BIG 12 MEDIA DAYS

July 20, 2005

Gary Pinkel

Jason Simpson

Brad Smith

COACH PINKEL: Good morning. First of all, I would like to -- I know there has been a lot of coaches that have come up here and expressed their sympathies for Aaron O'Neal and his family, and some of the things that we are dealing with. There has been a lot of press and media people doing the same thing, and I want you to know, on behalf of the family and the University of Missouri, we are appreciative of those thoughts and prayers as we get through a very difficult time. Players -- a significant number of players started working out yesterday and continue to do so as they deal with this. I think our players have, with the leadership of these two guys and others, are just leaning on one another, what you do in this situation like this, and through time, we will get through it. From a football standpoint, I am real excited about this season. I think when you come off a difficult year like we did a year ago, I believe that we will work very, very hard. The leadership has been as good as it has ever been since we started building our football program. I am excited about the year and I know our players are, too. Certainly we have a lot of work to do. I talk to our players about respect all the time. In the first three years of our program we slowly started building respect within the Big 12 and nationally, and a year ago this time we had done quite a bit, and our players know it can go fast. We had a chance to earn respect back, and that's a huge motivation to me. One last thing on Aaron O'Neal is that our seniors are going to do several things throughout the season for Aaron and in the future, but one thing they are going to do, without question, is going to dedicate this season to Aaron. That kind of just changes everything. I think it's a little bit bigger and more important than it has ever been, for obvious reasons. I have Jason Simpson here, who is from the Houston area here, an hour north of here, and a safety for us, I think one of the best safeties in the country without question. I have Brad Smith from the Youngstown area, Ohio, quarterback, and, obviously, I have a very high opinion of Brad, also.

JASON SIMPSON: Well, we don't want it to be that he didn't die for anything. He died on the field. He made the ultimate sacrifice. He was giving his all. He did, obviously. He gave everything he had. He didn't hold anything back, and I respect him for that. I think every player that knows him, and every person that knew him, knew that's how he was. It's a tragic thing, but you just have to get through this and respect him, and that's what we are trying to do. Hopefully, we are going to do a couple of things throughout the season, like Coach Pinkel said, I don't know if we discussed them or know if I want to.

COACH PINKEL: We don't know for sure so --

JASON SIMPSON: Yeah, no discussion. We are trying to have everyone remember AO as he was, and a great human being. He was always smiling, always happy. He was like my little brother, so we all lost somebody we cared about.

BRAD SMITH: Jason said it all. Aaron deserves all the honoring and all the remembering that you can have for someone, especially from us, his teammates and University, so we will try to do our best to honor him and his family and to support him.

COACH PINKEL: Time. Time will dictate that. We have some work-outs going the rest of this week, and a couple in the next week, and then our players have a week and a half where a lot of them will go home -- finish their finals and go home, there will be some more time there. Every player adjusts differently and every young man has to deal with it in different ways and the stages of what they are going through. The big thing is we have to support one another, and through time we will work through this. The University of Missouri will work through this, but we will just hang together and do it.

BRAD SMITH: I don't think I will be expected to do too much different, you know, this offense, and we have to do the same thing. We have to throw and catch and rock and roll with it. Doing those fundamentals will help us to win, and as a quarterback it's my responsibility to get everybody to play at a high level by playing at a very high level myself. That's what I am working at. That's where my focus is.

COACH PINKEL: I think -- I don't think you can point to one thing. First of all, I did a very good job, so that's number one. Number two is I felt that we went backwards in some areas that we worked hard on trying to develop as habits, if you want to have consistent success, and then we went backwards in the kicking game and went backwards in turnovers and fourth quarter. As we all know, we were in every single game until the final moment. We didn't, obviously, handle some of the difficult situations well enough, which is my job. Those are habits of winning, and we just don't have them yet, but we are not going to do anything different in terms of how we made progress prior to. We are going to go back to work and straighten it out. I think the leadership in terms of our football team has been hugely important. As I met with the seniors at the end of last year, the new seniors, their leadership has been absolutely tremendous and just focused on every player getting better and working hard, not that we didn't before, but it's certainly different. I am very appreciative of that.

COACH PINKEL: We went backwards in the fourth quarter. If you analyze statistically first, second, third-year improvement in the fourth quarter, there are significant numbers you will see. Last year it went backwards. We always have stress the fourth quarter, but we will emphasize and do the same things we did before to build it up. Obviously, you have to win some games and gain some confidence, keep working on things we did before. We expect to regain that habit and turn it back into a habit rather than going backwards like we did.

COACH PINKEL: We are going to do some different things. Other players are excited about it and we will get good at it. I don't think we are good during spring at it. We got better in some of the things we are doing. We are doing some things new. We are trying to be able to just be more multiple in our attack, do more things. So I think the players have a lot of fun with it, but as Brad mentioned before, scheme is important, but I would suggest if we would have blocked better and thrown better and catch better and run better, it's fundamental. You can do anything you want on offense and defense, but if it is not fundamentally the right things -- I am more concerned about that than anything, about fundamentally executing more so than the scheme.

COACH PINKEL: Obviously, since the day we got here we didn't have this big private meeting in the top of the hill in Columbia. Honestly, what we will do with every player we have is we are going to try to develop every skill that they have. Brad, as he has matured, he wants to work on his throwing, work on his footwork, work on all kinds of things to make himself a better player, as he has done this year. He has spent a lot of time on his footwork, which has certainly helped him throw better. We want to be able to throw the football well and run the football well. Obviously, we try to make him the best quarterback he can be. A year ago he identified he wanted to work on his throwing and make him a better thrower. We did the same thing this year, same thing his freshman and sophomore year. We want him to be a complete player, and he has worked very hard, and I expect him to have a very good year.

COACH PINKEL: Maybe you guys want to answer that first.

BRAD SMITH: Personally I just learned what it takes to win, what you really had to focus on, what really matters. I think we got caught up in extracurricular things outside of what it takes to win on the field, and now in the spring and during the summer, sitting back and thinking, if we really focus on each play and give it our all, every play with that complete focus, that's what it's going to take for us to be a good team. If we get 11 guys at a time out there doing that, I think we can be pretty good.

JASON SIMPSON: I think that pretty much you just learn how to come together and be more cohesive. Great teams have great cohesion. When we go through this we are going to have to lean on each other. We are not going to have one person that's strong for everybody else. We are going to have to lean on each other, and pretty much all we want is just somebody to know what they are doing and do it 100 percent. That's all I ask for.

COACH PINKEL: I think when you deal with it, with adversity, I think certainly you have to be unselfish. I don't care how well you play, you know, you didn't play well enough to win if you didn't win. I think you always point your finger at yourself. As we went through some trying times, I don't think that's uncharacteristic of a football team that has multiple losses. I think we handled that well internally, and, as these young men say, stayed tight and close together and working together through those things, you have to do that if you want to be able to deal with adversity. That's something that, again, I have been very, very pleased with our team and how I think we are maturing the leadership that we have.

BRAD SMITH: I mean, actually, I try not to focus on it at all. It did kind of just affect me a little bit, the expectation factor, and not really knowing how to handle it. It was a very important thing for something like that. So I think, like I said before, just knowing what to focus on and having complete focus on that, forgetting everything else, and focus on the things that really matter -- if I could go back, I would change it, but if I could just do that a little bit better.