Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Reck Show.
Today in the podcast, we sit down with Jay Paterno,
and if you are a fan of college football or
sports in general, then you've obviously heard of the paternal
family and very familiar with Penn State University all time
winning His coach in college football is his dad, Joe,
and I wanted to get Jay on the podcast today
talk about his new book, Blizz, just talk about the
(00:20):
modern game of college football and what's going on, what's
different from even from the years when his dad was
coaching and he was coaching with him, and just really
dive into everything that has to do with college sports.
It's a crazy landscape right now. So without further ado, Jay,
welcome to the podcast, my friend. Good to be here. Well,
you know, let's start with this. I'm in Utah, I'm
a BYU fan. Actually, after the last couple of days,
(00:41):
it's been the only thing in the news is End
State is heavily recruiting Bou's coach, Kolanie Satake, and it
looked like he was going to go to Penn State
for a second. Do you have an update for us?
I know you're a guy that's in the not so
I figured i'd get you on and let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, it's leaked. It's leaked out that he's going to stay.
It sounds like you know it to be. It looks
like that's the way the cookie is going to crumble,
so to speak.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
If you've been following the story, there's.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Been a The co founder of Crumble Cookie is Byu Alum.
I guess he's been involved. So I guess you know,
when you charge five bucks for a cookie, you make
a lot of money. They are good cookies. I mean,
I will give him that, and they're worth every penny.
But no, but you know, I think it's one of
those things where if he is staying, which it looks
like he is. You know, he's a b yu Alum,
(01:26):
he's from there, he's been there ten years. He's member
of the Latter Day Saints. So I mean, this is
one of those things if I had grown up in
South Bend.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And played a Notre Dame and you.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Know, coaching Notre Dame, I mean, when you start talking
about you know, if the money's that much different, that
that's one thing, But when you add in the money
being the same and you know, being at home and
and and you throw God into it, which is part
of it. I mean, that's it starts to be God,
money and home.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
It's pretty good a triple combination that by Yeah, the
recruiting pitch. How did Penn State it feel about Colini?
You're obviously very familiar with, you know, the poult to
what's going on over there? How did Penn State feel
about getting him as a coach if he was an option?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Just curious.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, we're in day fifty one as of today, you know,
of the coaching search. I think right now there's just
some trepidation as to you know, where does it where's
when does this end?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
And where does it end?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And and you know, Terry Smith's been the interim coach
now for six games. They've gone three and three and
lost Indiana on a circus catch and lost Iowa by
one out there. So I mean, this team could very easy,
easily be five and one right now under with this stretch,
and you would be looking at saying, you know, this.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Guy's done a heck of a job.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And so given the job he's done and giving away
the team has played the last six weeks, there are
a lot of.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
People that want him to get hired. Uh, and are really.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Excited about the fact that, you know, he's a guy
that's got ties to the history of the school and
he's spoken very openly about all that, and so there's
there's a lot of our fan base that would like
to coalesce behind him as a bridge to history into now.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
But for whatever reason, that hasn't happened.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And I'm as remember the board trustees, I'm not going
to get into all that stuff as to what should
and shouldn't, but that's part of the equation right now.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
And you know, he maybe a guy that ends up
getting it, but we'll see.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, how does a I mean being a member of
the board of trustees, how did you guys come to
conclusion to you know, you have a coach James Franklin
and obviously he's getting paid a lot of money to
buy out. Is crazy, right, It's a lot of money
to have to come up with. How difficult of a
decision is that, as you know, a member of the
Board of trustees to move on from a coach when
he still has that much money left on the contract.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, surprisingly, we as trustees did not weigh in on
didn't have anything to do with it backcraft, the ad
made that decision, and you know, we kind of make
those decisions in terms of money when the.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Contract gets approved.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So four years ago November of twenty twenty one, we
approved the compensation Committee of our board approved this contract,
so they were on board with it.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
So the buyout was part of that. Now when you
go fast forward to it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
That's turned out now with James getting James Fryant and
getting a new job of Virginia Tech. The buyout has
gone from forty nine million to nine million because it
was a mitigation which was wisely put into the contract.
You know, if I were James, I may have sat
out of here too and collected. But no, but no,
I think he wanted to get on with coaching.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I think he has a passion for it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I think it's good that he got back into it,
certainly as a fiduciary of Fenn State, knowing that we're
only giving him nine millions posed to forty five million.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I'm elated that he got back into coaching.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it's like when there's a divorce and I think,
you know, if the wife gets remarried to get a
quick calimony, it's like as much as you don't want
to see your woman move on. It's like, you know what,
I'll gladly allow that so I can quit paying this
money every month.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh, it's a good friend of mine. You know, he
was divorced. He kept she started dating this guy. Seriously,
it was constantly, I am so rooting for this guy,
and he explained why. So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, it's interesting. You know, you have obviously been around
the game for your entire life, literally probably from the
time you took your first steps, and to see kind
of how it works today. It is such a different
game today, even than it was you know when you
were coaching with your dad and everything else. But what
do you think, you know, your dad would have thought
of the modern game today, That change is the main
different things that you have to deal with as a
(05:11):
coach as opposed to when he was there.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, I think the guys of his generation, whether it's
him or Tom Osborn or you know, even Bo scham Beckler,
guys like that in that era, I think they would
have been much more proactive than what we've seen from
this generation of coaches and administrators and presidents. When California
passed the law on nil I think they would have
gotten together and said, okay, do where does this plane land,
(05:36):
and let's make sure we're helping landed and get it
and let's get to something that works for everybody and
makes this as even and as fair to everybody as possible.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
That has not happened.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It has been bounced from one court case to another,
and whatever the latest thing with the judge happens, is
where we land as a model, So I think they
would have been more proactive. I think they also have
been real. He would have been more real, very realistic
about what we're doing here and saying, look, there's a
happy medium in here. But what no one's talking about
(06:06):
right now, which I think he would have been very
passionate about, giving his track record, is the academic side
of it. No one talks about what always jumping around
means to the academic side of it. You know, I
started my coaching career at UVA and they're in the
big the A SEC championship game where the quarterback who's
on his four school And that's not to judge anything,
but I mean that seems strange and to an old
(06:29):
school guy, but I think you know, they would He
was a realist. He was a guy that changed with
the times, and he would have certainly adapted as well
as tried to shape times. I think that's the difference
is we don't have anybody trying to shape this right now.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, I think that's that. And there's really no leadership
at the top of the encity of the lay. It
doesn't feel like there's just like that, you know, like
there needs to be like a commissioner or something somebody
can actually put into place. What's happening you knew, But
blaz you talk about a lot of these, you know,
modern problems or pressures. I guess you could say that
they're facing college football. What made you want to talk
about this or you know, go dive into this topic
(07:02):
and maybe maybe explain a little bit to the listener
what is so different about today versus in the past.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I'd written a book about my dad after he died
about eleven years ago. Wrote the book, and then I
was starting on another book, and I was going to
write about my experience in coaching and the store things
I had seen and all these things. As I started
to write it, I said, I can't write this as
a nonfiction book because lawyers will tie it up forever
because they'll say, well, you say this about this school
(07:29):
and this coach and that coach. So I used a
different device. There was a book called Primary Colors, which
was about a presidential campaign, and I read I said,
I'm going to use that same kind of device to
take what really happens in college coaching and write that book.
And I wrote A cold Hot Seat and started. I
said it at Ohio State because I had spent seventeen
years recruiting that state and was familiar with it. So
(07:51):
I said at Ohio State and basically had a fictional
coach that was told you have one year to win
or you're out, and.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
So it takes you through all the ethical dilemmas.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Now that book came out, people loved it, and they said, well,
we would know what comes next because within two years
or three years of that book coming out, you have
anil transfer portal, all these things. And I had done
consulting and IEL stuff, so I had all kinds of
background stories about what's going on now. So I basically
created took this coach into the next phase into what
(08:20):
it is now. So this is a book that pulls
back the curtain on what's really going on in college athletics,
and some of it's not pretty, some of it's downright
ugly and sleazy. And it does it in a way
that I can be completely honest about what's happening without
having to worry about, you know this somebody blowing my
car up because I'm telling true stories about what's really
(08:41):
going on.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So, I mean, it does.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Pull back the curtain for someone who's really interested in
all the things that are going on, and it talks
about the real pressures that coaches are under that are different.
Now it's a twenty four to seven constant. You know,
guys can transfer when they want. Now you're dealing with
I got to get this guy X amount of money
for recruiting, and I got to give this guy money
and that guy money, and so all these things are
different than what you had.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
And on top of that, you have.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
The mental health issues that no one ever talked about,
you know, for years. You have all these other things
going on that coaches are dealing with that that are different.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, and you know, speaking the mental health side of it,
it's interesting when you start talking about these college kids
and the pressures even of getting the money I talked.
I had Vince Young on my podcast and he had
talked about a young man that he was mentoring that
committed suicide because his family was fighting over his NIL
money and who was going to get what and how
it was going to break down. I never even crossed
my mind to think about something like that. Some of
(09:35):
these pressures that these young kids have, things they have
to worry about that they never had to in the past.
It's just really is a whole different ballgame today. And
I'm glad that you know, again, you have a book
that kind of talks a lot about a lot of
these pressures. You use that word a lot. But what
as far as the nil goes in the transfer portal?
I think the combination of it is really created a
little bit of a cluster for these coaches because you
(09:56):
have to play a guy right away or else he's
going to transfer. But sometimes they're not ready. And then
you've got all this money and you're you know, you've
invested in these guys. What is the answer? Where does
the game go from here? How do we make sure
that college football maintains its amateur status? But also, like
you know, obviously the players need to get paid and
what their you know, value is, But how do you
keep the purity of the game. I guess, for lack
(10:17):
of a better word.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I think the idea that we're going to have this
amateur standard, I think is probably gone.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
And I hate to say that. I'm a guy that
believed in it, loved it in the whole nine yards.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And you know, I wrote a column years ago about
you know, you talk about players aren't getting paid, but
an out of state football player at Penn State was
making roughly ninety to one hundred dollars an hour when
you broke down to scholarship into the number of hours,
and you say, that's a pretty good deal. And you know,
every other student at Penn State, if you said you're
going to work doing something you love.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And graduate with no student debt, they take it. We'd
all take it.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So I mean, I come from that to where now
I'm realistic about where we're at in terms of when
you talk about one point one billion dollars a year
in metia rites for the big.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Ten, that's just a big ten.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That doesn't include arch madness, that does include all these
ticket sales, that's just meteorites. We're long past the point
where this is just an extracurricular activity. I think there's
a happy medium where we strike a meet a place
where the academic side is important. That's part of the process,
but as well as getting nil money and revenue sharing money.
(11:19):
I think all those things can exist coexist. I think
you look at a higher State to higher State had
the top APR academic performance rating of all football teams
in the country last year, and they won the national championship.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So they've shown you can do it.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Notre Dame is doing the same kind of things, and
that's something we want to happen to here at Penn State.
But I think the reality is we've got to get
to a point where at this point I've talked openly
about members of our governing bodies, which I'm a trustee
at Penn State, we need to start to get involved
not in who we hire as coaches or what the
depth chart looks like, but we better start to get
(11:53):
involved in the discussion as to what this college football
model is going to look like. It's time to strip
the thing down. It's time to start this whole thing over.
You know, we're tied to these old calendars, whether the
signing day is this State or or the transfer ports.
We need to start and look and say, forget what
we have, what would be ideal, and what makes.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
What can be realistic? And that's we got to get
to them.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Well, you look at this year. You got the Lane
Kiffin situation. Even right now, I think with Kolonie Sataki
by Us playing one of the biggest games in their
career against Texas Tech to go to the College Football Playoff,
and the only story for the last three or four
days is Colonie Sataki going to Penn State or is
he going to stay here at BYU? Right it's just
the calendar screwed up. They've got it all backwards. And
again I think that goes back to who's running this
(12:38):
who's in charge, And you see the big ten in
the SEC have kind of made moves where they're like, hey,
we kind of don't need you guys, and if it's
not going to be overbalanced in our favor, you know,
we might do our own thing. Like you look at it,
this year, you've got either Tulane or James Madison's going
to steal a spot from either you know, BYU or
Tennessee or Vanderbilt or maybe even a Notre Dame, and
(12:58):
so all of a sudden you start looking at the
and you go, Okay, what is the answer to kind
of make this all work a little bit more cohesively.
But like you said, even just the timing of how
things happen right now, like link Kiffin or even leaving
to you know, to go to l see what a
disaster that is for for his team and just kind
of for the sport in general.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, and you put a signing you know, the signing
date didn't used to be the first week in February.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
There was no early signing date.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
And I'll never forget when when people were debating that,
and it happened after my dad was done coaching, and
it passed.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
But he used to tell us, you guys want to
really sign it.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You understand, coach, you're going to start getting fired in
October and we're like, now, who would fire?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And look what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Guys are getting fired in October because they want to
get the new guy in to save the recruiting class.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
And if you move this, if you move the sign.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Date back to February, that helps, If you move the
transfer portal thing, that helps, and there's not as much
pressure a to fire people in October as there is now,
and there's not as much pressure as somebody in place.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I mean, you'll get the NFL.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I mean, the Cleveland Browns can't go chase John Harbaugh
and the Ravens right now and convince and believe the
Ravens before they go to the playoffs if they make
the playoffs, right, you can't do it because there are
rules in place, there's a calendar in place, and these
things all have the place where you a time and
place where you do it. And if you mess around
with that, you get hammered with the loss of draft
picks you lost, and you get fines and that kind
(14:19):
of stuff. So I think it's going to require that
at some point, Like I said, we need to rescale
and redesign exactly what college football is can look like
going forward.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Well, you know, you have such an interesting life, Jane.
It's one of those people that you know. The more
I started digging into this, and you you are, you know,
the son of this most iconic human being, I mean
literally share his namesake and raised by this man who
you know, did things in culture well nobody literally nobody
else has ever done. And the benefits that come with that,
(14:51):
and then obviously, you know, towards the end, some things
happen and a lot of people have opinions and everything
like that. How do you find your own path in life?
I'm just curious, like, is somebody that you know, like
you have such a big father figure. It's a very
fascinating topic to me. But how do you hart of
your own path in life yet still honor, you know,
the heritage that you come from?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I think you know when I was, when I was
finished on college, I went, you know, I wanted to coach,
and you.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Know, my dad gave me an article. It was New
York Times.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I forget who wrote it, but the point it just was,
you know, the headline was released from expectations, the son
finds his own path, Okay. And he wrote and said,
you know, he wrote a note on basically said hopeless hopeless.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
You know, helps you. And he would do that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
He would take articles and he'd need photocopy and write
a note and send them to you. And it was
just kind of a lesson of like, look, I don't
care if he coached or not coach. I mean, he
kept saying, in my mind, why would you want to coach,
you know. He would say, Look, my career is an exception.
You're not going to get somewhere and stay put someplace
for you know, whatever number of years it was at
that time.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
He said, just understand, that's the exception.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And he just wanted to make sure that if I
wanted to coach or do what I want to do,
I was doing because that's what I wanted to do.
And so there was My parents were great, whatever you
want to do, you know, do and so I kind of,
you know, I left Penn State for five years, came
back and coached with them, and then the last couple
of years I had some chances and some people talking
(16:18):
about leaving, but I felt like I wanted to be
there through the end of his career. But at the
same time, I had already started writing columns as kind
of a sidelight, I'd done some things politically as in
my own time, and in my spare time, I'd started
writing and doing some other things. So a lot of
these other other things were part of my life, which
gave me, I think, really good balance to the pressure
(16:38):
of the constant pressure of coaching. Was a chance to
get out and do something that would you know, I
didn't go I don't golf. I only started fly fishing
after I got done coaching, So I didn't have those
other hobbies that a lot of other people do because
a I can't golf for you know, to save my life.
But so I found these other paths and I think
it gave me. I think my parents gave me inter
(17:00):
confidence to have that. I think it's tough when you
are raised as you come in you have successful parents,
it's very difficult because there is this, especially with fathers
and sons, this there's this expectation that I've got to
be bigger than he is, I've got to do something
better than he did, especially competitive people. And you know,
(17:22):
I quickly came to the conclusion, Look, I'm not going
to win four hundred games the coach.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I mean, why even think you're gonna do that?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And be confident in who you are and what you're doing,
and every day, at the end of the day, you
can look yourself in the mirror be confident that you
did what you should do that day.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Then that's that's enough. And I think you see people
struggle with that all the time. Yeah, I think you
have a unique perspective to be able to speak about that.
You know, I think so many people they have these
expectations of what their life's supposed to look like. A
lot of times they're not even their own expectations. They're
you know, and.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
They they're eat faults from their parents or their community
or whatever that might be. And a lot of pain
can come from feeling like you need to be something
different than maybe what you are. And so that's just
an interesting thing for me to kind of look at.
You know, I'm very fascinated by people that are raised
by such iconic figures. Everybody wants their time, they want
their attention. What are a couple of things you learned
(18:12):
from your dad that maybe we wouldn't know just from
you know, following his career, from you know, the media's
point of view.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
One of the things that he told me before I
had kids, we were walking. We used to walk home
from games. So he lives, he lived their house. My
mom's still there there. Their house, only three or four
blocks in campus and really only about a fifteen minute
walk from the stadium.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So he started walking home from games early in his career.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Because when you come off a game, you have this
adrenaline rush, and it's like a drug. It's a very
addictive thing. And you get this high from being in
the ebb and flow of a big time game where
you're calling plays every thirty five seconds and your mind
is racing and and then you know the whole thing.
So you have to come down from that high, so
to speak. So he would start walking home games. So
he and I would walk home from games when I
(19:00):
was on the team, and then when I left, I
came back and I said, hey, we should walk home again.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
He goes, yeah, he goes, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I actually found a way to have found my way
home without you for five years, so you know I'm
capable of getting home without you.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
But we did it again because it was just something
that we had.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And the one time, I was talking about a kid
that we had recruited who hadn't quite panned out yet
as to what we thought he was going to be,
and he said, Jay, you know you got to be
patient with kids.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
He said, but you're not a.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Parent yet, but when you are, you'll realize that you're
only as happy as your least happy child. And he said, understand,
it doesn't mean you give them everything they want, and
when they throw a temper tanton, we say here, here's
the money or the car or whatever it is. You
have to raise them. You have to prepare the child
for the path, not prepare the path.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
For the child.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And he said, and that's how you get truly happy people,
young young people. And he said, every kid that we
have recruited, somebody put eighteen years of their life into
that young man. Could be the mom and dad, could
be a grandmother, could be an aunt, could be whoever,
And we have an obligation we bring them in to
continue what they've done and make them better people than
(20:05):
when they left, and make them understand what life's about.
And so that's the best, biggest responsibility we have. And
that lesson about being a parent certainly has resonated with
me as a parent myself now, but also the rest
of my coaching career. I looked at everything differently because
that was the core foundational value of what that program
(20:26):
was all about. And those things are you know, that's
not something he talked about a bunch And I think
that's something that really is a lesson that should even
resonate even now.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, No, that's great, based on kind of how everything
went towards the end. I know, it's been very important
for you to honor his legacy and to be able
to make sure that people, you know, see your father
for the legacy that he built and not for a
few of those things that you know obviously went down
towards the end of it. How difficult was that to
watch that, after so many years of giving in, you know,
(20:57):
giving to all these kids that he coached in the
universe everything else, to see so much backlash based on
the you know, the Sandusky stuff and everything else that
went down.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Well, really, when you look at it from a legal standpoint,
I mean, he was in the grand jury, a three
year grand jury, for seven minutes because he was really
a tangent to this whole case. He was told he
was something was reported to him one time, and he
followed university policy and state lawed the fullest extent he
was allowed, and that story never got out. I mean
initially the state attorney general when they were bringing these
(21:29):
charges said that Joe was forthcoming and did what he
was supposed to do and was honest to the whole thing,
and the prosecutors even a year later, said there was
no cover up nothing, but the media narrative very quickly
settled on him. So he was really a cancel culture victim.
Early on, before we even talked about cancel culture, people
found the clicks were on the side of putting Joe
(21:53):
in the story. I mean, Saturday Live did a you know,
the weekend up date story the Saturday after he was fired.
They mentioned my dad's name a bunch of times, They
mentioned Ben States the name a bunch of times. They
never once mentioned the guy who actually was accused of crime.
He became a central figure. So that part has been
frustrating because there are people that just don't get it.
(22:14):
They want to believe the worst in people is rather
than give people a benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
So, I mean, that's.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Been hard to deal with. But the point you reach
a point where you say, you know, the people that
matter know. I was, you know, at one point, was
being asked about running for office, and I was in
then Vice President Joe Biden's office, and Joe Biden pulled
me aside and said talked about, you know the fact
that I was out there sticking up for my dad,
(22:40):
even you know, after he'd passed, and how much respect
he had for what I was doing that, And he said, look,
ninety percent of the people know exactly the kind of
person your father was. They know what a great man
he was. He said, the other ten percent you never had.
You're never going to get him to hell with him.
And it was great advice, and it was it went
back to some of my dad used to tell me
all the time. He said, look, you know, you're never
(23:02):
getting anybody to like you. You want something to being animous,
It just doesn't exist. And he said, you know, he said,
we were raised Roman Catholic. We believe Jesus Christ was
the son of God. He had twelve apostles and one
of them portrayed him, so even he couldn't keep everybody
on board, and he was the son of God.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
So the hell do you think you are?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So? I mean, it was one of those things that
I had forgotten about until Joe Biden made that point
to me.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
And on the way home driving home, I'm like, oh.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
My god, I lost that lesson in all this, and
you just thankfully you have those lessons to hold on
to him.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, was there anything you took away from a personally
watching your dad go through that at that point in
his life, or anything that you just you know, being
so close to a story that was getting so much
national attention, like you said, they really you know, he
became a focal point in the entire story. And was
there anything that you just liked that, like it changed
the way you thought of life, or the way that
you know you saw him treated by certain people or.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well, first of all, for him, there was a complete
lack of bitterness on his part. I mean, he never
once railed against anybody. There was no vitriol. There was
a I mean, at one point, you know, there's dozens
and dozens of reporters camped out across the distreet from
the house or outside the house, and somebody, one of
my siblings, had complained about him. He said, look, don't
(24:15):
get mad at those people. They have an editor, they
have a boss, they have somebody's telling them to be there.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
You know, they don't necessarily want to be there. Don't
be mad at them.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
And I was like, wow, what perspective in this moment,
Like you know, here I am, you know, but I
think the thing going through that, I think it shows
you how fragile things are. He used to always tell us,
you know, at the height of his career.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
He would say, look, this can all go away tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I mean, you understand that, guys, and understand that the
people that remain with you will be the people that
count when you go through tough times, when you go
through adversity, and that lesson. You know, he died within
two three months and it's all happening. That lesson certainly
stuck with me, and I remember telling my wife and
my kids saying, well, look, you're gonna find out who's
really who really cares about you as a person when
(25:00):
you're no longer part of the big show and when
you're going through difficult adversity. I think that's hard for
people to understand. They get to a point where they're
the head coach at a school, or they're this political
or their boss of this company, and it goes away
some of the people they thought were with them just.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Go to the next person. I think that was a
good lesson to get out of all this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I listen to your eulogy that you gave to your father.
It's known actually as one of the top fifty speeches
ever given, and I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, I mean it was just yeah, I mean the thing,
you know, one of the things I always say is like,
what do you want people to say at your funeral?
You know, what you want? An exercise I run a
men's coaching program, and an exercise I do with the
men is actually have them, right from their wife, their kid,
and their best friend's perspective eulogy, what the people would
say at there, what they want them to say at their.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Funtual, what they want them to say. Yes, yeah, it's like,
you know, that's what you want them to say. Will
be dramatically different from what they they say.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
But you know, that was that was one of the
most challenging things I've ever had to do in my life,
because you know, it was on three networks. You know,
it was on Worldwide Live, and so there was obviously
I put a lot of time into it, and but
there's still an element of going right before that that happened.
And Phil Knight, who's the CEO of Nike, had spoken
earlier in that event in that and did a great job.
(26:16):
And so I go backstage to go to the bathroom
before I'm about to speak, and I put my folder
down with my speech and I go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I come back and the folder's gone.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
And this is like three minutes, Like team I has
two minutes and thirty seconds. And I'm on CNN, ESPN,
Big ten network. You know, Oh my god, do I
even remember what the hell I wrote? Oh my god?
And all of a sudden, I see Phil Knight sitting
there laughing, and he goes, here it is.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
And it put me.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
It was a little just that little device put me
at ease and kind of got me into the right place.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
And I went up and gave a speech.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So but you know, it's like you said, how do
you want people to remember you? And what do you
want them to say about it? And I'm you know,
I'm working on a book. We're going to book on leadership,
and one of the chapters is going to be has
the first.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Line of your obituary already been written? You know, for
a guy like.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Barack Obama, doesn't matter what he does the rest of
his life, the first line is going to be former
President of Barack Obama.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
That's going to be it.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I mean, but the challenge for the rest of us
is to put your feet in the ground and say, hey,
let's do something bigger and better that supersedes what I've.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Already done, and that's what I try and do.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah, no, that's great. Well, college football, again, is a
lot of the focus of your book is around kind
of where the game's going and stuff. It's changed so
much in the last five ten years. What do you
see things going in the next five ten years?
Speaker 2 (27:39):
And again I say this as an old school guy
who doesn't necessarily like what's happening, but.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Is realistic about it.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Sure, I think we're going to have to get a
collective bargaining situation with players, because that's just you know,
it's just I think the leadership of universities. And when
I say leadership, I mean as a member of a
governing board. I think we have to get involved now
because presidents are jumping around, you know, in two and
(28:06):
three and four years, and athletic directors and coaches are
jumping around. So I think it's going to be important
for the people who are enduring, who have the enduring
fiducial responsibility university get involved in what the model is
going to look like. But I think once we get
in that room, we're gonna have to redesign the model.
Collective barding is going to be a part of it
because it'll protect the schools.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
And the players.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
You know, players that are getting run off now will
at least have some records and say no, no, no, no,
I have a contract and you can't just kick me off,
kick me the curb and forces me out or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
So I think that's going to have to be part
of it.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I think that there's going to have to be some
realignment in terms of how this whole thing works in
terms of the Big Ten with the number of schools
we have, and the SEC, I think is going to
do some more equitable distribution of this whole thing to
keep the game healthy all over the country. I think
those are some things gonna have to happen, and it's
going to take some leadership to do that.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
How does a social media the game today with the
kids versus you know, when you were coaching.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
I was when I was coaching, it was still part
of it.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
People are still getting on social media and going after kids,
but with nil so much of what they're required to
do for whatever company they're doing is to post about
that company, to post about whether it's Nike or Coca.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Cola or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And once you do that now you have people that
can get at you because your social media has to
be accessible, so there's more pressure on kids. And you know,
I used to tell guys I coach, like just don't look
at it. I mean, just or have a private account
or whatever. But with NIL, they've got out of a
public account because nobody, if only their friends can see
(29:39):
them promoting whatever brand that they're promoting. It doesn't do
the brand any good. So I think there's they I
think that's a big part.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Of the mental health aspect of.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Being able to go out there and do that, but
also to be able to deal with what comes on
the back end of it, and the backlash is going
to happen, because if you're out there promoting a brand
and you throw three interceptions and lose the game, somebody's
going to come at you and say, oh, if you
didn't spend all this time promoting Company X, or maybe
I viewer as good as Company x's product, we wouldn't
(30:10):
have lost the game, where you wouldn't stink. I mean,
and I think the game the part of the social
media aspect that's been difficult is the game has become
so professionalized.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
The players are making a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Coaches are making a lot of money, and the fans
know that, so they're not looking at them as the
eighteen year old kid who's out there for the good
of their their alma mode. They're looking at the eighteen
year old kid who's catching in so and then when
you add in the proliferation of legalized gambling, the fans
are even more invested pun intended in the outcome of
(30:45):
the game. So if they know their quarterback's making two
million dollars into a game costing interception that cost them money,
they're going to be even more angry, especially when they've
had a couple of beers in the stadium, which you know,
we never sold beer in the stadium before, so now
you got all these things come into play, which has
created a much more difficult social media environment for student athletes.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, I mean, if you never had people attacking you online,
it could be very uncomfortable. I'm sure you experience plenty
of that you know your life, but you know, when
you think about it, I'm you know, I'm in my
forties now, but when I was a kid, I don't
know how I would have handled it. That being in
nineteen twenty years old, and like you said, I think
the you know, legalized gambling in so many ways has
really changed that we see. You know, major League Baseball
is run into some issues and the NBA's ran into
(31:28):
some issues of some of this tampering with games and
things like that. How big of a problem do you
think gambling has become? So because the access to so
many college kids. I can't imagine this is good for
any of them, but it's so accessible now. And I
was just wondering what your take is on that.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I think it's only a matter of time till something
blows up. I mean, that's just the reality. And when
you start talking about prop bets and things like that,
you know, you know, if I'm a Penn State guy
and I was friends with Tyler, teammates with Tyler Warren
at the Colts and texting with Tyler Warren, he said,
not that I'm just throwing names out of course, but
Tyler Warren goes, yeah, tweaked.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
My ankle today in practice on Thursday. I may not
go on Sunday. And there's a prop bet that he's
gonna have one hundred yards receiving.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Well, I guess what I'm telling all my teammates get
under and bet that he's going to be under because
he's not playing, or he's going to play half the game,
whatever it may be. So those these and there's prop
bets on college So you have all these things. Now,
it's just a matter of time.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
And we saw when there wasn't legalized gambling.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
We saw gambling scandals and college sports, and it's like
he said, it's only a matter of time.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I saw a stat recently that said only eighteen percent
of adults feel like having a college degree is an
advantage in today's world. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I think that that's that's something that we have thought
that as a as to take away the college the
athletics side, as a college trustee. That polling is very troubling,
and that's really you know, I think it was two
or three years ago almost sixty seventy percent of people
aged voters age thirty five to forty nine who would
(33:02):
be having kids about to go to college felt that
was not worthwhile taking out student loans to go to
college for the value of education. I think we have
to look at what we're asking what it's costing. Do
we need four years? Do you have to go to
for four years, can you get degree in three, which
now all of a sudden brings the cost down twenty
five percent.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I think there's a lot of value to go into
college and get any kind of education you get at
the university.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
But I think right now we're not doing a very
good job of educating people as to what the true
value is. And part of it is because the massive
amount of debt that people are going into to get
that degree.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, it's fascinates me. I know, I got my degree,
but and I think for me, the value of going
to college it was the people I met, the connections
I made, the networking that I did. I was actually
pretty surprised at how worthless the actual education part of
it was. I went to Arizona State and then a
local college here in Utah, and it was just I
just didn't learn that much. But I wonder how many
(33:58):
people had my similar experience. Don't know, But you know,
you see a lot of these kids nowadays and AI
and everything that's coming. A lot of the seems like
a lot of the trades are going to be some
of the more popular jobs. They are going to be
paying the most because they're you know, plumber, electricians, some
of these things that other AI can't replace. But it's
just it'll be fascinating to see what happens to the
entire college education system and how that affects the sporting
(34:22):
side of it. As more and more people graduate and
kind of find themselves not necessarily in a career they
thought they might be able to get by going to college.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
One of the things that there's now an outsized importance
being put on college football is that that becomes a
drawing card to people to go.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
To college, like, oh wow, you know, like it'd be great.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
To go to college, get a place like Penn State
or Alabama, whatever, because that's part of the experience, and
I get this sense of belonging by being in the
student section whoever it is.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
So I think.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Schools are now valuing this even more so, and maybe
the where they're putting too much value on it to
where they're willing to take some shortcuts they help drive
encourage enrollment. As we go to the demographics now of
the college the birth rates are going down right now,
So the next eighteen years is.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Gonna be very challenging.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, I think I saw some studies when Alabama hired
Nick Saban. He was the highest paid employee in Alabama
by a long shot, right, But they showed that he
literally up to the entire revenue of the college by
over twenty percent just because of the amount of people
that wanted to be involved with the university while he
was the football coach there.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
It shows you the.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Importance, you know, of college football to a university.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
They made a very conscious effort that they were to
boost their enrollment and go beyond the curtain the numbers
and aggressively recruited kids from all over the country in
terms of students. They're at college fairs in Connecticut, you
name it, and they're offering kids discounts. They've done a
good job of kind of parlaying that and getting an
expanding enrollment, and they've gone far more out of state
(35:53):
kids as in that process. So there can be a
role for it.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
There's no question.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
How do you know one from a PR perspective, I'm
a marketing PR guy in a lot of ways too.
I'm curious Penn State. I feel like I was able
to fix their reputation very quickly for having, you know,
as big of a scandal as it did. What were
a couple of things that you learned through it, or
you saw that Penn State did well, or maybe some
things that maybe they should have done better as far
as the imaging after the fact and in being able
(36:19):
to you know, resurrect their their their image is a
you know, top tier program and one that didn't need
to worry about having the kind of issues that they
were dealing with.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Well, initially from the crisis management standpoint, we completely botched it.
I mean, there's no question Penn State did allows each
job when this when the story broke, they were not prepared,
They did not have a crisis management firm on retainer.
You know, the some members of the board gotten charged
very quickly and said, well, this is what we're going
to do when we're not going to do this. So
the first time anybody went on camera was you know,
(36:48):
this story had broke on a Friday afternoon. The first
time that anybody from the university went on camera to
address it and it was allowed to go on camera
was the following Wednesday night. And at that point they
fired to head football coach and the president university.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
So you want one hundred and twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Hours without responding on cameras so it was an absolute disaster.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
The story got away from them.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
The further away you are, the more it seems a
reputation kind of came back and being further across the
country than you are within certainly within the state of
Pennsylvania within the Northeast, it lingered for quite a while
because of that initial reaction and because of our inability
to this day, when you look at the facts of
that case, the overwhelming majority of the things that happened
(37:32):
in that case did not happen on our campus, had
nothing to do with our campus. And the mistake that
we made is we took it on and started to
pay out claimants that never even had any to do
with Penn State. So it looked like all these things
happened on our campus. But it was kind of a
corporate mindset of let's just pay people out that make
(37:53):
claims and let's move on, which works in the corporate world.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But if you have a Penn.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
State degree, it became very difficult to get away from
that because you can't sell your stock in Penn State
because it's your degree, it's what it's part of who
your being. So it's taken us a while a lot longer.
It probably should have to kind of get out under that.
And there's still people that still think have the wrong
idea and the wrong narrative. But you know, like I said,
(38:18):
you're never going to convert and convince everybody of anything.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, well, I appreciate you taking some time. It's such
an interesting thing, college football. It means so much to
so many people. It's such a passionate thing, and with
that it come all the benefits of that, but also
it becomes a very heavy responsibility. And you know, being
again as involved as you are with the university, what
I guess if you could, you know, what's one thing
that you think that you want to see happen just
(38:43):
to leave the game in the best possible place that
it could going forward as both a fan and then
somebody that's just invested in the level that you are.
What's something you really hope happens with the game here
over the next year or two.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I hope we get to a point where you know,
it's not so much about the Big ten has to
be the SEC and money. The SEC has to beat
the big ten of money. I'd like to see the game,
the money, the revenues of the game and everything a
little bit more equitably distributed, so that schools all over
the place can compete on you know, can maintain a
(39:16):
level competition. I think with revenue sharing with nil stuff,
I think the imbalances are growing. I don't think that's good,
And the imbalances are going to favor the schools that
have alumni either or commit and throw a bunch of.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Money at them sharing football.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
And the danger of that is once you start throwing
a bunch of money at football, there's a bunch of
money that doesn't go towards endowments, towards professorships, towards scholarships
for students to come. So I want to get into
a little bit better balance. I would hope that the finances,
even at a place like Penn State, there are things
we're doing right now that put us at risk financially, even.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
With all the money that we are.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
You know, we're in the top ten fifteen schools in
the country in terms of athletics revenue, but we're doing
some things in terms of taking on some debt that
put at risk. So I'd like to see everybody get
to where they're putting things on the right financial footing,
but also not sacrificing the opportunities for so many female
athletes and male athletes and other sports, because that's always
(40:14):
one of the answers, Well, we're having trouble financially, cut
this sport, cut that sport. I'd like to see those
things all maintained.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, I mean, that's a scary thought to think the
university is taking on loans to be able to stay competitive.
You say that that's something that you already having to
do at Penn State, even with just how the game
is right now.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Well, when you'll get the facilities wise, I mean we
we're borrowing a hundred will be when we get the
stadium done, will be at a point where we're almost
eight hundred million dollars in bonds out outstanding for facilities,
and that's you know, that's that's twice the level of
anybody else in the country right now, which doesn't make
me very comfortable as a trustee.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
You know. At the time, part of the argument was
and not just athletics.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
There's a lot of borrowing going on a lot of
universities for a lot of things, not just athletics.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
And the argument was it's.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Well, it's money's never going to be this cheap, and
yet cheap is not free. You know, a guy that
writes you a check for forty million dollars is build
this building. That's free money. And even that's not free
because that guy's gonna want something. But at the end
of the day, I think that's been the that's been
the biggest thing that we keep able to keep me
up at night.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I appreciate you, Jay coming
on and so you tell me it's pretty from what
you're hearing, Klonie's staying at Uyu.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
That's sounds like yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
And look, you know, selfishly, I would have liked a
different outcome, perhaps, you know, because we're but you know what,
I think there's something about guys that you know, you know,
my dad used to tell coaches when they get places,
find someplace you like and stay put. And if you
can deal with the people you work with and you're
making enough money that you're happy, and you know, don't
always make it.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
About the bigger dollar or whatever.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
So you know, if it is, if he does stay,
I'm happy for people at b Yu.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh, there's something to be said. But I mean, your
dad was how many years total was the events.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
To sixty one and forty six as the forty six
is the head coach, coach that's in town.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
That's yeah, it's odd.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
I mean people like, oh my god, you know, like, yeah,
I know how many times did they try to run
him off in that forty six years? Thankfully he was
winning a lot, but I know, but that every coach
right from John Wood and there were there was one.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Time where they really kind of approached him and said,
and then there were other offers too to go other places.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
And the.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Biggest one was New England Patriots in nineteen seventy two,
end of seventy two, early seventy three, and they came
in and basically said, you know, uh, he was making
twenty four thousand a year at that time maybe, and
they offer him two hundred and eighty thousand, which was
the biggest contract at the time. Plus offered him ownership
part ownership of the team. This would be four teams
were valued like they are now.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Said that'd be worth something today.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well it was like seven or eight percent and the
Patriots valued like eight billion.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
So that's you know, that's five hundred and sixty million.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
I'm like, you know that, I admire your wady to
stay at Penn State.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
But all these years later, we're going like, if you
knew it was gonna be five hundred and sixty million,
he goes, well, yeah, that might have changed the calculus
a little bit. That's amazing. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
It was the time when guys got the coaching, not
because they could get rich, because nobody.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Was getting rich. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Well, and it's just a you know, I don't think
he would give up what he was able to do
at Penn State for all the money world. So for you,
no question to read your book. They want to learn
more about this, more about the college game. Jay, where's
the best place we can send him?
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Amazon has the book.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
My website Jvpatrono dot com has the has the book.
You know, surely bookstores all over the place, but those
are the two main.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Places to get it.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Awesome, And I can tell you Colonie's he's a personal
friend of mine. I've known him for years and years
and I used to for five years. I had sideline
passes when his first five years there, and he's as
good of a human as they come. So it's for
what it's worth, you picked a good one that you
at least went after whether it ends up at They don't.
They don't make it worse.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
You're making get worse.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
They do not make humans better than that. Man.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Look, when I was a senior in college, we played
by U and it was first time we'd ever played them,
and so we're in a bowl game and one of
my one of my takeaway, we go to this luncheon
with both teams.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
I'm like, oh, my god, Like these guys all got
to bring their girlfriends and.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Like, my god, they every one of them's got like
a gorgeous girlfriend, like and like how and so one
of their guys it was our table.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
What gives He goes, Oh, they're all wives. And I'm like, well,
he goes yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
I mean, like, did we come in, we read shirt,
we go on the mission for two years, we come
back and buy year three or four. We're twenty two,
twenty three years old, and there's certain rules about certain things,
so we get married.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I'm like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
But been always in tremendous respect for that program because
of what kids have to give up to go there
and be part of it. I think that's really ethnique.
My dad and Lavelle Edwards were really really good friends,
just to the point where he shows you a different
time in coaching. We went out there at ninety two.
I wasn't coaching at the time, went out there ninety
two and played BYU and it was a late afternoon game,
(44:54):
so the team just stayed over that night. So Lavell
and my dad after they beat us, Leavell.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
And my dad went out to dinner to I mean
just a different, different world, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
That's awesome. Yeah, I remember they had that friendship. So well,
thank you again, Jay and guys joined it. Look wherever
you go, and good luck to whoever becomes the new
head coach. And I'm sure you guys will be back
on top before too long.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Appreciate it. Thanks very much, Thank you, sir. Thank you.