Joe Paterno Media Day Press Conference Transcript
COACH JOE PATERNO PRESS CONFERENCE
MEDIA DAY
AUGUST 12, 2004
A lot of the guys talked about more confidence and a better attitude this year. Did you see that in the spring and do you see it now?
I think that depends on whether it maintains itself. We have a tough preseason ahead of us. I don’t think we are anywhere close to being good enough to be ready to feel really good about ourselves. I think we have to challenge this team in preseason and we will go from there. We had a good winter program and good spring practice and it looks as if the kids came back in pretty good shape. There is reason to be optimistic and reason to have some confidence. We have a long way to go yet.
Midway through last season you reduced the roles of Tony Hunt and Austin Scott at running back as a matter of experience. Have those issues been addressed? Are we going to see them more on the offense this year or are we still going to see Michael Robinson mainly at running back?
I don’t know whether you saw Mike mainly at running back last year. I am not really sure about that. I think that both Austin and Tony are both going to be good backs. They have had good preseasons. Rodney Kinlaw will not step aside. I like Rodney Kinlaw very much. I think we have got to see just how far they have come along. Obviously, we put an awful lot of pressure on them last year as true freshmen out of anybody to kind of set a bar for them. Ordinarily, when a young back comes into our program there is an experienced back ahead of them who can kind of help them by example, the way he practices and things like that. These kids almost had to establish their own way of getting things done. You can coach up to a point. I think that, obviously, I’d be disappointed if we are not better and more stable at that position. Whether we are good enough remains to be seen. We didn’t have very many long runs this spring. Until we get some big plays either from the running backs, wideouts or some place, we are still going to be just another football team on offense.
Going into this season, what are you going to consider a success? Are you looking for a winning season, a bowl game or a national championship? What goals do you have set for your team going into the season?
I am not a goal-oriented kind of guy. I hope we play better. I hope we do some of the things we didn’t do very well last year. Our kicking game was terrible last year. We were last in the country, I think, and our field goal percentage was probably the worst in the Big Ten. We lost games on punt returns when Wisconsin broke open a game. We had punt blocks. The number one thing we have to do is start to address some of the things that caused us to be losers. That is one. We have to catch the ball, obviously. The question of young tailbacks, they have to grow up and not be freshman and make some things happen when they get their hands on the football. We have to be a little better against the run on defense. We are close in a lot of ways. There is really only one game last year that we were out of. We were terrible. Our kicking game let us down in two or three of those. We are close. Certainly close does not get you there.
Zack has had ups and downs during his career and talked earlier about how he really wants to go out with a winning season. Where is he right now mentally and physically?
I will start off with I resent the fact that you say he has had his ups and downs. The team has had its ups and downs. A lot of Zack’s problems were not because of Zack. A lot of them were the fact that we had very inaccurate people who, when we were throwing the football, we were not quite sure where they were going. They dropped a lot of clutch passes on him. He had to literally coach two freshmen tailbacks in the huddle as to what to do, where to go and so forth. I think Zack did a marvelous job with everything considered. He got bumped up and then Mike Robinson had to come in there. It is not fair to say his “up and down career”. He suffered through a tough year last year, none of which was any of his doing. I think he will have a great year. If we can get our wideouts to be a little more disciplined, we can catch the ball in the clutch and get a little bit more production out of our tailbacks as I said earlier, I think you will find that he is really a big league quarterback.
Do you foresee the race in the 17th congressional district as being a distraction to you during the season?
Let’s get on with football.
Do you have any regrets as far as moving Gerald Smith to the defensive side for part of last season? How stable do you see the receiving corps this year?
That had nothing to do with it. I don’t think that really has anything to do with anything we are doing.
How much better has the offensive line gotten? How vital will that be for you this year?
I think we will be better because we have a little bit more experience. Levi Brown, obviously, did a great job as a freshman who stepped into the offensive line situation a little bit reluctantly because we had recruited him as a defensive lineman. Tyler Reed will come along and do well for us. Tyler has a chance, now that he is comfortable at that spot. Charles Rush and Scott Davis, Rush particularly, has really worked hard this summer. I shouldn’t say particularly because a lot of kids have. Andrew Richardson, again, was a tight end coming out of high school reluctant to become an offensive tackle. So there is a combination of things. There are a couple of kids that are going to show some leadership. I think E.Z. Smith is over some of his problems and will give us a solid kid at center. We should be a little better on the offensive line.
What are your thoughts on the wide receiver and the quarterback meetings and how do you think it has helped the team to get communication better between the two groups?
You have to be a little bit more specific. We have always had quarterback/receiver meetings. I really don’t know what the purpose of the question is. We have always had quarterback/receivers meet as a group, individually and as part of the whole offensive team meetings. I just think that the wideouts are a little bit older. They have to understand that when you say you go down 14 yards and break it off that you don’t go with 8 and a quarterback throws to the 14 and the quarterbacks gets the blame and then you have to catch the football. If we don’t catch the ball any better than we did last year, it doesn’t make any difference if you have meetings coming out your ears. Meetings are not going to get it done. It is being able to perform on the field that will get it done.
How comfortable are you playing some of the younger guys in key positions?
Dan Connor, thank goodness, came in January. He has some competition in the position. We have moved Derek Wake back to outside linebacker. Connor is in the same position with Wake. He does give us good depth there and I hope we can get him into the game. Connor is a very unusual freshman because he has such great football instincts. He comes from a great football family. His father has been a coach. He has brothers who have been captains in different colleges. I think that is not a problem with Connor.
Is it a balance to get Michael Robinson ready to play quarterback and if he is not there getting him into the game somehow?
Obviously, anytime you ask a guy to play two key positions such as if we ask him to play receiver or ask him to do something else besides play quarterback, we have to be organized well enough that we are really being productive. That is something that we have to address every time we go out to practice. We really are not settled with exactly what we are going to do with Michael Robinson. We are going to prod here, prod there, do this, try that and take a look at the people we have to play against and see where we can best use a situation where we have Michael and Zack in the game at the same time. Who knows, maybe Michael will be at quarterback and Zack will be at tailback. I don’t know.
What is the status of Mike Sothern and are there any other players who will not be coming back due to injury or other reasons?
Mike Sothern has never really been included in our 105. He is a walk-on kid.
Are there any other players?
No, we are fine.
I understand Lee Lispi is gone.
Lispi has decided he wanted to give up football.
What about special teams? How vital and important?
I think I hit on that when I said earlier the fact that I think one of our problems last year was that the kicking game cost us some games. I don’t think there is any question that we fumbled a punt on the two-yard and three-yard line. We were last in the country in kick-off returns. I think we were last in the Big Ten in field goal percentage and things like that. Overall, our kicking game and special teams will have to have a significant improvement for us to be competitive. If you look at the good teams in the Big Ten last year, they all had great kicking games. Iowa had a great kicking game. Minnesota had a great kicking game. Ohio State had a great kicking game. All of them. I am talking about the return game. Wisconsin had a great return game. All of them have had an advantage over us I the production they got out of their specialty teams. If we are going to move up, we have to do a better job in that area.
Some of your key players such as Derek Wake, Zack Mills and Michael Robinson today all said that they see this year coming into the season that you are more fired up clearly after the way the season was. Would you agree with that statement?
The hardest thing to do is evaluate yourself. I have told that story a thousand times and one day I was looking in the mirror and I said to my wife, “How many great football coaches do you think there are in the country?” She said, “One less than you think.” So the hardest thing you can do is evaluate you. I am excited. I like to coach. I think it is going to be a good team to coach and a fun year. One of the things that has really fired me up as I have traveled around, maybe a little bit more this year than I have done any other time, is the tremendous enthusiasm that the fans have. I don’t think there is anybody in the country that has better fans than Penn Staters do. As a result, I came back and said, “We have to do something special when we kickoff for Akron. We are playing at 3:30 in the afternoon. Why don’t we do we do something Friday night.” We are going to have a great big rally and fireworks in the stadium and a rally in the stadium. I feel that the fans deserve a little pat in the back and a little appreciation night. They have been terrific. As a lot of you know, I go down to a place on the New Jersey coast and spend eight days. In fact, I ran down there this past weekend. I have worked the staff so hard and we have pushed ourselves a lot. I said, “You guys take a weekend off and I want to get out of here for a couple of days just to be by myself.” I went down and I walked the beach early in the morning and so forth. It is amazing how many people have said, “Hey coach, good luck, good luck. We are excited and can hardly wait.” That kind of stuff gets you fired up, obviously. I am excited about what can happen. The day I don’t have that kind of excitement is the day that maybe, 10 or 12 years from now, I will give it up.
Talk about Galen Hall, now that you have gone through spring practice and now you are doing preparation for the fall camp. Has he been as advertised for you as far as injecting new ideas, strategies and things?
I don’t know where you come from with some of these “advertised to me.” I have known Galen. He didn’t have to prove anything to me at all. I knew what we were getting. When Galen had gotten into a little bit of a jam in Florida, he was here as a G.A. for a year. He came back up here and helped me a year as a G.A. I recruited him out of high school. I spent a lot of time with Galen. I coached him when he was a quarterback here when I coached the quarterbacks. He is everything I knew he would be. Not what I expected he would be, but what I knew he would be. He is a great football mind. He has a great way with people and an excellent teacher. The kids will like the way he approaches things. He will be very poised and do a really good job on Saturdays. I think he is going to be a real good asset to us. Having said that, I am going to miss Franny (Fran Ganter). Every once in awhile when I start making some plans, I think, “What would Franny think about this?” I am going to miss Franny. Galen was the right guy at the time when Franny left us to go on and will do an excellent job.
Have you changed anything in your approach over the last few years when the team hasn’t had as much success and what have you learned? Some of your players said that this spring might have been tougher than it has ever been. Have you changed anything in your approach?
You are asking me to evaluate myself. As I said, that is so difficult. If I were to tell you that I was this person 10 years ago and I am now this person, I don’t know. I really don’t know. If you are going to be successful in whatever you do, you adjust to the position you are in. It isn’t what happens to you that is important, it is how you react to what happens to you that is important. Hopefully, I am reacting in a way that is going to be appropriate to the way I assessed the situation. I think I had to be tougher in the spring, if I were tougher. I am not sure I was tougher than I was 15 years ago. We were a young team last year and a little sloppy. We were, obviously, not a very good fourth quarter team. We were in most of our football games until one or two plays didn’t go our way and we weren’t poised enough or mentally tough enough to handle some of it. Those kinds of things you have to step back and adjust to. How you adjust to them in the sense of saying, “Boy, I am going to be tougher now.” That just isn’t the way I act. I look at the situation and try to do things that I think are going to be appropriate to make it better. There is no magic to it. Sometimes you are right and sometimes you are wrong.
Do you wish you had “instant replay” a year earlier?
How about three years earlier? You guys forget the Virginia game that we lost in 2001. The fumble where the kid picked it up which was not a fumble. The ball was on the ground and Zack was on the ground. So you can go back three years.
Do you see it (replay) becoming something that all of the other conferences will be adopting in the near future?
I have no way of knowing. I am not even sure that what we are going to do is going to be successful. That is the interesting part of the whole idea that we are involved in. We are involved in an attempt to figure out a way that we can have an instant replay that is not a sideshow to the football game. That the coach on the sideline is not going to be tempted to throw a flag down to stop the pace of the game because he thinks it was a bad call or somebody on his staff upstairs thinks it was a bad call. Now, hopefully, there will be a third party involved in it who has some football background who is just going to watch the game and when he sees something that looks as if it was a bad decision, not because the official made a bad decision, maybe he was not in good position but had to make a decision and make a call. There are some things that come up in a ball game that are very decisive as to the outcome of the football game. There are a lot of times that a bad call is made that the time they occur and how they occur really don’t have much bearing on the potential outcome of the game, but there are some. I think that if you have a guy upstairs who is looking at a monitor who can say, “Hey, that is too crucial of a play and as I look at it is too debatable.” The guy who made the call not because it was his fault but because he just couldn’t really get a good look at it but had to make a call plus take a look at it and maybe he can fix a failure. If he can, that is great. If there are a couple of games that are decided and decisions are overcome that affected the outcome of that game because some guy upstairs and it is not the coaches involved, I think that is worth at look. Whether it works or not I have no way of knowing but I think it is a good start.
You have seen a lot in college football. Has Galen Hall brought any new ideas?
There are no new ideas in football. They are all the same. You do what you want to do. Galen comes as a guy who is organized, understands football and knows personnel. He knows how to handle the tempo of a football game and use the staff. In 1994 we had revolutionary ideas doing the same things we did in 1974, but in 1994 we set all kinds of Big Ten records. We had the same kind of play calling system. We have averaged 520 some yards a game, the highest ever in the Big Ten and did some of the things we did 20 years before 1994. Galen is a great addition replacing a guy that did a heck of a job for us and maybe because of a couple of TV shots of Fran and I having a little disagreement on a call, which I will have with Galen too. I don’t care if God were making the calls, I would have a couple of different agreements with him. He might even disagree with me.
You have talked very highly about the senior class of 2002, in what they have accomplished. Have you challenged this class of seniors yet?
Not yet. I have not challenged anybody really yet except to try to come together as a team. We have too many people who were on the fringe of understanding what a commitment to a team was all about. That was part of our problems with some of the shenanigans that went on with a lot of them were overblown by you guys. When I say you people, that is probably not fair to you people but there were a lot of things that went on that were really not anywhere near different that what goes on with a lot of colleges. That is not to say that it is right. I think if you have a commitment to a group and you understand the position you are in, in the sense of being in a glass bowl, you are more careful and have more of a commitment and loyalty to the team. That is the one challenge I presented. I said, “You are either going to be a football team or you’re not going to be a football team. You are going to be a bunch of individuals more concerned about whether you are going to have a good time when there is a good time available, or are you going to turn your head because I have a commitment to a bunch of guys out there that want to have a good football team.” I think that is the kind of challenge I have given them. Other than that, we haven’t even come close yet to trying to figure out exactly what is appropriate in the way of a challenge.
How has your defensive line progressed so far? How important is it for your defense as a whole to shut down some rushing attacks?
I think our defensive line last year was pretty good most of the time. We didn’t make the big plays, obviously, in the fourth quarter in some drives where you would have loved to have somebody bring down a block and make a play. A lot of that has got to do with youth. That was a fairly young line last year and it is going to be young yet. This is a young football team. There are a handful of kids on this football team that are going to make a significant contribution to its success if we have some success that aren’t going to be here for two or three years. It is a young football team. In a lot of positions last year, a little too young for anybody to stand up and take over, make the play and have enough confidence in himself that he would get in the defensive huddle and say some things. A number of times we played fairly well. We just really, obviously, did not play very well in most of the fourth quarters in the closer games we were in. I think we will be all right.
How do you think Paul Posluszny is going to fare into things this year? He did a fine job last year.
Quantitative questions are very difficult for me. How much do you think? What level of contribution? Those things are tough for me to answer. I think Paul is a very, very fine prospect. I think he has a chance to be an outstanding linebacker. As a young player last year, he did a really good job. He has got good athletic ability. He is a very good competitor. Hopefully, he is going to do what I think you want me to say. I hope he is going to make a very strong contribution, but what level is that? I don’t know. I made a statement about Derek Wake that I was a little bit disappointed in him last year and a couple of his friends wrote me letters saying: “How could you say you were disappointed in Derek Wake, they ran away from him?” I looked at the tapes and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t run away from him. I don’t know. I think it is all a question of it has to be a team thing. Paul will fit in very nicely with a good defensive football team if the rest of the guys do their job.
You said you are going to need people who can step up and make big plays. Are there people you see who have that potential? Who do you see as the big play people coming into the season?
I see some people with potential, yeah. I always go back to Jerry Claiborne, the former coach at Maryland. He used to tell some kids when he would bring them in, “Your potential is going to cost me my job.” That is not potential, it is production. We, obviously, have some people who could make a significant difference in our success and who I think should be able to make some big plays. Whether they have the moxy, confidence and success you need to feel good about yourself, part of that is my responsibility. Part of my responsibility is to put them in positions where they can make those plays. Once you put them in those positions, then they have to make them. Hopefully you prepare them for it and hopefully you drill them enough that when the opportunity comes, they are comfortable that they can do it and they recognize the opportunity. That is all part of coaching. Whether that is going to happen or not will depend on how good of a job I do coaching and will depend on whether we have some people that really feel that they can get that done, which is really a growth on what I just said about whether I can create that kind of an environment or an attitude in their mind. That doesn’t mean that if you said tomorrow we were going to go out and these guys can make big plays. I don’t know.
Are you pleased with the development of John Bronson at tight end in the spring and how far does he have to go?
I think John is a pretty good tight end right now. I think John can run, catch the ball. He is a big kid. He is about 255 or 260 lbs. He will have to beat out Isaac Smolko. Smolko is a pretty good player. They both run about the same. Smolko has more experience at tight end because John had been a defensive end, but I think the tight end situation is pretty good.
What was it you saw in Mike McQueary that made you think he would be good to oversee the kicking game?
I didn’t know he was overseeing the kicking game. Does he have his own press agent already? He is going to work with the field goal kickers because he is a very committed kid. He is very focused and Fran Ganter is not allowed to be on the field with them. He has talked with Fran and has built the tapes together. I think he will do a good job. Mike McQueary will be fine. Mike is a hard worker, bright, good competitor and not afraid to say what he thinks. That was an easy call. He has been around us. I was the guy who recruited him out of high school. He was going to go to Rutgers and I took a look at him in a game they lost. They lost the state championship game in high school. I liked what I saw. I remember sitting down with his folks over at the house. They wanted to know why we hadn’t been more interested. I said, “Well, one reason or the other.” Mike is going to be fine.
What does having Paul Jefferson back at fullback mean for the offense and for the football team?
Paul is a very solid football player. Depending on how we play the game, the tailbacks react, how the passing game goes will depend on how much the fans say, “Ooh, that is Paul Jefferson.” Paul Jefferson is an excellent blocker. He is a big man with a lot of shock. He is a tough kid. He will levitate the football and make everybody get nervous about it. He will make hidden yards for you. He has been a good leader in the winter program, in the spring practice and I am assuming in the summer workouts as I talk to the kids. I think Paul will be a real strong player. He will have a very strong impact on whatever success we have.
Have you heard from your non-conference opponents on whether they have agreed to the instant replay for your games?
The only one I have heard of that was non-conference that agreed to it was Central Florida. I just got a note from Fran, who is handling scheduling and things like that now. I don’t know whether Akron has agreed or not. It is kind of an experimental thing. I have not really felt that we were going to lobby for it. Boston College is away. I would assume they are not going to have it because they are not in the league that is doing it. We will probably have 10 of 11 games that there will be instant replays.
What kind of reaction did people who are close to you around you have when you got the four-year extension?
You would be amazed at how many calls I got. I was delighted except when they called and said, “How much can you give us for United Way?” and “How much for cancer?” I think most people just felt good about it. Obviously, the people who call you are the ones who say, “You deserve it and I’m glad they did it.” Then there are ones that say, “What is the matter with that university, they are crazy.” I told a story out at the Big Ten luncheon, which is a true story, and I won’t mention his name because he lives in State College. We have a fellow in State College who is a very successful CEO of one of the major corporations in the country. He came up to see me about four or five years ago with his grandson that was on his way down to Annapolis who was a wrestler at Blair Academy and they had wrestled against our J.V. team here. The kid was going to go down to Annapolis and get started. This gentleman brought the kid in to meet me and so we talked awhile and then he said, “Would you mind if you would leave because I want to talk to Coach Paterno about something?” Here is a fellow who is a couple of years older than I am but he had retired from his corporation and he said to me, “Whatever you do, don’t retire. I retired too soon and I am finally getting some things together where I am putting a company together with a new kind of metal situation. Don’t retire.” Last January I saw him downtown and he said, “Damnit you took my advice.”
Which of the assistants is working with the punt and kickoff returners?
I think we can do a better job from my end of it by giving them more time and better personnel. The kicking game is really a question of personnel. Larry Johnson works with the punter and punt coverage and has done an excellent job. We fell down in a couple of positions last year as far as the return goes without getting into any particular people or positions overall. I think I did not give them enough time to work with some people and did not allow some people we needed in other areas that I felt weren’t quite ready to play in other positions. Everything kind of balances out when you have kids that are experienced in one area, they can do more than one thing. When you are struggling to get a kid ready to do something in one area and then the kicking coach says, “I’d like him on the coverage team.” You are reluctant to give him up on the coverage team because he is not quite ready whether it is a defensive back, receiver or tight end. So you say, “You can’t have him.” So then you play with a poorer guy on the kicking team. I have to make that decision and last year I think I made a couple of bad ones on that. I think that had a big to-do with the fact that we didn’t do a better job. I get very uptight when anybody criticizes any of my assistants or any of the program. I have said this to some people and I don’t think it is fair. Anything that goes on at that field, I know what is going on. I know what is going on what is going on in the weight room and I know what is going on anywhere whether it is academic support or what. Bill Kenney is going to coach the kickoff return team. That is who coached it last year. Ron Vanderlinden is going to coach the punt return teams. Mike McQueary will coach the field goal kickers. Dick Anderson and Bill Kenney will coach the field goal protection and Brian Norwood will coach the kickoff coverage and the field goal teams. That is exactly what we did last year except for Mike.
Talk a little bit about the play of Austin Scott and his chances at the starting running back position.
Austin, Tony Hunt, Rodney Kinlaw, Mike Gasparato and those guys, I think Austin Scott has a chance to be a really good back. I am not so sure that Austin understands the difference of one level that he had been at in high school where he had so much success and the level that we need if we are going to have a really big league tailback. It is not a lack of ability, he is never late, he works hard and the whole bit. Imagination, looking at tapes, taking advantage of blocking schemes and things like that, that the really good backs get a feel for things. You wouldn’t expect them to have that necessarily as a true freshman, particularly since we were not that effective in some other areas offensively. We were not a great offensive line. We did not have a passing game which would take a lot of people away from the running game because of inconsistencies and the fact that we dropped so many passes. They almost tempted us to catch the ball and that kind of thing. In all fairness to Scott and the young backs, they really didn’t have many opportunities. There again, as I am prone to say having said that, I think right now he has had a good spring. He has had a good summer and I am anxious to see just whether he can start to do the little things. I always go back to what is a great back. When I first got to be a head coach, Rip Engle was my coach. When I was assistant coach, he took me down to Westminster, Maryland to visit Dick Harlow who was the coach at Harvard, had coached at Penn State and had been the first Coach of the Year ever. Rip said to him, “What do I have to do to get Penn State back?” He said, “The first thing you have to do is go out and get a great back.” So I am a new coach and I say, “Coach, what is a great back?” He said, “A great back is a guy that can get them in the secondary three times and get you two touchdowns.” With Franco Harris, we used to come off the practice field when George Welsh was the assistant coach, coaching the running backs. He would say, “Well, we got one.” He said, “We are starting 70, Franco is in good shape.” All he had to do was get Franco in the secondary. Once he got in the secondary, he saw people, could judge their speed and the angles and he took off. He was a fullback without great speed. He would run :4.7 most of the time and maybe run a :4.6 once in awhile, but had a great feel for things. Austin has got to learn that. In high school he just ran away from people. He has got to get a little better feel for people who don’t go all out every step, anticipate certain things and that only comes with experience. I don’t care how good you are, it just doesn’t happen overnight.
Have you seen some of the older guys serving as examples for the younger guys?
Most of the problems these guys have had happened when they were younger. That is, obviously, a big problem we have in our society how these kids are getting involved in some things coming out of high school. Once you can get them over that, in most cases they kind of get themselves straightened out. I think that is where we are right now. Hopefully, we are over some of that and hopefully some of the kids that had some problems will be mentors to some of the younger kids who might be tempted to do some of the dumb things they did. You never know. I am optimistic that we are a more mature football team, both in the attitude towards what it is going to take to be a good football team and the things which cause distractions go beyond the individual’s problem because they become problems for the team and problems for the coaching staff, which takes away from your ability to concentrate on what has got to be done at any particular time. We are in a very competitive world in the world of football right now. There are very few teams that really have that many players that are better than everybody. There are two or three teams probably. After that, there is probably a whole group of guys that have a good, solid personnel and what makes them good are the intangibles. The intangibles go into a lot of things, but basically it is the ability to stay focused day in and day out. To go to bed at night, wake up in the morning, go to class, come to practice rested and understanding what has to be done in order for you to be a better football team or you a particularly better player and if you are a better player, we are going to be a better football team. There are a lot of things that go into it. I feel better that a lot of those things are behind us, but the minute you open your mouth somebody does something stupid. Sometimes people have been a little critical of me doing this or that. I know I repeat myself, but I still always have a little piece of poster that I wrote on that Teddy Roosevelt said one time, “Youth is a disease, but it can be cured.” I think that every once in awhile you just have to understand that you have to get them through it without killing them. If you can get through them without killing them and they end up being juniors and they all of a sudden come to you and say, “How are we going to handle this crazy kid?” You look at him and you say, “Boy, oh boy, the worm has turned.” I think we are in better shape.
I appreciate you all coming. We are optimistic. I think we are going to have a better football team than we had last year. How much better, we will find out. How many more games we are going to win, we will find out if we are going to win more. It is going to be interesting and it is going to be exciting. I hope all of you have a little fun watching us.