The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - What will life after Harbaugh be like for Michigan? Alabama gets a win & “Horns Down” strikes again

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt discusses the challenges that new Michigan Head Coach Sherrone Moore will face as he begins the post-Harbaugh era in Ann Arbor. Klatt explains why retaining Strength Coach Ben Herbert is so critical to maintaining the culture at Michigan and tells a story of one of Herbert’s famous winter workouts. He assesses the latest player movements in the sport including Alabama getting their 5-star Wide Receiver recruit to re-commit to the program and Washington holding onto their QB for next season. He wraps up the show by discussing the latest controversy surrounding “Horns Down.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He's got to be authentically himself. This has to turn into Sharon Moore's program, not Jim Harbaugh's program with Sharon Moore coaching it. That's imperative. College football's never been better. Interest has never been higher. Believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football.

It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again. What's up, everybody? This is the Joel Clatio. I am Joel Clat. And thank you for joining us here today. Hey, remember to subscribe wherever you're listening to this show, wherever you're listening, wherever you get your podcasts. And make sure to be there for us because, listen, we're there for you.

Even in the off season, that's right, even in the midst of some great playoff games. Congratulations, by the way, to, let's see, the 49ers and the Chiefs should be a good Super Bowl rematch of that one. What was it, five years ago? So, yes, we've got a lot coming down for you. and this one, we've got some Michigan talk about Sharon Moore, a little bit of Bama conversation, and then Washington jumps in, and then some thoughts for Texas and Texas fans, all of that coming straight up. Hey, if you are watching on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to the show. Wherever you are on social media, please follow us at Joel Klatshow. We're all over those

locations. And then chime in with your comments in particular on YouTube, if you're a subscriber because I like to jump in there on the YouTube comments and actually have a conversation with you. And I try to do that on every episode. It doesn't always work out. But I try to be involved in there on the conversation. So let's get started. Sharon Moore is announced as the new head coach for the Michigan Wolverines. This was a no-brainer. That's my first thought overall is that this is exactly what should happen, what was going to happen. And they superseded that law about the seven days. And they've done that before.

That's why it was so surprising when that was a topic after Jim Harbaugh left for the, for the Chargers. But they get it done. And Sharon Moore is the new head coach. Everybody knew this was going to happen. You don't do what he was able to do this year as the acting head coach and some of their biggest games and not get this job in particular with the culture that they've built. They've built something so special at Michigan as the national champions, right?

I mean, we didn't think that was going to happen, really, did we? And yet it did happen. And so you want to continue that. Jim Harbaugh has built something that has legs and is sustainable. And now that sustained effort is going to be handed to Sharon Moore. So he's going to get that five-year deal. He's going to start about $5.5 million. That's absolutely in line with where he probably should be.

It's about what Ryan Day got when he first got the job at Ohio State right around Lincoln Riley, when he first got the job at Oklahoma and even state. Steve's first contract at Texas down there with Steve Sarkesian. Now, they since got bigger deals and rightly so because they had a lot of success. I do think Sharon Moore is going to have a lot of success. But the first thought, as I already laid out, is that this was a no-brainer. And the first element to that is that he did prove it. So we got to see this. He didn't have to go into a job interview and say, this is what I would do if I was the head coach. They got to see it in practice. and they got to see it in some of the biggest games that Michigan had,

in particular down the stretch. You look at the four games that he was the acting head coach, Bowling Green early in that first suspension for Jim Harbaugh. And then later in the year, right when they are like up against it, games in November are the ones we remember, and they win a road game against the top 10 Penn State team. They win a road game against Maryland, and then he beats the Ohio State Buckeyes.

that's the job interview. You didn't have to have a job interview to look at what he was able to do and immediately know that he was going to be the coach. And he did a great job in those games. Their game plans were terrific. His adjustment against Penn State was outstanding when he realized that they weren't going to be able to block the pass rush for Penn State. What did he do?

He got big, put extra offensive linemen on the field, and immediately ran the ball 32 straight times to close out the game. Incredible, incredible. adjustment as the acting head coach and the play caller. More on that and just a little bit. The second part of me that looks at this from a no-brainer standpoint is the stability. If this off-season has proven anything, it's that no program, no program in the country is immune from the chaos that ensues with a coaching change.

No program. Look at Alabama. Alabama is the case study. Nick Saban walks away and retires as the greatest in the history of our sport and immediately chaos ensued even in Alabama. So the fact that Michigan could do this with a guy that has been in this program and helped build this culture that just culminated in a national championship is a must. And they needed to do it quickly, which is exactly what they did,

to avoid the chaos that naturally ensues in modern day college football when you change your coach. I've had conversations with several guys. Like, for instance, Ohio State fans, there have been some that have clamored like, I don't know if Ryan's the guy, you know, he lost against me. What are you going to do? Like, fire him so that you have to start from ground zero. That's not what you want unless you absolutely have to.

Okay, what's better is to just change, identify, what are you going to do to change and get better, and then go do that, which is what Ohio State seems. to have done this offseason. Michigan gets to avoid that because they've got the no-brainer right in front of them with Sharon Moore. This guy is a rock star. I love Sharon. I've loved meeting with Sharon Moore. I think he's going to be highly successful for a lot of reasons. And I'll get into those here as we get there. But you look at the chaos. Think about what happened at Alabama. Think about what's happened at Washington. In some ways, Arizona with Jed Fish leaving or Texas

A&M with the Jimbo move. Like, it just happens, man. It's just like the churn effect gets going. And everybody starts to come in and try to recruit those players away from those schools. Now, what is priority number one for Sharon Moore? And really the entire program, if I'm Moore manual, the athletic director at Michigan, if I'm Sharon Moore, if I'm anybody, it's get Ben Herbert to stay as a strength and conditioning coach.

For those of you that don't know, Ben Herbert, is one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the country. In fact, he's paid as such. He makes a million dollars a year, which is tied for the highest paid strength and conditioning coach in the country. They also gave him the title Jim Harbaugh did associate head coach. Okay. Why is he such a priority?

Because we can talk about this all we want, but why is he such a priority? I think that we should get into this. First and foremost, you have to understand the strength coach at any program spends more time with the players than any other coach on staff, even more than the player's individual position coach. The strength coach and his team spend more time around that player than anybody,

more than the academic department, more than the actual coaches themselves. So it is vital that that guy is a conduit to the culture that you want to establish in your program. Okay? It's absolutely vital. Because again, the players are going to be there. The proximity. That's the proximity. Now, I think that it would be naive, I think is the right word.

Maybe it's short-sighted to just think that, hey, you know, all they do is lift weights. And that's a common misconception. Now, I think there are some around the country that, yeah, you know, like you have a good strength coach. Okay. And what does that mean? A lot of people think it's just like the workout. and are they getting stronger and this or that? And yes, that's a part of it.

You want a guy that understands and is on the cutting edge of physical development. However, it's more than that. It really is. In particular with the amount of time that the players are going to spend with this guy. And remember, he's going to spend time with them in the moments where nobody is looking right now. Right now, January, February, every team in the country, they're going through their worst workouts of the year right now. You don't hear about it.

There's no articles written about it. There's no tweets about it. Why? Because it's ugly. It's early in the morning. I know ours were, we called them dirty dozens. They were at 5 a.m. They were just the term dirty dozens.

We did them in the field house, which I can remember how it smelled. We basically ran until we threw up. Right. And like, so basically what I'm telling you is like the culture of these teams is being forged right now with the strength coach. And so it's not just about like, hey, you know, look at our big weight room. And yeah, he's our head strength coach. And this and that. That guy has to be not only important, but he has to be an extension of the head coach and an extension of the culture that you're trying to build. Okay, so Ben Herbert has done that ridiculously well at Michigan. Everybody, to a man, whether it's the coaches or the players themselves, talk about Ben Herbert and the importance that he has to them and their culture and their program.

Specifically, his ability to build and develop players physically, which that's obvious with their lack of five stars and yet their dominance in particular at the line of scrimmage. And then it's also about their culture. And this is where I want to just kind of tell a little bit of a story. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a story about what Blake Corum shared with us at one of our meetings about Ben Herbert. Okay. So it's the offseason. It's right now, like last year and the previous year.

And it's cold. It's Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's the dead of winter. It's not fancy. Right? there's no celebrations. There's no wins. There's no 100,000 in the big house. They show up for an early morning offseason workout. And Ben Herbert is renowned for doing these things that test and train their minds more than just their bodies. And so what he does

is he brings them in. And unbeknownst to them, they're not going to just go into the weight room and turn the music on loud and just start lifting weights. He's got something different planned for them. And this is what makes him so good. He first, for those of you that don't know, they have this giant cold tub that you can kind of walk through and meander through. It's like a little bit of a maze at Michigan in their facility. And so he has them in the dead of winter early in the morning in their workout gear. They're in their shoes. They're in their workout gear. And he says, walk through the cold tub. So the team walks through the cold tub. They're soaking wet. He says, all right, get down, you know, kind of to your chest, hands in the water.

It's freezing cold water. It sounds awful. It sounds awful. They walk out of the cold tub. Nobody has a towel and they're in their clothes that they're supposed to work out in. Their shoes that they're supposed to work out in. He takes them into the field house, which is right next door to the cold tub. So it's right there.

He takes them into the field house. And he has sets, like these different sets of dumbbells. And they go from their largest dumbbells, which is 100. I believe, or maybe a little bit more. It's an ridiculously heavy dumbbell all the way down to like their 50 pound dumbbells. And it's so it's a row of dumbbells. And there's several rows of all these dumbbells. Let's call it like five or six different rows.

And he breaks the team up into five or six different groups. Those dumbbells are chained together, chained together. And their objective, freezing cold, soaking wet is to, with their group, lift up the dumbbells, however you want to do it, because there's more dumbbells than there are players in your group and walk them around the field. Now, what does that have to do with football? Nothing. What does it have to do with culture?

Everything. Everything. So that's an example of why they talk about Ben Herbert so glowingly. And I'm reminded immediately when I heard that story, I immediately thought to myself, That sounds eerily similar to like a Navy SEALs training. When it's not necessarily about the training itself, but it's about the mentality and the culture that they're trying to build through the training. And there's things that I immediately point to.

One of the Navy SEALs lessons that they point to is like, you can't go it alone. Another Navy SEAL training lesson, life's not fair. Drive on, right? Is it fair that you just walk through the cold tub and your hands are soaking wet? You probably can't feel them because they're freezing cold. And your feet are freezing cold. and by the way, they're sloshing because you just walk through the water in your shoes and socks. Life's not fair.

Drive on. You know, another Navy SEALs lesson, dare greatly, rise to the occasion, like all these things. And so, like, that's what Ben Herbert was driving into the Michigan players. And then that's the way that they started to play. And that's why I think it's so important that Sharon Moore keeps him as a coach there. You think about the way that they dealt with some adversity. this year, whether it was the Zach Zenter injury that I talked about on this program, Harbaugh's suspension, whether it was early in the year or late in the year.

Even, you know, it's fourth down against Alabama in the Rose Bowl. This team never blinked. And then you hear stories about Ben Herbert and you're like, oh, okay, they practiced that. They practiced that in January at 6 a.m. in Ann Arbor walking through the cold tub and then carrying dumbbells that were chained together around. It's like, hey, life's not fair. Get it done. Right?

So those are reasons why I think, you know, Ben Herbert is so important. The strength and conditioning coach is really the glue of a program for anybody. And when you find a good one, you've got to keep him. And by the way, one of the reasons why he wouldn't go to the NFL or probably shouldn't go to the NFL or I don't think he will go to the NFL, you can't have that impact on the pros. The pros, you're coaching guys that are 14-year veterans and guys. that are rookies. You're coaching guys that have a hundred million dollar contract and you're coaching guys that are making $800,000 and you know, living with their parents. And it's like it's totally it's totally different. You're not there for culture at the next level. You're you're there

for totally different reasons and and it's a physical development type of role and it's an injury prevention type of role. And I don't think he wants to do that. I think he loves the culture building and being important on that end. And that's just different in terms of the two levels. All right. Now let's continue to move on. And what's the challenge? What is this going to look like now that Sharon is going to be the head coach

from Michigan? Well, it brings up the question immediately, like, is he going to call plays? Now, it's a little bit different than let's say Ryan Day or Lincoln Riley when they got these jobs through kind of a similar way, almost a promotion from within. and the reason is that they had called plays for an extended period of time, and that was really their superpower.

If you remember, this is actually the first year that Sharon was the sole play caller for Michigan. So it's not like he has an extended history, even though he did a great job. I'm not saying that he didn't. But this is not something that has been in his DNA for even four years or five years or six years or 10 years. This is something that he just started doing last year. So it's going to be easier for him to move into a CEO role than it would be those guys that in large part got their promotions because of their ability to call plays. That's not necessarily why Sharon got this job. Now, is he really good at it?

Yes, obviously. And his adjustments in some of those games were really solid. But it's a little different than those guys that had done it for an extended period of time before they got their head coaching job. So that's going to help him if he wants to move off of it. And we've talked at length about this. I actually believe in college football, it might be too difficult for a coach to be a head coach and do it well in this day and age with NIL and transfer portal and the crazy schedule that we have and be a play caller. I think it might just be too difficult. This is one of the reasons why I think Ryan Day has gone to the outside and hired Bill O'Brien as the offensive coordinator.

And that's the evidence that you need because this guy, Ryan is one of the elite play callers that we have. in the sport. Why would he give that up? Well, it's just too difficult. Okay, so Sharon's going to have to battle with that from the beginning. If I were him, I would look to give that up immediately. Set it up right away so that you can focus 100% on just being the head football coach and give somebody else those duties as the play caller. I think that'll be really important. And a likely candidate would be Kirk Campbell. He's a guy that was the quarterback coach this last year. I like Kirk a lot.

Got to spend some time around him. He did a really good job with JJ this year. JJ took a step forward in his game, a pretty gigantic step forward in his game from a development standpoint. And Kirk was a big reason for that. And so I think Kirk could easily step in there and be the play caller. And then the other question that I would have is what happens on defense? I expect Jesse Minter to go with Jim Harbaugh.

I think that's pretty likely. So who's the extension of Mike McDonald and Jesse Mentor? The defense in a large way is just as much a part of the identity of this program as the run game. And because of that, you've got to hold on to both. That'll be difficult for Sharon because he's going to have to find someone. You can't run a different defense. I think those players would look at you, you know, with their eyes crossed. And they're like, what?

We're not running a different defense. Look at what this defense just did. We just beat Ohio State three straight times, right? Like, they're not going to want to change defense. So they're going to need to find who's the extension of Mike McDonald or Jesse Minner that you can bring in and coordinate the defense and keep it on the rails in terms of how dominant they've been over the last couple of years, specifically this last year. Their defense was just incredible. and that leads you to kind of the last thought on Sharon, which is the difficulty for him personally. And he's going to be caught in between these two things that are both true.

He's going to want nothing to change at Michigan, clearly. And yet, everything has to change at Michigan. How can both of those be true? Well, because Sharon has to keep the culture, the systems, and everything in place, and yet he cannot be Jim Harbaugh. Nor can he try to be Jim Harbaugh. He's got to be authentically himself. This has to turn into Sharon Moore's program, not Jim Harbaugh's program with Sharon Moore coaching it. That's imperative.

That's imperative. and even more for him personally being authentic, which is exactly what he addressed at his introductory press conference. So I'm going to be me. And I think if you, you know, in this business in any world, if you're not yourself and you're going to lose, you're going to lose the people around you. So I'm definitely going to be myself, be who I am,

my leadership styles, how I'm going to approach things. I'm going to do that way. I'm definitely going to lean on him tremendously because obviously we've, you know, what he's built and what we've built. and what we've built here. The locker room will find you if you're not authentic. It is a great barometer, man. It is a place where the locker room just susses out BS quicker than any place on the planet that I've been in.

Just does. There are so many places in our culture, in our lives, that people can just kind of skate. They can be inauthentic. They can be passive-aggressive. They can, you know, like, you and I deal with people like that all the time. In football programs, though, that doesn't fly,

especially successful ones. Man, BS don't fly in locker rooms. If you're not authentic, if you're not yourself, people look at you like, what are you talking about? And they will know, those players will know. They have seen Sharon Moore

and the good times and the bad times. They've seen him as an acting head coach in Jim Harbaugh's program. And now they're going to see him as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines. And they will know when he's not being authentic and he has to be authentically himself. I think that there's a couple of ways

that he could even take this program to the next level. They haven't recruited at the top end. Now, you could argue that they're getting the right type of players. And you know what? Fair enough. But I still think that you could improve their recruiting overall a little bit. And maybe he has a little bit more energy than Jim Harbaugh did to do that. That's something that he can do. They're going to have to find a way to continue to play great at the quarterback position like they did with J.J. McCarthy. These are all things that he's going to be challenged with as he moves forward. One little look back. And I think

that this is important. Jim builds programs to have success after he leaves. I'm a big fan of, there's an old book. I actually got it when I was playing. It's now it's a really old book. Good to Great by Jim Collins. And Jim was an author and he's, it's, it's more of a business leadership book, but, but I was given the book by Jim who lived in Boulder at the time I was playing. And Coach Barnett, Gary Barnett, my coach, had Jim out in Jim. I didn't know him. at the time, but Gary said, hey, go meet that gentleman over there. So I went over and Jim Collins gave me a book. And I didn't know it was Jim.

He just said, here you go. I think that you will find this helpful. And I was like, all right, buddy. You know, like, thanks. And sure enough, like, I turned the cover open and it's from Jim Collins. Well, anyways, sorry, I went on a quick tangent on that. But this idea from Jim Collins in the book is that you've got to have the right people in the right places on the bus in order to have success at any company. And when you get that combination, you have to keep it.

But then the key is that the one driving the bus, the leader, right, the CEO, the head coach, there's this distinction between a level. four leader and a level five leader. And he talks about how both of them will have ultimate success. They will achieve the goals of everything that they set out to achieve, both four and five. But there's a distinct difference. The level four leader, when he walks at the door, has not set up anything to have success after he's gone. All right. So the structure is not there. He's just such a dominant force or she, sorry, or she. That person is such a dominant force. that the success happens, but when that force steps out, everything crumbles. The level five leader is different.

The level five leader builds something to sustain and have success, whether they're in that position or not. I would make the argument that Jim Harbaugh, at least in his past, in particular when you look at Stanford, is a level five head coach because they were sustained and had success after he left. And they did so in the mold that he built them. him. Now, this is where it's, it's important is that I believe David Shaw had a lot of success as, as the man after Jim Harbaugh at Stanford, because he stayed true to the way the team was

built and the fashion that the team was built and the identity that the team had. If you look at the last three years of Harbaugh's tenure at Stanford, they were a 60% running team, rushing the football. They called it intellectual, In the first seven years of the Shaw era, they remained the same 58% run team. They averaged 10 wins in those years. They were one of the best teams in the country. Then there was a clear shift in 2018. They still won nine games, but they only ran the ball 45% of the time.

Then if you look at the last few years, 19 to 22, they were a bottom 10 run team in the country. Bottom 10, they averaged 42% running the football. average three and a half wins per season. You can make an argument that when they moved away from what was built to sustain after Jim Harbaugh left, that's when they started to fall apart at Stanford, among other things. By the way, they lost their strength coach, so on and so forth. And I know that fits in this conversation. So expect a little bit more of the same from Michigan.

I do think that they're going to have success. Around the country, Bama seems to have stopped the bleeding. It wasn't pretty, it was pretty chaotic. after Nick Saban retired. And again, that's what you find now, is that it's going to be chaotic for any team that decides to change their coach. And yet, they seem to have circled the wagons, if you will, and calmed down. Alabama gets their five-star wide receiver, Ryan Williams, he recommitted.

If you remember that after the news that Saban was going to retire, he decommitted and now has recommitted. will be at Alabama. He was the number five overall player in 2024, according to 24-7 composite. Bama was, I don't want to say they were in a spiral, but there was a bit of panic, right? I think it was eye-opening for everyone around the country, maybe even Bama fans that were like, oh, man, this can even happen to us when Caleb Downs walks out the door and Caden Proctor walks out the door, and Isaiah Bond walks out the door. And their highly touted quarterback recruit Julian saying, and he walks out all after the Saban retirement.

But now the bleeding is stopped. And now Kalin DeBore can take a little bit of a deep breath. And he can get, okay, I get Ryan Williams. And by the way, if you're Ryan Williams, why wouldn't you want to go play for Kalin DeBore? Look at what he just did with Romodonze and McMillan and Polk. I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, Alabama should be getting some of the best wide receivers in the country.

But now what it does is it sets up a huge spring. Because guess what? Caitlin DeBoer is not out of the woods yet, nor are any of these coaches that are in their first spring in their new spot, because there's still going to be a spring transfer portal period. Okay, so this spring is going to be a huge test for DeBoer and this team at Alabama. All right. Are they buying what he's selling? Is he authentic? By the way, that goes for Sharon Moore.

It goes for Jed Fish. It goes for any of these. Mike Elko, any of these guys in these guys in these. these new spots. Are you authentic? What's spring football like? We're going to find out at all of these places because there's another spring transfer portal period where the players can jump in and leave. Okay. So not out of the woods yet. DeBoer now has to be authentic and he's got to have a good spring. We're going to learn a lot about how spring goes down at Bama by how it kind of they react, if you will, to that spring transfer portal.

Speaking of some of those other teams, Jed Fish, he got a big win out of the portal in a guy that had already decided he wanted to go to Washington and play for Kalin DeBore. That's Will Rogers. So Will Rogers, he's going to go to Washington after all. He was the Mississippi State quarterback. He transferred to Washington.

Then DeBore leaves. He goes back into the portal. Where is he going to go? And now he's removed his name from the portal and he's going to stay at Washington. I think that is a big win for Jed Fish. Because now I can look at Washington and say, okay, you know, I think that they're going to take a little step back,

but now you've got some players. I like what Jed Fish has done clearly at Arizona. And they brought in the running back Jonah Coleman, a couple of corners from Arizona. They brought in a few linemen from other schools, which will help them replenish up front what they're losing. I get it that they still lost some really good players in the transfer portal, but that's, I think, almost expected, right?

I mean, you can't have this type of coaching change and not lose at least a couple of guys. Their center, Parker Brailsford, he went to Bama. Jabbar Muhammad, he has committed to Oregon. That's a big get for Oregon. He's a really good defensive back at the corner position. Quarterback, Austin Mack, he went down to Bama. So, yeah, they lost some guys. But they're getting some reinforcements.

and I think the same can be said about Kalin DeBor. It seems like, okay, bleeding is stopped. All right, now we're back in school. Okay, we're into off-season strength and conditioning like I was just talking about. And we've got a quarterback with Will Rogers. So now it leads you to look at their schedule. What is Washington going to be after this run to the national championship game? I think Jed Fish could do pretty well early,

but then their slate late in the year gets really difficult. Their last seven games are going to be very, very tough. This is what it looks like. They've got to play Michigan. They've got to go to Iowa at Indiana, USC, at Penn State, UCLA, and at Oregon. That's a really tough finish in Jed Fish's first year. But remember, just remember, he did take over an Arizona team that was winless. They won one game in his first year, and he just left after they won 10 games. So if anybody can do it, I do think he can, but a big, big win for him with Will Rogers. Texas has been back in the news.

And even though it wasn't necessarily college football, it certainly fits in college football. Horns down. I'm so sick of people being offended by Horns Down. Like, this is ridiculous. So if you haven't been following, their basketball coach, Rodney Terry, he kind of brought this to the forefront again. And I tweeted about it, by the way. He said some UCF players were, quote, classless because they flashed horns down before going to the handshake line after beating Texas in Austin.

Now, he has since backtracked it. So I don't want to, you know, beat a dead horse here. But then don't lose the game. Like, why? is this the only gesture in intercollegiate athletics that we're so worried about. There's a lot of things, by the way, that there's a lot of hand gestures that get made on the football field, on the basketball court. There are a lot worse than horns down. A lot worse.

Don't Google them, if you know what I mean. And here we are like always wasting time about horns down. it's just like, you know, it's one thing if you do it like right in the face as a taunt, just like anything as a taunt, I think is fair to penalize. But in a lot of ways, the Big 12 kind of created this mess when they started to say, like, we're going to penalize horns down as an unsportsman like, like, why? That is so weak. That is so weak.

If you don't like it, win. Okay? If you don't like it, win. and stop being so externally focused. That's what I would tell Rodney Terry. And again, I know he walked it back. So he's going to hear this and be like, listen, this is water under the bridge.

That's fine. But if you're offended by this, stop being externally focused. There's no reason to be externally focused. You have zero control in your life. I'm speaking to everybody now. You out there, listening, watching. You have zero control

of anything going on, except for one thing in this world, your own effort level. Maybe you could say your attitude, but it's really your effort level. That's it. That's it. So stop worrying about all the other stuff. Stop being externally focused. For those of you out there that draw yourself self-worth and value from things that happen on the exterior or from others, I mean, you are in for a world of hurt.

A world of hurt. Stop doing that. Immediately. I feel like we're in a mailbag episode. Please stop doing that. That's detrimental to your well-being, long-term and short-term. No doubt about it. You should not draw your value from that.

You can control your own effort level and you can control your own attitude to a certain extent. And you can be better than that. So someone flashes a horns down. Who cares? And now at the BYU basketball game, they told the kids to, like, take the shirts off. They had like horns down written on shirts at BYU and someone told them to take off the shirts. Now, to be fair, I have, it wasn't Texas that told them to take it off. But then that's like, BYU told their own students to take it off.

Why? Because the Big 12 made a big deal out of it a few years ago. Stop making a big deal out of it. And by the way, the SEC is not making a big deal out of it. The SEC has said they will not penalize the gesture of horns down. Good. Good. Because it's only a thing because it was made a thing.

Right. By the way, you should take it as a compliment. If someone goes out of their way to be focused on you rather than internally focused on themselves, you should take that as a compliment. That is a great compliment. Oh, man, that probably stems from some sort of jealousy on their part. Like they want to be a part of that. They horns down.

Again, do not let yourself be defined. Draw your value or your worth from anything on the outside. Be internally focused on that and controlling your own effort level. Because that's the only thing that you can control in life. That's it. Thank you for listening. Next week is going to be a mailbag only Joel Clatchio. So that means send your questions in to the mailbag.

We've got the Joel Clatshow mailbag at gmail.com open. We are ready. We are open for business. So send in your questions. They can be about college football. Heck, throw them in about the Super Bowl if you want. Life, parenting, golf, whatever you want. I'm open.

I'm ready to talk about it. In fact, right before we did this show, me and the staff, we were talking about like our phones and like screen time. and what are these phones doing to us and what's social media doing to us on our phone? By the way, I don't have any social media on my phone. I have a picture there in my family, as you can see if you're watching. But I don't have any social media on my phone. And guess what?

It's awesome. I suggest it. Try it for a day. Try for two days. You're going to love it. You're going to absolutely love it. Because guess what goes up when you're scrolling on social media? Low-grade anxiety.

You don't even know it, but it does. that might be in the mailbag. Send your questions in the Joel Clat Show mailbag at gmail.com and we're going to have a mailbag episode next week right here on Monday. I hope you have a great week and we'll be back with you for that mailbag episode. Have a great day, everybody.