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TOSTITOS FIESTA BOWL MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 8, 2013Art BrilesTHE MODERATOR: Coach Briles, thank you for being here. We'll have you open up with an opening statement, and then open it up to questions. COACH BRILES: We're just extremely excited to represent the Big 12 Conference and Baylor University in the Fiesta Bowl. We understand from talking to some schools here, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, a few others that have played in that bowl game, that it's a tremendous bowl game, that all the players and all the fans were very excited about and felt very welcomed when they went out there. We're pumped about getting out there December 26th and playing on the 1st. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up to questions for Coach Briles. Q. Have you had a chance to see UCF on film yet? If so, what have you seen from them? COACH BRILES: I really haven't. We just found out today who our opponent is going to be. We were playing last night. They were playing yesterday and traveling home. We're kind of getting settled in, figuring out when we're going to work out. We'll start looking at UCF tomorrow and go from there. But I'm a little familiar. I don't know if George mentioned this or not, but we were in the same league when I was at Houston, he was at Central Florida. There's a little crossover, but that's six or seven years ago now. Q. Can you talk about your quarterback, how he's been so successful. COACH BRILES: He's a great leader, a great player. Very passionate, very intelligent. He does a great job protecting the football, which is critical at that position. I think his numbers speak for themselves. Q. What do you like about playing up‑tempo? COACH BRILES: Playing up‑tempo offense? Q. Yes. COACH BRILES: It's just something we've always done. I've been doing it for 20 years plus. I like the fact that something good happens you can't pat yourself on the back, something bad happens, you can't worry about it. You're on to the next play and just have to keep going. Q. Do you think it's advantageous for an offense to run it rapid fire like that? COACH BRILES: I hope so. Wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think there was. Q. What does this mean to the city of Waco, your fifth year at Baylor, you go from the Texas Bowl, Alamo Bowl, Holiday Bowl, now you're playing in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. COACH BRILES: It's a big deal. It's actually my sixth year here. It's a great accomplishment for the city of Waco, for the state of Texas, for Baylor University. Anytime you're in a bowl game that's got a big B, C and S on it, it's a big‑time deal. There's five of them. We can probably sit here and name all the people that are involved in those five bowl games without having to look at a piece of paper. It's a big‑time bowl game. Like I said, we're thankful and honored that we're able to take care of business. We're excited about going to Arizona, Phoenix, that area. We go out there once a year. It's a super climate. It's a great stadium. We're pumped about the whole deal. Just very thankful to be going out there. Q. Do you still use your big tablets, coach? COACH BRILES: I have one on my lap right now (laughter). I'm taking notes, getting ready. Q. Drawing plays? COACH BRILES: Well, not yet (laughter). We're looking at the logistics of bowl practice and everything. Q. What's the biggest aspect of getting your team ready for a bowl game that's going to happen in over three weeks? Is there a different preparation you're going to go through as a team? COACH BRILES: Fortunately, this is our fourth bowl game in a row, so we've dealt with the spacing of one game to the next. It's not something that we're not used to. There's always some adjustments. I think they're all good. What we're going to allow our guys to do is catch up on the schoolwork this week, rest their minds and body. We'll start working out again this weekend sometime, regular bowl practice time from them. Guys that have little nicks and bruises that they built up through the season, some have some more serious injuries, they might be back for the bowl game. Those are always positives. Q. When you took this job, this was part of the plan. Now that it's here and you've done it, is it surreal at all? Has it met or exceeded your expectations, the fact that you did do it? COACH BRILES: I mean, you kind of mentioned it. It was just a plan. It's just something that when we got here, we felt like this is something that needed to be done if we were ever going to have a feeling of accomplishment for the university and for the football program. Now that we've established ourselves as Big 12 champions, it's like I was saying earlier today, it's not like we reached the mountaintop. There's a lot of things out in front of us we're shooting for, doing everything right in all situations across the board. There's other team goals we want to achieve. We've gotten to a good point with our program. Now the drive and duty is to maintain that. Q. I know you don't want to look too far ahead. You have your quarterback coming back. What you've built, there's a very good chance you could be a top‑five team next season. Is it completely different now that you're the team people are gunning for? COACH BRILES: We like it. That's something that you try to do. You like to have the target on your back, on your chest, wherever they want to put it. If people are not shooting at you, they're not respecting you. We're just trying to earn respect. I think our duty now is to maintain that respect. It took us four or five years to get there. Now we're going to have to work hard to make sure we maintain that level of respect people finally have for us. Q. I've noticed from Baylor fans on social media, they were disappointed by the fact not that you got into the game, but you're not playing Alabama, one of the big celebrity schools, that you're playing Central Florida. Do you have to guard against that at all, that you're playing a good team? COACH BRILES: I don't as a coach because I know Coach O'Leary, I know UCF. I've been around them. I've had a world of respect for them ever since George got there, I don't know, probably 10 years ago. That's not an issue. I mean, to me everybody is a glamour school. There's so much parity in college football, if you look around and think somebody is not as good as somebody else, you're going to get your tail beat. We understand that. We have respect for every opponent regardless of what their ranking is, what conference they're in, what state they're in. We've been on the bad side of a game enough to understand that everybody's capable. We'll approach this game just like we do every Big 12 Conference game. Q. I asked Coach O'Leary what, if any, are the differences of preparing your team for the Waco Bowl or the Texas Bowl or getting them into a BCS bowl and preparing them for that? COACH BRILES: The preparation I don't think will be much different. Of course, the excitement and anticipation level will increase just by the fact that, like I mentioned, there's five of them in America. There's a bunch of those bowls that we've been in. We're proud to have been in them, they're great bowls. For good measure and good reason, these bowls have a different feel and different name to them. That part of it, we feel like we have to honor being invited to one of these games, earning our right to play in a BCS bowl game. We have to play at that level, prepare at that level, represent at that level, because it is an honor. Like I said, there's 10 universities playing in five BCS bowl games. We happen to be one of them. UCF is one of them. It's an honor to be in that game so we have to prepare to perform at that level. Q. With you being in the Fiesta Bowl, Gus Malzahn being in the national championship game, you having worked your way up through the high school ranks, do you think we'll see some other high school coaches take that chance, take a leap to college now? COACH BRILES: I mean, I hope so. It's all about timing. It's all about situations, getting opportunities. They're few and far between. Gus has been fortunate. I've been fortunate. Anybody that is head coach at a Division I‑A school, what their journey is, they're fortunate to be in that position. I don't know. It's got to take somebody to believe in you, then you have to prove it once you get there. Q. What does it mean to be on top of the football world in Texas? For Baylor to be basically the No.1 team in Texas right now, what does that mean to the kids? COACH BRILES: I missed a little bit of the question. Q. A lot of these guys at Baylor didn't get recruited by big names. COACH BRILES: I beg to differ. They did get recruited by a big‑time school, and that's Baylor University. Q. Do you think they're going to be playing with a bit of a chip on their shoulder to go out there and put up big numbers that Baylor always puts up? COACH BRILES: We're not really concerned about putting up numbers, anything along those lines. What we're concerned about doing is doing what we do and doing it the best we can offensively, defensively and special teams. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach Briles, for joining us tonight. COACH BRILES: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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