October 6, 2021 • 31 mins
One of the biggest names in college baseball, Tim Corbin has transformed the Vanderbilt University Baseball program into a powerhouse over the last 20 seasons. He’s won two NCAA Championships and several national coaching awards. Coach Corbin joins Nick to discuss youth sports, including the ‘D1 or bust’ mentality, early sport specialization, and how versatility can be a huge differentiator in his recruiting process.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm I'm gonna tell you the best picture to ever
play at Vanderbilt University. I found in a summer league
playing shortstop, and that was a six ft five left
handed picture named David Christ. The bottom line is our
attraction to him was that he was a baseball player,
and then he became a picture. This is the Reformed
(00:27):
Sports Project, a podcast about restoring healthy balance and perspective
in all areas of sports through education and advocacy. Hi,
this is Nick Bonacoor from the Reformed Sports Project podcast.
Today's guest is the head baseball coach of the two
time n C Double A National champion, Vanderbilt University. Commodore's
(00:48):
Tim Corbin. Coach Corbin and I dig into a host
of topics all pertaining to youth sports, from sports parenting
to early sports specialization, and why Coach Corbyn has a
passion for being able to be crue multi sport athletes.
Will also dig into Coach Corbin and my unique experience
as Division three athletes and how that Division three experience
(01:08):
help shape the rest of our lives. Coach, thank you
so much for hopping on at my pleasure. Next, thank you,
I'm just gonna get down to them as someone who's
spent to the highest levels and coach guys who have
played at the highest levels. You know, and you're a
parent and all that stuff yourself. When you look at
youth sports, the culture of youth sports, say what concerns
you the most as a collegiate coach in apparent when
(01:30):
you look at youth sports today. When I look at
youth sports as a whole, it's someone who's advocating for
the kids themselves. You think about what the kids are
doing on playing fields or playing courts, and a lot
of what they're doing are largely the interests of adults.
Adults are making the decisions for the children themselves, so
the children are only going to follow the paths of
(01:52):
which the adults put them in. And I think us
as adults, and you hope in a lot of cases,
prudent adults, especially people that work with athletes every day,
you can look at those kids and say, Okay, this
is a six year old, or this is an eight
year old, and this is a ten year old, and yes,
you want them outside, and yes you want them active,
(02:13):
but at the same time, there's a certain level of
time and volume that that you want to give children
and then at some certain time pull back. And I
think our restrictive measures have certainly lessened through the years.
There's more activity in certain concentrated areas rather than maybe
an eight or nine or ten year old being able
(02:35):
to do other things or explore other sports. And I've
got to see in it as a coach, and certainly
have got to see it as as a stepparent. You know,
when I married my wife, I thought my wife was
a very good parent with her girls in terms of
what she was giving them, and she was just giving
them a lot of opportunities. But what she was trying
(02:55):
to do is facilitate and try to find their passion,
whether it was music, whether it was soccer, whether it
was tennis. And the thing that she didn't do is
she didn't force feed them on something that she did,
which was tennis. The younger one ended up becoming a
college tennis player, but Maggie was a very you know,
an All American tennis player herself. But she just didn't
(03:15):
send her girls down that path because it pleased her.
She really wanted them to see and open up opportunities
for them and try to find their passion. And I
think she did a great job of it. But I
think that's that's where we are. There's too much concentration
and certain areas for kids that places a high amount
of volume on them, and so much so that they
a lot of times mentally and physically can't handle it.
(03:38):
I started playing baseball. I'm talking about regular baseball, and
I was seven years old. I never played T ball.
And I've actually heard parents, I swear, by God, I've
heard this. I've heard parents say, I've brought my kid
out there to play, you know, machine pitch baseball. They're
too far behind. These other kids are too good. They
can't play baseball anymore. And my hand goes to my head.
I'm like, there's seven, you know, but there's kids that
(03:59):
are being told by someone somewhere somehow that they need
to do one thing and one thing only if they
even want to have a chance to go to let's
say play forget about it, just to play in college.
What's your take on early sports specialization and it's pre puberty,
but let's use twelve view twelve you what are your
thoughts about specializing at those early ages from one hundred
(04:21):
or two hundred or three hundred whatever percentage you want
to put on it above one hundred against it percent
against it. I don't feel that at that age right there,
a young man should specialize, or young woman for that matter,
specialized in any certain area because there's, first off, the
most important piece of this is the brain needs a
(04:43):
chance to reset. And if you're involving yourself just in
one concentrated area, there's kind of a given a take. Yes,
you're spending a lot of time in that one area,
but then I think there's a lot of time to
where you think you're getting better when actually you're not
getting better because you're body in your brain. They start
to go into cruise control just because they do it
(05:04):
so much that their focus and their level of attention
and their level of care for the repetitions that they're
doing inside of that sport are at the same level
as if they were removed from it for a certain
amount of time where they were hungry to go back
into it. And I think, you know, even at the
college level, we take the ball and the bat away
from our players. We just do it, and we do
(05:26):
it because we know that they cannot sustain even at eighteen,
nineteen and twenty years of age twelve months out of
year doing the same thing and think that they're going
to improve. The brain needs to decompress, the body needs
to decompress, and even if it's doing something else. But
you're talking to someone who was a three sport athlete
himself in high school. And our mission as a as
(05:49):
a staff is to find multi sport athletes that play
other things besides baseball in recruiting. So yeah, I'm dead
set against it. I hear this all the time, and
interesting because it always comes from a lot of times
from people who hadn't played a sport past high school,
but they are convinced because I've yet to speak to
a professional athlete who's and this goes for Michael Phelps,
(06:10):
who specialized that one thing before they were twelve years old,
and he tabbled and other things when he was younger.
But I often hear people say, the only way to
even get and I'm gonna go up to high school
and talk about recruiting a little you can't get seen.
No college coaches can see multi sport athletes. Their rosters
are riddled with specialists, so they're talking out of both
(06:31):
sides of their mouth. So I hear that and I go, well,
I think that's just a product of the environment, right,
But you tell me, is it harder to be a
multi sport athlete today? What's the reason for the search?
Because I feel like when I was coming up, that
was the norm. You played baseball, then you went to
basketball or football. What what's changed. What's changed is the
coaches and the parents themselves. The coaches want exclusive rights
(06:54):
to a kid if they feel like he's going to
be good at that sport. And you know, there's some
of it I understand, But at the same time, if
a young man, and I'm doing a quarterback study right
now on all the quarterbacks who are eligible for the
NFL Draft, and I look at every single one of them,
and all of them at age twelve, thirteen, fourteen, or
fifteen played three sports minimum, and then as they got
(07:17):
into sixteen and seventeen, they started moving into an area
exclusively just as a football player. And even some of
them still retained two to three other sports and still
played those up until their senior year. But I think
it's the pressures that we just put on them as adults.
We want their time, especially if they're good, and we
want them in the summer months maybe to learn the
(07:38):
playbook or we need them over here, when in essence,
really it's allowing the player himself to do the things
that he needs to do to find his passion and
to get better, because I and a lot of times
you're getting a lot better at baseball. If you're playing basketball,
you're your athletic skills are growing, You're becoming more nimble,
you're becoming more aware of space awareness on a basketball court,
(08:01):
which really helps you as a baseball player once you
get on the basis, and so on and so on.
So there's so many transitional skills that are learned in
other sports that just slow over to the game of baseball.
And I'm speaking to baseball because on a baseball coach
because of it. But baseball is a very stationary sport
for a long period of time until the game becomes
(08:22):
more skilled. The game becomes more skilled at fifteen, sixty
and seventeen, but even then it's a stationary sport. And
I just feel like there's a lot of transitional skills
you can learn by playing other sports, and should play
other sports. Jim Calhoun's on our advisory board to right,
you know Calhoun kon Yes, Yeah, he said. When we
talked about this, I said, Coach, what do you think
(08:43):
of the biggest benefit in your mind from multi sport participation?
And he said his belief is it teaches you waste
to be competitive in multiple ways, to compete in multiple ways.
And when I talked to Coach Fox, he had talked
about Nick, go to our field in the middle of
the summer, there's travel teams, there's games taking place all
the time. Because I hear often there's so many games
being played all year along a hundred degrees that their
(09:05):
competitiveness kind of goes out the window. Do you believe
that keeping distance between sports keeps that hunger right? Like?
I know when I said I didn't love football, I
liked it, but I love baseball. But now I look
back and I think playing football made me more hungry
to get on the baseball field. Do you think there's
a correlation there and competitiveness. Well, yeah, and the competitiveness
(09:25):
is derived from your emotional feelings towards the people who
are playing next to you. And that's what sport does.
It integrates our personalities into one another. And and from
a baseball mode, that's kind of the amateur setting, right,
now kids are auditioning, they're not necessarily competing. When you
run from a showcase to a showcase to a showcase,
(09:48):
you're doing it to serve yourself. You're not doing it
because it serves nine other people. Are twelve other people
that you're doing it with. When you jump on a
field on a Friday night under the lights in front
of people to place the ball, you're doing it for
other people. And when you do what you do, no
matter what it is, you do it better when you
do it for other people outside of yourself. And that's
(10:11):
the most important thing that sport does is it makes
it emotional for us to where our personality start unifying
together in order to build an energy system that allows
us to have more fun inside the game. But it
allows us to create a spirit. It allows us to
build some competitiveness. But competitiveness is built on doing something
(10:32):
with other people, and when you do something individually, not
saying you can't have fun at it, and not saying
you can't be good at it. But it's not as fulfilling.
There's no way it's just fulfilling. And I think every
coach would tell you that it's more fulfilling when you
do something as a group rather than when you do
it individually. And that's what playing other sports allows you
to do well. I want to shift gears a little bit,
(10:54):
and I see a lot, especially on social media, but
there's a lot of baseball twitter right pitching guru, hitting ruin.
When I talked to coach back at folks specifically on
this saying kids should be throwing hard. You know, young
kids twelve and unders should be playing right, just going
out and playing and testing their bodies. Is there a
benefit to building a swing or formulating a spin rate,
(11:15):
launching was all those things for young kids? Because I
hear those metrics all the time, and I'm wondering are
they beneficial for young twelve you kids know I I
don't think it's necessary at that age. I think what's
necessary at that age is it's just overall skilled development
is learning how to be a baseball player. And I said,
learned how to be a baseball player. To be honest
with you, Nick, I didn't know what a PO was
(11:37):
six years ago. When someone in my camp said my
son's a p O, I didn't even I didn't even
answer the question because I didn't know. I don't know
what it's a it's a picture only, and and that's
how I felt. So I was embarrassed because I didn't
know it. So I just didn't answer the question. I
just nodded my head and I said, that's fine. But
once I start to understand what pos were, I'm thinking
(11:58):
to myself of baseball player is a baseball player. Baseball
player is someone that at that age, anyway, ten eleven,
twelve thirteen, you get to a field and it's almost
like you could open your equipment bag and any glove
could follow. And I'm not to say that parents should
buy their kids three gloves, because they shouldn't, but it's
just like, Okay, my mindset is, I'm a baseball player, coach.
(12:22):
I could play first base, I can play second, I
can play short. And you're for your left handed you know,
there's only certain positions you can play. But I'm gonna
tell you the best picture to ever play at Vanderbilt University,
I found in a summer league playing shortstop, and that
was a six ft five left handed picture named David Price.
And he was playing shortstop in a summer league. But
the bottom line is our attraction to him was that
(12:44):
he was a baseball player, and then he became a pitcher.
And I think when you start to see kids that
are baseball players first that start to move in the
direction of certain positions, that's okay. But even if you're
a position guy, if you come into as Vanderbilt as
a shortstop, it's most likely you're going to move to
another position on the field. It's just the way it is.
You can't have fifteen shortstops. A lot of times they're
(13:07):
the best athlete, but they've also done other things on
the field. So to that point, no, I think specialization,
even from a position, is a mistake at that age,
and numbers identifying kids with spin rates and angles not necessary.
Kids don't need to be saddled down with those types
of thoughts. Those are for parents. Those are for adults,
and even for adults and parents, they don't need him
(13:28):
at that age. I'm gonna ask you characteristics that you
look for in the recruiting process outside of the obviously
skill set. How important is being a great teammate and
having tremendous character are they are they high up on
the list or is it all about well, this kid throw,
this kid hits it. You know what? Where do the
rankings come as far as a kid that you want
(13:50):
to have complay a Vandabile university. Those are essential components
of kids that we want inside of our program. They're
very essential, and I think you can find out right
away when you're communicating with kids on how they feel
about those components. When a young man has those types
of fibers, it accentuates the skill sets that he has physically,
(14:11):
but the physical skill sets that are void of those
components right there, it just makes an individual less satisfying,
at least in this world. We want kids that really
enjoy being part of something where it's bigger than themselves,
it's more special than themselves. That makes the experience whole.
And I think being patient as a player and understanding
(14:33):
that I'm going into this program and it may mean
that I'm not active on the field and I'm not
a participant right away. It may mean that it takes
me a year, it may take two years. They have
to be fine with that. It doesn't lessen their competitiveness
or make them less hungryous, just that I understand. I
became part of this program because I understood it was
gonna be tough. And I also have to have a
(14:55):
level of patients in order to be able to play
here and understand that it's very difficult to play as
a freshman. So I would say character traits, patients, and
the feeling of unification to do something as a whole
is a is an extreme interest of ours. When we're
recruiting a young man, you have two kids in front
(15:16):
of you. You know, both very good. You know athletes
can play physically at Vanderbilt University. One has played strictly
baseball off the time they were a freshman of high school.
Ones a multi sport athlete. Is there one you prefer
and everything else being equal, and you have to pick one,
where do you go if they're the same. If they're
the same, ones a multi sport athlete and one's a
baseball well, the easy answer would be the multi sport
(15:38):
athlete because of his growth. But the first thing I
would do is I would take the guy with the
what we just got done talking about, I would take
the take the young man with the fibers and the
personality traits that I'm looking for. First, I think the
human qualities of a player. If there's a sameness to them.
They both have the same skill sets, I'm always moved
towards the personality and the character traits of the young man.
(16:00):
And now if if you're just identifying and that isn't
part of the equation, that I'm always going to move
towards the multi sport athlete just because I think he's
been exposed to more team play. More team play, I
would say, in most cases brings out the team qualities
of a young kid, and those are essential, as I said,
inside our environment. And you mentioned more upside potentially, do
(16:23):
you think that's because they hadn't specialized yet that if
they do when they dial into college, is potentially more upside. Yeah.
And I think they've got improv skills. I think the
thing about being an athlete, as you improvise your whole life.
You you make up things along the way because you can.
And I think when you learn how to improvise on
a field of play, you're not so mechanical. You have
(16:43):
some instincts, and the instincts are derived from playing another sport.
If I'm a basketball player and I shoot a shot,
and I see the shot leave my fingertips and I
know it's headed to the right side of the rim,
I'm already moving towards the right side of the court,
anticipating the ball going to bounce that way. That's an instinct.
But if I don't play basketball, then I don't pick
(17:06):
up that one specific instinct. And those instincts all transition,
they all run together. Whether it's catching skills when you're
on a football field, whether it's blocking skills when you're
on a football field well, whether it's learning angles, whether
it's learning movements and your ability to move your hips
or move your feet in a certain way. You can
only gain those things by doing other things. And if
(17:28):
you just play baseball, you're gonna miss out a lot
of those skills that are needed as you grow inside
the game of baseball that you're going to see as
you start to get older and you start playing deeper
into your career. What would be your advice to a
parent of a kid is twelve years old. You know
they're fighting that all the travel organization says, well, if
you don't do this, you may lose your spot, but
their kid likes to play different things. What would be
(17:49):
a thirty second piece of advice to a parent of
a young athlete today? Release the opportunity to your child
be a teammate to your child. Don't look above them
and don't talk above them. Be a teammate to your
child by opening doors for them, Be a facilitator, and
then let them take it from there. Let them carry
the torch. I think any time that we want to
drive the car and take the keys from our kids
(18:11):
at every single turn, we don't empower them. Your empower
them by letting them make decisions. And you're standing next
to him, not standing over him, And I think that's
so important for a kid. It's just releasing the opportunity
to child. Let it be his situation, not your situation.
That's Tim Corbyn, head baseball coach at Vanderbilt University. After
(18:31):
the break, Coach Corbyn and I we'll talk about the
impact D three has had on Coach Corbyn and how
it helped him get to where he is today. I'm
Nick Bonacourt and you're listening to the Reform Sports Project podcast.
Welcome back to the Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt,
(18:53):
and today we have Tim Corbyn, head baseball coach at
Vanderbilt University. When we left off, we were discussing the
upset of multi sport athletes before entering college. You and
I share a background, but I think it's important to
talk about, especially today when it comes to you know,
kids looking to play collegiate sports. There's a D one
(19:14):
or bust mentality, And I, for one, wouldn't be where
I am today if we're from my Division three baseball experience.
Not because I got to play for a legendary coach,
but like Mike Fox for a year and I'm Scott Forbes,
and you know all these great teammates and friends. When
a national title, those were all great, but it opened
up so many doors. And I remember people at times
still will say like D three, like Coach Fox said,
this D three is not a synonym for third rate.
(19:37):
And what I read your story a little bit. I
want you to talk about what Division three playing and
the experience meant to you, and most importantly, what doors
opened up as a result of your experience. Well, I
think it's the chair I'm sitting in. I mean, long term,
I ended up in a place because of my Division
three experience. But I think you have to go back
(19:58):
and look at why you make those just visions as
a person, and you get to that point because you
decide what you want out of an experience, do you
want to go somewhere and have an opportunity to play?
And I think I, like a lot of kids, wanted
to play at the highest level. The College World Series
was on TV in the early eighties, and the University
(20:19):
of Maine was that school that I always aspired to
go to. But the reality was I wasn't the type
of player that could play there from a skill standpoint,
and it took a while to understand that. But then
I had to make the decision do I just want
to go there and try to walk on and be
a piece of it or potentially get cut, or do
(20:41):
I want to go somewhere and have an impact in
a program where I feel like I can play personally
and be part of the team. So I chose to
do that, and by doing that, I opened up other
opportunities for myself. I was a student coach in football
as a sophomore, junior, and senior. The assistant coach there
(21:02):
who happened to be the head coach in baseball gave
me that opportunity, and also because I was a roommate
of a couple of football players, so my coaching and
teaching career actually started while I was in college, while
I was playing baseball because of a small school experience.
And I think the interactions that you have people because
(21:22):
of of a smaller school allow you personal touches that
you might not get if you're not connected to a program.
And I think when we start looking as kids at situations,
we get caught up in facilities, We get caught up
in the glamor of the uniform, We get caught up
in the size of a crowd. And what we do
(21:47):
is we don't necessarily are looking at the right things
and the right things. For me back then, when I
made that decision, that had more to do with a
personal connection that I didn't think I could get it
a bigger school because my skill set would not allow
me to do so. And I don't think it's you know,
for for kids. And I had this discussion over at
(22:09):
Montgomery Bell Academy several years ago when the athletic director
called me in and asked me to speak about my
Division three experience and what it led to because he
was concerned with kids like yourself that if I'm not
going to Division one school to play a sport, then
forget it. And then you have to ask yourself why
(22:29):
you're playing. And I think that the reason I was
playing because I enjoyed competition and I enjoyed just playing
a sport. And heaven forbid, you go to a college
and at eighteen or nineteen, you stopped participating because you
didn't give yourself an opportunity because the size of the
school and the fit of the school didn't necessarily fit
(22:51):
your skill set. So you chose to give up everything
that had provided you fun, opportunity and relationship bill holding
that you could have, but you took it away from yourself.
So I just think, you know, I know that's a
long winded answer, but you start to look at that
school that I went to, Ohio Wesleyan, much like where
you went, and I look at all the college coaches,
(23:14):
and I look at an athletic director and my college
baseball coach and the assistant coach that gave me that
opportunity as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Steelers the
last twenty years. So these small college people, now we're
all Division one coaches, Division one athletic directors in professional sport,
and you have to ask yourself, if they played at
a higher level, what they have been granted the same opportunities. Well,
(23:37):
you never know, but at the same time, I know
I never would have had this. I used to hear
people say, in order to go play Vanderbilt, people read
the headlines on social media and they see D one
power five. You know, you gotta start getting recruited. When
you're an eighth, ninth grade, tenth grader, you don't have
a shot. And if you go to Juco, you and
I'm sitting there, I played with three guys at the
Division three level who had big league careers. I mean
(24:00):
they went to the big leagues, had careers. I mean
by the time they were juniors. Of course they didn't
belong at the D three level, but you know that
besides the point when they were seventeen, like Billy Wagner,
that guy was throwing the Division three school in my conference.
Do you think there's a misconception that it's if you're
not D one you can't get a look because parents
think or kids here, Oh, if I'm not getting looks
(24:21):
when I'm a sophomore, you know I'm not gonna make it.
You know. Could you talk a little bit about that
speeding up with the recruiting process, how that might because
let's face it, COVID, it's probably gonna make it even
more challenging just to play at a lower level. Forget
about you know, a Vanderbilder or you know Power five.
It's gonna be tough to play anywhere because there's more
kids and it gets gonna be more challenging. I mean,
what are your thoughts on that. Well, I mean, it
(24:43):
is a challenge. It's an an obvious challenge. But I
think the people that can provide the most sense to
this and can provide a commune effect on this or
are certainly the parents themselves because they're the older voice.
And when you have a son or daughter that aspires
to be a collegiate athlete, then I think it's it's
(25:04):
just the parents duty just to do as much research
as they possibly tend to help their child, but at
the same time not get caught up in the processes
of the people on their left or on their right.
Everyone runs their own race. Everyone has an individual race
based on their skill set, based on their growth, and
that's different. And if you're running a race and your
(25:26):
focus is what other people are doing around you, then
you're getting disconnected from your own personal situation and your
own personal process, and your own personal process is brought
upon by you just involving yourself and what you want
to do and how you want to do it. And
I mean, I think that's the other side of social
(25:47):
media and the other side of kids today and how
we operate from a communication standpoint that creates hurdles for us,
mental hurdles because those aren't real. Twenty thirty years ago,
people were operating with with communication by landline, by phone,
and I know that's gone, but at the same time,
people were disconnected from each other's race. They didn't know
(26:09):
what was going on. And a lot of times what
you don't know obviously is good for you. So I
think as a parent is just to guide your child
in a way that you can so that they can
move towards their passion, whatever it is. And if it's playing,
then guide them towards the situation and a fit where
(26:29):
they can play. If it's not, then obviously move in
it in another direction. But being challenged and being interrupted
in your own process by what other people doing what
you feel is important other people has nothing to do
with you. You're you're running your own individual race and
it you know, it always needs to be that way.
(26:50):
When I talked to Scott Brown, right, Brownie and and
and Coach Fox, they both kind of I asked Coach
Fox this question. I'm gonna ask you a shame on me.
I don't know if you went to the College World
Series when you were at Ohio Wesley and if you
and I really don't know, you could tell me here
in a second. But Coach Fox, when he was at
North Carolina Wesley, they wanted national title in nine. He
went to a bunch of World Series, but he wanted
then we wanted the year after he left. And then
(27:11):
Scott Brown, I mean he went with Courtland to the
World Series a bunch of times. And Brown he said
to me, like, that's the same thing we do here
at Vanderbilt. Nick, the same thing that we were trying
to do. The feelings the same when he was at
Courtland as it is when we wanted here in Vanderbilt.
And Coach Fox said the same thing. The feelings the same.
I mean, winning a national title Division three wasn't any
less gratifying than going to Omaha. Again. I get it.
(27:33):
When I was a freshman high school, I want to
go to Miami. I want to go to cal State
fort I want to go to because that's what I
saw on TV. I have a little did I know
I wasn't good enough to play there. But is there
any difference between the experience at the Division three level
the things you're chasing versus what you're trying to accomplish
at Vanderbilt from an emotional and gratification standpoint, Well, I mean,
you said it. It's a human emotion, and human emotion
(27:54):
is brought upon by a lot of different doctors in
our life, and they have nothing to do with the
eyes of where you're doing it and how you're doing it.
If the impetus of what you're doing is based around
relationships and people and helping teams, then it doesn't matter
where you're going to school, doesn't matter, the size of
(28:14):
the school, doesn't matter the amount of people that are
watching you do what you do. You're connected by fibers
that are emotional, and emotion has nothing to do with
outside things. Sometimes it gets louder because of other people
that are sharing that emotion with you. But my thoughts
(28:36):
and my feelings of what I did it Ohio Wesleyan, good, bad,
and different have have everything to do with my perspective
about that situation and no one else's perspective, and that's
all that matters. It's it's my own personal perspective on
what I did and how I did it and who
I was linked to, and I think outside of that nicket,
(28:57):
it doesn't matter. I think again, when you start thinking
outside of those things, you're thinking about the wrong things.
You're looking at the wrong things. It's all about your
personal feelings towards what you want to do and how
you want to do it. When I interviewed coach Gilmore
from Coastal, he said, Nick, you know he coached the
usc A can for a long time and he said
to me is quote was, Nick, there's D two teams
(29:17):
right here in my backyard, meaning in North Carolina or
South Carolina that I don't want to play. I mean,
if they throw their best guy, you know, they can
certainly beat us any given time. And he's like, there's
junior college teams that they have just as much talent
as we have. He goes, I get it, Vanderbilts the
cream of the crop, But do you think a Division
two team or Division through there's a picture out there
somewhere that one time can get out there potentially, you know,
(29:39):
shoving and beat a Vanderbilt. Well you know the answer
to that, Nick, You know, I just look at the
third basement for the Tampa bay Rays. I have to
do is look at a left handed picture named Fleming
for the Tampa Bay Rays. I mean, those kids. All
you have to do is go up to the Cape
Cod League All Star Game during the course of the
summer and see some of the kids that are on
(29:59):
that roster or those are Division two players, those are
Division three players. There's a certain amount of kids because
of roster sizes in spots that allow kids to play
Division one baseball and not allow kids to play Division
one baseball. But the reality is there's Division three players
that could play Division one baseball, and there's Division one
(30:20):
baseball players that should be playing Division three baseball. So
sometimes you get disconnected with where you go and at
the time that you're at. So I think it's really
being comfortable with who you are and what you do
and how you want to do it. Outside of that, again,
you're running your own personal race, and that's really all
that matters. I just cannot thank you enough. Hope you
(30:42):
and your family stay safe. And healthy through this ridiculous
time or going through. And best of luck once you
guys start back up with their Vanderbilt Commodores. I'm so
grateful and humble for you to come on. Thank you
very much, Nick, I appreciate the opportunity that's Tim Corbyn,
head baseball coach at Vanderbilt University. Thanks for listening to
the Reformed Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt and our
(31:03):
goal is to restore healthy, balance and perspective in all
areas of sport through education and advocacy. For updates, please
follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out
our website by searching for the Reform Sports Project
I'm I'm gonna tell you the best picture to ever
play at Vanderbilt University. I found in a summer league
playing shortstop, and that was a six ft five left
handed picture named David Christ. The bottom line is our
attraction to him was that he was a baseball player,
and then he became a picture. This is the Reformed
(00:27):
Sports Project, a podcast about restoring healthy balance and perspective
in all areas of sports through education and advocacy. Hi,
this is Nick Bonacoor from the Reformed Sports Project podcast.
Today's guest is the head baseball coach of the two
time n C Double A National champion, Vanderbilt University. Commodore's
(00:48):
Tim Corbin. Coach Corbin and I dig into a host
of topics all pertaining to youth sports, from sports parenting
to early sports specialization, and why Coach Corbyn has a
passion for being able to be crue multi sport athletes.
Will also dig into Coach Corbin and my unique experience
as Division three athletes and how that Division three experience
(01:08):
help shape the rest of our lives. Coach, thank you
so much for hopping on at my pleasure. Next, thank you,
I'm just gonna get down to them as someone who's
spent to the highest levels and coach guys who have
played at the highest levels. You know, and you're a
parent and all that stuff yourself. When you look at
youth sports, the culture of youth sports, say what concerns
you the most as a collegiate coach in apparent when
(01:30):
you look at youth sports today. When I look at
youth sports as a whole, it's someone who's advocating for
the kids themselves. You think about what the kids are
doing on playing fields or playing courts, and a lot
of what they're doing are largely the interests of adults.
Adults are making the decisions for the children themselves, so
the children are only going to follow the paths of
(01:52):
which the adults put them in. And I think us
as adults, and you hope in a lot of cases,
prudent adults, especially people that work with athletes every day,
you can look at those kids and say, Okay, this
is a six year old, or this is an eight
year old, and this is a ten year old, and yes,
you want them outside, and yes you want them active,
(02:13):
but at the same time, there's a certain level of
time and volume that that you want to give children
and then at some certain time pull back. And I
think our restrictive measures have certainly lessened through the years.
There's more activity in certain concentrated areas rather than maybe
an eight or nine or ten year old being able
(02:35):
to do other things or explore other sports. And I've
got to see in it as a coach, and certainly
have got to see it as as a stepparent. You know,
when I married my wife, I thought my wife was
a very good parent with her girls in terms of
what she was giving them, and she was just giving
them a lot of opportunities. But what she was trying
(02:55):
to do is facilitate and try to find their passion,
whether it was music, whether it was soccer, whether it
was tennis. And the thing that she didn't do is
she didn't force feed them on something that she did,
which was tennis. The younger one ended up becoming a
college tennis player, but Maggie was a very you know,
an All American tennis player herself. But she just didn't
(03:15):
send her girls down that path because it pleased her.
She really wanted them to see and open up opportunities
for them and try to find their passion. And I
think she did a great job of it. But I
think that's that's where we are. There's too much concentration
and certain areas for kids that places a high amount
of volume on them, and so much so that they
a lot of times mentally and physically can't handle it.
(03:38):
I started playing baseball. I'm talking about regular baseball, and
I was seven years old. I never played T ball.
And I've actually heard parents, I swear, by God, I've
heard this. I've heard parents say, I've brought my kid
out there to play, you know, machine pitch baseball. They're
too far behind. These other kids are too good. They
can't play baseball anymore. And my hand goes to my head.
I'm like, there's seven, you know, but there's kids that
(03:59):
are being told by someone somewhere somehow that they need
to do one thing and one thing only if they
even want to have a chance to go to let's
say play forget about it, just to play in college.
What's your take on early sports specialization and it's pre puberty,
but let's use twelve view twelve you what are your
thoughts about specializing at those early ages from one hundred
(04:21):
or two hundred or three hundred whatever percentage you want
to put on it above one hundred against it percent
against it. I don't feel that at that age right there,
a young man should specialize, or young woman for that matter,
specialized in any certain area because there's, first off, the
most important piece of this is the brain needs a
(04:43):
chance to reset. And if you're involving yourself just in
one concentrated area, there's kind of a given a take. Yes,
you're spending a lot of time in that one area,
but then I think there's a lot of time to
where you think you're getting better when actually you're not
getting better because you're body in your brain. They start
to go into cruise control just because they do it
(05:04):
so much that their focus and their level of attention
and their level of care for the repetitions that they're
doing inside of that sport are at the same level
as if they were removed from it for a certain
amount of time where they were hungry to go back
into it. And I think, you know, even at the
college level, we take the ball and the bat away
from our players. We just do it, and we do
(05:26):
it because we know that they cannot sustain even at eighteen,
nineteen and twenty years of age twelve months out of
year doing the same thing and think that they're going
to improve. The brain needs to decompress, the body needs
to decompress, and even if it's doing something else. But
you're talking to someone who was a three sport athlete
himself in high school. And our mission as a as
(05:49):
a staff is to find multi sport athletes that play
other things besides baseball in recruiting. So yeah, I'm dead
set against it. I hear this all the time, and
interesting because it always comes from a lot of times
from people who hadn't played a sport past high school,
but they are convinced because I've yet to speak to
a professional athlete who's and this goes for Michael Phelps,
(06:10):
who specialized that one thing before they were twelve years old,
and he tabbled and other things when he was younger.
But I often hear people say, the only way to
even get and I'm gonna go up to high school
and talk about recruiting a little you can't get seen.
No college coaches can see multi sport athletes. Their rosters
are riddled with specialists, so they're talking out of both
(06:31):
sides of their mouth. So I hear that and I go, well,
I think that's just a product of the environment, right,
But you tell me, is it harder to be a
multi sport athlete today? What's the reason for the search?
Because I feel like when I was coming up, that
was the norm. You played baseball, then you went to
basketball or football. What what's changed. What's changed is the
coaches and the parents themselves. The coaches want exclusive rights
(06:54):
to a kid if they feel like he's going to
be good at that sport. And you know, there's some
of it I understand, But at the same time, if
a young man, and I'm doing a quarterback study right
now on all the quarterbacks who are eligible for the
NFL Draft, and I look at every single one of them,
and all of them at age twelve, thirteen, fourteen, or
fifteen played three sports minimum, and then as they got
(07:17):
into sixteen and seventeen, they started moving into an area
exclusively just as a football player. And even some of
them still retained two to three other sports and still
played those up until their senior year. But I think
it's the pressures that we just put on them as adults.
We want their time, especially if they're good, and we
want them in the summer months maybe to learn the
(07:38):
playbook or we need them over here, when in essence,
really it's allowing the player himself to do the things
that he needs to do to find his passion and
to get better, because I and a lot of times
you're getting a lot better at baseball. If you're playing basketball,
you're your athletic skills are growing, You're becoming more nimble,
you're becoming more aware of space awareness on a basketball court,
(08:01):
which really helps you as a baseball player once you
get on the basis, and so on and so on.
So there's so many transitional skills that are learned in
other sports that just slow over to the game of baseball.
And I'm speaking to baseball because on a baseball coach
because of it. But baseball is a very stationary sport
for a long period of time until the game becomes
(08:22):
more skilled. The game becomes more skilled at fifteen, sixty
and seventeen, but even then it's a stationary sport. And
I just feel like there's a lot of transitional skills
you can learn by playing other sports, and should play
other sports. Jim Calhoun's on our advisory board to right,
you know Calhoun kon Yes, Yeah, he said. When we
talked about this, I said, Coach, what do you think
(08:43):
of the biggest benefit in your mind from multi sport participation?
And he said his belief is it teaches you waste
to be competitive in multiple ways, to compete in multiple ways.
And when I talked to Coach Fox, he had talked
about Nick, go to our field in the middle of
the summer, there's travel teams, there's games taking place all
the time. Because I hear often there's so many games
being played all year along a hundred degrees that their
(09:05):
competitiveness kind of goes out the window. Do you believe
that keeping distance between sports keeps that hunger right? Like?
I know when I said I didn't love football, I
liked it, but I love baseball. But now I look
back and I think playing football made me more hungry
to get on the baseball field. Do you think there's
a correlation there and competitiveness. Well, yeah, and the competitiveness
(09:25):
is derived from your emotional feelings towards the people who
are playing next to you. And that's what sport does.
It integrates our personalities into one another. And and from
a baseball mode, that's kind of the amateur setting, right,
now kids are auditioning, they're not necessarily competing. When you
run from a showcase to a showcase to a showcase,
(09:48):
you're doing it to serve yourself. You're not doing it
because it serves nine other people. Are twelve other people
that you're doing it with. When you jump on a
field on a Friday night under the lights in front
of people to place the ball, you're doing it for
other people. And when you do what you do, no
matter what it is, you do it better when you
do it for other people outside of yourself. And that's
(10:11):
the most important thing that sport does is it makes
it emotional for us to where our personality start unifying
together in order to build an energy system that allows
us to have more fun inside the game. But it
allows us to create a spirit. It allows us to
build some competitiveness. But competitiveness is built on doing something
(10:32):
with other people, and when you do something individually, not
saying you can't have fun at it, and not saying
you can't be good at it. But it's not as fulfilling.
There's no way it's just fulfilling. And I think every
coach would tell you that it's more fulfilling when you
do something as a group rather than when you do
it individually. And that's what playing other sports allows you
to do well. I want to shift gears a little bit,
(10:54):
and I see a lot, especially on social media, but
there's a lot of baseball twitter right pitching guru, hitting ruin.
When I talked to coach back at folks specifically on
this saying kids should be throwing hard. You know, young
kids twelve and unders should be playing right, just going
out and playing and testing their bodies. Is there a
benefit to building a swing or formulating a spin rate,
(11:15):
launching was all those things for young kids? Because I
hear those metrics all the time, and I'm wondering are
they beneficial for young twelve you kids know I I
don't think it's necessary at that age. I think what's
necessary at that age is it's just overall skilled development
is learning how to be a baseball player. And I said,
learned how to be a baseball player. To be honest
with you, Nick, I didn't know what a PO was
(11:37):
six years ago. When someone in my camp said my
son's a p O, I didn't even I didn't even
answer the question because I didn't know. I don't know
what it's a it's a picture only, and and that's
how I felt. So I was embarrassed because I didn't
know it. So I just didn't answer the question. I
just nodded my head and I said, that's fine. But
once I start to understand what pos were, I'm thinking
(11:58):
to myself of baseball player is a baseball player. Baseball
player is someone that at that age, anyway, ten eleven,
twelve thirteen, you get to a field and it's almost
like you could open your equipment bag and any glove
could follow. And I'm not to say that parents should
buy their kids three gloves, because they shouldn't, but it's
just like, Okay, my mindset is, I'm a baseball player, coach.
(12:22):
I could play first base, I can play second, I
can play short. And you're for your left handed you know,
there's only certain positions you can play. But I'm gonna
tell you the best picture to ever play at Vanderbilt University,
I found in a summer league playing shortstop, and that
was a six ft five left handed picture named David Price.
And he was playing shortstop in a summer league. But
the bottom line is our attraction to him was that
(12:44):
he was a baseball player, and then he became a pitcher.
And I think when you start to see kids that
are baseball players first that start to move in the
direction of certain positions, that's okay. But even if you're
a position guy, if you come into as Vanderbilt as
a shortstop, it's most likely you're going to move to
another position on the field. It's just the way it is.
You can't have fifteen shortstops. A lot of times they're
(13:07):
the best athlete, but they've also done other things on
the field. So to that point, no, I think specialization,
even from a position, is a mistake at that age,
and numbers identifying kids with spin rates and angles not necessary.
Kids don't need to be saddled down with those types
of thoughts. Those are for parents. Those are for adults,
and even for adults and parents, they don't need him
(13:28):
at that age. I'm gonna ask you characteristics that you
look for in the recruiting process outside of the obviously
skill set. How important is being a great teammate and
having tremendous character are they are they high up on
the list or is it all about well, this kid throw,
this kid hits it. You know what? Where do the
rankings come as far as a kid that you want
(13:50):
to have complay a Vandabile university. Those are essential components
of kids that we want inside of our program. They're
very essential, and I think you can find out right
away when you're communicating with kids on how they feel
about those components. When a young man has those types
of fibers, it accentuates the skill sets that he has physically,
(14:11):
but the physical skill sets that are void of those
components right there, it just makes an individual less satisfying,
at least in this world. We want kids that really
enjoy being part of something where it's bigger than themselves,
it's more special than themselves. That makes the experience whole.
And I think being patient as a player and understanding
(14:33):
that I'm going into this program and it may mean
that I'm not active on the field and I'm not
a participant right away. It may mean that it takes
me a year, it may take two years. They have
to be fine with that. It doesn't lessen their competitiveness
or make them less hungryous, just that I understand. I
became part of this program because I understood it was
gonna be tough. And I also have to have a
(14:55):
level of patients in order to be able to play
here and understand that it's very difficult to play as
a freshman. So I would say character traits, patients, and
the feeling of unification to do something as a whole
is a is an extreme interest of ours. When we're
recruiting a young man, you have two kids in front
(15:16):
of you. You know, both very good. You know athletes
can play physically at Vanderbilt University. One has played strictly
baseball off the time they were a freshman of high school.
Ones a multi sport athlete. Is there one you prefer
and everything else being equal, and you have to pick one,
where do you go if they're the same. If they're
the same, ones a multi sport athlete and one's a
baseball well, the easy answer would be the multi sport
(15:38):
athlete because of his growth. But the first thing I
would do is I would take the guy with the
what we just got done talking about, I would take
the take the young man with the fibers and the
personality traits that I'm looking for. First, I think the
human qualities of a player. If there's a sameness to them.
They both have the same skill sets, I'm always moved
towards the personality and the character traits of the young man.
(16:00):
And now if if you're just identifying and that isn't
part of the equation, that I'm always going to move
towards the multi sport athlete just because I think he's
been exposed to more team play. More team play, I
would say, in most cases brings out the team qualities
of a young kid, and those are essential, as I said,
inside our environment. And you mentioned more upside potentially, do
(16:23):
you think that's because they hadn't specialized yet that if
they do when they dial into college, is potentially more upside. Yeah.
And I think they've got improv skills. I think the
thing about being an athlete, as you improvise your whole life.
You you make up things along the way because you can.
And I think when you learn how to improvise on
a field of play, you're not so mechanical. You have
(16:43):
some instincts, and the instincts are derived from playing another sport.
If I'm a basketball player and I shoot a shot,
and I see the shot leave my fingertips and I
know it's headed to the right side of the rim,
I'm already moving towards the right side of the court,
anticipating the ball going to bounce that way. That's an instinct.
But if I don't play basketball, then I don't pick
(17:06):
up that one specific instinct. And those instincts all transition,
they all run together. Whether it's catching skills when you're
on a football field, whether it's blocking skills when you're
on a football field well, whether it's learning angles, whether
it's learning movements and your ability to move your hips
or move your feet in a certain way. You can
only gain those things by doing other things. And if
(17:28):
you just play baseball, you're gonna miss out a lot
of those skills that are needed as you grow inside
the game of baseball that you're going to see as
you start to get older and you start playing deeper
into your career. What would be your advice to a
parent of a kid is twelve years old. You know
they're fighting that all the travel organization says, well, if
you don't do this, you may lose your spot, but
their kid likes to play different things. What would be
(17:49):
a thirty second piece of advice to a parent of
a young athlete today? Release the opportunity to your child
be a teammate to your child. Don't look above them
and don't talk above them. Be a teammate to your
child by opening doors for them, Be a facilitator, and
then let them take it from there. Let them carry
the torch. I think any time that we want to
drive the car and take the keys from our kids
(18:11):
at every single turn, we don't empower them. Your empower
them by letting them make decisions. And you're standing next
to him, not standing over him, And I think that's
so important for a kid. It's just releasing the opportunity
to child. Let it be his situation, not your situation.
That's Tim Corbyn, head baseball coach at Vanderbilt University. After
(18:31):
the break, Coach Corbyn and I we'll talk about the
impact D three has had on Coach Corbyn and how
it helped him get to where he is today. I'm
Nick Bonacourt and you're listening to the Reform Sports Project podcast.
Welcome back to the Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt,
(18:53):
and today we have Tim Corbyn, head baseball coach at
Vanderbilt University. When we left off, we were discussing the
upset of multi sport athletes before entering college. You and
I share a background, but I think it's important to
talk about, especially today when it comes to you know,
kids looking to play collegiate sports. There's a D one
(19:14):
or bust mentality, And I, for one, wouldn't be where
I am today if we're from my Division three baseball experience.
Not because I got to play for a legendary coach,
but like Mike Fox for a year and I'm Scott Forbes,
and you know all these great teammates and friends. When
a national title, those were all great, but it opened
up so many doors. And I remember people at times
still will say like D three, like Coach Fox said,
this D three is not a synonym for third rate.
(19:37):
And what I read your story a little bit. I
want you to talk about what Division three playing and
the experience meant to you, and most importantly, what doors
opened up as a result of your experience. Well, I
think it's the chair I'm sitting in. I mean, long term,
I ended up in a place because of my Division
three experience. But I think you have to go back
(19:58):
and look at why you make those just visions as
a person, and you get to that point because you
decide what you want out of an experience, do you
want to go somewhere and have an opportunity to play?
And I think I, like a lot of kids, wanted
to play at the highest level. The College World Series
was on TV in the early eighties, and the University
(20:19):
of Maine was that school that I always aspired to
go to. But the reality was I wasn't the type
of player that could play there from a skill standpoint,
and it took a while to understand that. But then
I had to make the decision do I just want
to go there and try to walk on and be
a piece of it or potentially get cut, or do
(20:41):
I want to go somewhere and have an impact in
a program where I feel like I can play personally
and be part of the team. So I chose to
do that, and by doing that, I opened up other
opportunities for myself. I was a student coach in football
as a sophomore, junior, and senior. The assistant coach there
(21:02):
who happened to be the head coach in baseball gave
me that opportunity, and also because I was a roommate
of a couple of football players, so my coaching and
teaching career actually started while I was in college, while
I was playing baseball because of a small school experience.
And I think the interactions that you have people because
(21:22):
of of a smaller school allow you personal touches that
you might not get if you're not connected to a program.
And I think when we start looking as kids at situations,
we get caught up in facilities, We get caught up
in the glamor of the uniform, We get caught up
in the size of a crowd. And what we do
(21:47):
is we don't necessarily are looking at the right things
and the right things. For me back then, when I
made that decision, that had more to do with a
personal connection that I didn't think I could get it
a bigger school because my skill set would not allow
me to do so. And I don't think it's you know,
for for kids. And I had this discussion over at
(22:09):
Montgomery Bell Academy several years ago when the athletic director
called me in and asked me to speak about my
Division three experience and what it led to because he
was concerned with kids like yourself that if I'm not
going to Division one school to play a sport, then
forget it. And then you have to ask yourself why
(22:29):
you're playing. And I think that the reason I was
playing because I enjoyed competition and I enjoyed just playing
a sport. And heaven forbid, you go to a college
and at eighteen or nineteen, you stopped participating because you
didn't give yourself an opportunity because the size of the
school and the fit of the school didn't necessarily fit
(22:51):
your skill set. So you chose to give up everything
that had provided you fun, opportunity and relationship bill holding
that you could have, but you took it away from yourself.
So I just think, you know, I know that's a
long winded answer, but you start to look at that
school that I went to, Ohio Wesleyan, much like where
you went, and I look at all the college coaches,
(23:14):
and I look at an athletic director and my college
baseball coach and the assistant coach that gave me that
opportunity as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Steelers the
last twenty years. So these small college people, now we're
all Division one coaches, Division one athletic directors in professional sport,
and you have to ask yourself, if they played at
a higher level, what they have been granted the same opportunities. Well,
(23:37):
you never know, but at the same time, I know
I never would have had this. I used to hear
people say, in order to go play Vanderbilt, people read
the headlines on social media and they see D one
power five. You know, you gotta start getting recruited. When
you're an eighth, ninth grade, tenth grader, you don't have
a shot. And if you go to Juco, you and
I'm sitting there, I played with three guys at the
Division three level who had big league careers. I mean
(24:00):
they went to the big leagues, had careers. I mean
by the time they were juniors. Of course they didn't
belong at the D three level, but you know that
besides the point when they were seventeen, like Billy Wagner,
that guy was throwing the Division three school in my conference.
Do you think there's a misconception that it's if you're
not D one you can't get a look because parents
think or kids here, Oh, if I'm not getting looks
(24:21):
when I'm a sophomore, you know I'm not gonna make it.
You know. Could you talk a little bit about that
speeding up with the recruiting process, how that might because
let's face it, COVID, it's probably gonna make it even
more challenging just to play at a lower level. Forget
about you know, a Vanderbilder or you know Power five.
It's gonna be tough to play anywhere because there's more
kids and it gets gonna be more challenging. I mean,
what are your thoughts on that. Well, I mean, it
(24:43):
is a challenge. It's an an obvious challenge. But I
think the people that can provide the most sense to
this and can provide a commune effect on this or
are certainly the parents themselves because they're the older voice.
And when you have a son or daughter that aspires
to be a collegiate athlete, then I think it's it's
(25:04):
just the parents duty just to do as much research
as they possibly tend to help their child, but at
the same time not get caught up in the processes
of the people on their left or on their right.
Everyone runs their own race. Everyone has an individual race
based on their skill set, based on their growth, and
that's different. And if you're running a race and your
(25:26):
focus is what other people are doing around you, then
you're getting disconnected from your own personal situation and your
own personal process, and your own personal process is brought
upon by you just involving yourself and what you want
to do and how you want to do it. And
I mean, I think that's the other side of social
(25:47):
media and the other side of kids today and how
we operate from a communication standpoint that creates hurdles for us,
mental hurdles because those aren't real. Twenty thirty years ago,
people were operating with with communication by landline, by phone,
and I know that's gone, but at the same time,
people were disconnected from each other's race. They didn't know
(26:09):
what was going on. And a lot of times what
you don't know obviously is good for you. So I
think as a parent is just to guide your child
in a way that you can so that they can
move towards their passion, whatever it is. And if it's playing,
then guide them towards the situation and a fit where
(26:29):
they can play. If it's not, then obviously move in
it in another direction. But being challenged and being interrupted
in your own process by what other people doing what
you feel is important other people has nothing to do
with you. You're you're running your own individual race and
it you know, it always needs to be that way.
(26:50):
When I talked to Scott Brown, right, Brownie and and
and Coach Fox, they both kind of I asked Coach
Fox this question. I'm gonna ask you a shame on me.
I don't know if you went to the College World
Series when you were at Ohio Wesley and if you
and I really don't know, you could tell me here
in a second. But Coach Fox, when he was at
North Carolina Wesley, they wanted national title in nine. He
went to a bunch of World Series, but he wanted
then we wanted the year after he left. And then
(27:11):
Scott Brown, I mean he went with Courtland to the
World Series a bunch of times. And Brown he said
to me, like, that's the same thing we do here
at Vanderbilt. Nick, the same thing that we were trying
to do. The feelings the same when he was at
Courtland as it is when we wanted here in Vanderbilt.
And Coach Fox said the same thing. The feelings the same.
I mean, winning a national title Division three wasn't any
less gratifying than going to Omaha. Again. I get it.
(27:33):
When I was a freshman high school, I want to
go to Miami. I want to go to cal State
fort I want to go to because that's what I
saw on TV. I have a little did I know
I wasn't good enough to play there. But is there
any difference between the experience at the Division three level
the things you're chasing versus what you're trying to accomplish
at Vanderbilt from an emotional and gratification standpoint, Well, I mean,
you said it. It's a human emotion, and human emotion
(27:54):
is brought upon by a lot of different doctors in
our life, and they have nothing to do with the
eyes of where you're doing it and how you're doing it.
If the impetus of what you're doing is based around
relationships and people and helping teams, then it doesn't matter
where you're going to school, doesn't matter, the size of
(28:14):
the school, doesn't matter the amount of people that are
watching you do what you do. You're connected by fibers
that are emotional, and emotion has nothing to do with
outside things. Sometimes it gets louder because of other people
that are sharing that emotion with you. But my thoughts
(28:36):
and my feelings of what I did it Ohio Wesleyan, good, bad,
and different have have everything to do with my perspective
about that situation and no one else's perspective, and that's
all that matters. It's it's my own personal perspective on
what I did and how I did it and who
I was linked to, and I think outside of that nicket,
(28:57):
it doesn't matter. I think again, when you start thinking
outside of those things, you're thinking about the wrong things.
You're looking at the wrong things. It's all about your
personal feelings towards what you want to do and how
you want to do it. When I interviewed coach Gilmore
from Coastal, he said, Nick, you know he coached the
usc A can for a long time and he said
to me is quote was, Nick, there's D two teams
(29:17):
right here in my backyard, meaning in North Carolina or
South Carolina that I don't want to play. I mean,
if they throw their best guy, you know, they can
certainly beat us any given time. And he's like, there's
junior college teams that they have just as much talent
as we have. He goes, I get it, Vanderbilts the
cream of the crop, But do you think a Division
two team or Division through there's a picture out there
somewhere that one time can get out there potentially, you know,
(29:39):
shoving and beat a Vanderbilt. Well you know the answer
to that, Nick, You know, I just look at the
third basement for the Tampa bay Rays. I have to
do is look at a left handed picture named Fleming
for the Tampa Bay Rays. I mean, those kids. All
you have to do is go up to the Cape
Cod League All Star Game during the course of the
summer and see some of the kids that are on
(29:59):
that roster or those are Division two players, those are
Division three players. There's a certain amount of kids because
of roster sizes in spots that allow kids to play
Division one baseball and not allow kids to play Division
one baseball. But the reality is there's Division three players
that could play Division one baseball, and there's Division one
(30:20):
baseball players that should be playing Division three baseball. So
sometimes you get disconnected with where you go and at
the time that you're at. So I think it's really
being comfortable with who you are and what you do
and how you want to do it. Outside of that, again,
you're running your own personal race, and that's really all
that matters. I just cannot thank you enough. Hope you
(30:42):
and your family stay safe. And healthy through this ridiculous
time or going through. And best of luck once you
guys start back up with their Vanderbilt Commodores. I'm so
grateful and humble for you to come on. Thank you
very much, Nick, I appreciate the opportunity that's Tim Corbyn,
head baseball coach at Vanderbilt University. Thanks for listening to
the Reformed Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt and our
(31:03):
goal is to restore healthy, balance and perspective in all
areas of sport through education and advocacy. For updates, please
follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out
our website by searching for the Reform Sports Project
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