 100%. You know, they have rules in place right now that is illegal to use NIL as an inducement. Pay for Play is illegal in NIL.

If you look, it's weird, but only the good players get paid. but pay for play is illegal. No one's doing anything about it. It's not, the rule as it was written is not being implemented that way. And I think that's what all the coaches have an issue with. But we still have an enforcement side of the NCAA, but nothing's being done about it. So everybody just kind of, we're just going to do what we do.

And if you happen to be at a school that is very solid in terms of their collective and what they do, then that's a benefit to you. If not, then there's no crying on the yacht. Just move on and move on and just, and just, what do we have that's unique and what are we presenting to kids? And then how do we develop them? Yeah. Because the sad part about the amateurism aspect that is leaving the game as the air is leaving

the balloon is that the other thing that's happening is that a lot of us coaches had looked at what we do is transformational. And now it's going to turn into transnational. And do we want, is that what we want? You know, I know Nick has said that a lot. Is that what we want football to be, college football to be? Do we want it to be a transformational experience or do we want it to be a transactional experience? Or is there someone smart enough to get in a room and whoever those people are?

Can we make it both? Can we make it transformational and transactional? And that's what I think needs. And again, I'm with you. I think there needs to be, you know, a committee of just people that are pretty sharp and care about the game. not care about their team or their conference, but really, what is the future of college football gonna look like? I couldn't agree with you more.

I've argued time and time again that we need a, you can call it governing body, whatever it is. They can be a board. I don't know, whatever you want to call it, but we need a group that only cares about college football globally, everybody in college football, and in particular like the major, college football, but that's all they do, 365 days a year.

Because right now, we have these really very powerful people, these commissioners. And I like a lot of them. They sit down on this program with very well-intentioned and smart people that also are in charge of softball and also are in charge of basketball and are worried about their own conference. So the incentive structure for them is totally skewed in terms of how to create a world like you're talking about where we're looking after the sport and we're working. continuing to make it transformational into the future for all generations, rather than just transactional now for this generation to make what they deserve.

Yeah. I'll defend them because they're not just involved in football. So if I'm the commissioner of the Pac-12 or the SEC or the Big Ten, they're the commissioner for all sports. Well, that's what I was saying. And that's part of the problem. I'm with you is that, but I don't know if in the rules of our United States government, you can separate one sport from another sport because now you bump into Title IX and opportunities for women, which we should be providing. And I understand that.

And I think the whole model of that football and basketball are funding these other sports is what everybody is really the biggest hang-up because if the revenues that are produced in our sport are given to the players, which a lot of us believe should happen, then what happens to the other sports? Because the system has been,

all the athletic department revenue funds all of the athletes, and do you want to be a school that has 20, 25, 28 sports. I believe you should. I think that's what the collegiate athlete experience is about. So even when you're on a campus like that, there's so many unbelievable student athletes on this campus that aren't football players that you admire.

Our women's soccer team won a national championship. Our men's volleyball team won a national championship. And I was excited for both of those programs. What does that model look like when the money's funneled back to the players? Where do the funds come from? And that's what, it's a big money chase. Sure. I know one thing.

I know I don't have the answers. I think we still have to, what we're trying to protect, and I think you're in agreement with that, is that I'm so concerned about losing the transformational experience to just being a total transaction. Is, are we going to just be a minor league entity? And do we lease our name, image, and likeness

from this university, and we're an independent, and we're borrowing the name of the school, the colors of the school, the mascot of the school, and renting this facility to run a minor league football. Yeah, that's, and are you making the educational aspect optional? If you want to go to class, you can, but if you don't want to go to class, you don't have to, I hope that's not where this game is headed.

Um, because I don't think that's what college athletics is all about, but I don't know. I, that's the, that's the really tough part to kind of wrap your head around. This is why I knew I would love talking to you about this because you're you're great on all these topics. One of the last things I wanted to get into was coaches and I respect so many of you guys. There's a, like you said, I think that the the sport right now deeper in the coaching ranks than it's ever been, you already said that, but I believe that there's a threat to that and the threat is the calendar. The calendar makes your

guys' life miserable. There's no crying on the yacht, so I'm not going to have you say that, right? But there's got to be some way that we can help fix the calendar to do a lot of different things. Yes, help the coaches in terms of their quality of life, their ability to construct a roster. But then this also goes into the transformational aspect of once you build a roster, we need to understand what spots are available on the yacht, which right now it's pretty crazy because it all happens in one week. right after in the first week of December doing transfers, you're doing NIL deals, you're doing early signing day. What do we need to do with the calendar? The calendar is actually better than it's ever been, which is crazy to say.

Because kids could visit all summer. Okay. So you never got any summertime off. That's right. Kids could visit in February after the signing date. So at least they've gotten to February is a dead period where students can't visit coaches can't go off campus. July is a dead period.

So it's better than it's ever been. I don't really have an answer because. Do we need to space it out? Let me start with this. Let me give you some idea. Do we need to space it out more similar to the NFL where it's like transfer is open, then signing day happens, where it's separated.

So you're not trying to fill all those seats all at once. Here's the issue that people don't think about. So you look at an overall calendar. You have to factor in. And this is a novel concept. I always talk on this. We always forget about school. So for a kid to transfer,

when does school start in January? Well, we wanna go from January 1 to January 15. Well, if it's January 15, they're not getting admitted here because they need to be here on the first Monday in January. So some of the decisions, and we say, why is that the window? Well, because there are some schools,

there are different schools, we're a quarter school. We're not a semester school, so we're not even on the same schedule as in Alabama or other schools out there. you know, we're in a different schedule. So for a kid to be enrolled here is different than if a kid to be enrolled there because it's the one thing is, is I don't know if there's a universal one for all of them because everybody has a different kind of schedule.

Most of the decisions about when the portals are open and things like that contingent on school. Like for us, we were in the middle of spring ball because we're on the quarter system. So spring ball for us was the month of April. The transfer portal window started on April 15th with the understanding that most people are done spring practice. were six practices in. But because the semester schools needed to have a decision by May 1st so that kids could enroll somewhere for the summer program.

When we're right in the middle of it. And I know there's not many of us around the quarter system, but there's not a universal calendar helps. Sure. But it's still going to affect some schools because of what their school calendar is about. And I don't know if people ever have figured. Because I was like, why was it April 15th? Well, the semester schools.

And to me, I'm like, that makes sense. school, that's a different deal. And so there's a few of us in the quarters that we just have to, we gotta deal with it, you know. I would, I'll end with this. And I've gotten the pleasure, like I've gotten to know you really well, I've gotten to know Ryan really well. You guys obviously are great friends, Coach Day.

You guys had a conversation one time and I just thought it was so unique to witness and special to hear, but the joy that you guys talk about time at New Hampshire. You know, and the love that you had of that time was palpable during the conversation and obviously because you guys love each other and the people that you were with back there. What do you love currently? Like what's your favorite part about your job? I've got to think a lot about that recently because had friends pass away and as you start to get older and you're starting to think about it. And what I love the most is the day to day. Like the

camaraderie to be in a staff meeting when I used to think staff meetings were drudgery like Why do we have to meet again? Do we have to talk about what Tuesday practice is going to be like every single day But I think when you're not in that you kind of miss those days because of the personalities and the people that you get to work with on a daily basis like that's The fun part I think when you look back on when it's over you're going to reflect back on the locker room experience for for a for a It's the staff room experience. I don't know if the conversations go closer to the individual games. Hey, when we beat them or we beat them, it's just a situation that happened in that game

or a situation that happened that day at practice. Those are the things that I think you realize what you're doing this for. And it's all about, like, we got involved in this because this made us happy. And I don't know if I feel for people that ended up in a profession that they were doing it just because that's what's going to pay the bills. My dad always taught me when I was a younger kid is John Lennon was a little kid and he had a homework assignment and it was, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he wrote down happy and passed it in.

And his teacher sent back a note to the parents that said, I don't think he understood the assignment. And they wrote back to the teacher, I don't think you understand life. And I've always remembered that and it's always guided me is that if you can find joy and happy in the day to day, then that's what makes this special. So when you get to be around Ryan Day or coach of Ryan Day, like that was just, that was an amazing experience because he brought it every day,

so you better bring it every day as a coach. And you were on the same page. And it's the same thing with the staffs that you have an opportunity to coach with. Like you're around a bunch of great human beings. That if they share the same values and visions that you share, then that's what makes the fun part of it. So it's the day to day that makes me happy.

It's, you know, for coaches, speaking calendar-wise, like, I hate May. Because all the assistants go on the road and the head coach has to stay home. Like, we're not allowed to go out. I understand the rules. So you're just alone in this big building. You're in this building. And it's, our GA's and analysts, I drive them crazy because I think of a million different things to do. And I'm trying to call our coaches while they're on the road.

And it's just because you want to hear from them and you want to talk to them. So it's that. It's the day-to-day that I don't think I've learned to grow. to appreciate a lot more because that's when that's a fun part about it yeah hey man I appreciate your time all right brother thank you thank you very much yeah this is cool