Sept. 11, 2008
Opening statement: First, let me say that we've never worked so hard for an open date, and that we will remain undefeated this weekend. It's good that a decision is made. I found out last night right after the radio show, so it was very late. We tried to text and e-mail the players immediately, and tried to get to the families immediately so they would know at least that if they made plans to be here Saturday for the game we would change those. Then you have to try to get in contact with recruits and you can't call them since you've got one call per week, most of those calls are in the first of the week, so we had to e-mail those prospects immediately and let them know. Those were the initial thoughts. After that, we had to start on Rice this morning. We met as a staff at 7:00 this morning and pulled out Rice film and started working on a game plan for Rice, and we'll treat this now like an open date and start working on Rice at practice here in a few minutes. We'll practice today, and then we will have a team meeting afterwards. In that team meeting, we will tell them they will be off Friday and they will be off Saturday, and we will come back and practice Sunday night because we felt like that hopefully this storm will be through. In that meeting, we will go over why we felt like the decision was made, we will go over what we see of the hurricane right now and where it is and where it looks like it's going and try to bring them up to date because many of them have been in class all day and would not have seen it. Then we will talk to every player and find out if he's planning on going home, if his parents know it, if he is leaving here, where is he going, why is he going, and make sure that he tells us when he leaves, he calls us when he gets to wherever he's going so we know he's safe. There will be so many people on the road; we'll encourage them not to go anywhere because we're not sure what will happen with this storm.
Also, a lot of the players' families will come to Austin from the Gulf Coast because it happened a couple weeks ago when Gustav was headed that way, and I'm sure they'll stay in hotels or they'll stay with some of the players, because that happened a couple weeks ago, as well. We'll encourage them to go to class in the morning, we'll check class very closely, but they will be off Friday. We'll just monitor where they are and what they're doing. We will give them games that impact us this weekend that we'd like for them to watch, and coaches will do the same. Most of our coaches' weekend will be working on Rice because we're behind for what would normally be an open date weekend. That's why we'd rather come back and work on Sunday, and then give them off Monday to try to let them get their legs back.
We've got a few guys that are banged up, so from that standpoint, this is a positive. I'm sure if you talked to DeLoss (Dodds) and President Powers, the decision was made on the side of precaution for safety of all those that are evacuating and on the road and trying to not be a negative for a very, very difficult situation. It wasn't about football, it was about people. It was about their lives and their homes. Both teams were lucky that we do have an open date two weeks from now. The other thing, Arkansas is a young team. They'll have a chance to have another game under their belt before they play, we'll have the same. We've got a lot of young players on our team, so both teams will probably benefit from that standpoint. Other than the inconvenience for a lot of people, the only negative is that it takes away from the open date. It is what it is, so the open date will not be used later in the season. You'd rather have it in the middle of the season if you could, just to make sure everybody has a chance to breathe, and we'll have nine straight games. It is what it is, so we just told the players to move forward with that. I will meet with them after practice today and give them all these things because we have not met with them as a team yet, and then we'll eat dinner together tonight and make sure that they understand where we're coming from.
On how the preparations for Rice have changed: Well, normally you would have been working on Rice Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and now we're starting to work on them Friday morning. You're ahead of what you would have in a normal week but you're behind on what you would do in an open date week. The good thing is, usually with open dates you work on three or four teams down the road as well, so we have touched some of the Rice stuff and we're playing the same staff and a lot of the same players as last year.
On where the coaches will work from over the weekend: It's so good now; everybody's got the videos set up where they can take them home with them. They'll meet tomorrow and they'll work hard together, and them some will take them home. You've got different guys that work on different things. You don't always have to be in the same room to do that, so a lot of guys can work at home.
On if postponing the game has been draining to the team and the staff: It's very emotionally draining. I've never had it happen, so it's new ground for us and for me. When I heard last night, we texted all the players and a bunch of them called and said this is so disappointing and it's bad, and we said we'd like to play, too. That's part of the deal. We call it sudden change on the sideline when something happens and a new team has to go out, so this will be a sudden change deal. We've just got to manage it and handle it. The thing that we will explain to the players today is - how selfish of us to feel sorry ourselves that we don't get to play. There are a lot of people this weekend that have got a lot more problems than we have and we need to pray for them.
On how this will affect the team in a football sense: The fact that you're working on your depth but when a guy gets banged up, we always felt like the open date, if it was halfway between, just gave you a chance to rest your mind and your body, and we just won't have that now. This made a very difficult schedule more difficult for both us and Arkansas. They've got Alabama next week, then they've got us, Florida and Auburn. It wasn't a positive for either team, but that's something that couldn't have been used in the formula to figure out what was best.
On when he would prefer to have an open date: If we could have an open date in the middle of the season, we would have it. The Oklahoma game is so emotional for both Texas and Oklahoma; we'd like to have it either before or after that game. That's what you'd like because that sets the middle of the season apart from the rest of it, because that's usually a game that means so much. Obviously, it's not an issue this year.
On how this week will differ from a normal open week: We have normally practiced on Monday and taken Sunday off, but we felt like that the last couple times we haven't had as much juice on Saturday after a couple open date games as we'd like, so we're going back and reevaluating, and maybe it's because we practiced hard Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and went into the game a little bit tired. We feel like this is something we'll sell the players on, by practicing today on Rice, practicing Sunday on Rice, taking Monday off, it gets it back more of a normal week.
On if postponing the game is frustrating to him: When you think about the people that are really frustrated, they're the ones that are having to get up and leave their businesses and leave their homes and may not have a home when they get back. Again, I think that it would be very selfish of any football coach or football player to think that this might have inconvenienced them. We're still going to get to play. It's a change, it's something that we've got to deal with, but I think it is very, very minor when we look at the scope of what's going on in the Gulf Coast this weekend. Again, I don't even think football should be a factor.
On if any players plan on going home this weekend: I don't think anybody will go east. When Gustav was coming this way, most of those families came here, and this will be much safer. They've cancelled most of the high school games, I think, in the Houston area. Our coaches may go north recruiting but they're not going to go east recruiting. We're going to tell our players today to make sure they talk to their parents and have great communication. Really, we'd rather no one go home because the amount of people that are going to be overcrowded on the roads. Even getting back in here on Sunday, we're not sure how the weather will be Saturday, much less Sunday. The best thing for our guys to do would be have a great weekend watching ballgames and be safe and hopefully their parents can come here. If some do want to go home and they feel like they can get there, we're just going to ask them to try to get a great head start coming back so if they get in traffic, they won't have to rush.
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