Texas Bowl

Texas Bowl Coaches News Conference

Texas Bowl Quotes
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
(Transcribed by Zac Emmons)

Lone Star Sports & Entertainment General Manager Chris Keeney
(opening statement about the Texas Bowl) “Obviously, we at Lone Star Sports & Entertainment as managers of the Texas Bowl, are very excited to have Missouri and the Naval Academy here to play in the 2009 Texas Bowl.  A couple of items of note, we have a really good shot at selling out this game for the first time in the bowl’s history.  I believe the high for the Texas Bowl was 62,097 in 2007 when Houston took on TCU.  We’re nearing eclipsing that now, so we’ve got a shot at 70,000-plus.  It should be noted that the all-time bowl record is the Bluebonnet Bowl in 1960, which had 68,000 fans, and that’s the all-time Houston bowl record and we’ve got a shot to eclipse that.  An item of note on that, that was Alabama and Texas, so we have all of our ties into the big game of the year.  We’re very happy to have both coaches, incredible offenses, incredible athletic talent – (QB Ricky) Dobbs over at Navy and (Missouri WR) Danario Alexander may be the best wideout in the country.  So we’re very excited, and without further ado, I’d like to introduce the coaches.”

Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel
(opening statement)  “Good afternoon.  We’re certainly excited to be in Houston representing the University of Missouri and all of our fans and our players.  We think this is a great bowl.  We have 30 players from Texas that are on our football team; some locally, but many, many that are within a four- or five-hour radius of Houston.  It’s a great recruiting area for us, and talking to many people that I’ve talked to that have been a part of this bowl, they’ve just said that it’s as first-class as any in the country.  So we’re excited about it; we’ll be down here the 26th of December and we’re looking forward to having a great time and we’re playing a great football team in Navy.  (Navy head coach) Ken’s (Niumatalolo) done a great job and we’ll certainly have our challenges in trying to win this football game.”

Navy Head Coach Ken Niumatalolo
(opening statement)  “On behalf of the United States Naval Academy, we’re ecstatic to be here.  We just had our big rivalry game last Saturday and it was a great win for our program, but unfortunately, I got to see the Missouri tape and it kind of took some of the euphoria away just seeing it, knowing that we’re going to play such a great opponent.  I was going to ask coach Pinkel what he’s feeding their guys; I mean, their quarterback is bigger than our defensive end, but we’re ecstatic to play such a great program.  Talking with Coach Pinkel prior to this, it was interesting to note that some of our coaching roots, coach (Don) James and some of the guys that he knew at Washington were the same guys that I started my coaching career with. 

“We’re grateful to be here.  We have 26 players from the state of Texas on our roster.  Texas is the biggest state for us, so we’re ecstatic to be able to come back here, to be here and to represent our school, and I know our guys are excited to get away from finals and get down here to Houston.”

Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel
(on the development of LB Will Ebner)  “Well, Will is starting – he played significantly at the beginning of the season and started at the end of the season at inside linebacker – and he’s a player that is a great hitter.  He’s one of the best hitters on our team.  I expected him, he played last year as a freshman; he was on special teams and did an exceptional job there.  He played a little linebacker, similar to the path that (LB) Sean Weatherspoon had, and he’s such a physical player.  He’s fun to watch and he’s a great competitor.  We expected him to have a real good sophomore year and he’s having that kind of year, and we expect him to even get better in the next couple of years in our program.”

(on LB Will Ebner’s ability to return from surgery so quickly)  “Well, that was – getting scoped and being able to come back – as fast as I’ve ever seen a player get back.  He had surgery on Monday and I forget the particular game that he missed, but it was that Thursday he was running sprints in the end zone and I thought that he could’ve played but you know what, our trainers and medical staff said that if we were playing a bowl game or the last game of the season, he could’ve played and been fine, but they just didn’t want to take a chance.  But that’s Will.  That’s his mental toughness, physical toughness.  That’s just the way he is.”

(on being able to showcase his team in Houston)  “Certainly, when we came to Missouri nine years ago, we set a plan down for recruiting.  The University of Missouri is the only Division I school in Missouri, so certainly that’s where we started.  We wanted to keep the best players in the state of Missouri.  Then we looked at where I thought some of the best high school football programs in the country are certainly in Texas and it’s Big 12 country. 

“At the time, I think when we got there we might have had 12 kids on the team from the Texas area.  So what we did is we decided, I think we have five coaches down here, maybe five and a half, and we are down here and there are so many great players, there’s so many great programs, there’s so many great coaches that I have always felt that if you evaluate well, you’re always going to find some great players because there’s so many of them, and that’s what we’ve done. 

“We’ve got a lot of good players, players that went on and played in the NFL, and great players in the Big 12.  Certainly, this is, for us to be down here and to be in the media, the daily media, for people to learn more about our program, I think it’s just a huge, huge plus for us.  We’ll certainly invite all the high school coaches in the area to come to our practices, and I’m sure Ken will do the same thing, so it’s just a real, real plus for us.”

Navy Head Coach Ken Niumatalolo
(on being able to showcase his team in Houston)  “There’s a lot of great fits for us at the Naval Academy, like Coach Pinkel talked about, football is huge here.  High school football, Friday Night Lights is more than a reality show in the state of Texas; it’s real.  Every high school has their own football building with a weight room and a secretary.  It’s pretty amazing when you come here to recruit, just from the standpoint that you realize how important football is.

“Also for us, academics are great here in the state of Texas and people in Texas are very patriotic.  So for us, from the Naval Academy, just from the military standpoint, for everything that our school represents, there are a lot of fits, and it’s the number one state for us.  Even though we recruit nationally, Texas is our number one state.”

(on the reaction that Navy receives and what coaching at Navy means to him)  “Well, there’s a great responsibility in coaching here.  I’m a football coach, but I also understand the bigger picture.  These young men, when they graduate here, they’re going to go serve our country, so when you go into a home, you talk of academics, you talk of the things that you can offer to a young man and their family, ultimately it comes down to these young men will be in harm’s way and they’ll be protecting our country.  So there’s always a different recruiting pitch, so to speak, and none of our coaches, nobody on our staff takes that lightly because we understand it’s a great responsibility, more than being a Navy football player, but they’re eventually going to be a Navy or Marine Corps officer for our country.”

Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel
(on QB Blaine Gabbert’s progress)  “I think Blaine had a really good year.  He had that spell where he played injured for about three weeks which really showed me his mental toughness and physical toughness and determination.  It told me an awful lot about him.  I also think he grew a lot during that adversity that he had.  But you take the games that he’s been healthy and he’s just had a great sophomore year, first year.  His numbers are very comparable, most importantly to winning than anything, as we all know, and I put it in the quarterback’s face all the time that the most important thing is winning football games.  And (former Missouri QB) Chase Daniel, in his sophomore year, we won eight games; we had an opportunity to win nine.  So we’re real excited about his future.  I think he’s got the potential to be one of the best in the Big 12, which means if you can be that as his experience level improves as his career goes on, then you have a chance to be one of the best in the country, too. So, very, very pleased with his progress.”

(on why Missouri has played so well away from home)  “I don’t know.  I think that generally we’ve been a lot better in road games.  We’ve almost averaged 10 wins a year the last four years, a couple games from that I think, so you have to learn to win on the road.  You have to.  You’ve got to be disciplined enough to focus and be able to play your best game, play your best football.  So I think it’s a little bit of that.  We lost a couple games at home, which doesn’t happen to us – we call our stadium ‘The Zou”  - it doesn’t happen very often.  But I think that for some reason, we did a great job with a young football team of being able to focus and lock in, and that certainly was a plus for us this season as we had our ups and downs.”

(on preparing to face Navy’s offense)  “I got real nervous watching the tape.  It’s a real contrast in offenses.  I think what’s a little bit more difficult from our side is I think a lot of people run spread offenses now and everybody’s got their versions of their spread offenses, but we have not played anybody with this offense.  This is the option and all that they do with their system and their scheme, and it’s very, very impressive. 

“(QB Ricky) Dobbs is a great quarterback; I saw him in the Army-Navy game.  I actually got a chance to watch him compete rather than just looking at plays, and he’s tough and he can throw the football and he is obviously a great athlete, but his toughness, you just kind of shake your head a little bit because having a guy with the ball in his hands as many times as he does presents a lot of problems.  But it’s a great scheme, it’s very, very difficult and that’s going to be a real, real challenge for our defense.  We’re fortunate that we have more than a week to prepare for it.  I don’t know if that will do any good, but certainly it’s very, very impressive. 

“And I think you’re going to see, trend-wise, I think you’re going to see more people go to it.  People will always kind of jump on, and with Georgia Tech and Navy, people that are running this great offense, there are trends and I think the trend is going to shift that way a little bit, personally.”

Navy Head Coach Ken Niumatalolo
(on preparing to face Missouri’s offense)  “Well, the first thing that jumps out to me as I look at them on tape is how big they are.  Even without even having a two-deep in front of me, as I start to watch tape, you can see the size and mass of their team.  And then I didn’t realize until I looked at it that (Missouri QB Blaine) Gabbert is 6-5, 240 and just how big they are.  They create so much problems because they get in empty and five-wides and spread you out and you kind of pick your poison.  Do you go out and cover them and he (Gabbert) can run the ball?  They have a system, they’ve seen every blitz thrown at them.  There’s nothing you can do from a blitz standpoint that’s going to rattle them.  They know where to go with the ball, their sight adjusts and their hots (hot reads).  And the guys they throw the ball to when they spread you out, for us which has been giving us some trouble, just kind of getting us in space.  We know we’re going to have our work cut out for us just kind of matching up with them.”

(on what C/OG Curtis Bass has meant to the Navy program)  “He’s been a great leader.  Curtis Bass has been a great leader.  I coached him on the offensive line when he first came.  The one thing, again kind of going back to Texas kids, the one thing I know is these kids are used to being coached hard.  He wasn’t afraid, or he was accustomed to somebody getting after him hard on the field.  He hasn’t said anything, he’s kind of kept his mouth quiet, he’s worked hard, and he kind of epitomizes who we are.  He’s not the biggest kid in the world, but he’s tough as nails and he does whatever’s asked of him.”

(on the privilege of representing the Naval Academy)  “I guess, I can’t speak for the other coaches, but just from the standpoint that we’re a nation at war and we have a couple of conflicts going on with our country with other hot spots in the world and different things going on.  I was at two other civilian schools and I normally went in there and talked about our academics, our tutoring program, our facilities.  I mean, serving our country will always come up as you talk to these parents, so it’s a little different deal.  I can just see mothers’ eyes as they ask you, ‘Will my son be in harm’s way?’  And that’s always hard because you’ve got to be honest with people and they’re going to be serving our country and there’s always the possibility that they will be in harm’s way.  So I have great respect for them, just from the standpoint that they’re coming to an Academy when we’re a nation at wars – not war, wars – and they still come.  This is a volunteer service; this isn’t the 60’s where people were drafted, so I have a great amount of respect for them.”

(on embracing Navy’s status as the underdog in most of its games)  “Well, we kind of know who we are.  We know we’re never going to win the ‘get off the bus’ contest, and our kids understand that.  They understand that we’re not going to be as big as anybody, but I think for us, the team concept, being unselfish, is the only way we survive.  If we had guys worried about how many times they touched the ball or who’s getting in on this play or how many tackles they had, we’d be in trouble.  Our guys, to their credit, have bought into a team concept which allows us to survive on this level.  Because like I said, physically, one-on-one, we can’t match up with anybody, but hopefully, collectively as a group we can have a chance to compete.”