Ryan Day on what needs to change at Ohio State and DeShaun Foster's AWKARD moment at Big 10 Media Days

The Big Ten media days are underways and it's still weird to see USC and UCLA in attendence. It's also weird to listen to UCLA head football coach DeShaun Foster give his opening statement that he may not have known he was supposed to give until he got on stage. Hear THAT and also Ryan Day's comments on what Ohio State needs to do to get past Michigan.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Anyway, the coaches sometimes sounded likeand you know, and then sometimes they
don't. And here here's an examplewe're talking about. This is Ryan Day,
the head coach of the Ohio StateBuckets. Now is this his opening
statement or is he responding to aquestion? It no one on one with

(00:21):
Josh Pate. Okay, CDs Sports. Okay, all right, So this
is the head coach of one ofthe teams expected to be in contention for
a national championship, the Ohio StateBucketes. If you look at, like,
say, a lot of preseason publicationsand I've got one of them,
man's right now, applin Uh.They pick Ohio State to defeat Texas in

(00:42):
the Cotton Bowl in the semifinals beforefalling to Georgia in the national championship game.
They're held in pretty high regard.This is the Ryan Day, the
head coach. In that conversation,Is there ever a thought that, hey,
I can prop probably do most anythingI want to. I want to.

(01:03):
I want to shift twenty percent overhere. I want our identity be
a little bit more this, maybea little bit less that, or is
it I like where we're at andwe're just going to continue to swing every
year until we get it. Well, that's that's that's a great question because
after every year, you got toafter the dust settles and the smoke clears
and eevery they've got to figure outwhat is going well and you got to
continue to enhance it and what needsto get changed, what needs to get

(01:23):
fixed. And you know, there'ssome things that we've identified. You know,
I'm not going to get into allthose right now, but certainly one
of them is making sure the rightpeople in the right seats and that is
a critical thing. And you know, having Chipped there now, having Gym
on you know, as the twocoordinators, I think was very very important
to get solidified. But you know, also the players and having those but

(01:44):
but also schematically and you know someof the things that we did. But
again not getting into all those,but you know, making sure you're identify
because every year you learn, youknow, and I've certainly I've learned a
lot, you know, and especiallyin the last couple of years, and
you know, and we need tofigure out like even coming off a last
year, that last game, youknow, what, why why didn't we
finish that last drive? You know, why couldn't you know, we get

(02:05):
a stop sooner at the end ofthe game on defense, you know what
what what was it that held usback from winning that game last year?
And you could point to a fewthings, but you know, it's easy
to say, well, you're adriver two away, but the truth is
we need to leave no doubt.You know, in those games, you
can't leave it to one or twoplays. You got to leave no doubt.
And and so that's been a themefor us in the season. Yeah,

(02:27):
that's some of the conversations you hearat this time of year about leaving
no doubt and building for the futureand things like that. Also, and
I do not I don't know.I guess I should probably, you know,
preface this. Uh, it's probablyimportant to preface this by talking about

(02:52):
the fact that that sometimes, uhsometimes the way that conversations go in media
days. Now, we were ina pretty uniform environment in Dallas last week

(03:12):
and the coaches were well introduced bythe commissioner of the of the conference,
so Greg saying, he introduced eachcoach, who then would give his opening
statement and then would take questions.I don't know exactly how they did this

(03:32):
in the Big Ten, but DeshaunFoster, who of course was ann outstanding
running back at UCLA, is nowgetting his first opportunity as a head coach.
UCLA is a newbie to the BigTen, and Foster of course is
bringing in Eric the Enemy, isthe new offensive coordinator there. He is

(03:57):
doing a lot of things to tryto build things up and get UCLA turned
in a hurry, but either asmedia relations staff or the conference or something,
maybe just didn't go all out andexplaining to him what you do is
you get up there and you givean opening statement and you take questions,
because he sounded like he wasn't quiteready for that sequence of events to happen.

(04:19):
Coach Foster, welcome to the BigTen. We'll begin with your opening
statement. Okay, so they tellhim opening statement, right, Hi,
guys doing I'm happy to be here, glad to be a part of this
great conference. Finally put in twogreat emblems together, UCLA and a Big

(04:42):
Ten where a school that's won whatone hundred and twenty three championships? So
this fits us being right in thisconference football wise, which is excited.
You know, I'm sure you guysdon't know too much about UCLA, but
our football program, but we're inLA, that's us in USC. We

(05:24):
I'm just basically excited. Really,that's it. In questions. Hm hm,
that was a tough listening last partof the accent to uncomfortable there with
that, you know what. Italmost seemed to me like he wasn't told
that he was supposed to deliver anopening statement by his media relation staff,

(05:46):
and then he stepped up and thenhe was introduced and said, and we'll
start with an opening statement, andit probably went through his mind, I'm
supposed to do an opening statement andthen take some questions. So then he
was trying trying to come up withto talk about here we are, where
the league conference champions we came from. We got a lot of championships.
We are from LA, and youprobably don't know that much about US and

(06:13):
USC is here. And you know, instead of talking about his team like
most did, they talked about theplayers they brought with him. They talked
about what they're excited about. Sokind of felt for him. His opening
comments were a minute long. Comparethat to the opening comments from the SEC
coach that we played on our show, Sark Kirby smart Elko eight nine ten

(06:38):
minutes. They're almost as if they'regiving like a State of the Union address
in their opening comments and then fosterseventy two seconds now in his defense,
really, his coaching experience has beenlimited. He was that UCLA as a
running backs coach the last five sixyears, so he probably did not speak
that much, probably never talked tothe meeting because this was a very very
rushed hire after Kelly unexpectedly left forOhio State. He was a running back

(07:01):
coach of Texas Tech for a yearand before that he was just a GA
so he's probably had very very littlemedia experience as a head coach. And
obviously you kind of see that therewere just a sixty second opening comments compared
to other coaches who usually will takeup a good ten minute chunk of their
time. And that makes sense becauseall of you know, they're given a

(07:23):
thirty minute allowment. So hey,the more time I talk, the less
questions off the tick. Yeah,it was something Mack Brown said a long
time ago. You know, ifmy opening statement is long enough, there's
lots have to talk about afterwards.That he could back in filibuster with the
best of him. He could gosix seven minutes even on a weekly news
conference, it could do that.And I think out of that one minute,
probably fifty good fifteen to twenty secondsof it all told was probably just

(07:46):
pauses. Yeah, out of thatas well, So it kind of felt
for him there a little bit ofwas hoping, you know, maybe I
don't know if again, if themedia relations staff told him, hey,
let's talk about this, this,this, we brought this player, this
player, this, everybody else kindof did that. UCLA is expected to
struggle this year, Yeah, inthe Big ten. So we'll see how
all that goes. All right,we'll be back to wrap up today.

(08:07):
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