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TOSTITOS FIESTA BOWL: CENTRAL FLORIDA v BAYLORDecember 30, 2013Art BrilesGLENDALE, ARIZONA THE MODERATOR: Coach Briles will start with an opening statement. COACH BRILES: We're excited to be here. Weather is unbelievable. People are unbelievable. Valley of the Sun is a really neat place. I can see why people retire and come up here in the winters, no question. It's been a great experience for us. That's what it is about bowl games. They're things you earn throughout the season. Our guys have done a great job of staying focused and getting us to this level, to this atmosphere, and to a BCS bowl. We certainly don't take it lightly. It's our first BCS bowl game. What a better place to spend it than right here in Arizona. So we're really, really excited about that and anxious for the game Wednesday evening, because it's been a little bit of a break since December 7th since we played. We're ready to get back on the field and up against a good UCF football team that we feel haven't gotten the national respect for what they deserve over the last four years. They've won 41 games over the last four years, which is an amazing feat. They just really do a great job. Coach O'Leary does a great job, his staff does. He's been a really good football coach for many, many years. I certainly have a lot of respect for him. We were together in Conference USA back in the mid 2000s, had a couple wars together. Won't be any different this Wednesday night. But all of our guys are out there. That's where the personalities are, the reason we're here. I'm just thankful and honored to be part of it. But get out there and they'll give you some ammunition. I won't give you any. They'll give you something that people enjoy reading. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Coach Briles. Q. When you look back at your program, where you started, you look at getting to the BCS, what would a win in this game mean for your program overall? COACH BRILES: That's something I thought about quite honestly, about these players, these seniors, starting a legacy, creating a year that's going to be part to duplicate and overcome. There's one way to overcome it, if we win, is to win a national championship. Have an undefeated season and win a national championship. They can set the standard high. One of the things we talk about at Baylor is the standard. We're not going to compare ourselves to anybody else. We're not going to look to see what anybody else is doing. We're going to do what we do and try to do it better than anybody else in America. I think them coming out there and winning the game Wednesday night, I just think it would certainly increase our expectations and set a standard up there that would need to try to be equaled or surpassed every year. Q. You've gotten a reputation for rebuilding programs everywhere you've gone, having success. What is it about what you do, what your staff does, in your opinion, better than other coaches? COACH BRILES: I think everything's about timing 100%. It's about people. It's about environment. It's about atmosphere. It's about trust. It's about having a vision, having a plan, having the inner soul and toughness to follow it through without deviating. We've always felt like we do what we do, and we're going to continue to do it till we do it as well as we can do it. That's from a philosophical standpoint along with schematically. What we try to do with our players is treat them as men, treat them at human beings. I like to be respected. I always tell our players, Treat everybody you come into contact with with respect initially. Doesn't matter who it is, what they're doing, always treat them with respect. If they don't return that favor, then you can disrespect them. That's okay. But always give somebody a chance to be respectful. I think little things like that go a long way. It all starts at the top. Starts with the people in charge of the university that will follow that vision, give you the means to carry through with that vision. Then you have to have the players to carry it through. Q. Is there a specific point in the season that you thought you could see this happening down the line? COACH BRILES: That's a good question. I actually got asked that yesterday by the ESPN crew. I hadn't thought about it before till they asked it. I started rattling off a couple things that happened early in the season. Going into the season, offensively we thought that was going to be our issue, because we'd lost quite a bit of firepower, three linemen, two four‑year starters at receivers, lose a quarterback that's all‑time, single‑season leading thrower, so there's some question marks going in. We came in and did what we did offensively early in the season, because we knew we would be good on defense, we felt like it was going to be a great defensive year the way those guys finished up last year. I would say the point to where we got to thinking, This could be okay, is the Kansas State game, without question. We'd been to Manhattan. Went up with a good football team in 2011, no slight to Kansas State, but we were a 10‑to‑14 point better ballclub, got beat 36‑35. It's a credit to Bill Snyder, their fans and football team. They put on a show when you go up there now. That was a team we had beaten last year when they were 10‑0 in America and Number 1 in America. They came into Waco and we beat them. When we were going up there, hide the women and children, because we knew it was going to be a tough, tough atmosphere. It was. To be able to go up there and scratch out a 10‑point win by scoring 14 points in the fourth quarter on the road, that right then said, Yeah, this team's got what it takes to really be great. Q. Texas and Florida are two big recruiting states. What can a win in a game like this do for your recruiting? COACH BRILES: The great thing about us recruiting is that we recruit Texas. That's what we do because of our location, because we're familiar with the state and the programs and the personnel, the coaches. All that goes into evaluating student‑athletes. We'll have a few kids outside of the state. Most of them are JC kids, and they've done a great job for us. Three or four guys have come in and done a great job for us defensively that are JC kids. Most of our kids are from the state of Texas. What it would do, anytime you win, and your program excels in‑state, it just increases your ability to recruit the better players in the state of Texas, which we've been fortunate enough to do the last two or three years. So it would help tremendously. Q. UCF, a one‑loss team, what have you seen in them offensively or defensively that might cause you some problems? COACH BRILES: I think their style of play. I think their patience, their maturity, their discipline. Coach O'Leary, he's known for being a defensive guy. They do a great job schematically defensively. They don't get themselves out of position with alignment. They're productive in how they approach the game. We're just playing a well‑coached football team. They've won 41 games in four years. You get to thinking about who else has done that in Division I, and Alabama is the only one that comes to mind. I'm not sure how many they've won, but I'm guessing in the 40‑plus range. They may be the only other university that's done that. To me that's very impressive. At the end of the day, that's what it's about, it's about winning. Q. Could you talk about Cyril Richardson and how he's become the player he is? COACH BRILES: I could talk about him a lot if you want me to, but I'll just go a little (smiling). Cyril, as with a lot of our players, love 'em to death. But the great thing about Cyril is he was a hurricane kid from New Orleans that came into Texas I believe the end of his sophomore year, had zero offers out of high school. He came to one of our camps. We had a camp, he came over there. Coach Clements, our offensive line coach, called me over and said, You need to come look at this guy. If you've Cyril, he's a pretty good‑sized fella. I went over there, I said, That one? He said, Yes, sir. I said, Put him through the ropes. He goes about halfway through the ropes and I said, Offer him. He had the best feet of any big guy I've ever been around. I've been around some big guys, some really great players. He's as a guy that is as a quick twitch, a person for his size, as anybody I've seen. I've said it for at least a year and a half, I think he's the best O‑line man in the United States of America and I think he'll be a top‑15 pick. That's a nutshell. Q. Can you talk about the similarities of these two programs, both historically overlooked in their states, in their first Fiesta Bowl, conference champions. COACH BRILES: Yeah, you know, Central Florida, they've won some conference championships over the last four or five years. Coach O'Leary won it, I think they won Conference USA in '10 and '11. They've won a couple. As far as getting overlooked in your state, I mean, the way you keep from getting overlooked is to beat the competition and win. He's done that. Fortunately we've, to a certain degree, done some of that over the last two or three years. I mean, that's how you force equality. Equality is not given; it's something you've got to earn. His players have earned it, so have we, to now we're more on an equal scale to where we might have been five years ago. Q. How much has your blueprint changed for bowl week and preparation, from early till now? COACH BRILES: That's really a good question. Every year's different. It's different in that when you finish up and when is your bowl game. Like we finished up December 7th, our bowl game is January the 1st. We've got a three‑and‑a‑half week period in there where we can work our workout times in. A few years ago, we went to the Texas bowl, we finished up in November, maybe around Thanksgiving, then didn't play till the 27th or 28th. It was a full month. That was a little different. But the thing we usually try to do is get in a good week and a half at home and then a good five to six practices here. We took six at home. This will be six tomorrow here. That's really all we need. I don't know how many other universities have done it, to have been the only ones that played in August and January. But we played six months this year. We've been at it a while and our guys know what they're doing. Q. You mentioned national championship a little bit earlier. Are you still a little disappointed you weren't able to make it? Is it a good thing this program has gotten to the point where they're disappointed not to play for national championships and is that the next step next year? COACH BRILES: Well, it's always the step. I don't know if 'disappointed' is the right word, but displeased that we're one of the 121 other universities that didn't get in the national championship game. It's a pretty small minority that are able to get in there. You grind, you work, and you got to have good fortune. Everything's got to fall right. Your schedule has to fall right. Where you get in trouble late in the year is when you go on the road two weeks in a row in conference play. You can check the stats over the last two or three years. That's where teams that you think might win don't win because it's just late in the season. It's a long year. You have injuries. It happens for them and the opponent, for us and the opponent. But there's just an advantage to being at home late. I think that's where it catches up with you. I think that's why it's so hard to go undefeated in a major conference. Just hard to do. Q. There's a lot of distractions that go along with a bowl game for players. For you particular this week, the Texas job, all that, how do you keep from getting annoyed by that? COACH BRILES: Annoyed, simple. The great thing about having limited brain cells is you have to focus entirely on what the task at hand is. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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