BIG 12 MEDIA DAYS

July 20, 2005

Daniel Bullocks

Bill Callahan

Seppo Evwaraye

Cory Ross

COACH CALLAHAN: Thank you, Peter. First off, before we get going today, we would just like to express our sincere condolences and sympathies to the young men from Missouri, Aaron O'Neal, and condolences, obviously, to his family and team, and to Gary Pinkel and all the members of the University of Missouri. It's really tragic for something of that nature to occur, and for our conference to have two players that have passed away this off-season has really taken a lot away from such a great conference. Let me introduce our players here quickly. To my immediate left here is the brother of Josh Bullocks, Danny Bullocks, his twin brother. We think a great deal of Danny. He has been a superb leader for our football team. He has come on and has had an exceptional year as a full-time starter. We are leaning on his leadership to provide us a catalyst on defense. He will be spearheading a young secondary. Secondary is where we lost three starters from a year ago, so his leadership, his ability to communicate, put people in the right spots will be pivotal for us as we begin this season. The next person to Dan's left is Cory Ross, our starting I back, our most (inaudible) player. He was an 1,100-yard rusher for us. The thing that is most appealing for us is this is a guy that has been a workhorse for us and carried the load at times, even when he was pretty banged up and nicked up, so this is a guy that has great heart, great passion for the game, and there is no doubt he will be one of our offensive leaders as we go into the season. To his left is Seppo Evwaraye, which side we are not sure yet, but he does have the flexibility and he does have that ability to play either the right tackle or left tackle. It's an interesting story, Seppo is, in the sense that he is a student that came over here in high school from Finland, played in one of the northern high schools in Nebraska, was recruited here, and started off as a defensive lineman. When he first came here a year ago we made a position change and moved Seppo over to the offensive line where he impacted us immediately. As we played through the season his play was solid and good, and we really felt strong this spring we could make a move and put him over on the left tackle on the blind side of the quarterback to provide us a little more protection in that sense. He has done that. The sky is the limit for this guy. He has the potential not only to play in the (inaudible) but be an inside player as his career moves on. Relative to our team, we are starting at the bottom of the heap right now, all of us, in this conference. It's exciting, challenging, the opportunity to come back here, obviously, at some point in the summer, I think that's what the goal is for everybody, but we are very encouraged about where we are at as a football team. Our spring was very, very good in the sense we became a more physical football team, got isolated on more fundamentals and things of that nature where we had to improve, and the improvement was significant in a lot of respects. We like where we are at and we have a long ways to go yet. We are excited about the challenges ahead.

COACH CALLAHAN: I sure will, Steve. First off, when you come back from the NFL, go into a college situation, there is a lot of things that change. For us, we were in the midst of transition in this first year, and to implement a new system and to put in a new terminology with players that were recruited for different systems is a real challenge for any coach at any level, but once you have got your system ingrained and your foundation set, the transition becomes a little smoother. I will give you a perfect example. We are more familiar with what we are doing now. We have more -- we have more stability, more continuity in terms of our coaching staff. Some of these guys haven't had the same position coach for two years in the row in the last three years, so that has been significant to have that type of stability. When you have that type of stability and continuity, and you are continuing to teach your system and to get repetitions, you become a little redundant in terms of isolating your core fundamentals and techniques, the execution gets better. From that standpoint, Steve, I would tell you there are those elements that lead to more consistency, but we still, again, we are just taking steps and we are just like any other team, we are just trying to improve our consistency over the long haul.

COACH CALLAHAN: Brandon Jackson will be in training camp. He did have shoulder surgery. His shoulder has been repaired. I don't know how much physical contact we will do on it early, but we will back him down early, and we had him into the contact phase later in the month of August. Matt Herian sustained a leg fracture last fall in the Missouri game, had it repaired, and unfortunately had to go back for a second surgery, and his status right now is up in the air. I am confident -- we are confident that he will be back, but at what point in time, we don't know. He is just starting to run on that leg and he is progressing, but how fast and how fast that rate of ehabilitation goes, we are going to have to go day-by-day and week-by-week. Lydon Murtha will be in training camp. He sustained a shoulder injury and knee injury, and both were surgical, and he will be back for training camp. Like I said, it will reduce the contact. We have to finalize how much contact he will go under or have during the course of training camp, so we will be very patient in that process.

COACH CALLAHAN: A lot of things did. First off, he has the background necessary to function in a pro system. That's evident by what he has done and his history at Butler Community College and, of course, what he did in high school in Norman. From that standpoint, he captures you immediately when you watch him on film and you watch him play at a very high level and a good competition, a good junior college league. So, off the bat, he would just tell you that his background really captured us. And not only that, secondly, when you sit down and talk with this young man about football and about life, he comes off very well. High character guy, great leader, exceptionally motivated, and wants to be great. Those intangibles showed up in tangible ways for us.

COACH CALLAHAN: It's going to be interesting to get to the training camp and watch Zac compete. We have four other quarterbacks competing for the position, and Harrison Beck, a young man out of Clearwater, Florida, and Joey Ganz from Chicago, Beau Davis, and Jordan Adams from California, all four quarterbacks will compete for the stop. We didn't name a starter for the position. I will tell you, Zac has an upper hand predicated on the experience. It is going to be competitive. For all those guys, it's going to be interesting in terms of their battles. I know they have worked hard this summer. Unfortunately, I am not able or capable of watching them play because of the rule limitations, but from what I hear, they are all doing well, stop by, drop by the office quite a bit and check in with us as coaches and let us know what's going on. We seem to be pleased with what has happened. I really don't know until we get into the midst of training camp exactly where we are at, Sean.

COACH CALLAHAN: I will let Danny answer that from the player's perspective.

DANIEL BULLOCKS: The players on the field capitalized on the mistakes we made last year. We had variables and we need to capitalize on mistakes for this season.

COACH CALLAHAN: If you want to add something, Cory, go ahead.

CORY ROSS: I think, from the offensive side, I would say patience because you can't jump into a system like that and expect so many great things to happen just like that, so I think I probably would say our patience has grown, and we can see it during the spring, and people actually are starting to get focused on small stuff.

SEPPO EVWARAYE: Just to go off of that, I think we don't have -- we don't overlook games anymore, and I think in the past when you mark down games as sure wins, we are definitely not doing that anymore. We are going into every game as a single unit, and we have to get that accomplished. We are not like we used to be, chalk up victories before the game is even played. That's not the case anymore.

CORY ROSS: I think we are just more comfortable now. In the beginning of it everybody didn't know what to expect, you know, didn't know what to expect from the coaches because they are new coaches, and you didn't know how you were going to become friends with those coaches as well as listen to them and see what they had to offer for us. You know, it was hard, three coaches, we had three different coaches I have had in the four years I have been here, so just being able to have a second year with these guys and get comfortable with the offense, I mean, it definitely made us a better team offensive-wise.

SEPPO EVWARAYE: I really think it helped just from the standpoint you didn't have to relearn everything. I remember the first year I was with the play book terminology, and it looked like Hebrew to me and a bunch of other guys. This year it wasn't the same. We remembered a lot of stuff from the season, so it was just -- kind of just went over it again. You picked it up a lot faster. So I think that kind of went off -- that's one of the reasons we can be more physical and the tempo is higher this spring than it was last spring because it wasn't so much of a learning experience. It was more like guys trying to compete more instead of trying to learn the plays.

COACH CALLAHAN: I think reflecting back on Steve's question earlier, the biggest difference for us is the staff has been, in terms of transition, is creating and developing relationships with the players. Before you get into the Xs and Os and things of that nature, you really have to develop a relationship with your players, and that's paramount. I have always contended that players really don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That's really been the case for us as a coaching staff and as a team family, coming closer, coming together and having that chemistry bond a little bit tighter as you move through the process. It's tough to come into any situation transitionally and all of a sudden try to create trust and try to create instant credibility with your players. I think it's a tough dynamic no matter what profession you are in. The biggest thing that I think we have all taken from our first year at Nebraska as a staff, of course, with the players, is we have learned how to overcome adversity. We can't overcome in terms of the win-loss record for the season, but there are some real valuable lessons in overcoming adversity and how you handle adversity through the course of the season and through the course of the transition. So with that being said, we are really excited and looking forward to the season and we are looking forward to spending the day with you.