Well, I got beaten to the punch in asking about DaShaun White, so I had to pivot. And I switched to what turned out to be the longest answer from Brent Venables this week.
Seven minutes, 10 seconds, 999 words. FWIW, White story is gonna be really good Friday
Brent, when you have on-field issues like you guys did in the last month, what's the recruiting message? Does it change? We're still a ways away from signing day, but has it been tough to maintain what you guys worked so hard to get?
There’s no different message. When you are selling yourself and have no track record, you are trying to sell what you’ve accomplished in the past. When you have some sort of track record – good or bad, whether it’s coaching a position or a unit, being a part of experiences – you continue to nurture that. The biggest thing is you build relationships. At the end of the day, in the recruiting world, it never stops when a guy commits. People are still going to try to recruit people and sometimes guys change their minds. That’s their right. That’s part of the process.
You don’t like it when you’re not on the right side of it. But you are always checking the temperature of the water. All right, this guy, I’m not sure. You’re really doing that from the get-go. This guy committed, but I’m not sure. For whatever reason – maybe it’s where they are located, family support or not, sometimes you get a parent who is looking at it more than an agent role as opposed as someone who will take the baton from us and help take their son from boyhood to manhood. Some people look at it from a business standpoint. Some like at it as growth and maturation and a football opportunity too.
A lot goes into it. Recruiting is tough and demanding and challenging. You are dealing with real emotions and real life opportunities. Hopefully you do things right. You’ve had success. You have people who are effective communicators, relationship-driven and hard-working. You will be on the strong side of it. Every once in a while, things won’t go your way. I don’t lose sleep over somebody that we never had, that was supposedly lost. If they come here in this program and they go on that field for us and they leave, that’s somebody that we lost. There’s a bunch of great players. We’ve identified a handful of them, I challenged the staff a couple of weeks ago … some of the best players who played here or our previous stops were guys who were under the radar going into their senior year. With diligence and that kind of mindset, you find some great players who were undervalued.
I think, more now than ever, there will be more and more players who are overlooked for a lot of reasons. No. 1, it’s because everybody is in such a hurry to get to the next class – the 24 class, the 25 class, now the 26 class. Some schools are in the 27s. You only have so much time in a day. What about that 23 guy that just had his first four games or his last four games. You saw him six months ago and he was 6-1. Now he’s 6-3½ but you don’t know because you stopped recruiting him and he didn’t meet the measureables. What have you, there are a million different things.
Some schools are like we didn’t identify anybody in the 23 class. The last time we offered people was in the summer and we’re not watching anyone in the fall – I’m not saying this is the game plan but it’s a byproduct. Now they are trying to identify who might be in the transfer portal or who will be and we’re going to save these five spots for portal guys. We’re moving onto the 24 class. And when the portal names get in there, we have to get a tackle, a receiver and they’re not looking for those seniors who are developing – Jeremy Beal, Isaiah Simmons, K’von Wallace, a bunch of great players that you didn’t offer until late. Mark Clayton. Mark was pretty good. There’s countless others. But guys that they just come on out of nowhere. It’s a developmental game. A guy’s senior year is where you have to be careful. We challenged the state – let’s look at guys at under-recruited states that may have had FBS offers in the last month. That’s one way to try to cut to the chase and find a shortcut to find guys and go from there. Just watching and evaluating and don’t worry about the popularity contest. Find out if these guys can play and find out about the intangibles.
"I love that. I think that’s exciting. I think that’s not real quote-unquote “sexy”, but I think that a portion of your team every year needs to be built from that. We’ve got to be mindful and I’ve got to do a good job protecting that part of our program. Instead of chasing a guy that’s been committed to three schools since August that has a commitment issue, obviously. He’ll have that same commitment issue when he comes and things don’t happen easy or quick for himself.
“There’s a lot of that that goes into it. It’s not foolproof, but that’s our philosophy when it comes to a lot of that. And again, recruiting is always tough. If you’re Alabama, they’ll say — everybody’s got their own pitch to recruit against Alabama, believe it or not. I don’t think its, ‘Why would you want to go there because they win all the time?’ I don’t think that’s it. Maybe it’s, ‘Hey man, we need you to play today.’ You might have to wait, but if I’m Alabama, the way we want to be is you want to be so good when you get to that practice field every day that you have no other option but to improve. And you practice this game a lot more than you actually play it.
“So you go to practice every day, you’re going to improve and get better. You’re going against the best of the best. That makes you get better. You can’t run and hide and get into bad habits. You’ll be exposed every single day. I want to create a practice field that systematically does that, and then the good-on-good does that for you. That’s how you exponentially develop players to buy into that.”
Seven minutes, 10 seconds, 999 words. FWIW, White story is gonna be really good Friday
Brent, when you have on-field issues like you guys did in the last month, what's the recruiting message? Does it change? We're still a ways away from signing day, but has it been tough to maintain what you guys worked so hard to get?
There’s no different message. When you are selling yourself and have no track record, you are trying to sell what you’ve accomplished in the past. When you have some sort of track record – good or bad, whether it’s coaching a position or a unit, being a part of experiences – you continue to nurture that. The biggest thing is you build relationships. At the end of the day, in the recruiting world, it never stops when a guy commits. People are still going to try to recruit people and sometimes guys change their minds. That’s their right. That’s part of the process.
You don’t like it when you’re not on the right side of it. But you are always checking the temperature of the water. All right, this guy, I’m not sure. You’re really doing that from the get-go. This guy committed, but I’m not sure. For whatever reason – maybe it’s where they are located, family support or not, sometimes you get a parent who is looking at it more than an agent role as opposed as someone who will take the baton from us and help take their son from boyhood to manhood. Some people look at it from a business standpoint. Some like at it as growth and maturation and a football opportunity too.
A lot goes into it. Recruiting is tough and demanding and challenging. You are dealing with real emotions and real life opportunities. Hopefully you do things right. You’ve had success. You have people who are effective communicators, relationship-driven and hard-working. You will be on the strong side of it. Every once in a while, things won’t go your way. I don’t lose sleep over somebody that we never had, that was supposedly lost. If they come here in this program and they go on that field for us and they leave, that’s somebody that we lost. There’s a bunch of great players. We’ve identified a handful of them, I challenged the staff a couple of weeks ago … some of the best players who played here or our previous stops were guys who were under the radar going into their senior year. With diligence and that kind of mindset, you find some great players who were undervalued.
I think, more now than ever, there will be more and more players who are overlooked for a lot of reasons. No. 1, it’s because everybody is in such a hurry to get to the next class – the 24 class, the 25 class, now the 26 class. Some schools are in the 27s. You only have so much time in a day. What about that 23 guy that just had his first four games or his last four games. You saw him six months ago and he was 6-1. Now he’s 6-3½ but you don’t know because you stopped recruiting him and he didn’t meet the measureables. What have you, there are a million different things.
Some schools are like we didn’t identify anybody in the 23 class. The last time we offered people was in the summer and we’re not watching anyone in the fall – I’m not saying this is the game plan but it’s a byproduct. Now they are trying to identify who might be in the transfer portal or who will be and we’re going to save these five spots for portal guys. We’re moving onto the 24 class. And when the portal names get in there, we have to get a tackle, a receiver and they’re not looking for those seniors who are developing – Jeremy Beal, Isaiah Simmons, K’von Wallace, a bunch of great players that you didn’t offer until late. Mark Clayton. Mark was pretty good. There’s countless others. But guys that they just come on out of nowhere. It’s a developmental game. A guy’s senior year is where you have to be careful. We challenged the state – let’s look at guys at under-recruited states that may have had FBS offers in the last month. That’s one way to try to cut to the chase and find a shortcut to find guys and go from there. Just watching and evaluating and don’t worry about the popularity contest. Find out if these guys can play and find out about the intangibles.
"I love that. I think that’s exciting. I think that’s not real quote-unquote “sexy”, but I think that a portion of your team every year needs to be built from that. We’ve got to be mindful and I’ve got to do a good job protecting that part of our program. Instead of chasing a guy that’s been committed to three schools since August that has a commitment issue, obviously. He’ll have that same commitment issue when he comes and things don’t happen easy or quick for himself.
“There’s a lot of that that goes into it. It’s not foolproof, but that’s our philosophy when it comes to a lot of that. And again, recruiting is always tough. If you’re Alabama, they’ll say — everybody’s got their own pitch to recruit against Alabama, believe it or not. I don’t think its, ‘Why would you want to go there because they win all the time?’ I don’t think that’s it. Maybe it’s, ‘Hey man, we need you to play today.’ You might have to wait, but if I’m Alabama, the way we want to be is you want to be so good when you get to that practice field every day that you have no other option but to improve. And you practice this game a lot more than you actually play it.
“So you go to practice every day, you’re going to improve and get better. You’re going against the best of the best. That makes you get better. You can’t run and hide and get into bad habits. You’ll be exposed every single day. I want to create a practice field that systematically does that, and then the good-on-good does that for you. That’s how you exponentially develop players to buy into that.”
