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ROSE BOWL GAME: OREGON v FLORIDA STATEDecember 31, 2014Mark HelfrichPASADENA, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Florida Coach Mark Helfrich. COACH HELFRICH: Good morning, everybody. Just, again, I've had several opening remarks. So keep this brief.  Just want to thank everybody at the Tournament of Roses, Mr. Chinen and his staff. All the hospitality has been off the charts. Our guys are having a great time. Very excited for the challenge ahead. We'll close up things this afternoon in our normal fashion as far as 48 hours before game time and playing in the best venue in college football in the Rose Bowl, and we'll be, again, very excited for that challenge. Q. Coach, I asked a lot of your players if they noticed the difference between you in your first year and your second year. Most of them said that you were pretty much the same. Can you point to one thing that you changed this year that might have helped your success. COACH HELFRICH: Now we've had this, quote/unquote, dramatic success, which it's maybe not that different. It's always this one reason. It's because we wear this helmet or that. You can point to a thousand different things. Our whole deal is we want to be better. We want to be better in every single thing we do, and that certainly starts with me‑‑ but that's nutrition, that's medicine, it's how we practice, it's everything that we try to evaluate on a daily basis and then on a year‑to‑year basis. Some of that is schematic changes. Some of those are personnel changes. Hopefully, we're all better the second go‑round. Q. Mark, what did you learn in the previous BCS games while you were the offensive coordinator that you can take into this game and bring into it? COACH HELFRICH: A lot. We've talked about that and addressed that, particularly with our younger guys who haven't been in these games. It's different. The game is different. As I said yesterday, the crowd will be jacked for the coin toss. The coin toss will decide the game in a lot of people's minds. The first first down, the first just ebb and flow of the game. It's really being able to sustain your focus on yourselves and not the guys that are going to look really good in the garnet and gold. That's going to be a great looking team, and I think a lot of teams are mesmerized by that and fall back into that, some of their comebacks, after giving them a great test early and not being able to sustain that. The TV time‑outs are different. The atmosphere, again, will be outstanding, but we can't get caught up in that. We'll try to kind of take care of that today when we visit the stadium and take some pictures, be ooh and aah a little bit, and then just dial it in. Q. We were having a little fun with your players this week and asked them what they thought your New Year's resolution should be in terms of coaching. They said you should hit the gym and work on your biceps. Just wondering if you had any thoughts on that and what you think your New Year's resolution should be in terms of coaching. COACH HELFRICH: I've thought of a lot of things this fall, and that's not one of them. Maybe I need to go back to it. What were the rest? I need to gain some weight? I definitely need to work on the biceps. That's true. I'm sure my wife will have a couple others that I need to work on. Take out the garbage on time, that kind of stuff. Q. I was just wondering, you're facing a quarterback that's never lost a game, and, obviously, Florida State is on this amazing run. What are some of the intangibles you've seen that, yes, they've got some lucky bounces, but you're still facing a quarterback who's never lost in college football? COACH HELFRICH: And that lucky bounce thing only goes so far. You don't win 29 games in a row with luck ever. They're just unflappable in a lot of ways. Again, they get everybody's best shot. The team that's playing them this week has had their best week of focus, their best week of preparation, trying to dethrone the champs and to be resilient enough to come back and win all those games is, again, very, very impressive. They just make a ton of plays when it matters the most, and there's times you look at‑‑ again, like the Virginia game, where Virginia's in really good shape and they have two really bad possessions back to back, and it's over. It's over. So, again, focus on the next play, all those cliche‑type deals that go into a successful football game. And more important, just because of how good they are, they can score on any play in any phase. It's a pick six, it's a scoop and score, a flip of the field on a punt return, a punt return for a touchdown. All those things are huge, and, again, it's just focusing on us. Q. Coach, obviously, you've got so much more time to prepare for a Rose Bowl game. How do you change the pace of preparation so that you're peaking your team at the right time? COACH HELFRICH: That's the multimillion dollar question for sure, how to be physical enough to still hit and tackle and be able to do those things, to be conditioned, to be great on special teams. You look at every Bowl game, and there's something significant in special teams that affects the outcome. Another thing I think our staff has done a great job of is not being too cute. You can't reinvent the wheel and do something that isn't us. I'm sure they're doing the same thing. You fight that urge about this time of year about, okay, what if they put 14 guys in the weak A gap and put 12‑‑ they can't do that, it's illegal. Trying to just focus on start from the game time, move it back, and make it as user friendly for our guys to play fast and free and confident. Q. What you do is very intense as a coach. How will this tournament intensify what you do in terms of recruiting, just in terms of everything? COACH HELFRICH: The intensity and the buildup and all that thing I don't think has really changed that much since the BCS era for us. In our conference, we can't lose a game, in terms of the BCS and how that all led to the culmination of choosing those two teams. So it's been very similar that way. I think it's been great for the media. Just name your four teams and turn on the microphone and argue. That's been great for college football. It's been an unbelievable infomercial for college football all year long, just that buildup. It's been great for our university. We think those things are tied together, absolutely, at the hip, where the most diverse, highest achieving, biggest class in the history of the University of Oregon, and we'd like to think that we're a part of that. From an intensity, day‑to‑day type of thing, it really doesn't change that much. We are, believe me, 100 percent focused on Florida State and haven't looked beyond them one second, which I think is comical that that's been brought up. Q. Six years ago, you were the offensive coordinator on a Colorado team that was 5‑7. Tomorrow you're going to head coach in the Rose Bowl. Can you just sort of put into perspective how that happened. COACH HELFRICH: I don't know if I can put in perspective exactly what you're working toward. I've been on both sides of it. Not very good, and we've been fortunate enough to be really good, some places we've been. Just part of a great program, our staff, our culture, everything at the university is moving the right direction and very happy to be on that side of it for sure and being around a great group of guys and men and women in our program and certainly on our team. Q. Coach, some of these quarterbacks who come out of systems similar to yours make the jump to the NFL, some of them struggle with it. Any chance that the system sort of that they've gotten used to in college works against them as they make the transition to the pro game? COACH HELFRICH: There's so many factors that go into that. Whether it's‑‑ you look at a, quote/unquote, every quarterback is a system quarterback. Whatever they run, they run. That's their deal. I think it really depends on that individual way more so than the system, and then you have to look at where they go. Generally, top‑flight quarterbacks don't end up in the perfect, just plug‑and‑play type of everybody‑‑ they've got 21 other great players and they just need the quarterback. That's rare for guys that are, whatever, highly touted coming out of college. I know with both the quarterbacks in this game, they can play at any level. Both those guys, they're completely different, totally different guys from a style standpoint, but both will have tremendous NFL careers if they end up in the right spot. If they don't, things can go different ways. Q. You've always seemed so calm and collected, and that's what you preach to the players on the big stage like this, but what about yourself? Have you felt the nerves as during the lead up to this game? And what will you be feeling tomorrow when you take the field? COACH HELFRICH: Game day. It's game day. Our most important time, in my opinion, is earlier this week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, fall camp‑‑ all the things‑‑ I lose sleep over Monday's and Tuesday's practice way more so than game day, of making sure we're in the right frame of mind to go out and prepare great. Our guys have bought into that wholeheartedly. Obviously, we've had one big hiccup this year, have bounced back from that really well, and we've had a great couple weeks of preparation. Now we've just got to go play. Q. Since you've been to a few of these, can you explain why the Rose Bowl is so special to people that maybe haven't been here before? And then how a playoff might affect it, do you think, in the future? COACH HELFRICH: The playoff aspect of it, to go in reverse order, would certainly affect just the purest of growing up on the West Coast, the Pac‑8, 10, 12, versus the Big Ten element probably, it's difficult to maintain. For one of those teams or two of those teams, that's a good thing, depending on the odd year. But it's the granddaddy of them all. Waking up on New Year's Day, you had the Rose Parade, and in the early midafternoon hours, you had the Rose Bowl. Dick Enberg, Keith Jackson, the field, usually Sun Field Stadium, those visions and those sounds are something that are incredibly special and unique to this game. Q. I feel like for the last not every bowl game since you've been here, and you've been including with Chip, but the majority of them, the offense has begun slowly. Has it had to do with the layoff at all? If so, the fact there's only been three weeks of a layoff this year? COACH HELFRICH: I think the first and most important factor in that is you're playing against somebody really good. They are‑‑ they're very talented as a coaching staff. Very deep and talented as a coaching staff, very deep and talented on the field, and they don't just get out of the way and let you score. So that, I think, is the biggest problem. It's natural to have a little anxiety up front, and it's‑‑ I would say it's not‑‑ there are less moving parts to a successful defensive play than a successful offensive play. That partially goes into it. And that's where, again, you just have to work that into your preparation, try to create that. But you can't simulate the aura and the presence that the Rose Bowl whole scenario situation, atmosphere is in your indoor facility. So we'll go out, and we'll attack. Q. Three weeks instead of five? COACH HELFRICH: Maybe. We had an odd three weeks. Our coaches and our in‑house staff did a great job from a recruiting standpoint. Obviously, had some great distractions along the way in those three weeks that took us off the field, but it wouldn't have changed and didn't change any of our pure preparation for the game. Q. The word "unique" gets tossed around with your program a lot. My question would be what's unique about Oregon to you? COACH HELFRICH: How long do we have? There's a lot of things that we think make it special. I think the people, first and foremost. Everybody talks about Mr. and Mrs. Knight and their final contribution. Their personal just blood, sweat, and tears guts contributions to the entire university. They're literally immeasurable. Then you go beyond that to the simplest thing in terms of we're different is, speaking as a native Oregonian, there's not a ton of talent in the state of Oregon, so we kind of have to go everywhere. The ascension probably started a little bit with the helmets and the uniforms and all that kind of stuff, but hopefully we've moved beyond that. We talk constantly about the guys in the uniforms. The uniforms don't give you points. If they do, we'd love that, if we could look into that. But being around there on a daily basis, it's all about the people. We can't‑‑ Coach Fisher, he could probably drive two or three hours in a radius around his school and put together a pretty good ball club. We have to go a little bit further, and that's a tremendous strength in our program. Q. What I meant with my original question is will this tournament, this entire tournament, intensify recruiting, the importance of talent, which has always been important. Now I'm wondering, if because this new setup, if it will intensify. COACH HELFRICH: I apologize for not answering your question correctly earlier. Three things, when you look at why prospective student‑athletes choose a place, are distance from home, which is a challenge for us, winning, and then having a platform. We think we have a pretty good hold on two of those three. The third one you can't affect. We're not going to move the campus. Being successful, being out there, publicizing great things about the University of Oregon certainly can do nothing but help those efforts of at least getting in those doors. Now we need to make sure it's the right guy coming into our program, and he's not just excited about the Hatfield‑Dowlin complex. He's not just excited about the Nike relationship. He wants to come here and truly maximize his existence. Q. Do you think all coaches will feel more pressure, knowing what the stakes are? COACH HELFRICH: I think pressure is relative. I think we have pressure to have a tremendous practice today. There's a ton of pressure on that. All that other stuff, the external stuff, the lights, camera, action element of it, that's great. You want to be a part of those kind of games. Q. Didn't really get a chance to talk to you this week about this. Southern Oregon won the NIAI, congratulations on that. Maybe talk about what that means to you as a former player, and maybe that might be a good omen. COACH HELFRICH: We'll take it. Any sort of mojo we'll take. They had a tremendous year, tremendous season for those guys. To finish in the style they did, basically dominating the semifinal and the championship game was awesome to watch. Got a ton of friends down there that are still on that staff and have talked with Coach Howard and his staff somewhat extensively about ball, and they do a great job. They do a great job. We can learn a lot of things from those guys. Q. I know you are focused on the Rose Bowl, but my question is do you think you are ready for NFL, maybe 49ers? COACH HELFRICH: First of all, is that your Eugene accent right there? I'm not ready to play in the NFL. I'm going to forego my senior season and stay in college. No, I have no idea. Those kind of things, a couple weeks ago I'm the biggest idiot in the history of the world, and now there's some other adjectives out there. We are, believe me, focused on a lot of other things and not the 49ers. Q. Coach, when you look at the film, how do you feel like your conditioning stacks up with FSU? COACH HELFRICH: We consider that a big strength of ours, just our conditioning and how we work, how we practice, how we train from the beginning of fall camp onward, and we consider that a tremendous point of pride and source of confidence. Relative to Florida State, I guess we'll find out. They're a tremendously fast, physical, talented football team. At this point, you're playing against great people in every phase. We certainly‑‑ again, we've always used that as a source of pride and a source of confidence, and I know our guys believe 100 percent in that part of our process. Q. Coach Frost yesterday said Oregon is a program where there's not a lot of yelling at players. I just wanted to ask you the philosophy behind that and what it might take for there to really be some yelling. COACH HELFRICH: There's hopefully way more teaching than yelling. We hammer home, just as coaches, when we're talking about ourselves, we need to teach the guys what to do. You know, the old coaching, do it right, what does that mean? Anybody in this room could tell somebody to do it right. We have excellent specialists in their field, great leaders of young men that need to teach guys what to do and show them and tell them and find a way to bring that home. The music's too loud to yell at them anyway. So they wouldn't be able to hear us. But especially in the meeting rooms and all that stuff, it's teaching. It's not who can scream the loudest. That's for the movies. Q. You've been a guy who obviously grew up in the state, and there's a lot of guys on your staff who seem like they have been at Oregon forever. Do you see yourself there‑‑ I know you're focused on the game, but do you see yourself at Oregon for 20 years, like some of these other guys down the road? COACH HELFRICH: I have no idea. Again, this is a weird business and they might keep me for 20 more days. Who knows. But going back to the question about unique, it is truly unique at Oregon that our staff, it's the longest tenured staff in college football, and there's guys that have been there for 20, 25, 30 years. We have a ton of people in our, quote/unquote, support staff‑type elements, whether it's academics, sports information, athletic medicine‑‑ all the things that maybe the other places, that's a springboard to somewhere else or a stepping stone to somewhere else. And they love to be a part of Oregon football, and being part of it is very special in our city. We don't have the Lakers and the Clippers and all that other stuff going on. We're kind of that, and it's a great thing to be a part of. Q. So many firsts for Oregon over the last 10 to 20 years. What might change for your program if you're able to win these next two games? COACH HELFRICH: I'm sure a lot, and I'm sure not much. I think nationally, hopefully, the perspective of not only our team but our conference would elevate, and the SEC has had that right to puff out their chest and with very good reason for the past several years, but we think we're doing a lot of the right things on this side of the country. It would validate things externally a lot more than I think internally. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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