Talent is talent, and everybody knows somebody who has talent or ability, but they never really converted it into a productive performance for whatever reasons.
I don’t think I’m complicated at all. I’m not political, and I’m not trying to be diplomatic. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, and I don’t say bad things about people. There is no agenda. There’s no trying to fool somebody.
People talk about you won four national championships. Well, I feel like we’ve had good enough teams to win eight. So I feel like we failed four times. I feel like I failed four times.
I feel like I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.
I guess I’m motivated by the fear of failure to some degree and knowing what can happen when you don’t do things the way you need to do them to have success.
I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn’t seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.
Now do I get some time off? Do I get a bonus? Do I get to go on a cruise? But it’s not to keep trying to be the best. That’s not necessarily human nature.
I don’t know if I’m different from everybody else, but there’s really only two things to me that are really, really important – recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.
But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.
There needs to be somebody that looks out for what’s best for the game, not what’s best for the Big 10 or what’s best for the SEC or what’s best for Jim Harbaugh, but what’s best for the game of college football – the integrity of the game, the coaches, the players, and the people that play it.
One of the easiest shots in golf is chipping. It should be the easiest. It’s like throwing a ball or pitching pennies. It’s easy. And I struggle with that, and the struggle is all mental.
