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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 29, 2011

Tommy Tuberville

COACH TUBERVILLE: All right. Time to get going on a new year. We've had some very good practices, and we've had some very average practices in the last month. I think the excitement of this year going into the season is so many new guys that will be on the field, whether they were with us last year and didn't play much or whether we've just signed them and they've been with us since January or they are new freshmen. But we've got a lot of new names and faces that will really play their first game this coming Saturday.
Have not made my mind up on a couple of guys whether we'll play them or not this year, but we're still looking at certain situations where more guys will play than not.
I'm excited about watching the younger guys play for the first time that I think will be household names for the next four years here at Texas Tech and both offense and defense guys like Blake Dees, LaDarrin Robertson, Delvon Simmons, Sam Eguavoen. We'll have a tough time with that name, by the way. And then on the offense, you have Bradley Marquez, DeAndre Washington, Kenny Williams.
And then if you just look at the team we have coming in with some of the older players, being one, our quarterback Seth Doege, been on the team but hasn't played a whole lot.
So this is going to be an interesting season. Lot of inexperience, lot of question marks, hopefully we start out with the right depth chart, so to speak of first and second team, but it will probably change a lot. That is what you get mainly concerned about is do we have the right people in the right spots going in the first game.
We don't have a lot of time to waste in getting players ready to go for about a month from now when we start conference play. But we've put a lot of time and effort into practicing guys in certain positions.
Say a receiver like Bradley Marquez, an inside receiver, moving him to outside receiver. Seeing what guys like Ronnie Daniels can do, seeing what Eric Stephens can handle. Because, again, he's played a lot, but he hasn't had the pressure put on him.
So those are things that we go into this first game kind of wondering how is this thing going to work out? But that is the beauty of college football because you have changes every year, different people, different guys in certain positions and it's always fun for the first few games to kind of see how we've done in terms of off-season and conditioning, getting guys ready to play and of course two-a-days.
It's really good to get back to the game field after all the off-the-field distractions all over the country. Being one, this is my profession, and I chose it a long, long time ago, 35 years ago. And I think all the players are looking forward to getting this season started and putting all this stuff behind us.
Should be fun. There's going to be a lot of ups and downs in this football season for us just because, as I said earlier, we have a lot of people that are just looking for an opportunity to play, number one, and then put their best foot forward and playing together as a team.
Right now I think we have a chance to be a good football team, but that is yet to be determined until we get into the middle of the season and kind of find out really where we're at or how the guys have gotten better as we go on through the year.
I've got one announcement here. Our top three songs. I know everybody's been waiting for this. This is the decision of the year. But what we want to do is have a song that starts the third quarter, or starts between the third and fourth quarter where everybody can kind of get energized. Because sometimes in long football games instead of people sitting around, they can get more intense and kind of enjoy the camaraderie of the people around them and get involved in the song that we'll play.
So what we'll do, I guess this goes on the website. The three songs that have been chosen by the people that have voted. So if you didn't vote, don't complain.
Number one is "All I Do is Win" -- these are not in any particular order. We're going to vote on all of those. "Thunderstruck," and "Party Rock Anthem". And I have no choice in either of those. These will be picked by the fans. So hopefully we'll have this song ready to go, and by the end of the third quarter next week if we do have words, they can be sang along, and we'll put them on the Jumbotron and everybody can learn them as they go along.
If this song is picked and is not followed well with our constituents in the stands, we will revote or pick another song as we go through the year. But we want to try to make it tradition. So this is not the final judgment. The judgment will pretty much happen out there between the third and fourth quarter. I know everybody's interested in that, so. All right, questions.

Q. Can you talk about Seth? Just seeing where he is now.
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, he's been on a tough road. I've seen him work hard since I've been here for a year and a half, and he's put his heart and soul into being the starter. We picked him as a starter because he's a guy that understands this offense.
I think he could have played for us last year. He could have been our starter, but I think it's very good that he was behind Sheffield and Potts and kind of learned for another year.
But he has two years now to prove himself as a quarterback in major college football. He's got some good guys around him. Seth has got to become a good leader. You don't talk about it to him. They just pretty much take it over not in practice but in games.
. We're going to find out not just how good of a football player he is and how good of a leader he is. How he can run an offense. How he can get off the ground after getting run over by a 300-pounder and making a decision 30 seconds later and getting the job done. But that's what college football is about.
So I'm excited for Seth and his perseverance and what he's done for this football team just in the year and a half I've been here. I hope he does well. I think he's earned that opportunity so, we'll see starting Saturday night at 6:00 o'clock.

Q. (No Audio)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: DeAndre will play for sure. We've not made our mind up on Kenny yet. Just a lot depends on some things of what we feel like we're going into this first game with offensively. This week, after preparing for a month, what we do is go back and look at everything we're doing on offense, formations, plays, routes, do the same thing on defense and then we scale it back.
I tell our guys I want to scale it back to 50% of what you've got in for a game plan, especially with all these young guys in. I don't want to put a player, especially a young high school guy in a position where he doesn't know what he's doing all the time, not just part of the time.
That will play into effect in terms of some of the younger guys whether they play or not, how much they can learn in the next three days before we get this game plan all put to bed.

Q. As a whole looking at it now, how much better does the defense look?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, my goodness. Well, it's yet to be seen, but we're more athletic. We've got a lot more depth. There are even some places last year where we were barely one deep; this year we're three deep.
Now that's people playing those positions. Can they get the job done? It's going to take a few of them, like Delvon Simmons a while to figure out the speed of the game. Leon Mackey, even though he's over 20 years old and played two years of junior college ball, it's going to take him a while to figure out how to play his position.
I'm really encouraged by the athletic ability we have on all the defense. We fly around a lot better. We've got guys that are asking better questions. I think they're a lot more comfortable with what we're doing now. But it all goes back to playing and getting ready to play and turning it loose and making plays.
It's not a big reach to say we'll be better than we were last year because we weren't very good defensively. We'll be better than we were last year. If we want to have an opportunity to compete in every game we play, this defense will have to go from 110th in the nation out of 119 teams into the top 50. And I think we have a chance to do that.

Q. Does inexperience worry you?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, oh, yeah. We're going to make mistakes right and left. The thing about defense is you can make a mistake and still play good just with your athletic ability and speed.
There are defenses I've coached where we didn't do a lot of things right. But just because of the type of athletes we had the field they got the job done. You can't do that on offense. If you make a mistake, it's going to cost you.
So I feel better going in defensively with the younger players just because I know how good -- how they can run the ball, their speed, their quickness, knowing that they'll run underneath the block. They might not use the right technique, but they'll be able to make a lot of big plays.

Q. Talk about your plans (Indiscernible)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, Fran and I had good games back when he was at Alabama and I was at Auburn. As a matter of fact his last game at Alabama was the Iron Bowl game, and we won the game and right after that he went to Texas A & M.
He's a good football coach. He's been around different levels of football. He's moved up-and-down. He's been out a few years. It kind of puts us in a little bit of a quandary trying to figure out really what they want to do on offense and defense.
So the best thing that we've done is we've looked at some things that he's done over the course of his career, but we look at their personnel, trying to figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are. But, again, it's hard to tell that, depending on what they want to do with them.
But I'm excited Fran's back in college football. He's a good guy, been a friend of mine for a long time, and I'm excited about playing him.

Q. In the past he ran a lot of trick plays. Can you talk a little about that?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Fran? Yeah, over the course of our careers as long as I've been in it, we've tried certain things. But he's an offensive coach. He's not going to change a whole lot. I think the coaches around him, he's got his son coaching with him who is an offensive guy. I think you can follow the tracks on what they've done.
No matter who you're playing, we prepared last year against SMU. You prepare pretty much your team to play and not really play against somebody in the first game. You get them ready to play your offense, your defense, and be able to adjust on the run. That's what you really have to do this first game because there have to be changes made.
As I talk to our team, communication is huge at the beginning of the season because we have to be able to make changes on the sidelines on the run. People have to understand why we're making changes. And that makes you a little bit leery with all these inexperienced guys, will they be able to handle all those things going into this game.

Q. How much does a mentality of the player and the staff change this week knowing that players get to finally lineup and go against somebody else other than the same guys they've been seeing in the locker room all week?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, we had a very long practice yesterday on Sunday. It wasn't very good, and it wasn't because of effort or not knowing what to do. It's the simple fact they're getting bored and tired of doing the same things over and over. But that's what you do for the first game. You just cram so much in.
And as we started yesterday, we started cutting back and really repping a few things other than a bunch of things. You see a little bit of, hey, let's get on with this thing from the players and from the coaches.
The thing that I have to do this week is make sure that we're not stale and guys are not bored to death and they're not excited about playing the game. So we'll be fresh. We'll have an hour and a half practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Make sure everybody knows what to do, get everybody healthy 100%, and have them hungry ready to play somebody else.
They are ready to do that, but you want to make sure they're in the right frame of mind going into Saturday night. But it's been long.
Of course, after Saturday night, it will be another kind of lull because we don't play mechanics week. But it will give us a chance and an opportunity to brush up on some things that we didn't do as well as we would have hoped and maybe make a few changes in about a seven or eight practice session for New Mexico.

Q. Are there certain tendencies that you look at offensively or defensively in the first quarter that make you feel like the plan you put in place is going well? Or maybe we may not be looking at (Inaudible)?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, we chart everything. For defense we chart down and distance, what the team is doing on down and distance, we do formation, what they're doing out of each formation, run, pass. We also do personnel, personnel's on the field, whether it's receivers or running backs. Then we adjust accordingly for defense.
Offensively, it's the same thing. Are they blitzing on first down or are they more conservative? Are they different in terms of their front or the coverage? We might be planning to go into any game and think we're going to see mostly manned coverage, and it might be all zone.
That is the thing about inexperienced players is are they going to be able to understand in a short period of time, maybe between series or between plays when you bring a guy off the sideline, can they make that adjustment? Can they visualize what you're talking to them about or are they still too hyped up and thinking about the crowd?
That is the thing you worry about all these young guys that we're playing. Because there are going to be times on defense where we'll have probably three or four true freshmen on the field playing, or maybe six or seven first-year players here at Texas Tech playing.
Won't be quite as many on offense. Could be three or four guys on the field on offense that it might be their first time to ever be at a Texas Tech football game other than maybe in a recruiting visit. So there are a lot of questions marks, big time question marks.
I'm excited because I tell you that this team -- I like the make-up of it. How the older guys have really helped the younger guys focus and fit in. Because as I told the older players and I'll tell our seniors tonight, tonight's my senior dinner at my house. We'll talk about those things and about adjustments and how they have to help with the younger guys that are out on the field. When coaches aren't standing next to them, how to get them lined up or calmed down in the huddle.
All those little things that go along with what you really don't see from the stands or even from the sideline. So we'll have our dinner tonight and talk about those things. So we'll have a pretty good talk to our seniors tonight about making sure they play a big role in the first part of the season in helping all the young and first year players.

Q. Is there a timeframe for these younger guys where you say, hey, you're not new anymore and you need to step it up, this is it?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, it's kind of like what I said earlier, the last couple of practices we've kind of noticed some things on offense and defense of the plays that were not quite as consistent with. So we've cut back to a point where every player, no matter whether they've been here four years or one year, they've had a lot of reps in practice about what had game plan is going to be.
I don't want to go in and we make a mistake, we call a play, and we knew good and well that Bradley Marquez was really not sure about what to do against each coverage, whether it's a running play or pass play. I want him to get a true picture of every player of, hey, they've had as many reps as the older guys at this play. They know what to do and kind of get a good idea of what they can do full speed.
Because if they're not doing it full speed, they're not going to be able to help us. So we've got to do a good job of calling defenses this week and getting guys in position where they feel comfortable in knowing what's going on.

Q. Jarvis Phillips has a starting spot. Is that a testament to the talent that's there right now or do they need to pick it up a little bit?
COACH TUBERVILLE: No, no, that's a true testament of how much better we are athletically. Now Jarvis will play a lot. As I told you all last year, it takes 25 defensive players to play a college football game, and last year we were lucky to have 16, 15, 16 in a game that really we probably played more than that. But maybe 15 or 16 that had a clue what they were doing and could play major college football. There were times when we didn't have that many.
But we're going into this football game. We talked this morning and 31 players on defense. Looks like we feel good about putting them out there. Now they know what to do, now can they do it?
That 31, by the time we get to probably New Mexico will be whittled down to around 25. But we want to give around 31 guys this week an opportunity to play defense. Whether it's one play or ten plays, to give an opportunity to see what can they do? Are they going to be able to help us? It's going to be pretty close to that on offense too. The same amount or maybe a few more on offense.
Depth wins for you. You win games with your first teamers, but you win a lot of games with your back-ups. They've got to playa and they've got to play a huge role in a college football game.
I like to play starters, not counting the quarterback, and probably most of the offensive linemen, but the starters on the rest positions on offense or defense probably should play about 60% of the time your starters and back-ups about 40%.
Last year Colby Whitlock had to play 80 plays, and you can't do justice in playing college football and playing that many snaps because you're going to throttle back some. You might not play full speed when the ball's going away just because you've got to play a lot more snaps and you're trying to hold back and make it for the entire game.
This game this week that you'll see, if they're not going full speed, they won't be in there long. That's one thing we'll watch from the press box and the sideline. We'll tell our defense you might not know what you're doing, but you'll play fast. If you don't play fast, you'll be standing over there and sitting with me. I think they understand that.
Coach Glasgow has done a good job of getting their attention during practice. So it will be fun to watch. I think that's one thing you can watch from the stands this week. Our fans will be able to make sure you get a program when you go in. I'll have one with me because you won't know a lot of the names and numbers. I won't. Because we've got several duplicate numbers that I'm not big of, but we've got so many more players this year that will have a chance and an opportunity to play.
It will be a fun night. What's a game program cost? How much you charging people this year? $5? Are you kidding me? Have you all not seen the people out of jobs and stuff? The bad economic times.

Q. Would you talk about Raider Walk and how important that is for the new kids?
COACH TUBERVILLE: Raider Walk is a good tradition for us. It's going to be better and better. Always be at Raider Walk. The game starts at 6:00, so that means we'll arrive at the stadium for the beginning of Raider Walk 2:30 before kickoff.
Our band will be there. This year we're putting the saddle tramps. We'll line the street. What is the name of the street -- Drive of Champions. Starts at the baseball stadium. They will line the street where our fans can come up closer to our players.
We're not going to go quite as far with Raider Walk this year. We'll actually go into the stadium on the southwest side with our players. So we won't go all the way to the dressing room like we did last year.
Our band will be there, our cheerleaders in Raider Red. It's a great tradition that can get even better and better. We want the young people involved. Parents bring your kids up where they can see the players and high-five the players.
I think it's an awesome way to get the football day started after tailgating and start getting into the game face mode. It should be a lot of fun.

Q. Can you talk about your schedule real quick and how it sets up?
COACH TUBERVILLE: The schedule, yeah, the schedule this year is not a lot of fun. I don't like the second open day, but we had no choice on that. That is part of going to the nine-game season with conference teams. It will change a little bit next year. Obviously, it could change even more the way it's looking with some of the teams.
We have 11 straight games without an open date. That is a long season. So we're going top need that depth as we get going through the season. We'll have to be careful at practice time and making sure we've got guys healthy and get them back for the game for the next week, week after week for 11 straight weeks.
It should play out pretty good. All of our non-conference games were early. Last year two of them were late which I don't think any of us liked. Once we get the first month out of the way, it's all conference games from then on in.
It should be an interesting conference race with one of our teams in the conference. Oklahoma being picked as one of the national champion contenders, which they'll have an awful good football team as will some others.
This conference this year will probably be the toughest conference in the country just looking at the teams with all the players coming back, especially the quarterbacks and skill players. It should be an interesting time playing in this conference with a lot of points having the opportunity to be scored.

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