On-Site with UNLV Football

Welcome to OLP On Site. I'm LeCharles Bentley, and today we are on site at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We're spending the day with the coaching staff, visiting their brand new state-of-the-art facilities, and hearing, of course, what the coaches have to say in regards to player development. It's going to be a great segment. Come take the tour with us. The transition from high school—

Yeah.

To a major Division I program, what's been some of the biggest challenges you've had to face?

You know, probably just the management of some of the administrative stuff. You know, we were talking earlier about the fundraising for the building. So one of the things is we didn't have the infrastructure to compete recruiting-wise at an elite level, not even at a Mountain West level. So we knew we needed to do something about that. We needed to raise coaching salaries. We needed to go ahead and, you know, invest in our facilities. So, you know, raising the money for the Fertitta Football Complex was a whole job in itself. I mean, I was a half a football coach and half a fundraiser for the university. But I'm proud of it. It's the, you know, the most expensive athletic facility ever built. Wow. You know, UNLV, it's the largest fundraise project we've ever had athletically, and we've had some of the largest donations ever. So it's been a lot of work, but now to see it almost at completion and knowing the impact it's going to have on this program, not for the next 2 or 3, but the next 30, 40, 50 years, it makes you proud.

You talked about recruiting. Let's talk about the impact on the growth of the infrastructure on recruiting. How is that going to help you? It's a game changer.

A game changer for us. Because, you know, for example, you get a kid on campus and let's say you're one of the first schools he sees. Well, he's excited. He's walking around a football building.

Right.

But then he's going to go compare apples to apples to other schools. He's going to go to Boise or he may go down the road to UCLA or other places. And you look and go like, it just doesn't match facility-wise.

Right.

You know, do facilities win games? No, but great players do.

Of course.

And getting great players in your facilities is the key.

Right. Right? Right. That's the key. Now, coming from Gorman, you've had every top program come through and check out your players. How has that past experience and exposure helped you in recruiting today?

Man, that's a great question. And I'll tell you what, I think that's— I tell people all the time is I didn't know it at the time, but I had a front row seat to recruiting on a national scale. I saw the good and the bad and the ugly, man. Who was full of it, who was sincere, you know, what did the players gravitate to, what were they attracted to, you know, from, I mean, just the different ways people went about doing it. You know, I've shared a lot of that with our staff. I think I had a really good pulse on the high school kid and what they look to, what they're looking for. And my whole thing is always just be raw and real. At the end of the day, be raw, be real with the kids. You know, you can recruit them with bling, but you're gonna keep them with substance. So there's better be something there.

So what's your vision? What's your vision for UNLV football over the next 3, 4 years?

I really believe that we have an opportunity going into this season, 2019, to win a bunch of football games. You know, we were— when we got here, one of the biggest areas we had to develop was the offensive line. You spent a day talking about that. We had 8 linemen on scholarship when we got here, you know, and one of the things we said is we were going to run the football. We're going to be able to run the football so we can win football games, late in games. And I really believe this year is an opportunity for us to go out and win a bunch of football games, move into a brand new facility. 2020 comes, we move into that new stadium we share with the Raiders, and all of a sudden now opportunity is upon us, right? We have a talented roster. We've had 3 semesters in a row the highest GPA in the history of the program. We have 2 years in a row now the highest APR in the history of the program. So our kids, you know, they're understanding that this is about life, not just football.

Correct.

They're going to come here and they're going to leave better men, men of achievement. They're going to have degrees. They're going to have not just the paper, but the knowledge that comes with it. And they're going to be hardworking son of a guns that know how to win. And they're going to be that first generation that's changed UNLV football. That's awesome.

I watched a little film on you guys. I know you do a little spread offense. Sometimes you do kind of line up in single back or the I and hand the ball off as well. Talk to me about a little bit how those influences are influencing you today as a run game coordinator, as an offensive line coach, and how you guys are evolving here. And, you know, what makes your spread offense unique here at UNLV?

I think when you look back on it, championship teams are teams that can run the football in any condition 4-minute, goal line, the situations when everyone in the stadium knows you have to run the football.

Red zone.

Yeah, the championship teams are the ones that can run the ball in any situation and stop the run in any situation. So I think first and foremost, that's who we're going to be, and I think that's in line with Coach Sanchez, because we have to be a team that's physical up front on both sides of the ball and is very run dominant on both sides of the ball with the ability to create explosives.

At Concord University, you were a head coach. You know, not a lot of offensive line coaches have that background. Can you talk about how that experience has helped you, you know, with your O-line room, you know, now that you're being a position coach at Rungate Corner? How's that helped you kind of be able to interact with your guys?

Yeah, I think when you address a whole team room compared to addressing those 15, 20 guys, Having that experience of being in a full team room allows you to have that command of the room. I think it also allows you to see the team through a bigger lens. Okay. Sometimes as O-line coaches, you're just like, well, why are we doing this? Or why is the head coach doing that? And yeah, you're worried about your guys. Yeah. And that's, and that's important.

Yes.

Most of your worries should be about your guys or, or that specific room that you're in charge of. But when you're a head coach, you kind of step back and you say, okay, well, Coach is doing this because maybe that benefits the defense or maybe that benefits the linebacker room. And I think that, that really understand the broad look at how a team's supposed to go. I think that gives you some perspective. I think the other thing though is you're more comfortable in front of the guys. You're more comfortable leading the guys. You understand that it's not an EL first mentality. The thing I always say as a coach, like, you have to establish first and foremost with the kid how and what they need to do. Can they get in the right technique? Do they know the right assignment? Have they displayed this over time? Okay, if they have done that and they've checked those boxes, Now you have permission to raise your voice to the kid.

I got you.

Because they've established that they know what to do.

Yes. Being a parent, being a father, how does that help you be able to, you know, interact and get through to guys in a different way than just having a whistle?

Yeah, well, I think you talk about perspective as a head coach, Lance. Being a father puts perspective even more because now it's, hey, that's someone's child. Exactly. Whereas before It's Tommy who doesn't listen to what I'm trying to coach him to do. Now it's, hey, that's Tommy who has a mom, who has a mom and dad who love him and want to be treated the right way. And I think I never was a guy that yelled. I never was a guy that was too hard. Yeah, there's times where you have to go there. But I think when you have a daughter and you look back and say, OK, what I want—

There you go.

—as a coach. Treating my child that way. And I think that's something you always— you always have pictures of your family in your office because you love them and you want them first and foremost in your life. But the other part of it's a reminder that, hey, everyone in that room is someone's child. I mean, right? You need to love them the same way because they thought enough of you to send them and be coached by you.

Yeah, that's the big picture right there. Yeah, that's the big picture.

You pretty much have been part of every level of football. You played it most or coached it most now. Um, what was your playing experience like?

So in terms of playing experience, I got to be around some tremendous guys. I loved it. I was around those 49ers, the San Francisco 49ers, with Jerry Rice is there, Steve Young. I mean, all these amazing Hall of Famers, right? There was 8 All-Pros on the team. Yeah. Okay. When I was there, where you're looking at going, hey guys, they're all pro, right? That's when there was no salary cap, the year before the salary cap. And I was like, wow, this is incredible with the amount of experience, man, the professionalism those guys had. It was amazing. That stuff was the best part that I took away from the game in life was, hey, if you're going to do things, you do it this way. This is how you apply yourself to anything you do and you can be successful. Was the pattern there that Coach Bill Walsh built. With those standards of performance that he built out that that place held on to tooth and nail until the bitter end. You know, and then, like I said, when Mariucci came, it faded and they kept fading. The organization went down. But that's the biggest thing. When I was playing, I wanted to play with Kansas City. But the biggest thing was my— what happened at the Niners was amazing. It was an amazing organization to be a part of. And I was always grateful for that experience.

Things have changed with just, just technology has changed people's bodies. Like I see high school kids They're rounded like this. They're stiff. They don't play as much, and I don't blame them. Like, some of these— if video games looked like that when I was young, that's all I would do too. I'm not blaming them. But like, what are some of the things you see, like, maybe universal that you're seeing with athletes coming in?

So, you know, the biggest thing is most guys are going to do bench, they're going to do squat, and they're going to do some kind of clean, right? And then you got these kids, and it's not just the technological, right? You got kids in class all day. All day. So high school, you're in school for 8 hours, you're sitting at a desk 45 minutes a pop, at least 6 times, right? Yeah. So you're sitting there, they're talking about getting rid of PE, right? So it's starting to limit different things. Like, oh, going the wrong direction. So these guys, when they come in, is what you just said. They're sitting in this position where they're here, posterior chain is incredibly weak, it's out of optimal muscle length tension relationship. Like, optimal length, I'm here, muscles. I'm here, this is too long, this is too tight. I'm going to get some kind of overactivity issue here. I'm going to get some kind of pullback here, right? Right. Or my shoulder's not in proper position socket-wise. I'm going to get some kind of labrum issue, right? Impingement issues. Something is going to happen on my shoulder. The other thing too is I'm sitting down all the time. My flexors are incredibly tight. And you know, in football you're always squatting and bending in football. So they're already going to beat that position to death playing. Yeah. Now they're beating it to death while they're sitting down. Now they go home and they play the video games. The posture starts to be this incredibly posteriorly weak chain, right? And these really overactive flexors that all of it leads to— any immobility in the joint above leads to instability in the joint below. So kids get these tight hips, all of a sudden what's vulnerable is their knees. Yeah. And you get all these issues where the kids have got a higher vulnerability to this injury. Yeah. Because of these things. And so when you say, how do I see it? You know, that's the side of technology and sitting down, our stationary lifestyle, our sedentary lifestyle, and all these other different things that have impacted the kinetic chain of the human body negatively for people that are performing in athletics, right?

Like, we just kind of formed this thing right here. I mean, you're like this.

Yeah. All day. Or the kids are laying down. I know, I see it all the time. When the guys come in, that's the hardest pattern to fix. We do scap retraction drills. Yeah. And the guy's like, you really do this? The Division 1 athletes? And I'll go, yeah, watch this. The kid will start—

yeah, it's all trapped.

All trapped. You're like, you see the synergistic trap dominance? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, man. He's got a— we can't get him to decompress the scap, right? Okay, good. He's got a floating joint. He's gonna have a labrum within a year, 2 years. Yeah, automatic. He's not stabilized, right? Uh, his bench is going to suffer. He can't set a proper platform to do his bench because he can't retract his scap and get his chest out. Right. He can't get a proper squat. His low back's weak. He's, you know, he's incredibly weak, those posterior chain. You know, usually the hamstrings are overactive because they're short in here like this. So when you try and get the guy to go in a squat, he's like, uh, or he's rounded and he's sitting down. He can't push his knees out. And so when the guys come in, that's the biggest thing we see is the instability in the kinetic chain and the incredibly poor patterning in the kinetic chain in basic patterns. Hip hinge, squat, press, you know, whatever, you name it.

We spend so much time with strength coaches as athletes, like, you got to grow to really appreciate them and love them. And for me, I love when a strength coach has been through injuries. I know it sucks for you, but could you talk about how maybe that helped you as a strength coach? Like you said, there was no one to tell you why you were hurt.

When I say that's been the most pivotal part of my coaching, philosophy and the biggest influential factor on my coaching philosophy. When I came out of the league, no one could tell me, hey, you've done your medial collateral, your ACL, your ACL. No one could tell me, hey, you keep doing this over and over again. I was glad I got to stay as long as I did. I was hurt so much half the time that I was like, I got to be getting put out of here in a minute. There's just no way to stay much longer. I'm always hurt. And What happened was no one could tell me. And then when I got out, a guy said, you know, I was doing shoes and I said, man, my knee's bothering me. It's always bothering me, kind of deal. And he said, hey, well, walk. Let me see your gait. So I started walking. He had these— he put these shoes on me and he went, hey, I'm shocked you haven't blown your knees out like a million times. And I was like, hey, it's funny you say that because I have. So I don't know if you're a prophet or what, but I have. And he said, no, I believe it. You've got this thing at your ankle. You're pronating the right ankle. It looks like a loose ligament. It makes you predisposed to ACL tears and knee tears, ligament tears in the knee, whether it's medial collateral or whatever it is. And I was like, oh, and they started to show me, hey, when you got an internally rotated femur and your tibia stays the same, that's how you tear your ACL. He said, your leg naturally falls into that position when you're stepping. When you put pressure on it over and over, the light bulb goes off, right? I go, uh, I'm there for 5 years. No one could tell me why it's been going on. I'm out here getting some shoes in the shoe store and this guy goes, hey, this could have been avoided. I wish I would have got you when you were younger. I go, oh, this is going to make sense of my pain. I can help other people avoid the same thing. It became the platform for me when I would go help. The first thing I do is I start doing assessment, looking at guys and going, hey, where's your ankle at? You know, is there a loose ankle? Do you have a pronation in the ankle? Are you everted, invert, whatever it is? How about the knee? Are you in valgus? Is it varus? All right, what about the hip? Where's the hip at? I immediately start with the chain because I understand, hey, listen, if we don't assess this, what's going to happen is you have this redundant injury pattern you can't get out of. So the injuries played a part by making me hyper-aware of the body and going in search of why is this happening. Okay, good. Well, that really, you know, put it— you know, it didn't— it doesn't limit your career because if you're mentally tough enough, you push, do anything. You know, maybe I could have been mentally tougher with different things, which I could totally agree with those things. You get to a breaking point and then you kind of move away from it. But you can help somebody's longevity by decreasing their risk of injury or increasing their injury resistance. Yeah, over a period of time. And then they have a longer career— and a less painful career in terms of an injury standpoint, because the game is a brutal game. But if I can do that, then it's all worth it. And so anyway, when you say, what was it that kind of tied me into it, and how did that play a factor? All those injuries made me go in search of, hey, what's the best way to help kids get in proper alignment? How do I focus on technique, flexibility, mobility? Foundational piece of anything I do. And I go, the reason why is I want to help those guys avoid what I went through. I love hearing that.

I appreciate to hear like that, uh, you know, you're going through the right process. You know, you kind of said something when you were in that culture in San Fran, like you, you around all these Hall of Famers and stuff and Pro Bowlers and All-Pros. And I don't necessarily agree like football can make you, uh, makes you the man you are, makes you the person you are, but it does show you like the recipe. Like, so as you're like, maybe it's not what they like, you know, they want to get in. I thought I was going to lift, you're giving me a plate. But it's like, hey, no, there's a process to this and this is how you attack things, right?

That was the biggest thing. And I'll tell you, that was the part that Bill Walsh was brilliant about. He was brilliant about helping you look at the process and saying, hey man, everything's in steps. You need to take step one. He was also brilliant. And the thing that you grab is what you just said. Football doesn't make you the man or makes those different things. It reveals your character. Like we always hear all the time, people talk about the other part about the revealing of your character is that it gives you an opportunity to be response-able, able to respond and to change, but that that's on you and what you do. So you go, I didn't make me. If I make a choice to allow this to influence me in a way where I'm going to respond appropriately and then grow from it, then I'll become that man. If I have this experience and I don't make the choice right, then it didn't make it. So when people say football, I'm like, it's a valuable tool if you understand the principles and you apply the principles to it. Yeah, but you can apply those principles anywhere and grow the same way because universal principles are what they are. Yeah, they build your life no matter where you're at.

Just because you didn't make it to the NFL doesn't mean you can't take these principles to anything else. That's the value. Yeah, that's why I love football.

I tell the kids all the time, biggest thing you'll get out of football, the principles and the things that develops within you, the discipline that develops within you. The football in and of itself will end for everybody. The principles will last you for the rest of your life and help you be successful in anything you do. Yeah. If you hold to them and you really marry those principles.

I love it. So, I mean, when did your— how old were you when your football career ended?

28. See, okay, so I—

when I see a 28-year-old and their life is over they're out of the league, even younger than their life's over. And I'm like, no, man, you got a lot of lives to live. And it's like, you, you could, you could just keep going. Like, you, like, you went high school successful, now college successful, and you're going to keep taking those, those lessons and those principles to whatever you want, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the failures are the things that help me the most because they tell me where I need correction, right? Hiding from them only disables. Yeah, with me. So absolutely, those are the biggest things when you come out One of the hardest things walking away from football is you start to get a sense of identity from the game, right? It's the only thing you've known to be successful. It's where you've gotten validation, right? Right. It's where people finally say, hey, you're acceptable. And you're like, I finally am acceptable. Oh, this is awesome. You know, I haven't felt much. I haven't felt a lot of acceptance growing up, these other different things. But now I feel like I'm socially acceptable. I've gotten a certain amount of status. I walk into restaurants. You mean I don't have to pay? I have the money now. I'll pay. Oh, you don't have to pay because you're— Yeah. Oh, I'm somebody now. That's crazy. Yeah. Because I'm playing. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, you're out and you're like, hey, who am I? I'm nobody anymore. I'm nothing. I'm not. And I don't know who— I went through that. Yeah. Like, who am I? What am I? Am I ever going to do anything great again? Is that it? And then what you just said was it. Bingo. Right on the money. When I finally realized, oh no, it was all these experience I got and what they allow me to do now. And if I point that ambition and that passion at something else, I'll be successful at it. I just have to realize That's not the only thing I'm going to be good at. That's just one thing I, you know, I gave everything to and I was able to excel to a certain degree. And I go, if I do it in this avenue, I'll excel over here the same way.

Yeah, I love it. So, I mean, like, I mean, if you're, if you're willing to take those steps, this process with these kids, it just shows you really care about these players, right? When they're coming to UNLV and it's, it's a, it's a beautiful thing. Oh my gosh.

That's the biggest thing. The coaches I always admired the most were the ones who had a genuine interest, right? Like a Mike Solari. Yeah, we got a lot of Solari players and they love him. When I say you look at that guy and you go, he just has a genuine interest. He brings you in. Hey, let's talk. What's going on with you in life? What's going on with this? And what do you need help with? Hey, let's talk, man. Let's talk about your assignments. Let's talk about what you need to do. How much more film do you need to do? All right, come on, man. Let's go break it down. Let's go do this. Let's go. You're just going, hey, this guy's trying to give me every opportunity to be phenomenal. Outside the hours that he's obligated to be in here. He wants to see me be great. Yeah, Carroll was the same way. I was having a hard time catching the ball, and, um, I got about week 3 or 4 as a rookie, and I remember one of the guys like, can you catch the ball anymore? You're great in the preseason, you can't catch anymore. I dropped like 2 balls, right, 2 days of practice. If you drop 2 balls, if you drop the ball once a year, you're like, hey, you could get cut, man. You know, I'm saying, that's what the standard was at. Where you're like, no one drops the ball out here. Yeah. And so I remember we went by, and in one week I dropped two balls. And, uh, and Carroll was like, hey, he was a defensive coordinator, hey, let's go, come over here and start doing some catch. He was like, really? He goes, yeah, come on. And him and Mike Solari both took me on the end zone, they started doing catch with me every day when we had practice. After that, Carroll would come get me, Pete Carroll would come get me and start throwing the ball with and say, hey, turn around. And this dude would on purpose have me turn around and face away, and he'd throw the first one, he'd beam me in the back of the helmet on purpose. And then he'd say— I turn around and go, Coach. And he'd go, you scared? You rattled? Come on, you can trust me or what? You can turn around and do it again. Don't turn early either. And I go, all right, go ahead, man. He'd usually beam me a second time just to test me, and then he'd just start going. And we, then we, we play catch for about 15 20 minutes. He was a defensive coordinator. That's awesome. Where I'm like, I would think, why, I wonder why you're over here throwing the ball with me. But it was a genuine— he has a genuine interest in people. It's contagious. People that, when you talk about it as a coach, you go, yeah, that's the biggest thing to me that had impact was the guys I saw, they just had a genuine interest in seeing you get better. I try and emulate that same thing every day.