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BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 5, 2010Gene ChizikChip KellyTONY ALBA: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tony Alba. I am the director of media operations for the Fiesta Bowl. First of all, extend our congratulations to Auburn and Oregon for their berth in the 2011 Tostitos National Championship game. I'd like to introduce Auburn head football, Coach Gene Chizik, and I believe he's joined by their media contact person. COACH CHIZIK: Obviously, this is just an exciting time for the Auburn family, obviously for our coaches and players. For our fan base who has waited so long for this opportunity, we just feel very blessed to be able to be involved in this game. It's going to be a great bowl playing against a great football team, and just feel very fortunate to be able to play in this game and to be able to have a chance to accomplish the goals that we set forth a long time ago. So proud for our players, and proud obviously for our coaches and our fan base. TONY ALBA: Thank you, Coach. Coach Kelly, will you make an opening statement for us, please? COACH KELLY: Yes, it's a real honor for us at Oregon to be selected to play in this game. We have the utmost respect for Coach Chizik and the Auburn football team. Got a chance to see just a little bit of them, and you can tell it's a well-coached team that plays the game. They've got a ton of resiliency. You just look at the scores and you can tell. Not just proud of our players, but we set out a long time ago that we have a vision for this football program, and we prepare for that vision and go out and compete for that vision. I told our guys to keep their heads up until December 5th and find out where we'll be. And we're fortunate to be in Glendale, Arizona playing against a really good team. It's going to be a huge challenge, but we embrace that challenge. Q. Gene, just what it means to be at this stage so young, so early in your career after being there only two years to get this far so quickly? COACH CHIZIK: I just feel blessed, guys, as I've said so many times. It all starts with great leadership at the top for us. With our president, Dr. Gogue, and our athletic director, Jay Jacobson, And it really just trickles down. Again, we feel very blessed to be in this game. You know, whether you're in your second year or your 20th year, it's just an extremely difficult game to get to. You can coach your whole life and never be involved in one of these. Again, I just feel very lucky. But in the same sense I feel very proud of our team that we were able to fight through a lot of things and get to this game and get an opportunity to play in it, because I do know how tough it is to get here. So all things being told, just very happy and very humbled to be here. Q. Can you just talk about your high-powered offense and what are the keys to your offense? COACH KELLY: One of the things we do is eliminate this phone call. I tell you what, if the game's going to be as hard as this, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Q. We've lost the moderator too. So go ahead. I'm sorry. COACH KELLY: You know, I think we've got just a group of guys that have a great understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. We had almost all of them starting from last year, except our quarterback and our tight end. And David Paulson played a lot of football for us and had been great. And Darron Thomas stepping in and playing like he'd been there all along. It has really been the difference for us for our football team. It's a quarterback driven offense, and I think Darron's perfect for what we do. But he was fortunate when he stepped into the job. We had top seven linemen back from last year, all of our receivers back from last year, and LaMichael James back from last year. So it's a total team effort. But it's a group of guys that really understand what we're trying to accomplish. It's just a fun group to coach. Q. Can you just take me through the last 24 hours what it's been like, the emotion has been like in Eugene? COACH KELLY: Yeah, everybody's excited. You know, it wasn't like it was a surprise. I think both Coach Chizik and myself felt if we won our games we were probably going to be in this one. So we weren't on pins and needles waiting for the selection show to happen. But everybody's excited just because of how hard our players have worked. To navigate through a 12-game season and to get through it undefeated, it's kind of special. It's something you can be really proud of. Now you can go out and challenge yourself one more time against the best football team in the country. Q. As disappointed as you were last year to lose the Rose Bowl, did that in any way help you for this year? COACH KELLY: I think any time you play in a game, you can learn from it. We didn't intentionally lose the Rose Bowl so we could have fuel for the fire for this year, I can tell you that. We got beat by a really, really good Ohio State team. Obviously, when the last game you play is a loss, there's always going to be fuel for motivation in the off-season. So yeah, there was something to do with that. Q. I wonder if you can talk about how has your offense changed over the course of the season as your offensive coordinator and your offensive staff has changed? Were you aware of the things that Cam Newton could do, you didn't ask him to do much early, but you asked him to do more as you found out he could do more? COACH CHIZIK: We did. And really and truly it was more of an evolution of the offense. The nuts and bolts ever what we do is never going to change. But when you have different players at impact positions and what we mean by that is obviously the quarterback position, who touches the ball every play, obviously is going to have a huge impact on your offense. So, you know, at that point in time, he was new. Yes, we had a whole spring to go through with Cam. But what I think people kind of lose sight of is as you go through spring practice, and you go through fall camp, there are certain things that you don't know about your quarterback. You don't know how he's going to respond when he's never been in front of 90,000 to play. How he's going to respond week in and week out in this league. When you practice you can't tackle the quarterback every play, you can't sack the quarterback. You don't know how he's going to react to a blitz that may have not gotten picked up. How he's going to be elusive with his feet and what kind of plays that he can make on his own. You don't really know that because you'd get blown dead in practice. Or you can't really generate a true quarterback run game in practice because you can't hit your quarterback. So there were some question marks in there as to what he would be able to do and what he wouldn't be able to do. So it definitely has evolved over the last four months because we've been able to see in game situations what he's really equipped to do, and he's done that. It's not like we've changed the whole offense. We certainly haven't done that. We've just added things in the offense that were already structured in there that we can do with the quarterback. It's the same thing in the passing game too. Obviously, we had to see exactly how he could, you know, work his first read, go to the second read, work his third read. What he could do when there wasn't anything there. What he could do again with play making abilities that you don't really know in practice. So with all those things being said, it has changed somewhat, but all within the structure of what we already do. Q. Was there an aha moment for you guys as a staff when you watched him play early in the schedule and you thought holy cow, this kid can do a lot more than we thought? COACH CHIZIK: Well, the first game of the year he brought down a -- it was a pass. Though it was not a quarterback draw even though it looked like one. He brought the ball down and ran 60 or 70 yards for a touchdown. Pretty much outran everybody. So that certainly got our attention. Then a few games later he made some other of those type of runs against people in our league. When you put that kind of speed on the field and the talent that some of these defenses have in our league and you see him outrun guys or make that one move, you know, and you sit there and go wow. So there were the moments where -- there were moments. I won't say there was one moment where we were just like, wow, he's the guy. There were several moments where we said this guy's going to be different than most. Q. Can you just talk about the way Cam Newton handled the off-the-field issues? COACH CHIZIK: I'll just talk in general about Cameron and his ability to be able to focus in situations that were obviously, you know, difficult at times. But you know, his preparation, his focus on the field, on the practice field, his focus in games, he's just solid. He's a guy that doesn't flinch. We've seen during the course of the season on the feed, certainly we've seen us go through a lot of good, but we've had our share of bad too. It's been a pleasure to watch him work. Because really and truly he just really never changes. He's a huge competitor. He's a guy that he loves the thrill of competition. If the game's on the line, he wants the ball in his hand and he's ready to compete. So no matter what is out there and what is circulating and all of the other distractions that are, I guess I should say potential distractions, he just doesn't really deal with those, and he has that innate ability to focus. Q. As you know the fans in your conference take pride probably more than any other in how the teams from the rest of their conference do, especially on national stages. How important is it for you guys going into this to try to continue the streak of what would become five straight national titles in the SEC? COACH CHIZIK: Well, obviously that's what everybody else is going to talk about. What Auburn's going to talk about is the opportunity to be in a game and have an opportunity to win a National Championship for these fans, these great fans, for our coaches and players and for the Auburn family. That's how we're going to prepare. We're going to prepare like it's any other game, and we've played in a bunch of huge ones already this year. We're not saying it's just another game, but we're going to prepare like we have for the previous 13. And we're going to prepare and really and truly try to focus in on one thing, and that is to win the National Championship. All of the other things that everybody else will talk about out there, we won't really have the opportunity if we're preparing correctly to pay a whole lot of attention to that. End of FastScripts |
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