	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 7, 2016

Waco, Texas

THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to you. We appreciate you being here today on this exciting day for Baylor University, Baylor athletics and Baylor football. Welcome to you. Let me say a word of thanks and welcome to our honored guests that are here today. Thanks to the Baylor Golden Way band. We appreciate you being here and adding to our festive atmosphere. Thanks to our song leaders and yell leaders. We appreciate you being here today. Thanks to and welcome, Coach Jim Grobe and his wife Holly. Coach Grobe, we appreciate you very much. And let's say thanks and welcome to the 2016 Baylor Bears. Welcome to you. Bowl eligible for a school record seventh consecutive year.

Let me bring a few folks up to the dais today. First off, Baylor's interim president, Dr. David Garland. Dr. Garland, welcome to you. Baylor's vice president and director of athletics Mack Rhoades and his wife Amy. And join me in welcoming new Baylor head football coach, Matt Rhule and his wife Julie. Welcome, Coach Rhule.

Welcome. We appreciate everyone being here, everyone watching on the live stream, as well. Let me bring to the podium Baylor's interim president. Welcome Dr. David Garland.

DAVID GARLAND: Thank you all. I want to welcome you to this celebration, and I want to welcome the newest member of our Baylor family, Coach Matt Rhule and his family here today.

The Christian mission of Baylor University permeates all we do in the hiring of our staff, our faculty, and our coaches, and I do want to thank especially our athletic director Mack Rhoades for his excellent work in finding such an outstanding coach for us. He knew that when he was hired that was going to be his primary assignment to identify a coach, and I am so incredibly grateful to him. I knew that when we hired him that he was going to be one of the best athletic directors in the country, and he has done so by hiring a great coach like Matt Rhule.

I have to confess that I attended the Naval Academy, and I watched the game, the American Athletic Championship game last Saturday, where Navy was ranked 19th. They'd beaten Notre Dame and they'd beaten Houston, and I was very, very, very disappointed as a team from Temple was absolutely smothering the offense of Navy.

Today -- oh, and the announcers were going on about what a great coach this Temple coach was, how he had built this program up. And today that coach is our coach. I am no longer disappointed. I do think -- I do plan to open up a T-shirt shop pretty soon because I think these are going to sell real well. Baylor Rhules, the Rhule of Law, the Green and Golden Rhule. You'll see, they're going to sell.

But I also want to say that our student-athletes deserve the absolute best Christian coaches. I want to say something to our football team. I am so very, very proud of you. You have overcome, and you have won, and we are supporting you as you go to our seventh bowl game.

I want to thank Coach Grobe for all that he has done this year. Thank you very much.

THE MODERATOR: Dr. Garland, thank you very much. Now please welcome Baylor's vice president and director of athletics, Mack Rhoades.

MACK RHOADES: Thank you, John, and welcome. What a fabulous, wonderful, glorious day it is. I am so excited and honored to be here. God is great. He absolutely rules. (Laughter.)

You know, when you embark upon a journey like this, there's certainly a lot of people that provide help and support, and so if you'll bear with me, that was no pun intended, I would certainly -- if you can indulge me and allow me just to introduce or thank some of the people that have been such a part of this.

First and foremost, I want to thank Baylor Nation. The emails, the prayers, all of the prayers, there's no way I could mess this up. So thank you to Baylor Nation. Dr. Garland, I appreciate your support, your friendship, and your prayers, as well. Our regents, our leadership of the university, again, thank you for allowing me to do my job. Coach Teaff could not be here with us today, and he certainly regrets that, and I know that Coach Rhule and him had a chance, an opportunity to visit, and he's in New York City, and I think everybody knows that he was honored last night by the National Football Foundation, but he is so thrilled and happy with the hiring of Coach Rhule.

Dave Campbell I believe is here somewhere. Dave, thank you for being such a great friend to Baylor athletics. As everybody knows, Dave is the father of Texas Football Monthly, and we appreciate you.

Todd Patterson, I'm not sure Todd wanted me to thank him, but Todd and Amy Patterson, they provided our transportation, and it was pretty good transportation, and it allowed us to go and fly wherever we needed to fly and certainly do this efficiently and under radar and do it with the class that Baylor deserves.

Trace Armstrong is here. He's a friend of both Matt Rhule and I. It's a gentleman that I've known for five or six years. I certainly think he is the best in the country in the way he represents coaches, players, et cetera. Trace, thank you for being here.

Coach Grobe, I know you already got a standing ovation. Well-deserved, by the way. But can you stand again, Coach Grobe and Holly? Please stand again.

(Applause.)

We have some other head coaches with us, and as I was beginning to think about just the hiring process, I really thought about, we've got to hire somebody that is absolutely great, off the charts, because we have unbelievable head coaches. Some of them are here with us today, but think about this:

Right now, right now, we have the No. 3 ranked women's basketball team in the nation. I don't know if Kim Mulkey is here. Where is Kim? There she is. She is an unbelievable basketball coach but not very good at following directions. She was supposed to be sitting down here.

I know that Coach Drew is here. We just happen to have the No. 4 ranked team in the country right now. Cross country just went to its ninth final site in 16 years. Where is Todd Harbour? Is he here? Cross country, great job. And all of our other head coaches, thank you for what you do and the way you prepare champions for life.

You know, when you embark on something like this, you certainly try to surround yourself with people that are much smarter than you are, and I was blessed to be able to surround myself with people that were smarter than me. The four gentlemen that were on the journey with me and helped me to come to a really, really great conclusion, again, I'd like to list them by person.

First and foremost, Walter Abercrombie. Walter, thank you. We provided this marketing pamphlet for our candidates, and in there is a picture of Walter when he played, and I think Coach Rhule commented that he looked really good with that 30-inch waist. But Walter, appreciate you.

Where is Doug McNamee? Doug did an unbelievable job, handled all the logistics, and certainly he was a tremendous, tremendous help with everything we did.

Todd Patulski, where is Todd? Todd provided all of the numbers and data and historical just perspective on who we are as an institution, so thank you, Todd.

And then finally regent Larry Heard for your great wisdom, friendship, and guidance. Thank you. Please stand.

And finally, okay, I saved the best for last, my wife Amy. How are you doing? I haven't seen you in five days. It's good to see you.

You know, I had an opportunity before we started this search to meet with about eight to ten football players, players that were part of -- or we considered part of a leadership group, and we talked about the next head football coach and what we were looking for. We certainly talked about that goal, that next vision of winning a championship, and why not. Why not? That should be our goal.

As we look forward and we move this program forward, winning a National Championship absolutely should be our goal. But we also talked about the kind of person, okay. The man that we were looking for in terms of leading our program. Somebody that was -- and we used the L word. We used love, somebody that was going to love them, love them as a football player, but also love them as a person. Somebody that is extremely demanding, that is going to push our student-athletes, our young men to be the best that they can be in everything we do. And our football team right here, thank you for being here, and again, one last round of applause for you and everything you do.

(Applause.)

Baylor is a special place, and it deserves a special coach. The committee, we prayed about it, and we asked God to please lead us, direct us, help us find that right person to lead our football program. And we found him. He is a committed Christian. He is a man of great integrity, great work ethic, a man that has an insatiable appetite for greatness and for excellence, to always be the best, a person that can relate with all walks of life.

You know, we talk about recruiting in the state of Texas. We have -- this state is blessed to have the best high school coaches in the country. And I know this: I know that our high school football coaches in this state want a man that is going to take care of their players when they hand them off to Baylor. They want somebody that knows football, that's going to be respectful, and we found that man. And I'm going to read something, and I'll get off my phone, but this was a text that I received today from a high school football coach that I don't even know. "Good morning from Texas." I won't name the city, and it wasn't Waco. "As a football coach in the state of Texas for 40 years, and from one that loves Baylor and Waco along with our great state," great in all caps, "great job on bringing a favorite study of mine to be the head football coach at Baylor University. He is a class act. The Bears did well."

He builds teams. He'll bring toughness, and finally, he will prepare champions for life. Athletic excellence, academic achievement, social responsibility, and yes, spiritual growth.

Please join me in welcoming the only person we offered the job to, okay. We are blessed that he is our football coach. Please, again, help me welcome Coach Rhule, his family, Julie, Gloria, and his parents to Baylor University. Head Coach Matt Rhule.

MATT RHULE: You might not believe, but there was a time when I wore No. 98. I was a little bit bigger in this area, a little bit less in some other areas. I was in a little bit better shape back then, but I'm so blessed to be here. It's been a crazy couple days.

The hardest part was I got a phone call yesterday from my wife, and I'm sitting in the office, I'm trying to start recruiting, trying to start watching these fantastic football players. I'm trying to say goodbye to Temple, and she emphatically told me that we had to go downtown and go clothes shopping. I tried on about 12 green blazers and five green ties because I plan on wearing green for a while. So it's been a wonderful time, so thank you.

On behalf of my wife Julie, my son Bryant, my mother Gloria, my father Denny, my two little girls Vivie and Leona who are banished back to the hotel because they couldn't handle this, we are truly honored to stand here with you and for me to stand here as the head coach at Baylor. I promise to take care of this program that belongs to so many of you, and I'm so grateful that you guys would entrust me with this tremendous team and tremendous group of young men.

I want to thank Dr. Garland for his leadership. I want to thank Mack Rhoades, who was first-class and his team in every way in this process. He's one of the major reasons why I chose to come here. I believe in him. I believe in the men that I met, and I believe in the athletic and leadership at Baylor. There's been a tremendous amount of outpouring of support from Baylor Nation, people that I don't even know, from coaches from other teams, from people in the community, and I'm so grateful, you've made Julie and I feel just so, so welcome. From the athletic department, just to think that today I'm sitting on the phone talking to Grant Taft, one of my idols, to think that next week I'm going to sit down tomorrow or the day after and have a chance to sit down and visit with him, that he blessed me as the head coach is just such an honor for me.

I want to thank Jim Grobe, who took a few minutes to spend some time with me as we were going through this process. What a tremendous man. One of the gentlemen coaches, the guys that we learn from, and I'm so, so grateful for him.

I'm grateful for a chance to meet these young men, to have a chance to coach them, some of whom will graduate and be gone. But they've been through this year. The character that they've showed says a lot about who they are. I just had a chance to meet them. They're pretty cool guys. I don't know what they think about me yet. We'll work on that as time goes on.

I want to thank Coach Briles and his staff for bringing these young men to Baylor. And if you'd allow me, I'd like to thank the people of Philadelphia and the people at Temple. I spent 10 years of my life. I cheated for a small time and went to the NFL and came back, but I spent 10 years of my life there as an assistant and as the head coach. All of the leadership, all the people in the athletic department, the people on campus, the students, the fans, they were such a wonderful part of our lives. All the high school coaches in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and New Jersey who supported us, and finally my players. They'll be my players forever. I love them.

It was one of the hardest things I did yesterday to say goodbye, but I knew that our job was done there, our time was over. Those kids went from 2-10 to 6-6 to the winningest two-year stretch at Temple, and I say that because I know they're watching and they know how proud I am of them. They won a championship on Saturday, but they were, as Mack says, they were champions way before that. They're champions for life, and I look forward to watching them as I know they'll be watching us.

It's always hard when you say -- I know people are saying why Matt Rhule, and people are saying to me, hey, Matt, why Baylor. I had some opportunities. We sat there, my wife and I in a restaurant in New York City, one phone in one hand, one phone in the other. We said, where do we go, what do we do, where are we being called. Where does God want us to be? And we looked at each other over a plate of ponzu shrimp, and figured out right then in our hearts we were called to come to Baylor, so why.

So I don't really know how to say it other than to kind of tell you why I want to be here. I woke up this morning, and we're getting ready to try to load three kids and get on a plane and fly to Waco, and I had like these memories of a time in my life. I was about four years old, and my parents were -- growing up in Pennsylvania, we were living in Kansas City where my dad went to seminary, and I had this memory of us kind of packing the car, and then my next memory is like being in the back of the car like literally all the way in the back, that was before like you had to wear a seatbelt at the time and things weren't quite as safe in those days, and I remember like seeing the Empire State Building. I remember seeing the bridge. I remember seeing the city.

And I remember that night, like sleeping in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, a beautiful place but not the nicest, not the glamorous, not the highrise, where the person comes up to the door and says, come on in. I'm talking about the place where you buzz yourself in. And I remember sitting there saying, where are we.

But see, my dad was a football coach, and he was a minister. He's a man who spent his life serving others on the football field, in the church, in the youth center that he ran in Times Square in one of the tough neighborhoods in New York City. And he showed me at an early age that we serve God in whatever way we're called to do it, and it doesn't matter where you go. It doesn't matter if you're in Kansas City and when you're called to go to New York City, you go to New York City. And whether my dad or my mom, who has spent her whole life working with women in crisis, doesn't matter if they're in Rwanda, which they go to every year to work at an orphanage, doesn't matter if they're in Philadelphia this year with my team. They told me that serving others and excellence and greatness knows no borders. So when we were called to come here, we came.

Coaching takes you all over the place, and I almost had to write all these things down. Julie and I met at Penn State where I was blessed to play for Coach Paterno, and from Penn State we went to Reading, Albright College. We went to University of Buffalo. There was a lot of snow there. We went to Los Angeles, there's not very much snow there. We went to the hills of western North Carolina. She worked in Atlanta. We went to Philly. We went to the NFL, and then we came back to Philly. See, we've gone wherever we've been called to go, and everywhere we've gone, it's been such a blessing to us in our lives, and I learned that from my parents.

So when the call came to come here, we came. And we came because we have one purpose. I'm here very simply this: To develop and work with these young people. I'm here to coach football, and I'm here to be the best partner that I can for Baylor.

I also came because if you're a high school coach, you want to be around the best. If you're a college coach, you want to be around the best. And I wanted to come to a state, the great state of Texas, where high school football is better than anywhere else in the country. I wanted to come be around the best high school coaches in the country.

See, what people don't understand is that high school coaches all across the country, everywhere, no one does more for young people now than high school coaches. They develop them. They love them. They coach them. They invest their time in them. They pick them up when they're down. They help them when they need help. They're there for them every step of the way, win, lose or draw.

I know that because my dad is a high school football coach. I know that because my uncle is in the Pennsylvania High School Coaches' Hall of Fame. I know that because my cousin is a high school football coach. I saw as I grew up that's what I want to be. I want to work with kids, and I want to win.

No one does that better than the high school coaches here in Texas. They care for their players, and they love football.

So as I stand here, I want the coaches and the players that we're going to go out and recruit, the coaches that we're going to visit with to know that we're all about the same thing. If you come to Baylor and you come to play for me, that you're going to get loved and you're going to get developed each and every day because that's hard. That's not easy. Coaches say that but they don't always want to do that. But that's all that we did at Temple. That's all we're going to do at Baylor because that's our purpose, to spend all of our time developing our players.

So now what's next? What's next? What do we have in store? What's our plan?

We're just going to build. I mean, in uncertain times when there's transition, I think you just take your two hands and you just start to build. Each and every year you build a new team. No matter what you did the year before, you start over from scratch and you build. You know it's going to be hard. You know it's not going to be easy. You know it takes time. You know it takes energy. You know there's going to be adversity along the way, but you just keep trying to build, and we're going to try to build in three ways.

Number one, we're going to try to build great men. I'm not a perfect man. I'm just trying to be. I don't know that I'm a great man, but I'm trying to be. And that's what we want for the young people that we're around. We want to lead the way, but we want to develop them. We want to develop them as people. We want to develop their character. We want to help them in their spiritual walk. We want them to be accountable, to have integrity, to be honest, to be someone who can say things that you don't want to say. I just met with the team, I said, hey, tell me what you got to say.

We want to develop them as students. We want them to be proud of the education that they get. We want them to leave feeling like you know what, I came here better than when I left; I can get the job that I want. I had the education that I want. I can have the future that I want.

And then we want to develop them as players. I want them to play pro football. I want them to be the best of the best. We're going to develop them in those three ways. We're going to build men. We're going to build a team.

I want to win. These guys want to win. I want to win. And we're going to do that by building a team. We're going to be the toughest, hardest working, most competitive team in the country because that stands against anything else. Doesn't matter who you're playing, doesn't matter when you're playing, doesn't matter the weather. It doesn't matter what happened. Real teams win when someone is hurt. Real teams win when they're behind. Real teams win on the road. So we're going to build a team that wins, that's tough, that works hard and that's competitive.

We're going to bring the No. 3 ranked defense in the country here. We're going to play great defense, and we're going to have a dynamic offense. Some of the guys started getting a little nervous when I walked in because they saw the Navy game and saw us run it like 72 times. I learned very quickly from Coach Coughlin that you take your great players and you let them be great. So we're going to have a tremendous defense. We're going to have a dynamic offense, and we're going to be a team that doesn't beat itself.

And then finally, at the end of the day, and it's been really, really great for me to talk to some of the Baylor players that are in the NFL who are just out and see how proud they are of those guys and how excited they are for the future. We want to be a team that makes everybody proud, whether you're sitting in the stands, whether you're watching the game, whether you're checking the score on your phone, whether you played here. When you watch us play, I want you to say to yourself, that's my team. They play the way I want them to play. Every game doesn't go your way. But win, lose or draw, I want us all to be proud of the way that our team plays the game.

We want to build great men. We want to build a great team. And then finally, we want to build a great program. See, teams come and go, but great programs are marked by the longevity. They're marked by how many great teams they put back to back.

And there's about six things we want from this program. Number one, we want to win championships. We want to win the Big 12 Championship. We want to win the National Championship. I didn't come here for anything else. We want to win at the highest level because we should.

(Applause.)

But at the same time, with a great program, we want to educate and graduate our players. I take a minute to distinguish between those because you don't come to college just to get a piece of paper. That's part of it. You come to college to get an education. You come to college to learn how to learn. You come to college to study what you want to study. You want to leave here not just saying I did it, but hey, I made the most out of it. I can get the job that I want. I was a part of the campus community. I learned how to learn, and I loved my time. I'm better for having come here. We want to educate and graduate players. We want to represent and respect Baylor. We want to walk down the street. We want everyone to walk down the street in their Baylor gear and just feel so proud about our football team. We want to be a part, not just of the football community but the overall community. We want everyone to be so proud, as you already are, of these young men and everything that they go through to accomplish all the things I'm talking about. We want to impact the community, and Baylor is already known for its commitment to service.

But in every way, we're going to try to make sure that these guys understand that giving is the ultimate form of living, and I can see already that they understand it now. We want to give back to the community. We want to affect the lives of little kids. You know what, you never know when you meet a little kid what he's been through, what he's going through, and sometimes just seeing one of their heroes and their hero actually spending some time with them, man, that can change a kid's life, and when you change a kid's life, you change the world, and that's what these guys and I am proud to be able to do.

Two more now, and I'm a little long-winded. I said my dad was a preacher, so I come by -- my dad is a preacher, my mom is Italian, so I come by it naturally. Sorry, mom.

We want to develop pros. We want our guys to have a chance to go play pro football. And if God didn't bless them with the ability to go play pro football, I want them to be pros in whatever else they choose in their life. See, being a pro isn't about being the fastest. It isn't about just where you get drafted. It's about how long you play. It's about how the team wants you. Are you a guy that maximizes your ability? If you were supposed to be in the NFL for five years, do you stay for eight? Do you know how to take notes? Do you have attention to detail? Can you look a coach in the eye? Do you have to be on your phone while you talk to the coach or can you hold a conversation with him? That is how you maximize your pro career, that is how you maximize your career. That is what we want to get done.

I'm proud of our kids at Temple. We'll have probably two kids go in the first two rounds. Neither one of them had an offer from anyone else. But they spent four years developing themselves every day by competing, by trying to be the best that they could be.

And the last thing is we want to have fun while we do this. A lot of this isn't very fun. A lot of this is -- as I told them, we're going to compete every day. We're going to go out there, we're going to work harder than anybody else in the country. We're going to walk into games we've put more into it than the people we play against. But when you have a chance, you have to have fun.

While winning is fun, you know what's fun? Grinding with your brothers, spending time with the guy next to you in something that's hard, fighting for something that everybody believes in. We want to have fun. Coaches aren't going to just be coaches. We're going to be partners. I told those guys already, my jump shot is ready, my 2K game is ready, my ping-pong game is beyond ready. We're going to have fun and compete in everything that we do.

When all that's done, when you have a program that does all that, you can look at your team, and they're going to win a lot of games and they're going to win championships, but when you see the team walking off the field playing the game as hard as they can possibly play it to the best of their ability, when you see them cross the stage, when you see them out in the community, you can say to yourself, I'm proud of those guys. Those guys are champions.

Sic 'em, Bears.

THE MODERATOR: Coach has already had a little Texas barbecue today. Coach, there's something we like to do around here. It's a sign of pride. It's a sign of unity, and we lift our bear claw, and who's going to lead us? Okay, I'll do it. Let's show him. Let's give him his first sic 'em, Bears, right here. Sick 'em, Bears! Way to go, Coach. All right.

Coach, we're so glad you're here. We're going to move into a media portion of our celebration today.

Q. Matt, what attracted you to this job, and what challenges do you feel like you face?
MATT RHULE: Well, I think the thing that attracted to us, again, as I said was we just felt called to be here. It's a world-class university. I knew Mack was here. I love the people that I met. But I think at the end of the day, it was an opportunity for me to coach football and still -- and outwardly embrace my faith, as well, and I think there's no greater calling for me right now than to do that.

In terms of challenges, I kind of just got my boots on the ground. I have a lot to figure out. I have to figure out sort of the roster. There's some guys gone, numbers are down a little bit. So I have to really get in the process of recruiting and trying to make sure that we are at full strength roster-wise. But I'll probably have a little bit better answer to some of those things in a week or so.

Q. At Temple you guys took guys that were one-, two-, three-star recruits and really developed them into great players. How does that translate to a Power Five conference and what you expect to have to do here at Baylor?
MATT RHULE: Well, I think one of two things. Number one, we developed the players because of the way we practiced and competed. I'm proud to say this. I've had NFL coaches, I've had NFL GM's say to me, Matt, just don't change the way you practice if you go there and you'll be really successful. I don't know how we practiced before, but we practiced in a way at Temple which I kind of learned from Pete Carroll at USC where everything matters. You compete in everything. And to me when you do that, iron sharpens iron, you get better and better and better as opposed to maybe just some other ways that some people across the country are doing it.

In terms of the one- and two-star piece, we're going to trust our own evaluations. We're going to intimately get to know all the players that we recruit and just make a decision based upon is this a guy that can develop into one of those pro guys.

Q. Matt, how have you handled player discipline issues in the past?
MATT RHULE: So I've always handled it on sort of a case-by-case basis. I've tried to do what I felt was right within certain parameters, right, so there were some sort of non-negotiable things, but at the end of the day, we just tried to deal with each kid based upon the real reality of what we knew about each thing that happened. We handled it that way.

Q. Matt, the Big 12 is known for its dynamic offenses, maybe not great defenses. But I know you're No. 3 in the country in total defense. How do you plan to adapt the way you coach around the state of Texas athletes that are produced here and the way football is played here?
MATT RHULE: Well, the one thing -- and I've had a tremendous opportunity to start to watch Texas high school football. The one thing I know is it's physical, and so I think any time you have players that are committed to being physical, you can play great offense and you can play great defense.

We believe and I believe that you can do both. You can play great defense, and you can still be dynamic on offense. You know, I might have to change sort of my end-of-game mentality. I came from Coach Paterno and Coach Coughlin, like we'd get up on people, and I might be a little respectful of the score, so maybe to keep these guys happy we'll try to score a fewer more touchdowns at the end of games, but we're going to seek to be potent on both sides of the ball.

Q. You talked about hitting the ground running. What is your first order of business as far as priority that you need to do when you get here, when you officially hit the ground running here?
MATT RHULE: I think the first and most important piece is the players, right. I mean, these transitions are always hard so I wanted to have a chance to address them, and hopefully at some point meet with each guy one-on-one based upon their schedules. And then the second thing is really staff and recruiting, so I'm going to make sure I meet with the current staff, but really at the end of the day, I want to start hitting the road recruiting, and that started once I got the job on the phone and evaluations. But we only have a couple days left in this early recruiting period, really through Sunday, so we're going to try to maximize that. I'm going to try to maximize that as best I can.

Q. Matt, you mentioned Coach Paterno. Who are some of your coaching mentors? Who did you learn from along the way?
MATT RHULE: Well, I'd say that one of the biggest impacts on me other than Coach Paterno would be Tom Coughlin. My time in the NFL was brief but it was like a Ph.D. in how to be a head coach. The thing about Coach Coughlin is he was never emotional with his decision making. He might be emotional towards the referees or might be emotional with the coaches or in the locker room, but he was never emotional about his decision making, and then I loved the way he treated his players. He was unbelievably demanding. If you walked in a minute late, you were going to get fined. If you were a pound overweight, you were going to get fined. But at the end of the day, he had great relationships with the players. He spent a lot of time with them, and when I came back to college football, I said, that's exactly how I'm going to do it.

Q. If you had a message, if you had a promise that you could give to the students of Baylor and the rest of Baylor Nation, what would that be?
MATT RHULE: If I had to give a promise to the students at Baylor? Just what I said, that our entire, our entire mentality is to build a program that everyone can be proud of, both on the field, in the classroom and in the community. You know, to me that's a day-by-day process of development. That's a day-by-day process of recognizing all the kids that are doing everything right. That's a day-by-day process of making sure that we build relationships. What I don't want is the football program over here and everybody else over here. The true experience of coming to college and coming to Baylor is making sure that everybody builds a relationship with everybody.

Q. You spent a lot of time talking about development of players. I'm wondering what's going to change on day one when you hit the ground, and what is your role and how can you address some of the failings of the program considering the last year?
MATT RHULE: Well, you know, everything I'm going to do is moving forward. I don't really -- I just want to -- I met all the kids, I had to ask them their name. This is such a tremendous opportunity for me to have a great start and a great new relationship with all these guys. Everything I do is just moving forward, and just what I talked about. I think that's the only way I know how to build something is never to look back but always to look forward.

Q. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like maybe the campus is a little fractured. How do you go about bringing everybody together and getting them on the same page in light of what happened here the last year plus?
MATT RHULE: Well, I think at the end of the day for me, and it's hard for me because I don't know everything. I'm going to maybe have to defer to some other people, but what I do know is this: You do the things that you say you're going to do. You build relationships with people. You invest in the community. You invest in the campus. And then you know what, typically everyone comes together. But it would be hard for me to start speculating on things just with me sort of first getting here. But I do know this: All we can control is what we can control, and that's our effort, that's us, what we're doing as a football program and as football coaches.

Q. Clearly in recruiting at Temple in Pennsylvania and New Jersey you've had a lot of inroads there. How do you turn that around and in Texas, a very highly competitive market area to recruit, how do you get your foot in there and how do you do it so quickly?
MATT RHULE: So you're saying to me coming from Pennsylvania how do I do it here? Yeah, it's been fantastic to me with some of the coaches already reaching out to me. I think there's a couple things I've learned in the last couple days. Number one, a lot of kids want to come to Baylor. The brand itself, there's kids reaching out to us. There's kids that were thinking about coming and they're waiting to see. They want to play with these guys and they want to play at Baylor.

Number two, one of the reasons why I came is Texas high school football coaches love football. So if you're a guy that's about ball, I'm not glad-handling car salesman guy, I'm a football guy, so guys that I know and trust in the state assured me, coaches are going to love you, just be you.

And then the third thing is we'll have some guys on the staff with Texas ties, we had some guys on my staff at Temple had Texas ties, so we'll make sure that we have that tie. But at the end of the day, to me recruiting is about making the proper evaluations, taking the right kids, and it's about building tremendous relationships. And to me that's about who you are as a person, and that's what the guys in Texas have assured me so far when I came here.

Q. Any kind of Charlie Strong rules that you'll be having for the players, any kind of rules that you will have in terms of discipline?
MATT RHULE: I don't know that I know Coach Strong's rules, so I'd probably be speaking out of turn. I think most of my rules with my kids have been pretty fair. At the end of the day, what I want is I want my kids to be the best men that they can be. I want them to be kind to other people. I don't tolerate people being disrespectful or bullyish to other people. But at the end of the day, each situation is different to me, and so I think there's some non-negotiable things that you can't do. You can't hurt women. You can't hurt people that are less fortunate than you. You can't bully other people. You know, that was kind of the way I handled it at Temple. I'll handle it the same way.

I think the biggest thing, though, is starting to really invest in these guys' lives because these guys are great kids who are doing everything right. These kids deserve to have a chance to have someone stand up for them. So what I will say is this: The reason why I say like, hey, I had other opportunities is not about me, but I want to stand up for those players and say like, you know what, don't believe everything -- these guys are guys that are doing it right. They're going to a bowl game, by the way, despite some turbulence in terms of what people are saying. KD Cannon promised me that they're going to win the bowl game, so there we go.

Q. Matt, will you bring in a whole new staff, or will you consider coaches from the current staff?
MATT RHULE: Will I be bringing my coaches or the -- I have not even -- I really just got here. I just kind of told everybody, hey, I don't know much about staff yet. Everything I do in my mind is a process, right, so there's coaches on my staff, I think they're all great. There's some that might be a better fit. I want to meet the coaches here, and then there's coaches here with Texas ties in the state of Texas, high school coaches, college coaches, and I just want to make a very deliberate decision, much like the decision I made to come here. I'll meet with people and I'll hire the people I think I'm called to hire.

Q. Can you tell us when Baylor contacted you and sort of -- did you speak to Mack Rhoades in New York, or where did you meet?
MATT RHULE: I defer that question to him. I don't want to get on his wrong side on the first day.

MACK RHOADES: I don't remember. You know, Matt and my relationship goes back just when I was at Houston and he was at Temple, and just in the same conference and seeing each other at conference meetings and just always had great, great respect for him. I texted him after they beat Navy. I'm sorry, Dr. Garland, but after they beat Navy and just told him congratulations. He's just -- and you can tell why. He's just a guy that I just had great, great respect for as, first and foremost, a person, but also as a football coach.

You know, I think it was 30 minutes into the interview where in my gut, in my heart, in my mind, this is our guy.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297