Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Coming out of the BYU game,I think, just to reiterate, you
know, there was our versatility continuesto kind of shine through, and I
thought it. I thought it didagain Saturday. You know, obviously,
defensively, anytime you can go intoa game and you can get you know,
three three turnovers, you can holdyour opponent to two or thirteen on
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third down, you get three redzone stops, and then you limit explosive
plays, it's usually a pretty goodday, right. I don't need to
watch the tape to think, man, that that defense probably had a really
good day. And that's exactly whatit looked like when you turn the tape
on you watch our guys play naturally. Uh, there's there's areas where I
think we can improve, which whichwe met on this morning about with with
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the players for them to improve there. You know, from a special team's
perspective, you know, obviously ahuge punt return by Xavier, but a
great job by the other ten guys, right, I mean, everybody,
everybody did a really nice job ofcreating the running lane and and Exavier trusting
his speed getting vertical to really setthe tone for the game. From a
special team's perspective, uh. Andthen from a coverage unit standpoint, you
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know, we've been so good allyear at our ability to cover kickoffs and
punts, and there were some thatwe did really, really well. We're
knocking the returner down inside the fifteenyard line a couple of times, but
a little uncharacteristic that a couple gotout, and so there's some things there
that we definitely need to need toneed to clean up, you know.
Offensively, you know, I thoughtwe we found a way to create some
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explosive plays. Six of eleven onthird down was it was a real positive
for us. But we can't affordtwo turnovers, you know, every week,
and so we've got to we've gotto take care of the ball.
Uh. And then two of fivein the red zone isn't good enough.
And so especially when you're zero forthree on first and goal scenarios. And
so to me, that's that's that'sa byproduct of making sure that we're dialed
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in on the details of the game, playing, the execution of it,
all the physicality that that is needed. And so we got to get back
to it, you know, becausewe had opportunities in that game for that
game to really go a different directionin our favor. We didn't capitalize,
and so we're gonna need to performbetter, uh in all three phases,
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most notably in some of those keyareas offensively. UH, to continue on
the mission that we're wrong. Andso from an injury update, you know,
yours, Burke and Catalan are stillall week to week and UH,
as far as Kansas State goes,obviously, this is a really hot team
right now. UH. They've beenplaying as good as anybody in the country,
UH in all all three phases forthe last two to three weeks.
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UH. I think it's I thinkit's really important that we focus on us
and what we need to do,that that the details and the level of
physicality in which we play the gameare at the forefront of what we do.
I do believe our best football isstill ahead of us, and that
part is exciting to me. Andwe're gonna need to play complimentary football Saturday
against a very good, well coachedfootball team in Kansas State. So it's
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an exciting weekend. Obviously, we'vegot you know, the big new kickoff
here with Fox. You know thatthey're coming to do their show. I
think it's a great opportunity for ourstudents, for our fans, uh to
really show up here at dk Rand have an impact on the ball game.
We've all we've all got work todo. Uh. I think everybody,
myself included, could have been betterlast week and and we all need
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to perform better this Saturday at elevenam. Uh. You know, I
think they they play well together.I think they play as a team.
I think they've got a good scheme. They're very aggressive. They they you
know, it's hard to stay ondouble teams. They get you off of
double teams at the line of scrimmage. The linebackers are downhill players, they're
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good tacklers, good tacklers in thesecondary. And then they forced third lungs
and when when your majority of yourthird downs or third and nine plus,
uh, then they're able to playcoverage and rush the passer and get off
the field. So I think it'sreally critical in this game that you know,
we've got to win on first down. But but we got to get
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back to playing our brand of football, and that's a physical brand of football,
uh, and being detail oriented andexecute right now. Yes, with
him mental wise and the way hefrom what we gathered last week, he's
the first guy in, the lastguy out in that kind of guy.
As far as preparation, what didyou see from him since Saturdays? You
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know how hungry he is to Ithink he stayed consistent, and that's that's
a great thing, you know.I don't think for any of our players
they should never feel like they needto change because they're playing more now.
You know, you develop the habitsthat you develop for consistency, and he's
developed great habits in his preparation,not only mentally but physically with the work
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that he does in the training room, has worked with coach Milwey, his
work on his own to put himselfin position to practice really well. And
so that level of consistency is athing that I'm most encouraged about Steve.
I guess if you know, froma play caller standpoint, with a new
quarterback having one game under your belt, can you talk about the comfortability and
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what plays he likes and what youyou know, how that feels going.
He likes plays and I like tocall the ones he likes. I mean,
I mean naturally right, I mean, you you try to, you
do you do get a feel foryou know, every quarterback manages the game
even a little bit differently than thenext one. We may call the same
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formations, motion shifts, whatever thatlooks like, but how they manage it,
the tempo in which they go,what their comfort level is, I
think is important to know. Youknow, where do his eyes go on
specific play that you know, isis he seeing what he what he wants
to see? And is the ballcoming up the way he wants it to
come up? And so naturally,as you get into game plan for the
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next opponent, you're like, Okay, this looked like he was really comfortable
with this stuff. This These thingsover here maybe not quite as comfortable,
but I've seen him do it beforein practice, and these things over here,
maybe we're just not there yet.And that's okay, too, right,
And so we have plenty offense touh to play good football with.
But to your point, I dothink there's finding his rhythm is is really
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important and trying to do the thingsthat that he's you know, comfortable with
but more so comfortable with that hedoes well. I love to throw deep
out routes, but I'm not verygood at it right, So naturally I
didn't want those calls when I playedI wish I could have. But with
Malik, you know there he's gotall the arm talent in the world.
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All right, there's a comfort levelof the progressions and different things that we
do that that and hopefully we're,like I said, we're putting him in
position to have a great deal ofsuccess. Steve, I just want to
ask you, at various points thisyear, you've said that the team still
has room to play their best football, and you know, offensively speaking,
your top twenty five and total points, total offense, run, rushing,
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passing. How do you juxtapose theability to still have room to grow with
the fact that offensively speaking, there'sstill a top turn the nation in various
offensive categories. Yeah, well,I think I think, first of all,
like defensively, I think we're thirdin the country on third down right
now, I think we're top ten, if not top five, in red
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zone defense. And so all right, where where can we improve? How
do we eliminate some of the explosivepass plays that we've been get it up
down the field? I think offensively, you know, we've we've kind of
rectified where we were at early inthe year, where we weren't great on
third down I think we've improved there. I think we are playing efficient offensive
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football between the twenties. But wegot to finish these drives, you know.
And I said to you guys Saturday, I would be lying if I
didn't say I wasn't frustrated, becausethat changes the whole complexion of a game.
When the scorer starts to go acertain way, now you're starting to
make a team one dimensional, andnow you can rush the passer different defensively.
So when I referenced complimentary football,it's all those phases adding up together.
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How can the offense help the defenseplay their style in which they want
to do. How can the defensehelp the offense creating turnovers giving them a
short field. How can the offensethen in turn help the defense again turn
those turnovers into points and not turnthe ball over and giving them a short
field. So it all ties together. But again, you know, as
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coaches, you know, I don'twant to say you're never satisfied, but
man, you know, we tryto chase perfection every day, and when
it's not perfect, my job asa coach is to try to help them,
you know, show them a pathand an avenue of where and how
close they are to perfect and howwe're going to try to get there couch.
When you're evaluating a quarterback's like firststart, does it look the same
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as a guy who's a returning starter, or is there like a level of
grace kind of given there? Imean, what what do you kind of
consider taken to consideration or what thingsyou anticipate happening with a new guy starting.
Yeah, I definitely think that Ihave a level of understanding of the
newness and the different things that cancome up. And you can only create
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so much in practice. You canonly create so much in a scrimmage,
and sometimes you have to you haveto live it real life. For example,
you know the fumble there in thered area. You know, maybe
in a practice setting, the leakgets that ball off because the quarterback's not
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live and the defender has to pulloff. And now you can get that
throw done in person. Now yourealize he's going to hit me if I
raise my arm up and the ballis going to come out. And so
I think that's a really cool lessonlearned for him. We're fortunate that a
couple of those lessons learned we wereable to bounce back from he was able
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to bounce back from So we learneda lot there too about himself that maybe
you don't have to deal with ina practice setting, and we were able
to overcome those things and win aballgame, you know, kind of pretty
convincingly. But the next time itcomes up, the goal is that he
doesn't do some of those same things. And so there's an understanding of it's
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his first time out there, butthere's also a standard and an expectation of
how we play at the position,and that's what we hold everybody to.
Yeah, just playoff rankings come outTuesday. Do you pay attention maybe not
to the rankings, but what thecommittee says they're looking for, or do
you just not pay attention to itat all? It seems pretty early to
me, you know, I'm shyedaway from this. I think we got
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a pretty good ball team, andI think that we're a very versatile team.
And I think the fact that,you know, we started our backup
quarterback against a five and two teamand won thirty five to six, and
so we get another opportunity this weekendto play with our backup quarterback, and
so, you know, not everyteam out there has had to endure some
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of the things that we've had toand if they had to play with their
backup, how would they play.But I think it speaks to the type
of team that we have. I'dargue we have the best win in the
country right now, the fact thatwe go into Tuscaloose, Alabama and beat
a team that was fifty two andone in the previous fifty three games of
us going in there, and Ihear so much about how tough the SEC
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is, but I haven't seen anybodythose teams going to Alabama win either.
So I feel pretty good about ourteam, and I think over time,
this whole thing will play itself out. So we've got to focus on what
we need to do Saturday and playour best football. Ye Steve, you've
been out spoken about your frustrations withthe red zone offense. How how hard
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are you pushing this offensive line andoverall, what have you seen from them
and what's their upside? Well,I'm pushing. I'm pushing our guys hard.
Like I said, you know,I think that that's my job as
a coach, is to push ourplayers to be the best that they can
be individually, and then to pushthe units on our team to be the
best that they can be collectively.And I think there's a standard of offense
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that our guys have established here,of the quality of play that that we
play with. There's a level ofphysicality that we play with, there's a
level of speed that we play with, and there's a level of intricacy to
which we play with with the shiftsand the motions and those things. And
so when when when we don't meetthose expectations and we when we don't play
to that standard, Okay, myjob is a to make sure that we're
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aware of that and then be howare we going to fix that? And
sometimes you have to get the attentionto do that, And so that was
this morning very candidly. I thinkI got their attention. And we need
a really good week of practice.We need a hard nose week of practice.
We need great preparation so that wecan go out and play really good
football against against a really good teamon Saturday. So are we headed in
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November with more than a third ofthe team's tied for first that's kind of
crazy in a fourteen team league.What does it say about the league?
And what was it say about thehome stretch? In this league. I
think it's like everything, which togo back to the earlier question. You
know, the start of the year, you know, a couple of teams
in our league lost some games thatmaybe they didn't people didn't think they were
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going to lose and whatnot, andsome other teams won some games in other
conferences. Well, all of asudden, now as the league is starting
to bear itself out, we're startingto find out that I think our league
is probably a little stronger than peoplegave it credit for in early September.
And there's there's a lot of teamsplaying really good football, and maybe some
of these other leagues aren't quite asstrong as people were giving them credit for
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at the start of the year.And so I think that that's why it's
important to watch the entire body ofwork throughout a season. But our league
is tough. I've said it allalong. We've got really good coaches in
this league. They they they gettheir teams to play hard and tough.
They're very good schematically, they're greatgame planners, and you've got to be
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on your toes, you know,week in and week out as a coach
in this league. But you alsogot to make sure that your team is
ready to play, because as aswe're finding out, there's a lot of
teams that have an opportunity to competefor a conference championship in November, and
that that doesn't surprise me. They'rethey're really good teams in our league.
Xavier got the apartment return for thetouchdown back. When you're first trying to
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settle on a guy who's going tobe a return guy for you, what's
the key quality that you're looking forand what separates the good ones from the
great ones? I think one,you have to be able to catch the
ball. I know that. Iknow that sounds really simple, but a
lot of times in high school theyjust don't get the punt. Like the
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punters in college and the pros puntthe ball there end over end. They're
rolling on the ground. And yousee so many of these guys in high
school always had eight punt returns fortouchdowns. Well seven of those the ball
was on the ground. He pickedit up off the ground. He didn't
have to feel it in the air. So that's you have to be able
to do that too. You haveto be able to feel it when people
are running at you right and thenthree, you have to have courage to
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make that play, and then fouryou have to have the natural instincts and
feel to run the return. Likean Xavier's example Saturday, the gunner was
free and we didn't block the leftgunner very well at all, but he
stood his ground and literally catches itand at the same time makes him miss
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right. And so all those things, I mean, that's a those are
qualities that he has. But allso, it took a lot of time
to work on those things in postpractice and in practice to to get comfortable
doing that. And so I thinkthat the greatest ones of them all,
the devin Hesters of the world.I mean, those guys are they're just
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innate, have that ability to feelit and make people miss and then get
vertical right, and you have tohave a lot of courage to do all
that. You mentioned Malik's arm talent. I'm curious how much you've had to
work with him on the touch partof it, because when you have that
arm, it's it's easy to wantto throw the fastball a lot of times,
but we saw a lot of touchthrows on Saturday. I think that's
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one thing about Malik. He's areally natural passer of the football, you
know, even even the deep ballto a D for the touchdown. I
mean, he has a natural feelof putting air under a ball or or
layering a ball, so that thatpart's pretty natural to him. But yet
where you saw the arm talent,you know, the slant he throws to
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a D on the touchdown, thatthat was a fastball, you know,
and that thing was coming, andso he definitely has the ability to change
you know, trajectories on the ball, to change velocity on the ball and
still remain accurate. And so alot of that to me, you know,
I think he learned really young,and the passing of the football is
very natural to him. Yeah,Steve teams to usually reflect their coach's background,
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personality, approach, and Chris Clembensseems to have done that at Case
State. You all have done thatas well, even though you're an offensive
guy. Do you feel like thisis just more of a toughness game than
a lot of them. Yeah,I mean I think coach climbing A does
a heck of a job. Imean he's a you know, throughout his
career wherever he's gone, he's hadreally good football teams. You know,
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they they they play well in allthree phases and you can definitely see his
you know, his imprint on thatteam now. I mean, he's been
there long enough now that that's that'shis group. And you know, I
think this game is about toughness.I think that this game, you know,
it's just look back to the lasttwo years, the way they those
games have gone. You know,two years ago we were playing with kind
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of a half of a quarterback andplayed wildcat and you know, didn't throw
a whole lot of passes and ranthe ball, and they were running the
ball with Deuce And last year,you know, Bijon and Roshan, it
was a real tough, hard nosed, physical game there as well. And
I don't see this game being awhole lot different. You know, it's
two teams believe in running the ball. Two teams pride themselves on being physical
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and being tough, being disciplined.You know now that they've really incorporated the
quarterback run stuff to what they do. And it's not just the young kid,
but but Howard's doing it as well. So they've got a multitude of
scheme and run game to go alongwith the toughness, right, and so
it's one thing just to be tough, it's another one you have the scheme
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with it. I think we're we'repretty good and those aspects as well.
We don't run the cue as much, but grammatically and then the physicality of
which we try to play the gameI think is important. And in turn,
when your offense is built like that, generally your defense is wired that
way as well. So I thinkboth both teams are similar that way,
and so that's why practice is soimportant to get yourself prepared for that,
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for that type of ballgame. Andthen ultimately, you know, Saturday eleven
m is a moment of truth.You know how you gonna play? Yeah,
coach, when you looked at thefilm when you got within the five
and we're unable to punch it in, what did you see on film?
That's there? Are you seeing acommon theme? And the second part of
that is when you decide to gofor it on fourth downs? Is that
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gut or you're using analytics to gofor that. So the first part is
probably a variety of things. Youknow, you you know, you game
plan for stuff that that you thinkyou're gonna get, and sometimes you get
what you think you're gonna get,and then that's when you want your execution
to kick in, and we justhave an execute a grate. The second
thing is you you gain plan forsomething you think you're gonna get, and
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then you don't get that, andso now the auxiliary playmaking somewhat has to
kick in and guys have to adjustand adapt on the fly. And then
the third is, you know,when you're down there is when do you
run it? When do you throwit? And and what personnel and all
those types of things. So there'sa there's a multitude of things that come
into play in the end. Youknow, the balls got across the goal
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line, right, and and we'rejust haven't done a good enough job and
so we've got to continue to toyou know, to kind of work at
that and get that done. Whatwas the second question, Yeah, it's
more gut. You know, wehave analytics. I always find out kind
of what the analytics says, butat the end of the day, I
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go with what I think is inthe best interests of our team at that
moment. You know, I jokinglysay, people have told me about the
book, and I said, yeah, we we have a book too.
But last time I checked President Artson the CDC didn't hire the book.
They hired Steve Sarkisian to be thehead coach, So I kind of trust
my gut on a lot of thatstuff. Coach Kansas State has been running
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two quarterbacks for the past couple ofgames. What's the challenge of dealing with
both of them? Well, youknow, their scheme really doesn't change,
you know, and then they're bothreally good players. Obviously, Howard has
a ton of experience. He playedagainst US shoot three years ago here and
started against US. The young kidis new to it. But in the
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end, they're still running their samestuff a little bit different style. Howard
definitely has the long speed. Wesaw that the freshman. He is really
quick and dynamic with the ball inhis hands. So you kind of get
a lot of the same plays andthe passing concepts and things, but they
do roll them, and then whatthey kind of feels like they're doing is
who's the hot hand, and whena guy starts getting hot, that's who
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they That's who they kind of rollwith in Obviously, last week it was
pretty much exclusively Howard. That doesn'tmean that this game is going to go
the exact same way. I thinkthey get a feel for how the game
is going marked about in case theyrunning the game running the ball. It's
been a few weeks since you playeda run first team. How much an
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adjustment is that defensively in practice nothaving done that in about a month or
so, well, you know,hopefully, you know, in scout periods
they have to prepare for, youknow, whatever our opponent, you know,
tendencies are, and they have toget themselves ready for that from a
defensive perspective. But we on everyTuesday and Wednesday we do good on good
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team run for this very reason becauseyou know, each week you don't know
who's gonna emphasize what, and sothere we always go with the period.
We're not gonna throw a pass,and we're gonna line up and we're going
to run the ball, and wehave to have the ability to run the
ball on offense when the defense knowswe're going to run it, and we
have to make sure that we havethe ability to stop the run and being
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physical at that. But we dothe same thing with the past game too.
We'll have another portion of practice wherewe do a good on good seven
on seven period there's a speed anda tempo and a physicality of why that
we do that. You know,the scout periods are great to get the
looks, but you have to feelthat competitive juice and the speed and the
tenacity of the game that we wantto make sure we keep it at the
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forefront of what we do on aweekly basis. And so to your point,
here comes a running football team hopefully. Yeah, they're going to have
some schemes that are different from ours, but man, we should be we
should be pretty well dialed into thephysicality that's going to be needed to play
the game. Right Well, speakingof running, Ricky Williams is going to
be honored on Saturday. Some memories, some thoughts. He was a little
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bit behind you, but a southernCalifornia kid. What are your memories of
Ricky? Yeah, I mean,phenomenal football player twenty five years now,
which is tells me how old Iam. But the fact that you know,
winning the Heisman, troll Fee andand what he was able to do
here and to continue to carry thelegacy of the great runners here right and
and there's been more since and continueto go. It's it's unique how certain
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places UH have that niche at aposition group and it just continues to grow.
And you know, what a legacythat that that he left here and
uh, I'm looking forward to seeinghim. And he was a phenomenal,
phenomenal football player. H h.