OPENING STATEMENT
“Well, I think it’s a long time coming. Our coaching staff and our players are excited about the opportunity to play football in the Pac-12. I think all the coaches feel the same way, I don’t want to speak for them but I got a pretty good idea that they feel like I feel. It’s been a long time for players, for our fan base, everyone involved in Pac-12 football. We’re all excited to see next Saturday come when we can actually play football.”
ON THE NAVIGATING THE SEASON WITH A SHORTENED SCHEDULE
“Safety is paramount. We have to be safe; we don’t have any wiggle room as far as being cancelled. Because it seems like every week now there’s a team or two that cannot play. We understand that, and it really comes down to people involved in your organization, making the right decisions. Because, if the virus should hit it can take a lot of people out with it, and we’ve seen that thus far in college football, professional sports as well. So, we’re all really aware of that and that’s the navigation part. To be quite honest, six games is going to come fast it’s going to go fast. When you think about the NFL, they’re almost halfway through the season. A lot of these teams have played eight games, and we’re just starting. So, we’re on the back end of what would be a 12-game season, but we have a six-game season and we’re very excited about having the opportunity to play.”
ON THE SHORTENED SCHEDULE DOES IT MAKE THIS GAME MORE PARAMOUNT
“I think for me as a coach and a former player, they’re all important to win, whether it’s six or whether you play 12, they’re all important to win. Winning your first game gives you a lot of momentum and there’s not a lot of margin for error. They’re all important; every win you get you feel like you’re in the race. You know you always want to control your destiny, but if you don’t win, all of the sudden you’ve got to count on other people patrolling and helping you out. So, if you can win, you’re in control, and if you don’t, then you’ve got to look for other people losing.”
ON THE SAFETY PROTCOLS AND CONCERNS MOVING FORWARD
“It’s been outstanding. Our university, our medical staff and all of the people that are involved in doing this… You can imagine all the planning that goes into this. And then it takes the players and the coaching staff and all the people that work in football to understand the importance as well. It’s not so much when we’re here, it’s when we leave here…What do you do? Who are you socializing with? Who are you allowing in you circle? That’s the critical one, and I think for the most part our players, our coaching staff, and the people that are involved have done a nice job. You’re talking about the trainers, the equipment guys, the weight coaches, everyone. You know this morning we’re safe, we want to continue to be safe. Who you socialize with when you leave the building is kind of important.”
ON THE TRAVEL GROUP SIZE AND ITS IMPACT
“As far as the players go, I think the number is 74, but we generally never travel that many anyway unless it’s against Arizona and we go on the road. And then that’s a game I try to dress all the players, I try to give them one at home one on the road. But this year that won’t allow us to do that. I think it’s 74 max and we’re right about at that number. The other part is, parties that have been on our aircraft, whoever they’ve been that’s been kind of cut too. The load is a lot lighter, we’re fortunate we have three road games, two of them are flights that are not very long and the Arizona game is a bus ride.”
ON GRAHAM HARRELL’S USC OFFENSE UP AGAINST ASU’S DEFENSE
“They run their system and that’s what good offenses do. They just do what they do. Last time I checked they’re pretty good at offense. They really don’t worry about their opponent’s defense, so much as how they run their system. They have certain routes they’ll run when they read the coverage. You know, these are the things that the quarterback is going to go to because he’s in his second season now with a talented group of receivers, they have some good runners, they have a veteran offensive line, so this groups been together for a year offensively.”
ON HOW MUCH OF ASU’S OFFENSE IS LOCKED IN
“Oh, it will continue to evolve. With so many young guys, you’re going to give them opportunities to play and I think as this thing goes, we’ll find out who’s who, meaning it kind of takes care of itself when you allow guys on the field. The one thing we’ve always done here, we’ve given young guys opportunities, and with that there’s going to be some errors involved and you’ve got to live with that, and we’ve lived with that the last two years. But I just think as this thing goes, I mean by week three we’ll probably have a pretty good idea of what it looks like on both sides of the ball. Practicing is one thing, but then when you play and after you play you get to look at it and you figure out was it too big for some guys? Did we give some young guys too many plays? Did we not give them enough plays? You can’t find that out until you get into competition.”
ON CONCERNS ABOUT USC’S POWERFUL OFFENSE
“We’re going to run our defense too by the way. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to run our coverages, we’re going to run our fronts, we’re going to do what we do. And as the game is played out, there’s always going to be some adjustments. We don’t know exactly what they’re going to do, but we have a pretty good idea. But they haven’t played yet, there might be a wrinkle or two that they run, maybe some different personnel groups, and we’re going to have to be able to adjust to that both offensively and defensively. They’re running a similar defense that we ran here the last two years. I think once we find out the rhythm of the game and the flow of the game, that’s when adjustments come in on the sideline.”
ON HOW THE OFFSEASON HELPED IMPLEMENT ESTABLISHING BOTH SIDES OF THE BALL
“When you implement offenses and defenses, you have so much to put in and now it’s the matter of what do you do well? You want to simplify things, you want to make sure the players are clear, are clear eyed and are not thinking and that’s the key now going forward. It’s not the volume of things you like to do, it’s being efficient at what you do. And I think that’s the big thing we talked about and I talked about to the coaching staff this week: simplification is critical now that we’re going to play a game; rotation of the players of who’s going in in what situations, that is very important. We haven’t done that, we haven’t played a game, and so the signals that are being called from the sidelines on offense and defense, we have not done that live. So, all of these things are a part of it, how we communicate to the coaches in the box, to the coaches on the field, all of those things as well. It’s the first time and there’ll probably be a couple misfires but we’ll adjust and we’ll be okay.”
ON KEEPING THE PLAYERS AND COACHES LEVEL HEADED
“Oh, it’s here and you can feel it. Coaches are very short now with their words, players are kind of like, ‘Okay we get it.’ You can feel it, it’s a different. There’s a different switch now because the reality of a football game is about to take place for us. And, with that I think details the focus, conversations aren’t very long anymore with players. It’s not a conversation, it’s almost, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ Like we don’t need to talk about it, this is what we’re going to do.”
ON THE 4:45 AM PRE-GAME MEAL AND WHAT TIME SHOULD THE PLAYERS BE IN BED
“Not the night before, it starts today. I told them they need to start getting their sleep, that’s important. Now, it’s easy for me to say, you know I’m not going to call them up and see where they’re at, but I told them this thing is going to come on you fast, and you need to get your rest. They like to burn the candle at both ends, but you’re an athlete and you’ve got to get up early on a Saturday morning to play this game and to function. So 4:45, I would assume we start breakfast at 4:45, no one will be there at 4:45 except probably me – I get up really early. I would think the rest of the team would probably get there probably within 30 minutes prior to that. But, that’s the wakeup call.”
ON THE EARLY START TIME
“For us we’ve been fortunate. We’ve always practiced in the morning, but that’s practice. We’ve never played a live game. There’s a different feeling when you’re playing a game, right? It’s the first time I’ve ever played a game at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. Players as well, so for both teams it will be interesting. How does it start with a stadium that’s not going to be full by any stretch of the imagination as we know. So, who’s going to bring the energy, and does it take a quarter for both teams to get started? I don’t know, I really don’t know. What/s the pace of the game that early in the morning? I wish I could tell you. but I don’t know. I think that we’ll just deal with it when it presents itself and from there we’ll adjust.”
ON BRINGING THE ENERGY TO THE SIDELINE
“I think what’s going to happen for both staffs probably, you’re going to hear coaches coaching the game from the sideline. Because you can actually hear, especially defensively. You can hear the defensive coach hollering at you. So, that’s going to be kind of interesting. It’s going to be like if you go to practice, you know how the coaches are hollering at practice. I anticipate the same thing happening in a live game now. They’ll be some of that music in the background, maybe that might help, but I see a whole lot of coaching going on right now on the sideline.”
ON "PLAY TO WIN THE GAME SPEECH" AND HOW YOU HAVE GROWN AS A COACH
“I’ve been in this for over 30 years… I learn something every time I walk on the field. If I don’t, shame on me, shame on me. That’s what this game gives you. You’re always learning, and when you become a coach, I think you learn more about situations that appear in games and practice, decisions you make, watching the tape, or how you can maybe adjust something a little bit different than you thought of you know 30 years ago. I joke that I’ve forgotten more football than most people can remember. Because you’ve been around it for so long, but you’re always learning. I’m a real believer that every day you need to learn something and that you can if you pay attention. And I’m a stickler on details and watching, and football has evolved from when I played high school football to right now. The way the game has changed and then at the college level and the professional level, you see a lot of college football in pro football right now. Low and behold it’s here, it’s everywhere the way the game is played on offense and the things you have to do on defense now. This is a game of scoring, it’s almost like 7 on 7 on the grass when you watch football. You know scoring is just kind of a part of it, it’s just you anticipate it. You know when you see a game 17-10 you kind of shake your head right? But as a defense guy, you think that’s pretty good. Most people don’t want to watch those games, you don’t see a lot of those games anymore. Because of the forward pass and the way offenses can create the ability to put you in space defensively and with the skill of the players that throw the ball and catch the ball and run with the ball and the skill of the defensive players that can run after the quarterback and play good coverage. So it’s an entirely different game; the rules are the same, they’ve changed some but the athleticism and how they play with the football is different than what it was 30 years ago, it’s not even close.”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ON A NATIONAL PLATFORM
“Well it’s very important, on national television you represent your conference. This is a Pac-12 game, both teams are representing the Pac-12, which I think is very important. This is the conference we play in, both of these teams recruit the same players, especially when it comes to the Southern California area. But I think it lets the national audience watch our conference and you want it to be a competitive game by both parties. So, you want a brand of football that people look at and go, ‘Woah, okay we see what they’re doing out there.’ And so that’s part of it, we know that. And I think anytime you can play USC, a team that has a national brand, I mean it had the same brand when I was leaving high school, I was recruited by USC. And it had a national brand then, you’re talking like 1972, my graduation from high school. And everybody knew who USC was and that hasn’t changed a whole lot. So, any time you play a team like that with a national brand on national television, it’s a big game.”
ON FAVORITE SEASON OPENER MEMORY
“Probably my dad coming to the first game that he ever watched me play football. You know my dad didn’t have the opportunity to watch me play high school football, he worked, he worked three to four hours away from where I lived from where we had our home. He didn’t get the opportunity to watch me play as a college player either, and he came to the Rams game in the colosseum and watched me play my first football game and Joe Namath was the quarterback. I can remember like it was yesterday. That was my first NFL interception, against Joe Namath and my dad watched it. I’ll never forget that.”
ON NOT SAYING TOO MUCH ON THE SIDELINES
“They’re going to have their own problems on the sideline. If they’re listening to what coaches are saying, they’re going to be in trouble because the offensive guys are going to be hollering at their offensive players and the defensive coach is going to be hollering at the defensive players and it’s going to be fun to watch.”