December 9, 2022 • 41 mins
The U Conn football team went 4-44 the last 4 years prior to Jim Mora showing up. He turned the football team in 2022 going 6-6 and being selected to play in a bowl game against Marshall. How do you change the mindset of young men who only know whats its like to lose? Listen to Jim Mora on how get got his players to believe and buy in to have a championship mindset. Amazing turnaround...
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Episode Transcript
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(00:11):
Everybody. It's Mark Pattison. I'mback again with another great episode of Finding
Your Summit, all about people overcomingdiversity in finding their way. Before we
get to two days great guests,I just want to draw attention really quickly
to my website www dot Mark PattisonNFL dot com. There's a bunch of
great stuff going on over there,like two hundred and seventy five plus podcast.
(00:33):
You can go in get inspired,just like I do every day.
We'll get to our rockstar guests injust a second. That's number one.
Number two is I would appreciate anylove on Apple by giving a review and
ratings, and by doing that ithelps elevate the popularity of the show.
We've talked about this before, butmy award winning best Picture me there.
(01:00):
It is the trophy, the hardwarenow searching for the Summit best picture.
The NFL shot of my journey upand down Mount Everest. You can access
that through a link. And finally, we continue to raise money for Higher
Ground. We have a campaign calledAmelia's Everest. We've raised several hundred thousand
dollars. It's fantastic and helps withimpowerment of other people. Okay, speaking
(01:26):
of impowerment of other people, Iwant to bring in today my very close
friend and guy who is now thehead coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies,
Jim Mora. Jim, how youdoing great? Mark? How are
you? I'm fantastic, even betterthat you're here in Sun Valley close to
me. But listen, you arethe head coach. Now, You've got
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your first year under your belt,and it's just absolutely miraculous what you and
your staff were able to pull outin terms of where the school has been
historically. I'm not sure exactly howmany D one teams there is, something
like one hundred and thirty one orsomething. But at the bottom of that
wrong historically has been Yukon at literallythe last wrong, the last spot in
(02:14):
that list. And I want totalk to you about really and this this
really speaks not so so much aboutlet's talk football, but it's really about
how you build a brand and howyou gain recognition nission In all these different
things that we'll get into. There'sa bunch of subsets within that culture,
belief system, personnel, which iscoaches, players and administrative folks. There's
(02:38):
schemes that you came in something youknow, new to all the players that
came came to the table, andof course social media, which I think
played a huge role, especially whenyou think about where you've been historically,
which is twenty five years in theNFL, six years at UCLA, and
it seems like more than ever,there's a there's a big slice that social
media is really playing for that.But we'll get to that last. I
(02:59):
want to just go back for theaudience really quickly, and then I'm going
to shut up and ask you.You know you can dig in, but
just to kind of reconstruct what happenedwith Yukon, I want to go back
to twenty eighteen, one and eleven, twenty nineteen, two and ten,
twenty twenty eight, didn't even play, didn't all these other teams are shown
up. They didn't even show upto play. There is no So you
(03:20):
have to count that as zero winsagainst twelve potential games that would have played
on twenty twenty one last year,one and eleven, this year, six
and six, And it's very possiblethat that number could have been seven and
five or eight and four. Imean that is that is definite possibility.
Where you are ahead in a gameat certain points right down to the end,
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and then things went the other way, But that so much of what
happened was about mindset. And bythe way, when you combined that that
that record together, I believe it'sfour wins and forty four losses over one,
two, three, four years.And then you come in and you
do your thing. So let's offwith when you first were offered this job
a year ago and the massive challengethat you were under. What were you
(04:06):
thinking in terms of what needed tohappen as as I'm talking about step one,
because there were like one hundred stepsin there, but step one,
where did you want to start?Step one was defining what we wanted our
culture to be. And people talka lot about culture, but I'm not
sure they ever define it, andwe needed to define it. And culture
(04:30):
is how you treat each other,how you talk to each other, what
your expectations are, what your standardsare, how you act, how you
enforce your standards. Aren't you know, necessarily living up there, It's everything.
It's the living and breathing essence ofany organization. So we had to
(04:50):
come in and establish what we wantedto be culturally as a team, and
we got into the weed with it. As a staff, I had a
very firm belief in what I feltwas necessary. And uh, you know,
being the head coach, you're youknow, you're the leader, and
(05:10):
you know the leader sets the culture, but everyone else kind of enforces it.
And you know, culture strongest whenthe players are saying the same things
and the players are enforcing the thingsthat the coach says. So I felt
like in order for us to tostart down the right path, initially,
I needed to develop trust with theseplayers and I needed to infuse them with
(05:31):
a passion that they hadn't maybe hadin a while, you know, they'd
lost. And so I came inthere strong like I always do, and
talking about the things that you know, we could accomplished if we took certain
steps along the way to make surewe accomplish those things. And I was
very fortunate to hire a really goodstaff of like minded men, good motivators,
(05:56):
excellent teachers, trustworthy people, menthat cared about men and women because
I do have a woman on mystaff, but men and women that cared
about the players as people first,and we're also trustworthy. So building that
trust amongst the players um was critical. It was a critical first step,
because once they trust you, they'llfollow you. Once they trust you,
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they'll buy into what you're saying.Once they trust you, you know,
when when maybe they want to questionsomething a little bit, they'll give you
the benefit of the doubt. Andyou have to earn that trust every day.
And I've really tried hard to dothat, and I think that I
think we've done a good job ofthat. So let's talk about you know,
you and I climbing around the mountainshere in sun Valley for really,
(06:42):
you know, the prior like sixmonths and leading up to this and actually
going back there and living in storesConnecticut, um, and everything that just
came out of your mouth. Ithink you could probably get that same that
same line from pretty much any coachaspiring coaches. That's that's a that's a
head guy or as ben ahead guy. It's trying to get out there about
belief system and buying into it.But not everybody that happens to, right,
(07:04):
and so so flipping this on theother side. So now you come
in with this belief system and thismantra and you know, having it trickled
down vertically integrated from from you know, the people at the bottom whoever those
people are, to the people youknow as you work away up the top
of the offensive coordinator and the othercoaches. But what did you find in
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terms of the players? Like you, you went back there and this wasn't
like when you took over UCLA.You came into a team that I am
guessing this like was five and sevenor six and six or something like that.
So they, yeah, they wonfive games, but you know,
it's a it's a program that's historicallyhad a lot of success, you know,
even though it was here and there, and now you're going in into
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a culture where there's been no success. And so so even though I know
you're walking in with that mindset,what did do you find on the other
side of that fence that that thatyou look at the same that like,
this is a mass of this isway bigger than what I thought. What
I found was apprehension initially, asyou would expect, you know, when
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you go into a new job anda new person comes in and the players
are there and they've heard it allbefore. One thing that helped me as
I had credibility. I've been ahead coach in the NFL. I've been
a head coach of a program wherewe've had success. I've been on TV,
so they'd seen me, so Ihad some credibility with them. But
the first thing we had to dois kind of weed out some of the
guys that I didn't think we're gonnafit, either from a scheme standpoint or
(08:39):
a mindset stand point. And sowe whittled that down a little bit and
we kept the core. And thecore was surprisingly resilient. I mean,
these guys, as you said,they've been through so much and yet it
didn't get them down. They wereso anxious to do whatever, you know,
we felt was necessary to become adecent, too good to growing football
(09:00):
team. And h what I found, Mark was a whole bunch of guys
that lacked a sense of entitlement.And I think entitlement is something that's a
negative in our culture today. Ithink there's sometimes, you know, people
that believe that they deserve something ratherthan have to go out and earn it.
And what I found was a bunchof guys that were so willing to
(09:20):
go out and earn whatever you know, they were going to get, they
were going to achieve. They didn'tbelieve anyone owed them anything. And it
was so refreshing, and every daythat sense of of competitiveness and sense of,
you know, just dying to dowhatever was asked to them to get
better, of not feeling entitled,of wanting to work for it, competing
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every day. It just continued togrow and it became an incredibly incredibly close
football team, probably the closest footballteam I've ever been on, and for
sure the least entitled group of playersI've ever been around. So it wasn't
hard to change their mindset. Andthen they just needed to win, right,
and they needed to be taught howto win and then need to know
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what it took to win, becauseit's more than just wanting to win.
I mean, heck, everyone wantsto win, but it's a work that
you have to put in, andit's the it's the trust that you have
to garner amongst each other, andit's it's the commitment you have to make
every single day, every single momentof every single day. It can't be
something you pick and choose, andthese guys were just willing to do the
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work and it was very, veryrewarding to be around those guys. So
the first thing I have written downon my list is the culture, and
you talked about that, you know, changing the mindset, changing the culture,
and probably more important than just changingthe culture, which is this sub
of the next thing that follows afteryou say, I may determine this is
(10:52):
the way I want my program torun, and then having various people buy
into that is now your belief system. And belief system just comes to confidence.
I got to tell you that whenI was back in stores Connecticut and
went back because you remember, forthree or four days just to come out
to spring ball and watch and enjoy. I love doing that stuff, and
what I saw was might be theworst collection I'm not going to say as
(11:15):
athletes, but just in terms oftechnique and were to be and building up
their bodies and doing all those thingsnecessary, which or you ultimately got those
people to believe and you pulled offsome unbelievable upsets. I think Vegas put
you that you wouldn't win any morethan two games, you know, at
the very beginning to see it season, and you blew past that. So
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what I'm asking is between spring balland then going into fall, where did
you see like the switch finally startto go on In terms of some of
the players on the team believing thatwhat you were saying, if they did
this, then that could happen,because they certainly played way above their abilities.
In my opinion, I think itwas a continual progression towards that.
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I don't think there's ever a timethat the switch really was on or off.
For me, the day that Ifelt like we had realized that we
could be better than they'd ever thoughtthey could be was when we actually lost
a game. You know, we'dbeen through a gauntlet of teams that were
really good, Syracuse, North CarolinaState, Michigan took our lumps, but
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I never felt like any of theguys were given in or given up,
or were I mean, you're obviousaffected by a loss, but they weren't
going to be long term effected.It wasn't it wasn't affecting their morale.
We won a couple of games.We went to ball State and we had
a good lead at halftime. Welost, and it was the first time
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that I felt like they were reallypissed, really disappointed, really upset that
we lost, that they were notaccepting defeat anymore, that they just had
enough of it. They learned howto win they learned what it felt like
to win. They knew we shouldhave won. Well, I hate to
use the word shit, or wehad an opportunity to win and we didn't
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capitalize. And to me, thatwas kind of like if you talk about
a turning point, because I recognizedthe expectations had really risen and our standard
had risen and losing was not acceptableand it wasn't okay and you don't just
get over it. And to me, that was a big, big,
big point in our development. ButI felt like just all along, they
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just every day they were making gains. Every single day, they were making
gains. I mean even when wedidn't have organized things, they had player
run practices, they had workouts ontheir own. There was hardly a weekend
day that I'd walk into my officejust because I'd go check into my office
or my house is right there,as you know, and there wouldn't be
you know, the whole team orpart of the team out there working.
And I've never been exposed to agroup that worked the way these guys work,
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So I think it just they hada desire to be good and now
they had um someone that was youknow, a staff that was showing them
what it takes to be good andmaking heavy demands on him, put in
you know, making them accountable,being demanding and uh and yet along the
way, you know, like wesay, we coach them hard, we
love him harder, you know,making them feel like we were all in
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this together, and if we alldid it as best as we could every
day, that we could get thisthing going in the right direction. I
love that. I love that.Um. Next thing is we go down
and we talk about that. There'sthis there's this great book and and it's
called Good to Great. I don'tknow if you ever read it, but
one of the things that he talksabout, read the first line of it,
(14:39):
yeah, good to Great. Sothe book is the book is by
Jim Collins, Okay, And oneof the first things he establishes and becoming
from good to great and and andin terms of business sense, there's a
lot of great companies who were good, um, like comp Usa if you
remember that company years ago. There'smany other examples like this which didn't make
(15:00):
hard pivots when they had to,and then market changed and then they ended
up going bankrupt. And there's othercompanies like Apple who had to take a
hard pivot, which they did andbecame very innovative along with Steve Jobs and
everything. So there's these various companiesthat he compares to companies that thrive versus
companies that didn't. In your caseor I actually stand on the same thing.
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One of the things he talks aboutis getting the right people on the
bus, okay, And I thinkthat's one of the things that you were
saying initially and what you were describingas in terms of changing out some of
the personnel, but just not thepersonnel on your team in terms of the
players. It's also getting the righttype of people in the administrative and your
coaches that were buying into the rightsystem. I think if I remember right,
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there is something like I don't knowthirty ish players that ended up leaving
the program. They just didn't meetthe goals that where you're trying to go.
You had something like thirties roughly thesame number of personnel that that you
know exchange that were there either theyear before the years before that were part
of that losing culture that you said, look at, we have to get
(16:07):
the right people on the bus.And if they're not on this bus and
we're not all going in the samedirection, then they need to go someplace
else and do whatever they want todo. Well. That book that you
talk about, Good to Great,the very first line in that book is
good is the enemy a great?Yeah, And that's really all you need
to know about the book is ifyou accept good, you'll never would be
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great. And interestingly enough, inmy very first team meeting, I mentioned
that book and those words good isin me a great And if we start
accepting good, we won't be great. If we start saying that was good
enough, that was pretty good,that'll do, then we'll be average,
will never be great. And so, you know, one of important things
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identifying the players, the people inthe in the program that subscribe to that
philosophy, you know that good wasnot enough for them. They wanted to
be great and populating not only yourteam with those types of players, but
staff members with that type of mindset. And I think we've done a good
job of that. It's never perfectand the job has never done. And
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you know, you know, there'sa couple of other words I hate,
and that's hey, we got itor I got it, you know,
and I don't like that either.Hey I got it. That means you
know you're about to start going thisway. If you think I got it,
I've reached the peak, you know, you start going out. We've
been around some really talented players inmy career that always felt like I got
it, I got it, andthey never realized their talent because they they
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just gave in and didn't keep pushinggreatness. And one of the fun things
about being in the situation I'm inis I think it's very lucky. It's
a stroke of luck. Is thatmost of the people that are in our
are highly motivated. And I thinkpart of that is it's very young,
Like my coaching staff is very young. These players, as I said,
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you know, these were the highestrecruited players in the country. Mark these
were you know, it was Yukon. I mean they were you know,
they weren't four three, five starguys, and so they've been used to
working for it and that's refreshing.It's called overachievers, right, Um,
what's something that's that's new or reachingyour potential? You know, every day,
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reaching your potential every day. Idon't know that. I don't really
like to use the word overachieving becauseif I think if you achieve it once
then you're able to achieve it everyevery time. So to me, and
like we stayed on message all year, it's like, let's max out every
day every day. Let's max outevery single day. Let's reach our potential
every single day. And if wecan do that with consistency, then people
may say, wow, they overachieved, but we know, no, we
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didn't overachieve. We just achieved whatwe're capable of. Yeah, at this
point, we got to keep gettingbetter. Well yeah. And then part
of that too, is that younever really truly know what your your ceiling
is. And I think that's wherewhen people either cap you add a certain
ceiling, that's when you you knowthat word potential which your dad used always
talk about, you know, thepotential really means that you haven't realized your
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full talents of where you can go, because that's what that word means,
it's potential. It's just like likeyou've actually failed. And that whole thing
something that's different from the way whenback you and I go back to playing
college ball. I think we firstmet each other in nineteen seventy nine or
eighty something like that, way longago, and back in the day,
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the way the rules were is thatif you didn't feel like you're in a
position where you're going to play ata particular school, then you were kind
of stuck there and if you wantedto leave, you was kind of like
it was jeopardy because you had tosit out more or less for two years
before you could come back. Soit just didn't favor anybody to leave.
In today's world, there's this thingcalled the transfer portal. Tell me how
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that has really benefited what you guysare trying to do in terms of building
a championship mindset and in terms ofyou know, everybody's always looking for a
better talent, right That's just theway it is. Whether you're a Georgia
who're sitting at number one right now, or whether you're you're a Yukon team.
Well, you have. It givesyou the opportunity to add experienced and
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talented players to your roster quickly,and that is certainly helpful. There are
some traps though, you have.You know, we talked initially about culture,
and you know, the type ofpeople you want and the type of
mindset you want in your locker room, and the more you tap into the
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portal, the more chance you haveof getting somebody that's maybe more just a
mercenary one year guy, doesn't reallyhave a team first attitude, and so
you really have to vet those playersand make sure that they fit what you
want, not just on the fieldbut off the field. So they're a
great opportunities to get tremendous young manthat are tremendous players, but you have
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to be careful because you can destroythe chemistry of your locker room very very
quickly, and that's something that we'revery careful about. But in terms of
the ability to add talented players veryquickly that can help you win, it's
a big time deal, you know, it's it's big. I think there's
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if there's a negative to it,it's that you see so many players that
go into the portal because they're notgetting opportunities where they are, and they
maybe have an overinflated estimation of whothey are as a player, and they
never land anywhere, you know,and so they enter the portal thinking they're
gonna go get a scholarship somewhere else, and now they're out, and so
they you know, I think youhave to move with extreme caution when you
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use the portal as a program oras a player. Yeah, you know,
I look back at again both ofour situations and you started playing before
me just a little bit. Um, it took me a Yeah I ran
down on a kickoff well whatever,but whatever, you were still out there
playing before I was. And youknow, for me, there was a
lot of hardship and I really didn'tsee the lot of day until my third
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year and even at that teams.But the point being is that, you
know, I think the A andI find this. I'm not sure what'side
of the fence. I'm on withthis. When when you when when the
kid is going through a struggle,maybe the best thing to do is for
that kid to stay exactly where he'sat and go through this struggle so that
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when he comes out the other end. It certainly made me work harder,
have a much greater desire. Ireally never had to work like that in
high school because I could just rollout of bed and do it and and
it was just like, Okay,this is sink or swim time now,
and so you either got to likebutton up your game and get after all
these things that are Hall of Famehead coach Don James, you know,
put in front of us you know, getting bigger, faster, stronger,
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knowing the game, doing well inclassroom, doing all those different things.
And in today's world and environment,if things aren't going exactly quite right,
you've got this thing called the transferportal. And so again kind of back
to your point, when do youat which point do you realize your potential?
If if the only test that youare being tested on is that,
oh, I'm not playing someone goingto bail and go someplace else, and
(23:03):
then you kind of restart that wholething again. Well, I think there's
that's part of it, but that'snot all of it. Oftentimes, you
know, players that didn't have opportunitiescoming out of high school that have developed
now maybe at a lower level ora smaller school or in a smaller conference,
have proven they're good players. Nowthey have a chance to go to
(23:25):
an Alabama or a Georgia or youknow, Michigan or Ohio State and play
at the highest level. So that'sone part of it. And then there's
coaching changes, you know that drasticallyaffect the situations of each player when coaches
leave or a fire, and sothere's an opportunity now for guys to improve
their their place, and so kindof going back to what I was saying
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about being careful about who you letin your program when you go to the
portal, I think a really importantquestion to ask, and to not only
ask, but to really kind offeel, is why is this guy leaving
this school? Because if it's becausehe's a whiner and he didn't think he
got a chance and he doesn't reallywant to work for it kind of what
(24:10):
you were describing, then man,do you really want that? You know?
I don't. You know, becauseyou and I were raised by a
coach that he demanded and you hadto work. And if a kid is
telling me, I'm just not gettinga chance there the coaches don't like me.
You know, I'm the victim boy. That's a tough one for me,
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you know, I don't I don'tnecessarily want to embrace the victim mentality.
So that's part of the evaluation processbecause what you said is true in
many cases, but there are othercases too, So it's just every case
is a different situation. You haveto really do a good job of evaluating
it. But you don't want tofill your team with a bunch of victims,
(24:52):
you know that? Yeah, Iwant to go back to something you
said earlier, and you said thatthe kind of where you felt as ow
the the switch went on in termsof like having that full belief system was
against Ball State, when you guyswere ahead most of the game. It
got down to the final five minutesand then a couple of things happened and
they went ahead and they ended upbeating you. A rank I don't know
(25:15):
if they're a ranked team or not, but they were certainly a good team
and a team with a record,and they're probably going to go to a
ball game. To me, itwas interesting because where I saw that that
again, that belief system really kickin. It was against Utah State at
the very beginning of the season.I was there in Logan, Utah,
and you guys were up fourteen,and it's just they hadn't experienced enough life
(25:41):
yet, a football football life,I guess you'd say, of understanding how
to get up, which that youguys did early in the game at fourteen,
and he had everything wrong going foryou in terms of your starter going
down probably the first eight players orsomething gone for the season. It was
horrific. And then you put ina freshman and then if you go,
but you know, getting in thereand not just staying in front, but
(26:03):
holding onto that and then surging fromthere. And that's that was like as
much probably have a lesson learned aboutthat game as it was against Ball State
or even maybe Army, where youknow, you really, in my opinion,
were the better team out there,and you just didn't bring it all
on that day and the three phasesof the game offense, defense, special
(26:27):
teams. Everybody didn't played with theirfull potential and at the end of the
day, they didn't win those games. But what great learning opportunities. Yeah,
those are three games that haunt me. You know, Utah State.
I think your point is you alwaystalk about, you know, learning how
to handle adversity and pushing through adversity, and I don't know that we talked
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enough with young people about how doyou handle success? You know, like
what is your mindset when all ofa sudden you're having some success that maybe
you didn't think you were going tohave. And so I think one of
my failures going into that game isI thought it was gonna be really hard
game and it ended up being thatI didn't see us jumping out fourteen to
nothing. You know, I thoughtthere was a chance that we might behind
(27:10):
behind fourteen and nothing have to comesscreaming back, and so I didn't talk
enough about, Hey, we're gonnaget a lead on these guys, and
here's how we're gonna handle it.You know. He talked all the time
about, Hey, if someone getsa lead on it, here's how we're
gonna handle a lead on us.Here's how we're gonna handle it. Ball
State, Uh, yeah, Idon't know. It was. It was.
It was a strange one and anarmy too. But I think we
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learned a lot from from all ourlosses. I don't know what the lesson
from Army is yet. I knowwhat the lessons from Utah State in Ball
State were. But those three games, you know, you're right, Like
I hate to ever say we shouldhave won a game, but we absolutely
had an opportunity community to win allthree of those games. And it's not
(27:57):
like a lot had to happen.And so it wasn't officiating, it wasn't
the weather, it wasn't anything.Yes, it was our opponent. I
never want to say it wasn't ouropponent. But I look at all three
of those games like you do,and I say that was on us,
that was on us, that wason me. That always starts with me.
And so those are the games Igo back and evaluate the most in
(28:19):
terms of like, where were weoff or where was I off that little
bit that didn't enable us to finisha team And that's as you know,
that's man, Those those games staywith you forever, forever. I know
the actual clock time is sixty minutesin a game roughly, but it's really
shown up for each play, andthose I don't know if it's a thirty
(28:41):
second by the time that you knowyou go and your line up and quarterback
counts it down, or if you'reon defense and you execute the play and
the play it then ends. It'sthirty seconds of hardcore concentration for sixty minutes.
It's really three hours or something,you know when you roll everything into
it. But but that is whatseparates you know a lot of these things
that you guys have done in thepast and years successes, um how much
(29:06):
I know you've you've coached Let's goback to the NFL for a minute.
Twenty five years in the NFL asan assistant coach and the head coach,
and you've been around significant amount ofof of Hall of Famers. Um,
is there any is there any characteristicwith those guys one through line that you
(29:29):
ever relate to your players. AndI'm and I'm thinking again going back where
you're twenty eight point twenty eight anda half point underdogs against Utah State and
you go out there and you're fourteenfourteen in the first quarter, and like
this is a miracle, Like thisis like I can't even believe this is
happening. But you know something thatmaybe it's not that game necessarily, but
there's a through line where for thewhole season that you can say, you
(29:53):
know, Jerry Rice did this,or Running Lot did that, or Morton
Anderson. You know, there's thissame consistent behavior that they did that creative,
that championship mindset. Well a keywordsthat you just said, it's consistent.
First of all, they never compromisetheir standard for themselves or for their
team in terms of their work ethic, their discipline, their tension to detail,
(30:18):
the way they practice, the waythey met, the way they took
care of their bodies, the waythey watched film, and the routine that
they got in to get ready fora game. They never deviated from that.
They never compromised it ever. Ever. I think they all played one
play at a time, and theyall just played with great intensity and passion,
(30:38):
one play at a time. Ithink that they had confidence that was
built from the fact that they knewthat they'd done the work. They put
in the work. So when youknow you've done the work, you have
compidence. When you have confidence,then you can play fast. And when
you can play fast, and you'regoing to make plays, and so it
all, I think it all goesback to like I said, is is
(31:02):
never compromising your standard, and yourstandard has to be the highest standard,
the standard that commands respect, reallyan internal respect that you have for yourself,
but the respect of others. AndRonnie Lott talked about that all the
time. You know, you playthis game for many reasons, but one
of them is you play you playa way that commands the respect of yourself,
(31:23):
so you know that when you goto bed at night, you've given
all you can. You play thisgame in a way that commands the respect
of your teammates, your opponents,your fans, and everyone that ever watches
the game. And you know,that's just something I constantly harp on with
these young players and I'm around isyou know you said, I've been around
(31:44):
you know, over forty Hall offamers at zero to do with them get
into the Hall of Fame, Butthey have everything to do with the way
I coach and being able to kindof access some of the lessons I learned
in watching those guys and tell theplayers about it. I think it makes
a huge impact, huge impact onthem because they know they know all these
guys, they know who they are, they knew Ronnie lott Is, and
(32:07):
so I'm always just trying to drawon the lessons that I learned from the
greatest of the grades. So whenyou started the season, there's all these
things culture, belief systems, personnelsystems, and now we're going to jump
into in the final category here associal media. Right, tell me what
social media has done, because Iknow you actually hired I don't know this
(32:30):
exactly, but almost like a socialmedia team that and I've seen a lot
of the stuff that's come out thesemany movies, and I'm sure your players
enjoyed and your fans enjoyed, Buthow has that affected your recruiting in terms
of giving you guys more exposure?That's out there big time. So we
hired a director of creative content fromLSU. He hired an assistant, and
(32:52):
then he created a team of twentystudents from Yukon that worked tirelessly just to
pump out content and as you said, mini movies, the videos, the
graphics on the information. So ithelps them recruiting because you know, you're
getting more eyes on your program andthey're seeing positive things about your program,
(33:12):
reading about your program, starting toget a better feel for who you are.
You're not just Ukon, you knowa word that they hear, You're
a true program. There's there's visualsthat people can see. And then it
helps with our local marketing. Ithelps with our engagement with our fans and
our alumnis and our former former players. Um, it allows it allows us
(33:36):
to kind of control the narrative ofthe stories that go out, you know,
and uh, we're never going todo anything that's not genuine, but
uh, you know, we cantell us we can tell compelling stories that
engage people. And our social mediateam is critical and we put money into
it. And you know, therecruiting aspect is, you know, recruiting
(33:59):
the Life broad program. And besidesthe NIL and there's nothing that's probably more
important than your facilities and then yourability to give your players exposure as they
become you know, people that otherswant to read about. And we're able
to do that now and it's it'sa big part of our success. Well,
what you're doing is you're going towhere the kids are, are making
(34:21):
the kids go to where you are, and that that's a brilliant move.
And you know, most of thebig programs are doing that because they realize
it and understand it, and Ithink it's effective. And that's the bottom
line. Yeah, we can't wecan't expect every student to like, you
know, go look up at Yukonfootball. That we can push content out
that somebody retweets that they know,so it's on their feet and then then
(34:43):
then all of a sudden they're exposedus and you know, we grab their
attention and then they delve a littlebit deeper and then there's an interest.
So it's critical. And our guyswork so hard at it and they are
really really really good and they workwith our players on our NIL stuff,
like they help our players promote themselveswith the new and I own the im
image and likeness rules that are aneffects, so they're very critical to our
(35:05):
success as a program. So finalquestion here, you guys, when you
first started the season, the goalis to become Bowl eligible and to do
that you have to at least winsix games. Right, you guys have
now done that. It appears thatyou're going to go to a Bowl.
You're going to find that out here, I'm sure in the next week or
two. How do you now getyour players under the mindset of you've achieved
(35:30):
your goal because your goal was tobe Bowl eligible, right. I don't
know if you actually put a number, whether it's seven and five or six
and six or eight and four orwhat, but your goal is to become
eligibles. And none of these kidshave ever understood what that has meant,
right because of where they have been. Where we talked about going four and
forty four over the last four years, did not even play in twenty twenty.
(35:51):
So now that you've achieved that goal, how do because I know you're
in your line, whatever you goafter, you're gonna want to win,
right, And so it's the messagenow when they've kind of plateaued yet,
you know, if they're like atCamp four twenty six five on Mount Everest,
and and and metaphorically speaking, youknow, you can see the top,
(36:13):
you can see the bowl game.You can see the top, and
the top is twenty nine three tworight, And for you, it's it's
going to play this game and performand try to beat whatever opponent they put
you against. Like how do youget them? Like that isn't the summit.
Camp four is not the summit.Some of it is still in front
of you. Well, I thinkit's pretty straightforward. We're six and six.
(36:36):
If we play a bowl game andwin, we're winners. We have
a winning record for the first timein a long long time at Yukon.
If we lose, we're six andseven and we don't. I'm not gonna
say we're losers, but we don'thave a winning record. Yeah, you
know, so right now we're ataverage. We're six and six. We're
average. We have a chance tobe above average, to be able to
say this was a winning season.Or we can be six and seven and
(37:00):
say, well, we didn't.We didn't win the majority of our games.
And so that's what the focus willbe on. And I think that
that's enough for these guys because it'svery important for them to win, and
they've been through so much, they'veworked so hard, they've stayed so committed
that I don't think it's gonna behard to get them motivated now going to
(37:22):
a bowl game. As you andI both know, there's some distractions out
there that we're gonna have to makesure that we avoid. But you get
that little why smile because we bothknow we're talking about there's things that happened
at bowl games. So we justhave to we have to do a great
job of keeping them focus and likewe always say, keep the main thing
(37:43):
the main thing, and the mainthing is preparing as hard as we can,
as best as we can, asthoroughly as we can, to try
to get on game day. Yousaid something, I'll end it with this.
You said something when everybody was jumpingfor joy when you're at least six
and six and they're like, isn'tthat just an amazing that you've got six
wins? And you said, well, I got fired at UCLA for having
six wins, which you did,and so you know that that, like
(38:07):
you know, where you're going isstill way up here and you're still trying
to hit that summit and so Ithink it really to me at least,
that it really once again it's justnot your players, but it's also your
coaches and your media and everybody elseinvolved in your program that that being six
and six is not is not whereyou want to be. It's a it's
(38:29):
a step in the process, butit's not the ultimate destination. And I
think that was as good a messageas I've heard of all the things that
you've said this season, well,to put it in terms of your mountain
climbing terms, as I see it, We're at base camp and we went
up into Kumbai's fall when we playedSyracuse North Carolina State in Michigan, and
(38:52):
somehow we survive. But we wentback to base camp and regrouped, and
then we made a couple of othertrips up there. But we i't mean
got the camp one yet, Likewe haven't, you know, we're still
trying to figure out how to getthrough the ice fall. But we're alive,
right, We're alive and kicking.So for anyone that would think that,
you know, man, they madeit through and they're on their way,
(39:14):
I would argue, you know,and I would really shouldn't have to
argue because I kind of know,and I think it's important to keep things
in perspective. If you're not alwaystrying to get better, you're gonna you're
gonna lose ground. We were talkingabout this yesterday, you and I on
our hike, is you can't letsix and six, which is average,
mask the deficiencies that you still facein your program, and you have to
(39:37):
constantly address them. And why everyone'sexcited because oh my god, they've won
six games and as you said,they've only won four in the last her
many years. It's like, yeah, but let's go back to Utah State,
Let's go back to ball State,Let's go back to Army. Let's
figure out why we weren't more competitiveagainst Syracuse, North Khana State and miss
(40:00):
again, you know, and andlet's really dig deep and be hard on
ourselves. And if we can dothat and still keep a positive attitude,
which we will, then we havea chance to make a lot of improvement.
Love it, love it, um. Where can people find you when
I say you it's yukon um onTwitter? Where's the best place um at?
(40:22):
Let me tell you at Jim MoraFootball, Jim Mora FB, Jim
Moore F Okay, there he is. And also, people, if you
go onto Twitter, you can lookup Yukon and they've got all kinds of
great content going on there, soget caught up with the revolution that is
Yukon football and these guys are goingplaces. So it's been fun to get
(40:45):
caught up and do kind of arecap of the season and nothing but good
luck moving forward. So on thatnote, I appreciate you coming on the
show. Thank you. It's fun, all right. There is the one,
the only, Jim More. Thankyou.
Everybody. It's Mark Pattison. I'mback again with another great episode of Finding
Your Summit, all about people overcomingdiversity in finding their way. Before we
get to two days great guests,I just want to draw attention really quickly
to my website www dot Mark PattisonNFL dot com. There's a bunch of
great stuff going on over there,like two hundred and seventy five plus podcast.
(00:33):
You can go in get inspired,just like I do every day.
We'll get to our rockstar guests injust a second. That's number one.
Number two is I would appreciate anylove on Apple by giving a review and
ratings, and by doing that ithelps elevate the popularity of the show.
We've talked about this before, butmy award winning best Picture me there.
(01:00):
It is the trophy, the hardwarenow searching for the Summit best picture.
The NFL shot of my journey upand down Mount Everest. You can access
that through a link. And finally, we continue to raise money for Higher
Ground. We have a campaign calledAmelia's Everest. We've raised several hundred thousand
dollars. It's fantastic and helps withimpowerment of other people. Okay, speaking
(01:26):
of impowerment of other people, Iwant to bring in today my very close
friend and guy who is now thehead coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies,
Jim Mora. Jim, how youdoing great? Mark? How are
you? I'm fantastic, even betterthat you're here in Sun Valley close to
me. But listen, you arethe head coach. Now, You've got
(01:49):
your first year under your belt,and it's just absolutely miraculous what you and
your staff were able to pull outin terms of where the school has been
historically. I'm not sure exactly howmany D one teams there is, something
like one hundred and thirty one orsomething. But at the bottom of that
wrong historically has been Yukon at literallythe last wrong, the last spot in
(02:14):
that list. And I want totalk to you about really and this this
really speaks not so so much aboutlet's talk football, but it's really about
how you build a brand and howyou gain recognition nission In all these different
things that we'll get into. There'sa bunch of subsets within that culture,
belief system, personnel, which iscoaches, players and administrative folks. There's
(02:38):
schemes that you came in something youknow, new to all the players that
came came to the table, andof course social media, which I think
played a huge role, especially whenyou think about where you've been historically,
which is twenty five years in theNFL, six years at UCLA, and
it seems like more than ever,there's a there's a big slice that social
media is really playing for that.But we'll get to that last. I
(02:59):
want to just go back for theaudience really quickly, and then I'm going
to shut up and ask you.You know you can dig in, but
just to kind of reconstruct what happenedwith Yukon, I want to go back
to twenty eighteen, one and eleven, twenty nineteen, two and ten,
twenty twenty eight, didn't even play, didn't all these other teams are shown
up. They didn't even show upto play. There is no So you
(03:20):
have to count that as zero winsagainst twelve potential games that would have played
on twenty twenty one last year,one and eleven, this year, six
and six, And it's very possiblethat that number could have been seven and
five or eight and four. Imean that is that is definite possibility.
Where you are ahead in a gameat certain points right down to the end,
(03:42):
and then things went the other way, But that so much of what
happened was about mindset. And bythe way, when you combined that that
that record together, I believe it'sfour wins and forty four losses over one,
two, three, four years.And then you come in and you
do your thing. So let's offwith when you first were offered this job
a year ago and the massive challengethat you were under. What were you
(04:06):
thinking in terms of what needed tohappen as as I'm talking about step one,
because there were like one hundred stepsin there, but step one,
where did you want to start?Step one was defining what we wanted our
culture to be. And people talka lot about culture, but I'm not
sure they ever define it, andwe needed to define it. And culture
(04:30):
is how you treat each other,how you talk to each other, what
your expectations are, what your standardsare, how you act, how you
enforce your standards. Aren't you know, necessarily living up there, It's everything.
It's the living and breathing essence ofany organization. So we had to
(04:50):
come in and establish what we wantedto be culturally as a team, and
we got into the weed with it. As a staff, I had a
very firm belief in what I feltwas necessary. And uh, you know,
being the head coach, you're youknow, you're the leader, and
(05:10):
you know the leader sets the culture, but everyone else kind of enforces it.
And you know, culture strongest whenthe players are saying the same things
and the players are enforcing the thingsthat the coach says. So I felt
like in order for us to tostart down the right path, initially,
I needed to develop trust with theseplayers and I needed to infuse them with
(05:31):
a passion that they hadn't maybe hadin a while, you know, they'd
lost. And so I came inthere strong like I always do, and
talking about the things that you know, we could accomplished if we took certain
steps along the way to make surewe accomplish those things. And I was
very fortunate to hire a really goodstaff of like minded men, good motivators,
(05:56):
excellent teachers, trustworthy people, menthat cared about men and women because
I do have a woman on mystaff, but men and women that cared
about the players as people first,and we're also trustworthy. So building that
trust amongst the players um was critical. It was a critical first step,
because once they trust you, they'llfollow you. Once they trust you,
(06:18):
they'll buy into what you're saying.Once they trust you, you know,
when when maybe they want to questionsomething a little bit, they'll give you
the benefit of the doubt. Andyou have to earn that trust every day.
And I've really tried hard to dothat, and I think that I
think we've done a good job ofthat. So let's talk about you know,
you and I climbing around the mountainshere in sun Valley for really,
(06:42):
you know, the prior like sixmonths and leading up to this and actually
going back there and living in storesConnecticut, um, and everything that just
came out of your mouth. Ithink you could probably get that same that
same line from pretty much any coachaspiring coaches. That's that's a that's a
head guy or as ben ahead guy. It's trying to get out there about
belief system and buying into it.But not everybody that happens to, right,
(07:04):
and so so flipping this on theother side. So now you come
in with this belief system and thismantra and you know, having it trickled
down vertically integrated from from you know, the people at the bottom whoever those
people are, to the people youknow as you work away up the top
of the offensive coordinator and the othercoaches. But what did you find in
(07:25):
terms of the players? Like you, you went back there and this wasn't
like when you took over UCLA.You came into a team that I am
guessing this like was five and sevenor six and six or something like that.
So they, yeah, they wonfive games, but you know,
it's a it's a program that's historicallyhad a lot of success, you know,
even though it was here and there, and now you're going in into
(07:46):
a culture where there's been no success. And so so even though I know
you're walking in with that mindset,what did do you find on the other
side of that fence that that thatyou look at the same that like,
this is a mass of this isway bigger than what I thought. What
I found was apprehension initially, asyou would expect, you know, when
(08:11):
you go into a new job anda new person comes in and the players
are there and they've heard it allbefore. One thing that helped me as
I had credibility. I've been ahead coach in the NFL. I've been
a head coach of a program wherewe've had success. I've been on TV,
so they'd seen me, so Ihad some credibility with them. But
the first thing we had to dois kind of weed out some of the
guys that I didn't think we're gonnafit, either from a scheme standpoint or
(08:39):
a mindset stand point. And sowe whittled that down a little bit and
we kept the core. And thecore was surprisingly resilient. I mean,
these guys, as you said,they've been through so much and yet it
didn't get them down. They wereso anxious to do whatever, you know,
we felt was necessary to become adecent, too good to growing football
(09:00):
team. And h what I found, Mark was a whole bunch of guys
that lacked a sense of entitlement.And I think entitlement is something that's a
negative in our culture today. Ithink there's sometimes, you know, people
that believe that they deserve something ratherthan have to go out and earn it.
And what I found was a bunchof guys that were so willing to
(09:20):
go out and earn whatever you know, they were going to get, they
were going to achieve. They didn'tbelieve anyone owed them anything. And it
was so refreshing, and every daythat sense of of competitiveness and sense of,
you know, just dying to dowhatever was asked to them to get
better, of not feeling entitled,of wanting to work for it, competing
(09:43):
every day. It just continued togrow and it became an incredibly incredibly close
football team, probably the closest footballteam I've ever been on, and for
sure the least entitled group of playersI've ever been around. So it wasn't
hard to change their mindset. Andthen they just needed to win, right,
and they needed to be taught howto win and then need to know
(10:05):
what it took to win, becauseit's more than just wanting to win.
I mean, heck, everyone wantsto win, but it's a work that
you have to put in, andit's the it's the trust that you have
to garner amongst each other, andit's it's the commitment you have to make
every single day, every single momentof every single day. It can't be
something you pick and choose, andthese guys were just willing to do the
(10:30):
work and it was very, veryrewarding to be around those guys. So
the first thing I have written downon my list is the culture, and
you talked about that, you know, changing the mindset, changing the culture,
and probably more important than just changingthe culture, which is this sub
of the next thing that follows afteryou say, I may determine this is
(10:52):
the way I want my program torun, and then having various people buy
into that is now your belief system. And belief system just comes to confidence.
I got to tell you that whenI was back in stores Connecticut and
went back because you remember, forthree or four days just to come out
to spring ball and watch and enjoy. I love doing that stuff, and
what I saw was might be theworst collection I'm not going to say as
(11:15):
athletes, but just in terms oftechnique and were to be and building up
their bodies and doing all those thingsnecessary, which or you ultimately got those
people to believe and you pulled offsome unbelievable upsets. I think Vegas put
you that you wouldn't win any morethan two games, you know, at
the very beginning to see it season, and you blew past that. So
(11:37):
what I'm asking is between spring balland then going into fall, where did
you see like the switch finally startto go on In terms of some of
the players on the team believing thatwhat you were saying, if they did
this, then that could happen,because they certainly played way above their abilities.
In my opinion, I think itwas a continual progression towards that.
(12:01):
I don't think there's ever a timethat the switch really was on or off.
For me, the day that Ifelt like we had realized that we
could be better than they'd ever thoughtthey could be was when we actually lost
a game. You know, we'dbeen through a gauntlet of teams that were
really good, Syracuse, North CarolinaState, Michigan took our lumps, but
(12:24):
I never felt like any of theguys were given in or given up,
or were I mean, you're obviousaffected by a loss, but they weren't
going to be long term effected.It wasn't it wasn't affecting their morale.
We won a couple of games.We went to ball State and we had
a good lead at halftime. Welost, and it was the first time
(12:46):
that I felt like they were reallypissed, really disappointed, really upset that
we lost, that they were notaccepting defeat anymore, that they just had
enough of it. They learned howto win they learned what it felt like
to win. They knew we shouldhave won. Well, I hate to
use the word shit, or wehad an opportunity to win and we didn't
(13:07):
capitalize. And to me, thatwas kind of like if you talk about
a turning point, because I recognizedthe expectations had really risen and our standard
had risen and losing was not acceptableand it wasn't okay and you don't just
get over it. And to me, that was a big, big,
big point in our development. ButI felt like just all along, they
(13:31):
just every day they were making gains. Every single day, they were making
gains. I mean even when wedidn't have organized things, they had player
run practices, they had workouts ontheir own. There was hardly a weekend
day that I'd walk into my officejust because I'd go check into my office
or my house is right there,as you know, and there wouldn't be
you know, the whole team orpart of the team out there working.
And I've never been exposed to agroup that worked the way these guys work,
(13:54):
So I think it just they hada desire to be good and now
they had um someone that was youknow, a staff that was showing them
what it takes to be good andmaking heavy demands on him, put in
you know, making them accountable,being demanding and uh and yet along the
way, you know, like wesay, we coach them hard, we
love him harder, you know,making them feel like we were all in
(14:16):
this together, and if we alldid it as best as we could every
day, that we could get thisthing going in the right direction. I
love that. I love that.Um. Next thing is we go down
and we talk about that. There'sthis there's this great book and and it's
called Good to Great. I don'tknow if you ever read it, but
one of the things that he talksabout, read the first line of it,
(14:39):
yeah, good to Great. Sothe book is the book is by
Jim Collins, Okay, And oneof the first things he establishes and becoming
from good to great and and andin terms of business sense, there's a
lot of great companies who were good, um, like comp Usa if you
remember that company years ago. There'smany other examples like this which didn't make
(15:00):
hard pivots when they had to,and then market changed and then they ended
up going bankrupt. And there's othercompanies like Apple who had to take a
hard pivot, which they did andbecame very innovative along with Steve Jobs and
everything. So there's these various companiesthat he compares to companies that thrive versus
companies that didn't. In your caseor I actually stand on the same thing.
(15:20):
One of the things he talks aboutis getting the right people on the
bus, okay, And I thinkthat's one of the things that you were
saying initially and what you were describingas in terms of changing out some of
the personnel, but just not thepersonnel on your team in terms of the
players. It's also getting the righttype of people in the administrative and your
coaches that were buying into the rightsystem. I think if I remember right,
(15:46):
there is something like I don't knowthirty ish players that ended up leaving
the program. They just didn't meetthe goals that where you're trying to go.
You had something like thirties roughly thesame number of personnel that that you
know exchange that were there either theyear before the years before that were part
of that losing culture that you said, look at, we have to get
(16:07):
the right people on the bus.And if they're not on this bus and
we're not all going in the samedirection, then they need to go someplace
else and do whatever they want todo. Well. That book that you
talk about, Good to Great,the very first line in that book is
good is the enemy a great?Yeah, And that's really all you need
to know about the book is ifyou accept good, you'll never would be
(16:27):
great. And interestingly enough, inmy very first team meeting, I mentioned
that book and those words good isin me a great And if we start
accepting good, we won't be great. If we start saying that was good
enough, that was pretty good,that'll do, then we'll be average,
will never be great. And so, you know, one of important things
(16:49):
identifying the players, the people inthe in the program that subscribe to that
philosophy, you know that good wasnot enough for them. They wanted to
be great and populating not only yourteam with those types of players, but
staff members with that type of mindset. And I think we've done a good
job of that. It's never perfectand the job has never done. And
(17:10):
you know, you know, there'sa couple of other words I hate,
and that's hey, we got itor I got it, you know,
and I don't like that either.Hey I got it. That means you
know you're about to start going thisway. If you think I got it,
I've reached the peak, you know, you start going out. We've
been around some really talented players inmy career that always felt like I got
it, I got it, andthey never realized their talent because they they
(17:33):
just gave in and didn't keep pushinggreatness. And one of the fun things
about being in the situation I'm inis I think it's very lucky. It's
a stroke of luck. Is thatmost of the people that are in our
are highly motivated. And I thinkpart of that is it's very young,
Like my coaching staff is very young. These players, as I said,
(17:56):
you know, these were the highestrecruited players in the country. Mark these
were you know, it was Yukon. I mean they were you know,
they weren't four three, five starguys, and so they've been used to
working for it and that's refreshing.It's called overachievers, right, Um,
what's something that's that's new or reachingyour potential? You know, every day,
(18:18):
reaching your potential every day. Idon't know that. I don't really
like to use the word overachieving becauseif I think if you achieve it once
then you're able to achieve it everyevery time. So to me, and
like we stayed on message all year, it's like, let's max out every
day every day. Let's max outevery single day. Let's reach our potential
every single day. And if wecan do that with consistency, then people
may say, wow, they overachieved, but we know, no, we
(18:40):
didn't overachieve. We just achieved whatwe're capable of. Yeah, at this
point, we got to keep gettingbetter. Well yeah. And then part
of that too, is that younever really truly know what your your ceiling
is. And I think that's wherewhen people either cap you add a certain
ceiling, that's when you you knowthat word potential which your dad used always
talk about, you know, thepotential really means that you haven't realized your
(19:04):
full talents of where you can go, because that's what that word means,
it's potential. It's just like likeyou've actually failed. And that whole thing
something that's different from the way whenback you and I go back to playing
college ball. I think we firstmet each other in nineteen seventy nine or
eighty something like that, way longago, and back in the day,
(19:25):
the way the rules were is thatif you didn't feel like you're in a
position where you're going to play ata particular school, then you were kind
of stuck there and if you wantedto leave, you was kind of like
it was jeopardy because you had tosit out more or less for two years
before you could come back. Soit just didn't favor anybody to leave.
In today's world, there's this thingcalled the transfer portal. Tell me how
(19:48):
that has really benefited what you guysare trying to do in terms of building
a championship mindset and in terms ofyou know, everybody's always looking for a
better talent, right That's just theway it is. Whether you're a Georgia
who're sitting at number one right now, or whether you're you're a Yukon team.
Well, you have. It givesyou the opportunity to add experienced and
(20:11):
talented players to your roster quickly,and that is certainly helpful. There are
some traps though, you have.You know, we talked initially about culture,
and you know, the type ofpeople you want and the type of
mindset you want in your locker room, and the more you tap into the
(20:32):
portal, the more chance you haveof getting somebody that's maybe more just a
mercenary one year guy, doesn't reallyhave a team first attitude, and so
you really have to vet those playersand make sure that they fit what you
want, not just on the fieldbut off the field. So they're a
great opportunities to get tremendous young manthat are tremendous players, but you have
(20:53):
to be careful because you can destroythe chemistry of your locker room very very
quickly, and that's something that we'revery careful about. But in terms of
the ability to add talented players veryquickly that can help you win, it's
a big time deal, you know, it's it's big. I think there's
(21:14):
if there's a negative to it,it's that you see so many players that
go into the portal because they're notgetting opportunities where they are, and they
maybe have an overinflated estimation of whothey are as a player, and they
never land anywhere, you know,and so they enter the portal thinking they're
gonna go get a scholarship somewhere else, and now they're out, and so
they you know, I think youhave to move with extreme caution when you
(21:37):
use the portal as a program oras a player. Yeah, you know,
I look back at again both ofour situations and you started playing before
me just a little bit. Um, it took me a Yeah I ran
down on a kickoff well whatever,but whatever, you were still out there
playing before I was. And youknow, for me, there was a
lot of hardship and I really didn'tsee the lot of day until my third
(21:57):
year and even at that teams.But the point being is that, you
know, I think the A andI find this. I'm not sure what'side
of the fence. I'm on withthis. When when you when when the
kid is going through a struggle,maybe the best thing to do is for
that kid to stay exactly where he'sat and go through this struggle so that
(22:18):
when he comes out the other end. It certainly made me work harder,
have a much greater desire. Ireally never had to work like that in
high school because I could just rollout of bed and do it and and
it was just like, Okay,this is sink or swim time now,
and so you either got to likebutton up your game and get after all
these things that are Hall of Famehead coach Don James, you know,
put in front of us you know, getting bigger, faster, stronger,
(22:41):
knowing the game, doing well inclassroom, doing all those different things.
And in today's world and environment,if things aren't going exactly quite right,
you've got this thing called the transferportal. And so again kind of back
to your point, when do youat which point do you realize your potential?
If if the only test that youare being tested on is that,
oh, I'm not playing someone goingto bail and go someplace else, and
(23:03):
then you kind of restart that wholething again. Well, I think there's
that's part of it, but that'snot all of it. Oftentimes, you
know, players that didn't have opportunitiescoming out of high school that have developed
now maybe at a lower level ora smaller school or in a smaller conference,
have proven they're good players. Nowthey have a chance to go to
(23:25):
an Alabama or a Georgia or youknow, Michigan or Ohio State and play
at the highest level. So that'sone part of it. And then there's
coaching changes, you know that drasticallyaffect the situations of each player when coaches
leave or a fire, and sothere's an opportunity now for guys to improve
their their place, and so kindof going back to what I was saying
(23:47):
about being careful about who you letin your program when you go to the
portal, I think a really importantquestion to ask, and to not only
ask, but to really kind offeel, is why is this guy leaving
this school? Because if it's becausehe's a whiner and he didn't think he
got a chance and he doesn't reallywant to work for it kind of what
(24:10):
you were describing, then man,do you really want that? You know?
I don't. You know, becauseyou and I were raised by a
coach that he demanded and you hadto work. And if a kid is
telling me, I'm just not gettinga chance there the coaches don't like me.
You know, I'm the victim boy. That's a tough one for me,
(24:32):
you know, I don't I don'tnecessarily want to embrace the victim mentality.
So that's part of the evaluation processbecause what you said is true in
many cases, but there are othercases too, So it's just every case
is a different situation. You haveto really do a good job of evaluating
it. But you don't want tofill your team with a bunch of victims,
(24:52):
you know that? Yeah, Iwant to go back to something you
said earlier, and you said thatthe kind of where you felt as ow
the the switch went on in termsof like having that full belief system was
against Ball State, when you guyswere ahead most of the game. It
got down to the final five minutesand then a couple of things happened and
they went ahead and they ended upbeating you. A rank I don't know
(25:15):
if they're a ranked team or not, but they were certainly a good team
and a team with a record,and they're probably going to go to a
ball game. To me, itwas interesting because where I saw that that
again, that belief system really kickin. It was against Utah State at
the very beginning of the season.I was there in Logan, Utah,
and you guys were up fourteen,and it's just they hadn't experienced enough life
(25:41):
yet, a football football life,I guess you'd say, of understanding how
to get up, which that youguys did early in the game at fourteen,
and he had everything wrong going foryou in terms of your starter going
down probably the first eight players orsomething gone for the season. It was
horrific. And then you put ina freshman and then if you go,
but you know, getting in thereand not just staying in front, but
(26:03):
holding onto that and then surging fromthere. And that's that was like as
much probably have a lesson learned aboutthat game as it was against Ball State
or even maybe Army, where youknow, you really, in my opinion,
were the better team out there,and you just didn't bring it all
on that day and the three phasesof the game offense, defense, special
(26:27):
teams. Everybody didn't played with theirfull potential and at the end of the
day, they didn't win those games. But what great learning opportunities. Yeah,
those are three games that haunt me. You know, Utah State.
I think your point is you alwaystalk about, you know, learning how
to handle adversity and pushing through adversity, and I don't know that we talked
(26:49):
enough with young people about how doyou handle success? You know, like
what is your mindset when all ofa sudden you're having some success that maybe
you didn't think you were going tohave. And so I think one of
my failures going into that game isI thought it was gonna be really hard
game and it ended up being thatI didn't see us jumping out fourteen to
nothing. You know, I thoughtthere was a chance that we might behind
(27:10):
behind fourteen and nothing have to comesscreaming back, and so I didn't talk
enough about, Hey, we're gonnaget a lead on these guys, and
here's how we're gonna handle it.You know. He talked all the time
about, Hey, if someone getsa lead on it, here's how we're
gonna handle a lead on us.Here's how we're gonna handle it. Ball
State, Uh, yeah, Idon't know. It was. It was.
It was a strange one and anarmy too. But I think we
(27:33):
learned a lot from from all ourlosses. I don't know what the lesson
from Army is yet. I knowwhat the lessons from Utah State in Ball
State were. But those three games, you know, you're right, Like
I hate to ever say we shouldhave won a game, but we absolutely
had an opportunity community to win allthree of those games. And it's not
(27:57):
like a lot had to happen.And so it wasn't officiating, it wasn't
the weather, it wasn't anything.Yes, it was our opponent. I
never want to say it wasn't ouropponent. But I look at all three
of those games like you do,and I say that was on us,
that was on us, that wason me. That always starts with me.
And so those are the games Igo back and evaluate the most in
(28:19):
terms of like, where were weoff or where was I off that little
bit that didn't enable us to finisha team And that's as you know,
that's man, Those those games staywith you forever, forever. I know
the actual clock time is sixty minutesin a game roughly, but it's really
shown up for each play, andthose I don't know if it's a thirty
(28:41):
second by the time that you knowyou go and your line up and quarterback
counts it down, or if you'reon defense and you execute the play and
the play it then ends. It'sthirty seconds of hardcore concentration for sixty minutes.
It's really three hours or something,you know when you roll everything into
it. But but that is whatseparates you know a lot of these things
that you guys have done in thepast and years successes, um how much
(29:06):
I know you've you've coached Let's goback to the NFL for a minute.
Twenty five years in the NFL asan assistant coach and the head coach,
and you've been around significant amount ofof of Hall of Famers. Um,
is there any is there any characteristicwith those guys one through line that you
(29:29):
ever relate to your players. AndI'm and I'm thinking again going back where
you're twenty eight point twenty eight anda half point underdogs against Utah State and
you go out there and you're fourteenfourteen in the first quarter, and like
this is a miracle, Like thisis like I can't even believe this is
happening. But you know something thatmaybe it's not that game necessarily, but
there's a through line where for thewhole season that you can say, you
(29:53):
know, Jerry Rice did this,or Running Lot did that, or Morton
Anderson. You know, there's thissame consistent behavior that they did that creative,
that championship mindset. Well a keywordsthat you just said, it's consistent.
First of all, they never compromisetheir standard for themselves or for their
team in terms of their work ethic, their discipline, their tension to detail,
(30:18):
the way they practice, the waythey met, the way they took
care of their bodies, the waythey watched film, and the routine that
they got in to get ready fora game. They never deviated from that.
They never compromised it ever. Ever. I think they all played one
play at a time, and theyall just played with great intensity and passion,
(30:38):
one play at a time. Ithink that they had confidence that was
built from the fact that they knewthat they'd done the work. They put
in the work. So when youknow you've done the work, you have
compidence. When you have confidence,then you can play fast. And when
you can play fast, and you'regoing to make plays, and so it
all, I think it all goesback to like I said, is is
(31:02):
never compromising your standard, and yourstandard has to be the highest standard,
the standard that commands respect, reallyan internal respect that you have for yourself,
but the respect of others. AndRonnie Lott talked about that all the
time. You know, you playthis game for many reasons, but one
of them is you play you playa way that commands the respect of yourself,
(31:23):
so you know that when you goto bed at night, you've given
all you can. You play thisgame in a way that commands the respect
of your teammates, your opponents,your fans, and everyone that ever watches
the game. And you know,that's just something I constantly harp on with
these young players and I'm around isyou know you said, I've been around
(31:44):
you know, over forty Hall offamers at zero to do with them get
into the Hall of Fame, Butthey have everything to do with the way
I coach and being able to kindof access some of the lessons I learned
in watching those guys and tell theplayers about it. I think it makes
a huge impact, huge impact onthem because they know they know all these
guys, they know who they are, they knew Ronnie lott Is, and
(32:07):
so I'm always just trying to drawon the lessons that I learned from the
greatest of the grades. So whenyou started the season, there's all these
things culture, belief systems, personnelsystems, and now we're going to jump
into in the final category here associal media. Right, tell me what
social media has done, because Iknow you actually hired I don't know this
(32:30):
exactly, but almost like a socialmedia team that and I've seen a lot
of the stuff that's come out thesemany movies, and I'm sure your players
enjoyed and your fans enjoyed, Buthow has that affected your recruiting in terms
of giving you guys more exposure?That's out there big time. So we
hired a director of creative content fromLSU. He hired an assistant, and
(32:52):
then he created a team of twentystudents from Yukon that worked tirelessly just to
pump out content and as you said, mini movies, the videos, the
graphics on the information. So ithelps them recruiting because you know, you're
getting more eyes on your program andthey're seeing positive things about your program,
(33:12):
reading about your program, starting toget a better feel for who you are.
You're not just Ukon, you knowa word that they hear, You're
a true program. There's there's visualsthat people can see. And then it
helps with our local marketing. Ithelps with our engagement with our fans and
our alumnis and our former former players. Um, it allows it allows us
(33:36):
to kind of control the narrative ofthe stories that go out, you know,
and uh, we're never going todo anything that's not genuine, but
uh, you know, we cantell us we can tell compelling stories that
engage people. And our social mediateam is critical and we put money into
it. And you know, therecruiting aspect is, you know, recruiting
(33:59):
the Life broad program. And besidesthe NIL and there's nothing that's probably more
important than your facilities and then yourability to give your players exposure as they
become you know, people that otherswant to read about. And we're able
to do that now and it's it'sa big part of our success. Well,
what you're doing is you're going towhere the kids are, are making
(34:21):
the kids go to where you are, and that that's a brilliant move.
And you know, most of thebig programs are doing that because they realize
it and understand it, and Ithink it's effective. And that's the bottom
line. Yeah, we can't wecan't expect every student to like, you
know, go look up at Yukonfootball. That we can push content out
that somebody retweets that they know,so it's on their feet and then then
(34:43):
then all of a sudden they're exposedus and you know, we grab their
attention and then they delve a littlebit deeper and then there's an interest.
So it's critical. And our guyswork so hard at it and they are
really really really good and they workwith our players on our NIL stuff,
like they help our players promote themselveswith the new and I own the im
image and likeness rules that are aneffects, so they're very critical to our
(35:05):
success as a program. So finalquestion here, you guys, when you
first started the season, the goalis to become Bowl eligible and to do
that you have to at least winsix games. Right, you guys have
now done that. It appears thatyou're going to go to a Bowl.
You're going to find that out here, I'm sure in the next week or
two. How do you now getyour players under the mindset of you've achieved
(35:30):
your goal because your goal was tobe Bowl eligible, right. I don't
know if you actually put a number, whether it's seven and five or six
and six or eight and four orwhat, but your goal is to become
eligibles. And none of these kidshave ever understood what that has meant,
right because of where they have been. Where we talked about going four and
forty four over the last four years, did not even play in twenty twenty.
(35:51):
So now that you've achieved that goal, how do because I know you're
in your line, whatever you goafter, you're gonna want to win,
right, And so it's the messagenow when they've kind of plateaued yet,
you know, if they're like atCamp four twenty six five on Mount Everest,
and and and metaphorically speaking, youknow, you can see the top,
(36:13):
you can see the bowl game.You can see the top, and
the top is twenty nine three tworight, And for you, it's it's
going to play this game and performand try to beat whatever opponent they put
you against. Like how do youget them? Like that isn't the summit.
Camp four is not the summit.Some of it is still in front
of you. Well, I thinkit's pretty straightforward. We're six and six.
(36:36):
If we play a bowl game andwin, we're winners. We have
a winning record for the first timein a long long time at Yukon.
If we lose, we're six andseven and we don't. I'm not gonna
say we're losers, but we don'thave a winning record. Yeah, you
know, so right now we're ataverage. We're six and six. We're
average. We have a chance tobe above average, to be able to
say this was a winning season.Or we can be six and seven and
(37:00):
say, well, we didn't.We didn't win the majority of our games.
And so that's what the focus willbe on. And I think that
that's enough for these guys because it'svery important for them to win, and
they've been through so much, they'veworked so hard, they've stayed so committed
that I don't think it's gonna behard to get them motivated now going to
(37:22):
a bowl game. As you andI both know, there's some distractions out
there that we're gonna have to makesure that we avoid. But you get
that little why smile because we bothknow we're talking about there's things that happened
at bowl games. So we justhave to we have to do a great
job of keeping them focus and likewe always say, keep the main thing
(37:43):
the main thing, and the mainthing is preparing as hard as we can,
as best as we can, asthoroughly as we can, to try
to get on game day. Yousaid something, I'll end it with this.
You said something when everybody was jumpingfor joy when you're at least six
and six and they're like, isn'tthat just an amazing that you've got six
wins? And you said, well, I got fired at UCLA for having
six wins, which you did,and so you know that that, like
(38:07):
you know, where you're going isstill way up here and you're still trying
to hit that summit and so Ithink it really to me at least,
that it really once again it's justnot your players, but it's also your
coaches and your media and everybody elseinvolved in your program that that being six
and six is not is not whereyou want to be. It's a it's
(38:29):
a step in the process, butit's not the ultimate destination. And I
think that was as good a messageas I've heard of all the things that
you've said this season, well,to put it in terms of your mountain
climbing terms, as I see it, We're at base camp and we went
up into Kumbai's fall when we playedSyracuse North Carolina State in Michigan, and
(38:52):
somehow we survive. But we wentback to base camp and regrouped, and
then we made a couple of othertrips up there. But we i't mean
got the camp one yet, Likewe haven't, you know, we're still
trying to figure out how to getthrough the ice fall. But we're alive,
right, We're alive and kicking.So for anyone that would think that,
you know, man, they madeit through and they're on their way,
(39:14):
I would argue, you know,and I would really shouldn't have to
argue because I kind of know,and I think it's important to keep things
in perspective. If you're not alwaystrying to get better, you're gonna you're
gonna lose ground. We were talkingabout this yesterday, you and I on
our hike, is you can't letsix and six, which is average,
mask the deficiencies that you still facein your program, and you have to
(39:37):
constantly address them. And why everyone'sexcited because oh my god, they've won
six games and as you said,they've only won four in the last her
many years. It's like, yeah, but let's go back to Utah State,
Let's go back to ball State,Let's go back to Army. Let's
figure out why we weren't more competitiveagainst Syracuse, North Khana State and miss
(40:00):
again, you know, and andlet's really dig deep and be hard on
ourselves. And if we can dothat and still keep a positive attitude,
which we will, then we havea chance to make a lot of improvement.
Love it, love it, um. Where can people find you when
I say you it's yukon um onTwitter? Where's the best place um at?
(40:22):
Let me tell you at Jim MoraFootball, Jim Mora FB, Jim
Moore F Okay, there he is. And also, people, if you
go onto Twitter, you can lookup Yukon and they've got all kinds of
great content going on there, soget caught up with the revolution that is
Yukon football and these guys are goingplaces. So it's been fun to get
(40:45):
caught up and do kind of arecap of the season and nothing but good
luck moving forward. So on thatnote, I appreciate you coming on the
show. Thank you. It's fun, all right. There is the one,
the only, Jim More. Thankyou.
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