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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 14, 2011

Blake Gideon

Q. Do you have any rituals?
BLAKE GIDEON: No.

Q. Have you ever heard of a "neard"?
BLAKE GIDEON: Yes, I have.

Q. How far back do you go with Justin? Did y'all know each other in high school?
BLAKE GIDEON: Just whenever we started getting recruited, I guess. I met J-Tuck -- actually all of us, we came to the spring game our junior year in high school, and then we all -- I guess all the commits went and hung out over at J-Tuck's house. He had the closest house there just in Westlake. That was probably the first time I met J-Tuck.

Q. What has this senior class meant to you because you've been such a big part of it?
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, it's flown by, first of all, from when we all got here to now. It's hard to believe it's been four years. But you know, the guys that I came in with and even some of the guys that red shirted that were kind of adopted into our class, Fozzy, Keenan, all those guys, they're about as close to a brother as I've ever had. They're family. I'd do anything for those guys. I hope they'd do anything for me.
But we have been through the highest of highs and lowest of lows in four years, and now I think we have a great opportunity to leave a legacy that we're going to go out as the leaders of a team that we really turned around from a down year last year to what we're hoping is a successful year this year.

Q. What did it mean to you when Fozzy went out and just to see what he's been through, especially after doing so much for the team?
BLAKE GIDEON: It's tough. You know, you're going to go through adversity every play in football. You just kind of count on it's not going to be that kind, that a guy is not going to be lost for the game or for the season in Fozzy's case. It's tough, especially being that it was Fozzy and the type of person he is and what he means to this team, you know, just how all the young guys look up to him every day in practice.
Fozzy is the same guy, it doesn't matter what kind of day he's having, he's going to make everybody else's day better. So I think that just speaks volumes about his character and the type of person he is beyond the field.

Q. You talked a little bit about Fozzy on Saturday. Talk about what he's meant to you.
BLAKE GIDEON: Fozzy is like a brother to me. I don't want to say that I took it as hard as he did whenever he got the news, but it was definitely tough for me to take, just knowing Fozzy as long as I have. He was kind of my welcome to college football momo whenever we met on the goal line my first spring coming in early. Fozzy and I have had a bond that I don't have with many other people, and that's -- I mean, we're family, we're brothers, we'd do anything for each other, and just knowing Fozzy as long as I have and seeing the kind of work he's put in, how far he's come, him seeing how far I've come, it's tough that he's not going to be able to finish out the year and our career, that we're not going to be able to do that together. But at the same time I know that Fozzy is good for me, and whenever something like this happens, you hope it's to somebody that's a strong person as strong as Fozzy, and there's no doubt in my mind that he's going to come out better for it.

Q. Talk about the standing ovation for him yesterday.
BLAKE GIDEON: Yeah, I think that was to be expected. I know for a fact that whenever we all jog out there for senior night and Fozzy makes his way out there that he's going to have the loudest cheers. Fozzy just -- I mean, he infects everybody else around him with the joy and happiness that he brings and that he has in his life. I think that's why he's such a blessing to everyone that knows him.

Q. Switching gears a little bit, Kansas State brings a pretty interesting challenge with Colin Klein and that option offense. How do you defend that?
BLAKE GIDEON: You defend the option and all these different running threats by playing responsibility football, by having somebody on him, somebody on the running back, and you know, it's preparation. We believe at this point in the season there's not many things that we're going to see on Saturday that we haven't seen on film. So it's about us getting in the film room this week and knowing what to expect and knowing how to defend it and trusting our game plan, and it's all going to come down to being the most physical team at the end. We felt like last year they physically dominated us, and there's really no question about who was more ready and who was the most physically prepared team.

Q. Not just Fozzy but just the entire -- seems like a big part of the offensive game as a whole is kind of hurting right now. Does that put a little extra pressure on you guys on defense that you don't have as much room for error in games like this?
BLAKE GIDEON: I don't know if it puts more pressure on us. I think we put enough pressure on ourselves, and our coaches press us enough. But you know, as far as we're concerned, Saturday's performance was a sub-par defensive performance. We didn't give ourselves a chance to stay in the game. Who knows, if we could have prevented two big plays, then maybe the offense is called differently knowing that they don't have a huge deficit to make up. So you know, we play a large part in that, in how the game flows along and momentum. You know, at any moment we could have taken the momentum of the game with a big play, and we were just unable to come up with them.

Q. Anything you learned from last year's game you can take into this year's game?
BLAKE GIDEON: Anything I learned? That minus all the schemes and theories and philosophies surrounding football, it comes down to who's the more physical team. You know, they didn't do anything too complex. They showed us a couple things we haven't seen, but this is college football. You go to the sideline and you make one adjustment, and then you're good; you go execute. It's not like they really out-schemed us or anything. They just out-physicaled (sic) us. That's probably the biggest slap in the face for any football player, especially a defensive football player, that you were not the most physical team on the field.
We kind of made it a point yesterday in the meetings that if we do nothing else on Saturday, we're going to be physical, and that was really embarrassing to watch. It's been embarrassing to see all year, that game from last year. We're looking forward to going out and being able to do something about it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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