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Do I think God is going to win football games? Oh no. I never prayed to God to help us win a game. I would pray for the safety of the players. I would pray that they would do their best. I think God will answer that.
There were a lot of big games. But I think one of the biggest was one that will go down as one of the biggest upsets in playoff history. We were 15-point underdogs going into Miami and upset them. That was a big one.
My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know.
I received my Master's degree from the University of Utah while coaching at Granite High School. I obtained my doctorate from BYU while coaching. I pursued these degrees to prepare myself if coaching didn't work out.
When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.
Right or wrong, when a team is doing well, the head coach and the quarterback get all the praise and when a team's not doing well, the head coach and the quarterback get all the blame. I've learned to drown that out.
How do we handle adversity? Adversity is going to be with us in everything that we do, almost in every facet of our lives-in our personal associations, in the mission field, in our chosen professions, in our families.
Professionally - I had the opportunity to play sports throughout my youth, in high school and college. Early on, I decided I wanted to be a coach so I tried to learn everything I could about all positions on the team.
I can honestly say that two weeks after the national championship year, I'd forgotten about it and started laying the groundwork for spring practice. And so every year, that's been the thing that's motivated me. . . .
I think that's healthy on a football team for competition to exist in every position and probably most important quarterback so that everyone on the team knows that position isn't handled any different than any other.
The best compliment I can give Blake is just to say that if I hadn't inherited him as the quarterback, he would have been a kid I would have recruited. I think he has all the tools to be very successful in our system.
There's a saying in my business that there are two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired and those who haven't been fired yet. That's kind of like prostate cancer. Every man will have it if he lives long enough.
If Texas and Kansas were countries they wouldn't be admitted to the World Trade Organization. Their policies are congruent with North Korea, Somalia, Turkestan, several other countries I can't pronounce and Micronesia.
It's something I think probably every football team and sports team in America deals with is having people get out of their comfort zone and being courageous enough to fix other people and not just focus on themselves.
We're so concerned about being polite in society, and rightfully so, that it carries over onto a football team. But on a good football team, they are your friends, but first and foremost they have to be good teammates.
He died right after he retired, and seeing that made me feel more conscious of a man needing a motive to live. If I ever got out of coaching, I would have to get a job somewhere, or I'm afraid I'd wilt on the vine, too.
No, we don't control who our parents are. We don't control what color we are. We don't control what home we are born into. But we control our attitude. We control our work ethic. We control our drive and our commitment.
There's shouting, there's blood, there's boogers, there's a whole thing. I mean, there's spitting, there's fighting, there's ripped jerseys. There's someone grabbing someone's throat. I mean, it's why you have football.
You can't be a successful leader or mentor until you have served. You can't serve until you have stepped out of your comfort zone. And you can't step out of your comfort zone unless you have character and keep your word.
The early commitments, early recruiting, that had changed. The whole clock is pushed ahead and you have to make decisions earlier about who to and who not to recruit. Is that a good thing I'm not sure, but it is reality.
I always get that. Who are you? Here's who I am: I'm that dog that dropped off down at the humane society, and he has about every breed in it. Whatever the situation is, you try to bring that breed out that helps success.
You can't motivate a group of people or a Team. You have to motivate people individually, and that motivation has to be in an environment in which that person has a goal - something they want to accomplish in their lives.
I would like to be coaching in the right situation if it's a team effort and doesn't have a bunch of mini-agendas. I want something where the school wants to win and values graduation and everybody wants to work together.
There's a lot of 'oops' from us in life as people. I always say that God never says 'oops.' That's just kind of how I've always lived my life, but we're so imperfect that there's a lot of times that we say, 'Oops, my bad.'
I do have a Viking axe by the bed if I need to whack someone... My wife bought me a Viking axe - the axe side curls down so you can grab the adversary around the neck and you can use it to climb walls, as a grappling hook.
I don't control what people put on dot-com or anything else. So I'm just telling you there's no significance, in my opinion, about this, about me, about any interest that I have in anything other than being the coach here.
I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.
All I know is, I was trying to win the football game. And the bottom line is, you have to do what you think is right. You have to go with your gut. And if you don't do that, then I think you regret a lot of things later on.
It's about how the players play and compete. I know everybody is going to equate that on winning or losing, like they always do, but if we play hard and compete well in the game .. then I think we are building on something.
Probably the number one position that has the greatest number of players to choose from is receiver. When we're out there recruiting, there are a lot of receivers out there to recruit. It's harder to find defensive players.
We've got a support system that gives our players a wonderful opportunity to graduate. If they go to class and give good effort, they can graduate from this school, and I believe that's important when you go out recruiting.
Like a lot of people who get into coaching, I was impacted by the people in my life. Certainly my father (John) who coached me in youth league baseball, and my high school coach, Joe Moore, were mentors and major influences.
Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.
I think everybody should take the attitude that we're working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do every day, we want to be a champion.
If you want to take the meaning of the word integrity and reduce it to its simplest terms, you'd conclude that a man of integrity is a promise keeper. When he gives you his word. You can take it to the bank. His word is good.
It's hard to train that in practice time. You can make calls, you can make adjustments, but just that pressure, 'This is what it is, this is reality, I need to concentrate on every play,' that's what we've got to get through.
This isn't an easy lifestyle for a coach's wife. The coach is the guy who stands up and hears everyone tell him how great he is. The wife is the one waiting at home alone while the coach is spending every night at the office.
I went off to Harvard Law School for six weeks, and then I said, 'Doggone this, it's not what I want to do.' I remember when I told my dad I was leaving law school, and I wanted to go into football. He said, 'Be a good coach.'
If you're a manager and you're stuck doing the same thing year after year, you're going to get stale and not know how to motivate people. Part of becoming better at what you do requires challenging yourself on a constant basis.
You can concede to an opponent something he hasn't earned. It's one thing to underestimate an opponent. But maybe the worst thing is to overestimate. You always play your strengths. But that doesn't mean you become predictable.
You and I are players, God's our coach, and we're playing the biggest game of all. We have a loving God that made us. We need to get on His team. It says in His word, there's only one way to Him and that's through Jesus Christ.
I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.
I feel like I've been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.
I had a born-again experience at the age of 33. As a result of that I found a church where I felt I was being fed properly. I don't say that as a reflection on Catholicism. But once I was born again, I got an evangelical spirit.
It's the journey to get there. It's that moment in that locker room when you're with a group of people that have gotten it done. There's nothing like it. If you could bottle that up and take that out in the world, you'd dominate.
We're all going to experience death and failure and setbacks and disappointments and cancer and, you know, it's a really difficult world. And for me, God has always - in my relationship with Christ - He's given me hope and peace.
Today the primary threat to the liberties of the American people comes not from communism, foreign tyrants or dictators. It comes from the tendency on our own shores to centralize power, to trust bureaucracies rather than people.
We create a standard for how we want to do things and everybody's got to buy into that standard or you really can't have any team chemistry. Mediocre people don't like high-achievers and high-achievers don't like mediocre people.
When you have the ability to affect other people and be somebody that somebody wants to emulate, care enough to help somebody else for their benefit, that's what makes you a good teammate, and that's what everybody's looking for.
Number two, we're going to play with a lot of effort. Our guys are going to be in such good shape that fatigue is not going to be a problem. We're going to play with full effort from snap to whistle on every play the entire game.