HS 280 - Passing the Torch: Building Winning Football Programs...with a Dose of Swagger Along the Way with 3-time College Championship Head Coach Howard Schnellenberger

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome coach Howard Schnellenberger to the show. He is a three time winner of the Colle Football national championship for Alabama U, Miami and Louisville. He's author of Passing the Torch, Building Winning Football Programs with a Dose of Swagger along the way. Coach, welcome. How are you?

Well, I'm wonderful and boy, what a great time it is. Super bowl right around the corner and the finest playoff game that we had ever.

Yeah, that's for sure. And as I mentioned before we started recording, this won't air until after the super bowl. So if you want to make your prediction, feel free.

Well, I've got a prediction, but let's work our way down the line.

Tell us a little bit about your background and you know how you can relate your experience and success as one of college's top football coaches to business and entrepreneurship.

Well, I'm the luckiest guy that ever lived because I knew I wanted to be a football coach early in life and grade school as a matter of fact, and as a result of the great coaching from Little League to my coaching time, I was tutored, mentored and learned from five hall of Fame coaches, Bryant, Don Shula, George Allen, Blaine Collier, and my high school coach, Paulie Miller. So that gave me more information, a better schooling than any coach that I know because I don't know of any other coach that's ever had that blessing of having five of those caliber of guys to work with over a 30 year period of time to prepare me for my first college coaching experience at the University of Miami. And without me knowing that if I was at any intelligence at all that I had learned enough from these guys that I could take Miami, maybe the worst program in America at the time, hadn't won a bowl game in 13 years and were dropping football when I got There I was conceived with enough knowledge to make it work. We were successful.

Yeah, yeah. What were some of the key things you did to turn it around?

Well, the first thing I had to do was evaluate the program. When I looked, I said, hell, we've got more natural resources that they have at USC or Alabama or Notre Dame or anywhere in a subtropical climate. Right in the middle of paradise, we have a college stadium. The orange bulb was a grand old lady and was the star of those places to play in the Southeastern Conference. So you're in the south, Southern part of the United States. We already had a better schedule than anybody could hope for. And if you didn't have one, you'd take 10 years to build it. And then to have the finest football talent within two hour drive of our campus, well, if you can't win here, you can't win anywhere. So we took that to the bank and I said, we've got to get the word out what we're here for. We're here to win the national championship in five years. We got the capacity to do it and we got to shout it from the mountaintops. We got to bring in coaches that believe that, that are willing to take less money and work harder and. But we got to recruit the kids and get them convinced that we're not with them coming with us, that we have a chance and should win the national championship. And singing from the highest mountaintop, we're not winning the national championship in five years. And lo and behold, the people started buying into it when we started winning a little bit. And the more we won, the more they bought into it. So that we had the most confident group of players, coaches, alumni, students. Then the fans started to come and they became. And super confident.

You must have had a lot of naysayers though, too, right? I mean, with no history, you declared that out of thin air.

Hell, we took it to the Cuban community. Nobody had ever taken a football team to a Cuban community. And we had a little. Havana became a mainstay. A few other youngsters had gone to school there. But, you know, if you have a dream and you don't tell it to anybody, it's still a dream. But if you have a dream that other people and tell other people about it, particularly radio stations and television stations, and shout it from the highest mountain and then you start producing and winning. But people that are drawn to you, it's magnetic.

Yeah. Yeah, they are. Tell us about how you took it to the Cuban community. I mean, what did you do? Did you go and make appearances in some of their hangouts or. What do you mean?

Well, first of all, we got the radio. Cuban radio stations invited them to do the games. And they. We did Cuban newspaper down there, got one that's for the Cubans only. And advertising there. Do your second sales in there. And they were just looking for something to adopt and that magnified numbers of our faithful. And then when we went to Louisville, we just took that same message up there. It was tougher battle up there because they had left the COVID really bare. But down in Miami, they, Lou Saban had left the cupboard pretty full with Jim Kelly and Bernie Kosar and a bunch of really good players so we could win early. When I went to Louisville, the COVID was barren. We had to take four years before we could get to a point where we could talk about national championships.

Let's talk about how we relate this to business and entrepreneurship a little bit more, if we could. I mean, certainly entrepreneurs are known for creating something out of thin air, creating something where nothing exists. And that's really what you did when you talk about the Miami example here. This team had no history. It was a bad program. And out of thin air, you know, you come in and you say, in five years, we're going to be the champs. A lot of people, I'm sure, thought you were crazy, but you got people to buy into the vision, too. You know, coaches to come and work for less, students and players. Yeah.

God in his divine wisdom, let me recognize that if we didn't do something.

Something very special, extraordinary, that we had no chance, because they had. They had voted to drop University of Miami football down to Division 1 double A. And when I found that out and I questioned them on it, they said, oh, we forgot to tell you about that, but we're going to take that back to the board and we're going to vote that down. Well, that's what I said in five years. Found out that they had tabled it for five years.

Turned it around, and that's when I. That's when I had said, we got to go out and tell the world that we're going to win the national championship in five years, because otherwise.

It would never happen. It would have taken 20 years rather than five years.

Right.

So it was those kinds of things. But what you have to do is you have to. You have to bring your coaching staff, your players, all of your. All of the people around. You know, you have to take it to the market. You gotta take it to.

And build a brand and take it to the market, and your Coaches, and particularly the head coach has to go out and speak to every. Every service club there is. I made two and a half speaking engagements every year for the first three years I was there on average. And when you say two and a.

Half, you didn't mean two and a half per year. Right.

Did you mean per month or per day?

Oh, per day. Ye. Okay, got it. You were talking to every service club out there. Right.

Dinner.

Yeah.

And sometimes. Sometimes a breakfast.

Yeah.

And hell, I went from Key west all the way up to. You know, we say that we created the.

State of Miami, where we started with three counties. Dade, Palm beach and Broward. That was our. That was our state. That was our hometown recruiting area.

Right, right.

And the next we added on went up to West Palm and then on up to Jupiter and then on right up to 95 until we got there to Highway 4, the corridor that goes across the state from the east coast to the west coast through Tampa, through Orlando, and that's the state of Miami. We built a great wall of china right along I4.

Yeah, interesting.

And we concentrated our nine coaches. Each school has nine coaches that can go out and recruit and we can get to i4 in about two and a half hours. So we saturated recruited that area and keeping the carpet baggers from coming down north and stealing our players. You know, everybody used to sit the head coach down there around Christmas time. And that was the reason why they did it was there's a lot good players down there. And it was good for the head coaches to take a vacation down there and go back to World War II. After World War II, they started retreating Miami heavily. But we were able to rebuke them because we outmanned them. We protected our area. We weren't on the advance. We weren't going into Alabama, we weren't going into Pennsylvania, we weren't going into Texas. And so we. Those nine coaches should be out. And when those carpet bakers came down there and tried to set a visit, we would probably have it cut off because we were in there first. So it was a great defense in recruiting is better than a good offense.

Yeah, no question about it. Tell us a little bit about teamwork as it relates. I mean, you talked about that certainly that creating the quote state unquote of Miami. This is interesting.

Well, first of all, you got to bring in the best coaches you bring in. And you do that by announcing that if you come with us, obviously we can't pay you as much as Florida can pay you or any, you know, Notre Dame or Penn State. But we can give you an opportunity to be considered the founders and the people that have created something from nothing. And you won't be like Florida, where they've been cranking out national championships and bowl games and all that for 100 years. And if you go in there and you do something good, another co the machinery that's been operating there for so long. But if you come in there with us at Miami and we do what we know we could do and we create a team that can beat anybody else in the country and we can establish a dynasty that will last longer than did it Alabama when I was with Brian, when he won three national championships in five years. We'll win five championships over a longer period of time, but we will have played in the championship game 10 out of the 15 years. By you coming and doing that, you will have created dossier a record that will help you get head coaching jobs, any positional country.

You know, we live in a world where things are changing so quickly. And I think a really important life skill people have is about embracing change and dealing with change. You changed a lot of stuff. You shook a lot of stuff up in your career. What advice would you give to people about managing change?

Well, don't change with a change. That's for sure. That's what we got going now. A change happens and you think that's the only way to do it. You just be true to your roots and true to your beliefs and your philosophy and sure, pick up on the good stuff that some people will create and will take advantage of. But you got to make your own agenda. You got to have your own culture. You can't try to please everybody. And you got to do what you believe in. And as long as you're having success with it, ride that horse to the finish line.

Ride that horse to the finish line. Good advice. Good advice. You know, just generally about overcoming obstacles.

An obstacle in a man's life, in a football coach's life or a football player's life is the greatest assets you can have. It's kind of like getting up on the horse. It's like lifting the weight. It's like doing the pull up. When you use those adversities as a object that we can use to make us stronger and better, and you'll come out the other end a lot better off the world. You didn't have obstacles.

Yeah, it makes you stronger. You know, anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You learn from obstacles and you become better at overcoming them.

The more you tackle yeah, absolutely. That's what weightlifting and strength building is built on, is overcoming resistance, breaking down your muscle fiber so that it can grow back. And when it comes back, it comes back stronger so it doesn't get defeated again. And you keep that going over a period of time and the success you see is unreal.

Yeah, no question about it. That's for sure. You know, muscles are strengthened by challenging them, by tearing them apart, by giving them bigger and bigger obstacles.

Sedimentary is the worst thing you can do, Sit down and melt away.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Have you managed teams of paid players as well, or have you always been in the college arena?

No, no, I was in National Football League for most of my early career. I was with. After I left Alabama, I went in with George Allen and with the Los Angeles Rams for four years. And I was Don Chul during his glory years, seven years with him.

That's what I wanted the listeners to hear. So here's my question about that coach. How is it different dealing with college versus pro players? You've got the money aspect in there. So what changes when you have that?

Well, back when we started with the Dolphins, with George Allen, it was much different. The players weren't making more than the head coach. The assistant coaches weren't making as much as the players. It was more like coaching in college at that period of time. The Miami Dolphins, for example, we had a good athletes, a lot of good athletes, but we didn't have the best athletes. But Don Shuler made sure that they were the athletes that could produce the most wins because of how hard they worked and worth. Actually, the players and the coaches had a great relationship. And most important thing was the head coach was the almighty power. He didn't have a bunch of people telling him what he could do and what he couldn't do. He had full card blotch. How to bring it, coach a team and bring them to from obscurity to success, how to train them to a point where they can challenge and play with the best in this market, in this day and time, we've got players making so much money that they can't fathom doing more than. More than they're required to do.

You're saying they're a bit spoiled. There's an entitlement attitude there.

Yeah, but you know, God in the Bible or somebody, that is harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to make his way to heaven. And that's absolutely true when you think about human nature. As soon as you get not worried about where your next meal is coming from. When you're not worried about taking the house payment, you have plenty of time for pleasure and leisure. That's not very good for human beings.

Yep. That luxury is the lull to apathy. And apathy is a bad thing, for sure.

Now, what we've done, we've built a bureaucracy around professional football, starting with the labor unions and starting with a whole bunch of tiers of levels of authority, going from the owners to general managers to managers to coaches to an excessive number of coaches and the labor unions.

The coaches are handcuffed. You can't coach them like you want to. Now. They. They won't let you have pads on two days in a row.

Yeah, yeah.

They won't let you practice more than so many hours. That's both.

This sounds a lot like government and unions and problems in business, you know, and the public school system. It's a mess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really interesting. Coach. Give out your website, tell people where they can find your book and find out more about you.

Yeah, well, it's Howard Salimber Edu. And you go to Amazon and pick up the book, all the Barnes and Nobles has it. And on the website we've got Howard Sallenberger dot com.

Yeah, absolutely. And the book again is called Passing the Torch. Building Winning Football Programs with a Dose of swagger along the Way.

Let's talk about swagger.

Yeah, I want to. That's exactly what I wanted to ask you to wrap up with, is swagger. Tell us about swagger. Swagger.

Well, I think swagger is a difficult word for most people to understand, but I can tell you what it isn't. It isn't being braggadocious, and it isn't being impolite, and it's not being discourteous, and it's not being a bully. It's a state of personal feelings. And it's a feeling that you get when you know you've outworked, you've out studied, you've out rehearsed, you put more effort into it. And in this body and mind of yours, you are a superior person and a superior athlete. And on the day in a game, you will rise to the occasion. And we know the games are one in the fourth quarter. That's why you see all the kids raising four fingers up and saying fourth quarter. The ones that have swagger are raising their fingers because they know that they've worked harder physically, mentally prepared better, sacrificed more, and that God will reward those things that you've done. And he will be there with you in the final moments of that game.

Very good point. Coach Howard Schnellenberger, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for the call.

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