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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 30, 2015Gary AndersenBURBANK, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and continue with Oregon State, Coach Gary Andersen. COACH ANDERSEN: We're excited to be here. It's been a great transition. We're fortunate to be around tremendous young men in a school that we all have great belief in and an administration that's allowed us to continue to grow and take next steps. We're in a good spot. We're a very young football team. We have 11 scholarship seniors on the team. Lot of young guys are going to play. How we move through our fall practice is going to be very important. We'll start with some broken up practices, A and B, split the team into two different practices just for the case of getting everybody reps and seeing how many young guys can play, little bit offensively and defensively for us. The freshmen quarterback is guaranteed to start, don't know which one, but there's three of them. So we'll see which freshman is going to come out of there, and that is exciting. If you look at the offensive line, we have some returners. If we can get Isaac back, that would give us another huge boost. He's a proven, in my opinion, top level player in our league, and exciting to see where he is. He looks to be in great shape. So we'll lean heavily on those offensive linemen as we go through this season. We need some big plays out of our wide receiver core. Bottom line is that Victor needs to come up big, Jordan needs to come up big and the rest of that crew. They've made some big‑time plays in this league, big‑time moments that have really helped the team move forward in games. Now the challenge for them is to make those plays and also make the consistent plays throughout a game, catch them all, make the plays that need to be made, and we'll lean heavily on them. Storm, who is with us today, we'll lean heavy on him. He's got experience, he's got toughness. He's a young man that's played in this league, and high expectations on him and he's had them for himself. Also, he's moved forward. He's a tremendous, tremendous young man, and that's why he's here today. He's got his degree. He's moving forward in life are and very excited about the opportunities in front of him. On the defensive side of the football, I don't know if the stat is correct or not, but I was told yesterday we returned 20% of our tackles from a year ago. That is obviously concerning. It's not the ideal stat that you'd like to have, but we have a young, hungry defense. Larry Scott is the other young man that's with us today. Larry is a proven player in this league. He's very excited about his future. He's also in the same position academically as far as moving forward in life, and he'll be in those, the graduate situation as he goes through time here. I'm proud of him and what he's done off the field. He's a tremendous leader. He'll be the leader and the catalyst to that defense as we move forward with a very young crew that's excited to go play. Coaching staff, very lucky to have the coaching staff, in my opinion the players on this team are very lucky to have the coaching staff we have in place. We'll work like crazy to put these kids in a position to move forward and play at a high level, which you have to play at a high level to have any chance to win a game in this league. Q. In the last couple years you got to Media Days with Urban Meyer, and now you get to hang with Kyle all day. What do you think about that? COACH ANDERSEN: It's good in evenings when we can get around each other and spend time. But it's always fun to be around people that you like to be around. So it's different when you've got to compete. We've had that discussion many times. But it's great opportunities to see where we've all come in our career, and we're all lucky to be in the spots that we're in. Q. Do you get to hang out a little with Kyle? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, absolutely. We'll get to hang out a little bit tonight and spend some time with each other. Both our wives are here, so it will be fun to get together. Q. Can you talk about your matriculation from Wisconsin to Oregon State, and kind of the thinking on your part to make this move? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, that question is always the transition for us. There's always that question of the whys. The easiest way and cleanest way for me to answer that question was I was given a tremendous opportunity in a school that I have a hundred percent belief in, and that is Oregon State. I saw a lot of things from afar for many, many years from recruiting to competing against the kids to you grow up in this profession, and 20‑plus years you get a really good idea of the communities that you liked, the schools that you like, the different universities are different. For us to be in a spot where we're a university that is so intertwined with the community, the community is so intertwined with the school in a small town, it doesn't happen everywhere, obviously. That's what we like. When I say we, that is this coaching staff. All of this coaching staff has been together before. Different timeframes, different spots, different places, but we all belief in the same thing, and that was key for us. I'm always going to go where I think I can affect kids lives, and at this spot I believe I can do that consistently. I had great kids at Wisconsin, but any time I'm in a position to compromise what I believe in coaching, that's hard for me to be in the middle of it. When I see an opportunity that I want and I'm told to go there, then I'll go. Q. Where do you see this team now, and where do you see it going in the immediate future? Is it a team that can contend for the conference championship? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, everybody's going to sit here and say they can contend for a conference championship, obviously. For us, we're really a day‑by‑day working team right now. We are so youthful. We have to worry about today and then take on the fights for tomorrow and find a way to be consistent. I think that's our challenge. We have some very talented pieces of the puzzle. I guess you could say unfortunately everybody in this league has some very talented pieces of the puzzle. We are extremely youthful. How we handle adversity. First time we get smacked in the face, what's going to happen? Are we going to put our tail between our legs and go sit in a corner or are we going to ball up and fight? We are going to face adversity. It may be the first day of camp. It may be the first game. Who knows what it's going to be? But how we can grind through those situations and fight through it with our youth will be imperative. The few senior leaders we have got to carry us through those moments of con controversy, adversity, hard times. That will be a big key. Just believe in ourselves, believe in our system. So where that all takes us, I don't know. I know this. When we jog out of the tunnel every Friday, Thursday, Saturday night, whenever that may be, we expect to win that game. Q. Until Mike Riley and Dennis Erickson, Oregon State had not had any sort of consistent sustained success. Do you feel the television exposure and the balance of the financials has sort of negated whatever lack of tradition for lack of a better term, Oregon State may have had in the past? COACH ANDERSEN: No, I think we need to lean hard on the tradition and successes that we've had in the past that Coach Riley had, Coach Erickson had. And we go back to the Rose Bowl team. We need to lean on all those teams that sat back and did tremendous things at the university. But Oregon State's in a great place right now. We are moving forward in a very aggressive way with the facilities, with the way we handle our kids academically, with the way we feed them. Our expectation level of them and their GPA situation. So it's all been pushed up. You know, the bar has been rising and it's going to continue to rise at a very high level. But we have what we need to be able to compete at the highest level. Every place is unique to recruit to. The question I always say to my assistant coaches is, do you believe in the place that you're recruiting into? Because in the end, it's still a relationship business. It's not about a street agent. It's not about this guy knows that guy. It's about your relationship with the people that are important to the young men. And if you believe you can recruit, that's when you can win games is when you have really good players. Q. You mentioned splitting practices. How's that going to work? COACH ANDERSEN: We'll split our first three practices. We'll go Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and we'll practice. It will be a practice A and B. So first, it's not really ones and twos and threes and fours. The team is just basically split. They'll come out for a 16‑period practice, and we'll have a special teams practice in between, so Group A comes out, group B stretches, they're all together for special teams. Group A goes in, group B practices. So it's a good way to it's also a good way to find out, because the first practices are about four hours, but that's a great, the kids are on and off quickly. Q. Have you done this in the past? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, we've done it in the past three or four times. Q. Comparing the Big Ten to the Pac-12, why is the Pac‑12 different? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, the speed. If you want to talk about something that is different. This is without question, and I'm looking from afar through a TV screen or a big jumbo screen we have in the offices that we watch film from and on the TV. So not firsthand experience. But this league has what we like to call juice. It is fast. There are a lot of guys that make one mistake and you're going to pay the price quickly. On the defensive side it is the same way. There are elite pass rushers that are fast and quick. There are linebackers that can run on the back end that I believe can make up for a lot of problems that ‑‑ it's hard to solve with a pen in your hand, but genetics take over and make you some special plays. The thing that I think is way underrated, and again, not firsthand experience from watching the film, is the way that this league plays in a physical nature in the box, with the defensive lines and the offensive lines. I never hear people talking about this league is tough minded. I know it's not the class, flashy thing to talk about, right, anyway, with the offensive and defensive lines. But the fact of the matter is they're well coached. They're tough kids. They play with leverage and play with great technique. That is something that jumped out on me on film because I look for that stuff. Maybe it's the old O‑lineman coming out of me. But it's apparent the kids are coached and they play the game the right way and they're tough, tough guys. Q. Compared to other leagues, the Pac-12 doesn’t get much attention. Do you feel that’s changing? COACH ANDERSEN: I absolutely have felt a huge swing in the last two years, and that's me being in the midwest for two years that the Pac‑12 has gained a ton of respect nationally. It's not that another league has taken a step backwards or not as good as they were. I don't believe that. I just believe that the Pac‑12 has gotten better and better and better, and it's because of the investment in athletics as a whole is my opinion. It gives you the opportunity to take better care of the kids. If you play in the Pac‑12, you play at Oregon State, you deserve to have the best of the best and that is a fact. Do you need everything that you have? Yeah. It's going to make you better socially. It's going to make you better academically, and make you better on the football field. All of these things that kids are getting now helps and it makes them more competitive. Our situation, we're going to be a developmental program and take great pride in that. We're going to recruit at the highest level against anybody in the country. We'll go banging heads with you recruiting‑wise and love to get into those contests with you. But on the flip side of that, what we have in our weight room, the way we feed our kids and the way our kids can go, we can take a developmental kid that nobody else is going to give a chance and let him develop with us. And they'll catch that, whatever star that other guy was, we'll catch that dude. Just give us a couple years. We'll catch him. Q. You mentioned this conference has juice. What is it like as a first‑year staff to teach a defense and get your guys playing at a high level on that side of the ball against these offenses? COACH ANDERSEN: One of the biggest challenges that we face is we are changing the offensive scheme and we are changing the defensive scheme. Again, in my opinion, off of what I have seen, you better be able to run at a high level on defense. You can pay a price very, very quickly. We have got the coaches in position that have played, or excuse me, have coached together. It's awesome to have Kalani who has coached in this league. Huge advantage. He knows personnel. He understands the systems. He understands it so cleanly it's good to have him with us. Ilaisa's with him. Coach Chad was also in this league for a couple years, so he gets it. That's a head start for both of those guys. So we're young, we're youthful. They need to play hard. How do you get them to play hard? You get that mentality through what we've done and what we call our first, second and third quarter. So hopefully right now we're prepared to play hard. We seem to be, but we'll see when we jog out of that tunnel. Q. You mentioned young quarterbacks. Is it going to be a freshman no matter who it is? Can you talk about the summer workouts? Is that hard? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, it seemed to me in just going through‑‑ we get them for a little bit every week, and the discussions that Coach McGiven had with them, and I think Kevin's a great teacher. We talk to them a lot about that. You don't have to be the leader, but I'm just telling you, when you jog out on the field and we're not a huddle team anymore. But when I was a center and I had to look my quarterback in the eye, I had to have the feeling that this guy's okay. I didn't have a rah‑rah quarterback in college. He just sat back and did his business, and that's what we need, but you have to carry yourself with confidence and the team has to believe in you. That is a big part of the picture. When you sit back and we ultimately decide on a starter and how we go about that, do the young men that are jogging out there. Those other ten guys on the field with him for that snap, do they believe he can be the guy that can move them down the field? And that comes through leadership, yes, but that also comes through how he prepares. What is he doing Friday night? What is he doing Saturday night? Q. In your short time what's been the biggest challenge of recruiting in the Pac‑12? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, the biggest challenge for us right now in recruiting is we identified our areas. We've got that done. We knocked it out. It's definitely for us showing the kids what we'll have in a year, and letting them understand the great facilities that we have through this conference, and there are many of them. You know that as well as I, we'll have those in a year. Is that a reason to go to a school just because of the facilities? No. But it does matter, and it shows a commitment to football at a very, very high level that you are going to have the best of the best when you walk into your locker room, your team room, your academic center, the way you eat. All of that stuff matters. In one year we'll have the best of the best. That's been a challenge for us to be able to present that to the young men and making sure they'll walk out of our place saying, okay, I get it. And then our low numbers in recruiting is a challenge for us as coaches. We graduate, like I said, 11 seniors, and we'll be in a full boat of 85 scholarships. So technically on paper right now you're recruiting 11 or 12 guys. That is a challenge. Q. You mentioned Isaac Seumalo, what is his timetable? COACH ANDERSEN: I expect Isaac to start camp the first day and be ready to go, which is great. I'm not even using those words anymore, optimistic. I don't want to see him on the injury report anymore. We're past that. As you know, as well as I, no young man in the country deserves to have an opportunity to play football again than him. Nobody's worked harder. Q. Have you had a freshman quarterback before? COACH ANDERSEN: Yes, Utah State. Chuckie Keeton, we had him as a true freshman. He came in in fall camp and ended upstarting. In an easy one against Auburn, they won the National Championship. The year after, I guess, they won the National Championship. Q. Can you talk a little about the ups and downs of coaching freshmen quarterbacks? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, to me I could never be a quarterback coach. I think I'm way too emotional. So I kind of stay away a little bit sometimes and let those guys do what they do. You're going to go through some growing pains. As you move through that, you have to be patient, but you also have to have expectations. You have to be careful that you put the young man in a position to do things that he can do. Don't expect him to be a junior quarterback that is in the spread offense and has done some wonderful things throughout his career. But have expectations that the team is going to surround the kid, make some plays for him, but sooner or later you have to forget he's a freshman and you have to go play. Q. The fact that you have a running back like Storm, does it give you a little more of a platform to build from with your quarterback knowing that you can hand it to a guy like him 25 times? COACH ANDERSEN: It has to. It absolutely has to. And Storm's ready to accept that role and that responsibility. He needs to be a young man that gets the ball in his hands 20, 25 times a game. Every game is different and there are different opportunities that arise. But he needs to carry the load for us back there. He's excited about it. He's trained the right way to be prepared to do that. So it's going to be fun to watch him go. Again, five offensive linemen back that started the last four games, that's a good starting point. It really is a nice starting point. Q. How is the Pac‑12 atmosphere different than the Big Ten so far for you? COACH ANDERSEN: It's not. Big time college football, it's the biggest stage there is. I always say it, but I'm going to keep saying it. We're all very lucky to be part of it. Q. What does winning the Civil War rank as a priority for you? COACH ANDERSEN: It's extremely high. Those rivalry games are so important to everybody. The challenge with those, and I've been around this in very similar, at Utah State, when we were trying to chase Utah and trying to chase BYU at those times. A rivalry still can be a respect. We have great respect for what's gone on at Oregon. I don't get into all the stuff of saying that this team is down there and this is that. That's not how I work. I'm not made up that way. I'm going to respect our opponents. I respect this whole league. But it is important that we get after the fact that we need to win that game. Eventually, when is that going to take place? Well, obviously, they want to win next year. We want to win next year. It's an important game. It's a big‑time moment and a time that those kids will remember the rest of their lives that they played in that Civil War game and they're going to remember every snap of it, because I do. I remember those games when I had a chance to play in special games. They remember them. So we're excited. We respect them, but we're going to chase like hell to catch them. Q. Do you have any idea of what position Isaac's going to play when he's back? COACH ANDERSEN: That's a great question, and he's so talented, he could do all three of them. So we'll look at it, let those kids get out, filter themselves through it, and then put him in the best spot. Q. What do you see from Melvin Gordon in the NFL? COACH ANDERSEN: He'll be a tremendous player in the NFL. He'll be a starter as a rookie is my guess. I'm no NFL coach, I've never coached in that league, but I'd be shocked if he didn't start as a rookie and play very well. Q. For you, what's important in replacing a long‑time head coach to kind of show to the players that gives you some credibility? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, a few things are important. Number one, it's important to show respect to Coach Riley and his staff, and that was important. In this transition, that's gone both ways. Respect to their staff. Their staff has shown great respect back to us, so that helps within the structure of the kids understanding. Setting up our core values, our beliefs, our values where we're going to go with what are our goals, what are our expectations of you academically? And in the end, if you follow our core values and stay on the right side of our core values. Don't go on the left side of those, you'll have a real issue on your hand, you'll be fine. If you look to succeed every day academically, socially, and athletically and do your best. That's us in a nutshell. That's our rules. Here's this book. Read this and see what the rules are about, we don't have that. That's what we're about. Then you work to get that trust. The only way to get trust and build a family environment is through time and going through experiences together. Now we've had eight months to do that, and I think we've got that accomplished. Q. One of the things Storm said when you came in is you called him and talked about his video and what he could improve. How much did you kind of cram before you came on campus to show guys how to pay attention when looking at tapes? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, we all pride ourselves on our staff of being a players' coach. We want to have good recruiters and a players coach. You can do both. Some guys pride themselves on being a recruiter and they don't develop relationships with their kids. That guy's never going to work at Oregon State University. I promise you that much. So you want to be able to reach out to the kids and help them move through life. When I watch the film on storm, I just saw a few things that I thought could really help him improve. Not that I'm a guru of running back coach, but I want to try to help him move forward. It's a good start. But I studied a lot. I tried to sit down with kids and watch film and help them learn to watch film. That's a fun part of my job as a head coach, because I don't get to do that stuff very much anymore. When I have an opportunity to really coach a kid, those are fun moments for me. Q. Reading the reports on Seth Collins, he sounds a lot like a Chuckie Keeton style quarterback. COACH ANDERSEN: Oh, God, I hope you're right. That would be fantastic. To compare Chuck or Seth to Chuckie or Chuckie to Seth right now is very tough. We'll see as he goes. Athleticism, yes. Chuckie was very athletic. Competitive, both very competitive. High belief in themselves and don't really care at this point. Seth doesn't really care what environment he's in. Chuckie seemed to have that same thing as we went through camp. Then he did it as he walked out on the football field. He walked out against Auburn and played in that environment. I'll never forget the war eagle bounced off the window on that day when they were going, and it kind of hit the window. Chuckie looked at me and he was laughing. He said, do you think the bird is okay? I said, are you kidding me? You're a freshman. What are you doing? So hopefully Seth can carry some of that with him. But we need to control ourselves. There are experiences that we can learn, whether it's Seth, whether it's going to be Nick, whether it's going to be Marcus in that situation at quarterback. Learn how to play in the spread offense, because you're playing against really good guys that would like to see you exit the game or affect the game in a positive way. So they're going to be coming after you. Q. You talked about speed earlier, and you landed a last‑minute recruit in Paul Lucas who might well be the fastest kid in the entire country. What do you envision his role being? COACH ANDERSEN: He needs to play. We need to initially spoon feed him within the offense to the package that he can affect the game. We will run fly sweep. It's going to be part of who we are and we're excited about it. He is dynamic. If you get his shoulder square on the edge of the defense, any team in the country is going to have a hard time with him. He has handled summer very well, from a school standpoint, to the workout standpoint. And it's hard. You guys can imagine. You graduated from high school and two days later you're on a plane, and that's hard. We expect him to play as a freshman. If he's ready, he'll play more. If he's not ready, then he won't play. But we expect him to play and we need him to play. Q. Have you ever been as reliant on young guys, new guys as you're going to have to be this year? COACH ANDERSEN: No, I've never been around a team, and so many things get you to this point. Three or four years of culmination of different scenarios to getting to having 11 seniors on scholarship. This is the youngest team I've been around. But that's exciting too. It's like having 13‑year‑olds again, and my kids are grown and gone, 13‑year‑old teenagers, something's going to happen, and you hope it's the right thing, right? Every night they go out, what they're doing. So this team is the same way. Something's going to happen, but I'm looking forward to it. Q. Do you have to adjust your mindset knowing that certain mistakes are going to happen just because it's their first time at this level? COACH ANDERSEN: You do have to have some sort of patience within yourself, which none of us are patient at coaches, and quite frankly I don't want our players to be patient either. But you understand the process. Which, in turn, I believe does mean you have to have some patience as you go through. Now, to go out and walk through a football game and have ten administrative penalties or unforced errors or missing lay‑ups, you can't do that. You can't jump off sides. You can't drop balls. You can't have those unforced situations when you're a team that's young. You'll never win a game. You'll be 0‑12 at the end of the deal, and you'll be right back to winter conditioning before you blink. So those are the things that we have to expect to play at a high level. Then the other stuff, I believe, will take care of itself. Q. Larry mentioned that you recruited him when you were at Utah State. What do you remember about him from then? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, we thought we would get him. We recruited like crazy to get him in there, and he came and got swooped away from us, and I understand why he did what he did. But he was a tall young man, and we liked him on offense. He would have been a player that maybe he would have turned around and played defense for us. Who knows as time was going to go on. But he was a tall, athletic kid that could run, had a very good motor. To me, he was underneath the radar. Unbelievably unrecruited. I was shocked, to be quite honest that he was still in the middle of it. But he was high on our board, I know that. Oregon State did a good job of getting him. Q. Especially given the program that he came out of. COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, you would not see him in that position. It was a little bit shocking. It shows you, it's not a perfect science. Not even close, that recruiting part of things. Q. How much emphasis are you placing on developing a deep passing game given the inexperience of the quarterbacks? COACH ANDERSEN: We need to be able to take shots. The key thing to that is it's one thing to take shots and another thing to be able to complete shots. I'm very interested to get into camp to see how we can throw the deep ball. Deep balls are going to become contested balls. When it becomes a contested ball, the opportunity to make a play is where a good receiver becomes a great receiver. We've got to be able to make those plays when it's contested. We've got four, five wide receivers or big tall kids that can run, and can they make that contested catch? But the ball has to be there. We need to take shots to loosen them up, yes. But then you need to be successful with those shots. If you really sat back and watched your National Championships from a year ago at Ohio State, their ability to change the game was throwing deep, I don't know four to six times a game, and the success rate they had was amazing, and how many of those balls were contested balls. It flipped games in their favor early, and obviously they were a great team. But you need to be able to do that. Q. Do you feel like Darell Garretson being thrown in the fire at Utah State, winning the ballgame and coming over, do you think his experience in any way would help some of the young guys that you would have? COACH ANDERSEN: Yes, I absolutely do. Darell went through this when Chuckie got hurt and Darell came in. Chuckie was a tremendous mentor to Darell as a true freshman. Now we're going to ask Darell to return the favor to another freshman. Darell's going to do that for this year, and he's accepted that role. He's excited about that role, and he's excited to compete, obviously, and be a starting quarterback in the future, like every kid in our program wants to be a starter. But Darell will be a vital part of our production at the quarterback position this year through his mentorship. Q. I saw Coach Wells yesterday in Vegas, and he said great things about you. You've been doing this for several years as a head coach. Do you find yourself mentoring the coaches too as well as the players in guiding them as they go on? COACH ANDERSEN: Oh, I sure hope so. I take a lot of pride, I guess, is the right word, in hoping to get young men to coach and let them start and move their way through this career. Because when I coach a kid that I think is going to be a great coach, I really encourage him to do it because he can be good at it, take care of his family, and he can also change kids lives, which is important. Those two kids back there today, they should both be coaches. There is no question. I don't know, maybe they don't want to be a coach. Maybe they'd look at me and say, you're crazy, I would never do that. But they'd be good at it. So I take pride in helping young men get into coaching. But then with Matt, yeah, Matt and I talk a lot. Kalani and I through the years have continued to talk a lot. I never say I've got all the answers. I've got very few. But I'll tell you what I believe. Q. How does it feel to see Matt doing so well? COACH ANDERSEN: Awesome. He's in a very good position. And Utah State is a very special spot in my heart and will be forever. To have him at the helm of that program, I think they're in good hands. Q. You said a big focus this year is on development. What are you looking for in terms of consistency this year? In terms of something to rely on? COACH ANDERSEN: We'll find out who we can rely on as we go through camp. We have to be competitive. We have to be physical. Camp has to be challenging in a lot of different ways, mentally and physically. Then you start to understand who you can rely on and who is going to be there day inform and day out. Now, unfortunately, practice is practice and a game is a game, so we'll learn a lot more when we start playing games. But this staff will do a great job of identifying who the play makers are and who we can rely on, which isn't always the same. We want a play maker and consistency, if you've got that, then you have a special young man, and that's what we look for. Q. Storm seemed perfectly at ease with the quarterback competition going all the way through summer and fall camp. How do you feel about that? Have you given a time line to when you'd like to know who the guy is going to be? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, we'll hold back. These kids have handled that quarterback situation well as a team. It always seems to me those position battles become crystal clear when they become crystal clear. We'll let it grow. Whether it's the right guard or the quarterback, we all like to talk about the quarterback position because he's the guy that touches the ball every snap, and he's important. So we'll let it filter out like we do all positions. I do not have a timeframe. We'll talk about it as a team. We'll talk about it, just like we do at any position. But when it happens, it will happen. On the similarities between Chuckie and Matt COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, it's been wonderful to watch Chuckie grow and develop. My boys on that team and both of my twins are both there in Logan going to school. So I get to see Chuckie on whatever it is, Snapchats and FaceTimes and different things every once in a while. To watch him grow and see where he's coming from, overcoming two devastating moments and fighting back, and quite frankly, wanting to fight back. He seems to be from, what I hear talking to Matt and talking to the kids on the team, in a better place than he's ever been. That's great because he's unbelievably talented, and I want to see him have a great, successful year. Continued COACH ANDERSEN: Well, those guys went and found him. So I can take very little credit in saying, other than they brought him to the table, they got him to say yeah, I'm coming on a trip this time of the year. That was very abnormal for us to say we're going to bring a kid up on a trip at that time, let alone a game like when he came up. I don't think we beat BYU in 175 years, and then we were going to turn around and play him and bring him to that game. It happened to be an unbelievably special night that Chuckie was with us, and the rest is history. They wanted to bring in a quarterback early. He had some early offers. Lot of people wanted Chuckie to play wide receiver. He wanted to play quarterback. He grew into it. But I thought Matt and all the coaches in that position did a great job of recruiting him. Then he stayed very loyal. Chuckie was like, nope, that's what I'm doing, as he went through his senior year. On the offensive line COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, I think that offensive line has definitely got some toughness to them and experience to them. I've challenged the defensive line, and I've said this many, many times and I'll continue to say it. How you just described them as a tough, salty group that's talented, that's what I believe they should be, but I haven't seen that consistently from them. I need to see that in fall camp. We had flashes of ourselves in spring where it was like, wow. Then I would get a flash again, like, wow. And that has to go away. Coach Chad will handle that. A lot of that sometimes is the defensive lineman coming out of me. Coach Chad and I talked about it the other day. He's like, no, Coach, I know exactly what you're going to say. But I expect a lot out of those kids. Having Kyle finally get there is great. Kyle's played junior college football. He hasn't played a snap in Division I football. Quite frankly, he deserves the opportunity he has, but more importantly he owes Oregon State University a good year because they've done a lot for him. He doesn't have to be there. They've allowed him to stay and be part of it. He worked his tail off to get academically eligible, so did a lot of people and staff to get him where he needs to be. So he needs to, and he owes the university a great year. Q. What is going to be the biggest thing you take away from your time at Wisconsin that you bring to Oregon State? COACH ANDERSEN: What I bring, say that one more time? Q. What is maybe the biggest thing you bring from your time at Wisconsin to now coaching at Oregon State? COACH ANDERSEN: Well, I learned a lot. This level is different. When I say that I mean it in a positive way. Kids are kids and how they go about themselves is the same. 18, 19, 20‑year‑old kids are the same. But to get into this position and this level, whether it's these elite conferences, and obviously the Pac‑12 is one of them, and so was the Big Ten. As a coach you're able to understand recruiting better. You're able to understand academically you can have a little more aggressive plan for kids because of the professional help you have surrounding the young men is so good, and those are probably really the two biggest things. Then handling yourself and handling a team where people are very interested and a lot of them are very, very interested. That's no knock on anyone else, but the bottom line is just the media coverage and how kids handle that, the way these kids today stick their nose in every bit of business out there because they're doing this and reading everything about themselves and about their team. That's sometimes hard to overcome. Q. Obviously Wisconsin has had two coaches leave, maybe in a little surprising manner, is there something about Wisconsin? Why do you think that is? COACH ANDERSEN: Just personal choice. Q. You've been on the job now (No microphone). Do you feel like the new guy? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, I guess you're always a little bit of the new guy as you go through the first year through. But it's been very welcoming. It's been good. There have been new issues with that. But, yeah, I'm the new guy for sure. They were all talking on the airplane and telling me stories about the league and everything else. But this is a great crew of coaches. I don't know if you can get another conference together and those guys can fly back across the country on an airplane and nobody's trying to throw anybody out the back end or stuff them in the luggage rack, so it turned out pretty good. Q. Did you all come back from Bristol together? COACH ANDERSEN: Yeah, it was two planes. But it was good. Some interesting things. You learn a lot about a couple coaches in five hours on an airplane. Q. Anything can you share? COACH ANDERSEN: No, it was fun. Let me put it that way. Q. I'm sure you discussed this earlier, but do you have sort of a vision of how you want the quarterback decision to come about and what you need to see and when you need to see that? COACH ANDERSEN: There is no realtime frame on it. Sooner would be better than later. But by the time we get to that second scrimmage, that's three weeks into camp, basically, we need to have a pretty good feel of what direction are we going? And it could be multiple directions. We just don't know yet. It's too cloudy to say this is our guy, or this is the two guys and I don't know what I even want to say yet. I just have to wait for it to filter out. I believe that Coach McGiven, Coach Baldwin have done this before. Not once, not twice, but many times. Once together. What Kevin went through last year to play basically three or four quarterbacks at Utah State was as challenging as there was in the country for a quarterback coach. What Dave has done with quarterbacks throughout his career, I think, gives our quarterbacks a good opportunity to be successful and they're really good at what they do. I'm far from a quarterback coach. But they'll make the decision with me the right way, and I guess I'm more involved from how does the team feel around them. It's just a feel sometimes, right. So it's fun. They were in a good spot, and they're going to compete like crazy. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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