Coaches Office with Coach Matt Chandler

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Coach David Buchanan coach Chuck Smith, two legendary high school
football coaches. This is the coach's Office, a behind the

(00:33):
scenes look at Kentucky high school football.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
The coach's office behind the scenes with Chuck Smith and
David Buchanan. Uh, this is a special addition. It's a
season four special addition. If we have coach Matt Chandler
with us tonight, and Matt was let go as has
high schools head football coach, and there's been a lot

(01:04):
of talk across the state about, you know, what happened.
I think Matt's going to come on tonight and he's
going to tell us a little bit about what happened.
We think it's important, David and I think it's important
that both sides be heard.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Sometimes the coach's side never gets heard. Sometimes it gets
lost in the politics of small town politics of of uh,
you know, switching coaches, that sort of thing. We like
to give Matt the opportunity to clear the air and
and and and and clear up the rumors going around

(01:41):
out there. And I think that's really important. David and
I both think that's important. We know the coach, would
you know, you know, he would like to formerly probably
say goodbye to his players and the community that supported him.
Uh So that's the intentions of this program, nothing more,
you know, nothing less. That's the intentions of the program

(02:02):
for Rick to have Matt on. David, you got anything
to add to that before we bring you on.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well, Matt's sort of the veteran now of these things
because he was at Danville when they when Clay Clevenger
when I don't remember all the details on that, but
he was on their staffs. So he's been through that
and Matt's already been through some wars. But in the
long run, I think that makes Matt a great candidate
for a head coach because he's not going to get

(02:28):
a lot thrown at him.

Speaker 5 (02:29):
So, Matt, we.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Appreciate you being on here, and let's just let's jump
right into it.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
While don't you tell us what happened with your job
at Hazard High School?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (02:39):
And you know, it's like you guys said, you know,
everybody knows how these things work. Unfortunately, there are things
that you'll never know about what happened behind the scenes
and who pulled what strings. Uh So, the easiest way
for me to do it, you know, I put a
statement out there on I believe it was Saturday, and

(03:00):
you know, I just told the truth about exactly what
happened and how everything went down with me was basically,
on Thursday, I met with my athletic director and was
informed that I would either need to resign and if
not resign, I would be given a letter of non
renewal by Monday, when they wanted to post. The job

(03:21):
was really taken aback, you know, I mean literally was
in the fieldhouse working on installing new lockers and painting
some walls the day before, and you know, when I
asked what happened, I was told that there was a
meeting that had been requested by assistant coaches the previous

(03:42):
week during Thanksgiving week, where concerns were addressed about communication,
not taking coaches input, things of that nature, where apparently
one member of my staff in particular is pretty strong
in leading it in saying that nobody was coming back

(04:02):
and all the kids were going to leave. It was
even insinuated at one point in the meeting that they
had contacted every parent on the roster, which I did
find out was absolutely not true, and what was told
to me was all but four kids were intending on
not playing the following year if I were retained, and
the way that it was portrayed to me, which again

(04:25):
I found out the majority of that was not true,
was that it kind of forced the administration's hand at
the school level to make the decision to none renew me.
And then, you know, you know how it goes. Things
don't stay quiet for long. I am not intended to
make any statement, but by Saturday I had realized that

(04:46):
there were a lot of narratives being spun to try
and take some pressure off the decision makers in this
process that were just not true. And as I told
one of my parents from last year, I said, you know,
it may hurt me in the long run. It's you know,
I went back and forth on releasing a statement, but
my number one job when I am a head football

(05:08):
coach or when I'm working with kids, is to look
out for the well being of the kids I coach.
And for me to sit there and not let those
kids know that I did not just decide to leave
for whatever reason was really important to me. I consider
that one of really my most important job is to
take care of my kids, and it just seemed like

(05:30):
the right thing to do to clear the air. And
as I said, you know, you never know. I'm sure
there were a lot of things behind the scenes that
are even crazier. There were strings that were pulled and
conversations that were had that I may never know, probably
won't ever know, as happens in these situations, But I
just decided that I needed to tell the truth about

(05:50):
what I know happened, and anything else that people want
to speculate on they can, but that's just the truth
of how this all happened in a very crazy two
or three day spare.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I think I think that's important that you're able to
do that, Matt. And I think that uh, to sit
there and think that people will not speculate and rumors
won't spread and people won't fill in the blanks when
there's no communication and you don't know the difference, that's

(06:23):
that's not that's not realistic. And Matt, I do want
I do want to say this. I want to talk
about Matt's record. Uh, he's been the head football coach
there at two for two years at Hazard High School.
In twenty twenty four, he was eight and five. He
made it to the third round. That's pretty dog one
good it is. And this year in twenty twenty five,

(06:47):
he was five and seven. Uh, he made it, still
made it to the second round. But listen to this,
listen to the losses and who they were too. You
had Pressenberg, he lost the Press. Prestonburgh was twelve and one.
This year Campbellsville. He lost to Campbellsville. They were eleven
and two and made it to the quarterfinals.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
Middlesbrough could have been the state champs, could have been
the state champs.

Speaker 5 (07:12):
They were right there.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, and Middlesbrough was eleven and one and made it
to the quarterfinals and he lost a pipe Bull which
is a pithouse, and they made it to the semi finals.
And then he lost to Raceland who was a state
runner up. Then Somerset who was eleven and two and
also made it to the quarterfinals. Of then the only

(07:36):
questionable loss he had was to Knox County Central who
was six and six. So I don't know, maybe that
was the reason to let a guy go to lose
to one game two.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
And you know, when I made that schedule, Chuck, it
was long term thinking. You know, I told everybody that
would listen, and I said, look, guys, this may not
be pretty, but we're sophomore heavy. We're gonna bring back
a ton next year. And in the age of RPI,
I wanted to schedule that if you go six and

(08:10):
four or seven and three, you've got a shot at
host in the third round. Because the reality with RPI
is we could have scheduled nine very easy games. We
could have went nine and one still lost a pipe
bull and in the second round of playoffs we would
have been on a bus to Middlesborough regardless.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
And in my opinion, and.

Speaker 6 (08:29):
I absolutely believe this, had that been the approach we
took that game that turned into a shootout and an
absolute war at Middlesbrough, we would have probably not been
mentally or physically tough enough to stay in that game. So,
you know, it was some long term thinking. It was
a little bit of a risk, but our kids competed
their butts off. I mean it was you know, every
week if nothing else, our kids got to compete in

(08:53):
big time atmospheres and big time games week in and
week out, and that's a lot of fun to do.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, well, I'll go ahead.

Speaker 5 (09:00):
I'm sorry, I'm.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Sorry, go ahead, Well just say I got a lot
of respect for you making that schedule, and I think
something for all of us. And I'm not going to
get into specific schools, but I've sort of learned over
the years there's some places that if you could be
there and you're playing really good people, your fan base knows.

Speaker 5 (09:19):
You're playing really good people.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
There's other places the fan base doesn't understand that at
All they see is the number, and that's that's sort
of I mean, I hate saying it, but a lot
of times making it in one place or another is
it's sort of how you schedule and then how the
community perceives it at the end, and you know that

(09:42):
that's part of it. But I respect what you did.
Go ahit, Chuck.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Sometimes there's a lot of politics involved in small towns too,
but that's not my question. My question to you, Matt
is if you have any regrets from your time there.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
You know you really don't, Chuck.

Speaker 6 (10:01):
I'm a big believer that you know, if you sit
and you dwell on, well, if I would have changed
this one negative thing, how does that impact the million
positive things that happened. So I'm not walking away from
this thing with any regrets. I got to be a
part of in terms of the community and unbelievable community.
We got to do so much good stuff. We got
to see kids break school records, We got to see,

(10:21):
you know, we got to take a team that was
one and ten the year before I got here to
the third round and win a game on the road
in the playoffs, and do so much good that goes
so far beyond the football field that I think it
would be selfish of me to sit here and say
that I had any regrets, to be honest, because at
the end of the day, there are kids that went

(10:42):
through two years of our football program that are going
to be better husbands and better fathers and better sons
and better community members for having gone through our program.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
And if that's the case, then how do you have
any regrets?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Pretty good?

Speaker 5 (10:57):
I like that.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
So, Hey, you've you've been through some wars, You've done well,
You've got you've got a phenomenal experience base right now
at a very young age.

Speaker 5 (11:09):
What's next for Matt Chandler.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (11:14):
I'm kind of just you know, this was pretty unexpected,
so we're kind of taking our time, and you know,
I'm gonna have a lot of options.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
It's really good to go to the state games this weekend.

Speaker 6 (11:22):
You know, this all happened on Thursday and my wife
and I were gonna go, and then you know, I
was like, I'm not gonna go, and she said, well,
you need to go and just be around other coaches.
You got a lot of people you've not seen in
a long time. So just go fellowship with coaches and
get to see a lot of people is really good.
There were some really good conversations, uh, that were really
good for me. You know, in terms of jobs, you know,

(11:45):
something to work out. I've taken a lot of phone
calls this weekend. I've taken most calls for head coaching
jobs and assistant coaching jobs. And you know, I've got
two little boys, and we're gonna do what's best for
them first of all, and to try to figure out
what's been you know, for me. Lastly, when we told
her today though, I will say this, Uh, you know,

(12:09):
we had a very brief conversation about you know, do
you need to take a break and not coach and
our boys are pretty upset. But one of the first
things they said was, well, Dad, where are we going
coach next? You know, oh, coach, you have to coach, so.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Up, I want to say, you're already on your way
to having a very long and successful head coaching career
because you listen to what your wife said. Here's what
I've learned over the years. I'm better off when I
listened to my wife. She is really intuitive and very
very intelligent. And Chuck would tell you the same thing

(12:46):
about Jackie. He's better off. In fact, he even gives
her credit for sort of helping his mindset turn around
the Bull County program. So I think the fact that
you're listening to your your wife and you realize that
she knew it, she was talking about that's a great
that's a great thing going forward. And he at the
end of the day, you better listen to her because

(13:07):
she's going to know more than the rest of them.

Speaker 5 (13:09):
You're really good, Bess, director of football ops.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I could ever hire.

Speaker 5 (13:14):
You, don't.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
I don't think they're going to have any trouble getting
another job out of a job. And I think you
need to and boys need to be around that football
program and uh and I know that'll be their favorite
memories forever. Hey, Matt, my last question for you is
what's your favorite memory there? What's your favorite accomplishment there
at Hazard.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
You know, I've been thinking about that.

Speaker 6 (13:41):
I had those questions, and I would say, for on
the field, I would say that last year at Williamsburg
in the second round was probably my favorite win and
favorite memory of what we've accomplished on the field. You know,
like I said, we're one and ten the year before
I got here, and the first round game of that
scene and was at Williamsburg and it was a running clock.

(14:03):
So I had a group of seniors who were desperate
to go out the right way. They really really wanted
to make a statement. And you know, I remember all
week we put the score from the previous year on
the scoreboard every day practice and those kids had to
look at it every day, and we essentially went and
flipped that score from the year before on the road
in the second round. And that was a big big

(14:26):
deal for us on the field and a lot of fun.
And then off the field, you know, we had really
bad flooding here in February, and my favorite memory off
the field was we I mean we worked. We ended
up getting twenty plus of our football kids pretty much
the old roster out helping I mean, doing dirty, hard
work digging through muck and mud for a full week

(14:49):
while we didn't have school, and just that time of
seeing our community rally around each other and to see
our kids that we pour so much into be the
one spearheading that was awesome.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
Memory it is.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
That's that's really good.

Speaker 5 (15:03):
That's that's a great memory. Great.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
I'm wanna follow up question here?

Speaker 2 (15:07):
What what what will you do different in your next
head football coaching gig? Is there anything you do different?

Speaker 3 (15:16):
I think it?

Speaker 2 (15:17):
You know, I mean, you're going into a new program.
What you're getting everything organized, You're getting everything set up?
What would you make sure of?

Speaker 6 (15:26):
I think the biggest thing before you even go into
it is to make sure that you have the resources
to hire who you want on staff. And it doesn't
even it doesn't even have to be guys. You know,
they say, who are you bringing with you?

Speaker 5 (15:38):
Well?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
I don't know. But do I have the option of
hiring new people?

Speaker 6 (15:43):
Because it's always really really difficult to bring guys in
from a previous staff and always have everybody all the
way boughty in. Uh, it's not impossible, but you definitely
have to have a majority of guys that you've brought
in and uh, you know. The second thing I think
is just I think that wherever I go next, they'll
definitely be an advantage in whatever decision that is to

(16:06):
the administration that I'm most comfortable with before any before
we ever even begin that process.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's really good. David and I have had this discussion
a lot of times. You know, if if you go
into a program and assistant coaches are really hard to find, yes,
but if you cannot find loyal ones, you're better off
not having any at all doing it yourself.

Speaker 6 (16:33):
I had a really good conversation with a really good,
longtime head coach who called me on Sunday to just
you know, check on me in and give me some advice.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
And he talked about that too.

Speaker 6 (16:43):
He said, you know, sometimes you just got to eat
one of the two of those spots on staff if
you don't feel like you can get quality guys. And
you know, the biggest thing too, and I think as
you look at especially with vertical alignment in your program,
you don't have to have guys that are great football
guys as long as they're willing to do what you
need them to do and they care about the kids

(17:05):
and they care about the program as a.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Whole and Walt is more important than quality. Yes, well
in my opinion, Yeah, yeah, David anything.

Speaker 5 (17:18):
Hey, well, I just you know, you're brought back of
memory for me there.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
You know, I won't say which school it was, but
I was in a principal's office one friday and they
were pretty upset about something I had done and they
told me. They said, uh, you know, we can't fire
you as a teacher, but we can't fire you as
a football coach. And you know you're up in that
locker room. I said, hey, guys, I said, I've got

(17:44):
to go put this weight room floor in. We're putting
in a weight room floor this weekend, So you guys
do what y'all need to do. But somebody's gonna be
the head coach here on Monday. We're gonna need a
weight room flow, so y'all do what you all got
to do. I'm gonna go put this weight room floor.
And I left, and you know what, they never brought
it up again. So yeah, it turned out. But I

(18:05):
appreciate though that man, Hey, you wasn't worried about all
these rumors or you're in there. Hey, how awesome is
it that when it came to the end when they
came to get you, you were working your butt off
and you were doing the dirty stuff that people don't
want to do. Yeah, that gets me fired up. I
really appreciate that. That well, when they came to tell

(18:27):
me I was done, I was working really hard.

Speaker 5 (18:30):
I didn't have to be there, but I was.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
So Yeah, if I were you, I'd feel really good
about That's how it came about.

Speaker 5 (18:37):
That's really cool.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Somebody's gonna have a lot of laundry to do there.

Speaker 5 (18:41):
You go. All right, man, Hey you thank you, Good
luck to you.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Appreciate you being on.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
I just appreciate you guys having me.

Speaker 6 (18:51):
I think what you guys do with the podcast in
general is really awesome. And I think, you know, it's
people don't understand kind of the brotherhood amongst coaches. People
talk about, you know, what kind of state we are
with a football state, whatever, But there's no question that
the football coaching brotherhood in Kentucky is super strong. Even

(19:12):
over the last few days, and like I said, over
the weekend, that's become really clear and evident to me.
So I just want to thank everybody that has reached
out and offered their support and all of those things.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
You're not gonna have any problem getting a job, buddy.

Speaker 5 (19:25):
Now you'll be in good shape. In fact, here's what's
going to happen to you.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
You're going to take a job and you're going to say,
what have I got myself into today? It'll be okay
when that happens.

Speaker 5 (19:39):
Thank you, Thank you, David.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
We didn't mean anything negative or anything like that. We
just wanted to give him that a chance to speak
his mind and clear up any rumors. I think he
did a really good job with that.

Speaker 5 (19:57):
I think he did too.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
And you know, after we did the Marvin Danceler episode,
I mean I went looking for feedback, and to be
quite honest, I got a lot that was negative.

Speaker 5 (20:07):
And that's okay. I mean, that's good for us to
think about.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
But the positive that I got from more than one
journalist is that they were almost envious of our brotherhood
and that we could approach this topic from that perspective.
And so, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, we're
gonna tell a cruth. We're not trying to hide anything
or we're not trying to spend anything, but we are

(20:31):
sort of trying to give people a voice that in
the past they really.

Speaker 5 (20:35):
Didn't have a voice, and we did not.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
They did not.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Hey, they're gonna have a voice with us, and we're
gonna give them a chance to speak up. And it's
not gonna be every single coach when it happens. I mean,
we can't do that, but you know there will be
times that we let's put it this way, when we
think it's appropriate.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
We're gonna go down this road.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
And I wish Matthew the best, and uh, I'm glad
that we've got this platform that we can do this.
And as he said, very well, help our help our
Kentucky high school football brotherhood of coaches that, uh, it's
a pretty tight group now, I mean as much as
they can be so.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
And that that that deal of saying don't speak about
it in public, you can resign. I'll give you a
recommendation that don't exist in today's world.

Speaker 5 (21:26):
So now we're going.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
To give our guys and our brothers a chance to
speak their mind. And I don't mean anything negative towards
Hazard or Louisville Central or anybody. Now that's not the
intention of this thing at all. It's not at all
fear of some of these rumors that are in these
coaches office across the state of Kentucky when they read
that one of their fellow coaches have been let go,

(21:50):
everybody wants to know what happened, and they want to
know his side of the story, not the school side
of the story.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Hey, that does remind me though, And you talk about
you know, they want us to keep our mouth shut.
Don't talk about it. You'll like this story. You can
appreciate because we've been friends for so long. My bosses
got really mad at me one time and they said
I was bad val.

Speaker 5 (22:09):
Of them in the community.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
And I said to them, no, you did something really
stupid and that's your fault.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
That's not my fault.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
So you know, that was how I handled it because
they were saying that I was saying stuff I wasn't.
I'll tell you what, it is tough when your bosses
are not doing what they should because we're always going
to be loyal, but we're not gonna lie either, And
so when your bosses are doing stuff that they shouldn't do,

(22:40):
you basically just walk around and keep your mouth shut
all the time because you can't say nothing good or bad.
I mean, that's what I did, and I know you
don't believe I kept my mouth shut, but I really
would do that on stuff like that. I mean, there's
nothing I could say. Instead, I'd call you invent for
thirty minutes every other day. That's how I get through
stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Well, listen, I hope the list enjoyed this episode. It's
a short episode, but it cleared the air. It cleared
up any rumors. We wish Matt nothing but the best.
We wish Hazard and their kids nothing but thanks for
tuning in and we will catch it next time.