We came out of it in good shape. We still have a couple of days of work ahead of us so, we will see what happens. A couple of kids had nicks and bruises and didn’t get to practice as much as I would have liked them to. Austin Scott would be one of those kids and a couple of other guys that should be OK. Chris Auletta had three or four days that he didn’t work. Overall, I thought we came out of it in pretty good shape. We didn’t do as much hitting as we ordinarily would do in a pre-season practice because of the fact that there are so many young kids. Am I satisfied? Yes, I think we got about as much done as we could do.

Josh Gaines is a good football player. He has practiced very well. You are always anxious to see how some of those guys will perform when they get into a ball game with a lot of people watching them and against some strangers where they haven’t had a chance to work against the same guy everyday. I think Josh will be fine. I think some of the young guys are going to have to play. Whether we can get them in there as much as we would like in the first ball game, I don’t know whether they are ready for that. As the season goes on, they are going to have to play because you can’t get by with just one set of defensive linemen anymore. The pace of the game is so fast and the pressure that the defensive linemen are under all the time and what they have to do in the way of a pass rush. All of those kinds of things take an awful lot out of them. You have to have some people who can backup. How many we have right now? Hopefully, we have a couple and I think we do. I am not sure exactly where we are with them, but we will probably play a couple of kids on Saturday.

I have not thought about the redshirt. I think he is going to have to come around and help us this year. We didn’t do anything on Saturday or Sunday. Yesterday he went out there with the ankle and limped a little bit. We will have to see how it goes this week before I can tell you definitively as to what we are going to get out of him. I think he has a chance to play a lot and if he does, he will be a big help.

Akron’s scheme is a very sophisticated scheme. That would be a difficult question for me to say whether it is more difficult for us to protect the passer or run the ball against them. Obviously, some things they do from it, we can run the ball. When they make some adjustments, then we are going to have to be able to throw the football. When we start throwing the football, then we have some other problems because they are not sitting there on their hands saying, “Well, we guessed wrong.” It is a very, very good football staff and a very well coached football team. I think some people do not realize that the head coach, J.D. Brookhart, was the guy that was at Pitt when Pitt kicked our ears in a couple of years ago. He has done an excellent job with this football team and we have to be ready to run and pass. I think both of those things will be difficult to do consistently. Most of the time, when you get up against a good football team that plays with the kind of enthusiasm and intelligence that Akron plays with, you have to be ready to have the balance necessary in order to consistently move the football.

I think Anthony will be fine.

He threw for over 3,000 yards last year. They do a good job with their quarterbacks. We played against that kid, Frye, a couple years ago who starts for the Cleveland Browns, I believe. This kid is either close or has broken most of those records. He is a tough kid, stays in there and doesn’t let the blitz bother him. They lost a couple of good wideouts and we are not quite sure which wideouts we are going to play against. The tight end is back. They have had a little bad luck with their tailback as far as being bumped around a little bit. He (Getsy) is really a good football player and can do all the things. He can throw the short pass or throw down the field. He can scramble when he has to. He keeps you off balance. They do a good job with him as you would expect, as J.D. was at Pitt with this kid when he was there. When J.D. got the job at Akron, the kid transferred from Pitt to Akron with him. They are good and he is good.

They both have had an outstanding pre-season. Jimmy is a little bit further along, which you would expect. He was down at Rice and he is a little older. He is a little further along in his techniques and things, but John has had a really good pre-season so, both of those kids will make a big contribution to our football team. They have everything you want. Jimmy is a 275-280 pounder, who runs really well and plays with tremendous intensity. John is 300 pounds, who is a really fine athlete for a big man. John has not had a lot of work and has not played a lot of football. Jimmy has played a lot more. I think both of them are going to be fine football players.

Confidence is a very strong word. I don’t know. For me to get up here and tell you that I am confident about this or confident about that, I don’t know. I really don’t. The first games are very difficult and I don’t mean to be hesitant and yet I don’t want to overstate the case. I think we are going to be a good football team. How well we play the first game is difficult to say. We have three more days of practice this week. Up to now, so far so good. I am hopeful that when we tuck it all in on Thursday night, we will all feel pretty good that we are ready to go and play as well as we can play. How good that is? I don’t know. I really don’t know yet. We will know after we play a couple of games.

There is always a possibility, but I hope we are not stupid. We will get licked if we have a lot of guys thinking that way. We have a tough football game against Akron. Akron is picked to win the MAC Championship. The last time we played a team as good as this one is from the MAC, we got licked. Toledo kicked our ears in. I don’t know. Sure we have some tough teams coming down the road, but the first one we have is this Saturday. I think our guys are pretty well zeroed in on that.

Pat missed three weeks of practice. We are in the middle of our fourth week now. With the new rule with the acclimation period of five days and all of that kind of stuff, he missed all of that and a couple of other weeks because of the mononucleosis. I don’t know what I am going to do with him yet. We are trying to give him some work and it is very difficult, at this stage, to be able to give him the kind of time and reps that you could make some kind of an evaluation as to whether he should be playing right now. If we have to redshirt him, that is not the worst thing in the world. I have watched him do some things. Both of the young quarterbacks we have, he and the kid from New Jersey, are both kids with a lot of talent. We just haven’t had a chance to work with them. Probably, both of them will not get to play unless we have some injuries. If we have some injuries, then we have to start to re-evaluate the quarterback situation. Right now, both of those kids have a tough road to hoe and probably would end up redshirting, although I have not sat down with them and talked to them about that because I am not sure that is the road we are going to take yet.

I think Lawlor is doing alright. He is second at fullback right now. He and Mickey Shuler are both going to be good football players eventually. I was needling Dan Lawlor, and I like to needle these kids once in awhile in the press. If they get angry with somebody, they might as well get angry with me. Dan will be OK and so will Mickey Shuler from down in Central Pennsylvania. Both of those kids are going to eventually be pretty good football players.

Akron ran it when we played them the last time. We have seen variations of it. Ohio State has run variations of it. Ohio State ran it frequently last year. I don’t know whether we have ever played anybody outside of Akron that has used it as their predominant defense. There have been variations of it in certain situations against certain personnel where they want to stick an extra pass defender in there and you end up with three guys on the line of scrimmage. In that sense, we have seen the 3-5-3 with some other people. As far as a basic defensive scheme philosophically, I don’t know whether we have played anybody but Akron. Don’t hold me to it because I may be wrong on that, but I think I am accurate on that. They give you a lot of problems. They play it well and know what they are doing. The kids enjoy playing it and play with a lot of enthusiasm and make it very tough. I think the big thing is, not necessarily because they play it 3-5-3, but it is the way they play it and their belief in it and their ability to make some adjustments when you think you can do something to them. It will be a cat and mouse game on Saturday.

He is ready to play. He has been with us for two years. He, obviously, has a lot of talent. He just needs a little luck and success…a couple of kids make some catches for him and that kind of thing. I think he will play well.

That is a big challenge for us right now because it has been a little longer pre-season. Plus the fact that when we started with the first week in that period that the NCAA calls the acclimation period where you are allowed five practice sessions within seven days and you can only practice once a day and you can’t practice two-a-days and so forth. It gets a little long. We are probably three or four days longer as far as just days, not necessarily practices. I am worried about that. I think we are going to be OK. It will depend on the next couple of days. We gave them two days off as I said earlier, on Saturday and Sunday. They went out there yesterday in pads for about an hour and 45 minutes. We will go out for about an hour and 35 minutes in pads today and try just to make sure we know what we are doing and that kind of thing. Hopefully, we will feel pretty good about going out there without a lot of bumps and bruises and go out and play.

The one thing about Daryll Clark is that he wasn’t allowed to practice, but he was out there everyday watching in street clothes and not in any kind of football gear. He is a kid with a lot of football savvy. He has been very interested in making sure he is as ready as he can be considering the situation he was in. He is a sophomore really, without really having played as a freshman. I wouldn’t count on him going out there and lighting up the scoreboard yet, but I think eventually he will be OK.

I am not sure where you are coming from on the sense that we are strong in one area. I think we have good linebackers and, really, our problem will be depth up front. Jay Alford is a very, very fine football player. Jimmy Shaw will be a good end and so will Josh Gaines. They are both good football players. They are not duds. They are good football players. Now that Eddie Johnson is back in the picture…if he just keeps his weight under control and does some things, those four guys are pretty good up front. They are not a bunch of lemons. They are good football players. They all can run and there is some size. Eddie Johnson is 295 lbs. Jay Alford is 295 lbs. I don’t feel that way about it. The same way with the secondary, outside of the fact that they are inexperienced, I think we have some awfully good athletes back there in the secondary. I think we have some very fine athletes. We have experienced linebackers. We have some places where we don’t have the experience you would like to have, but we have good athletes. I think, eventually, as we play the season out, those guys will get better as we go along. I don’t quite look at it the same way as you suggested it.

That is probably my biggest concern because a lot of those kids have never been in a football game. You mentioned Levi Brown and A.Q. Shipley. Shipley hasn’t played much at center. I think that offensive line is going to have a lot of pressure on them; particularly, the way Akron plays football. They do an awful lot of stunting from their 3-5 and they come from every different way. We have not practiced against it that much because we are a stack 4 defense with an over shift and an under shift, which is what we see most of the time. We have to get a foreign team that will give us the kind of look that these guys are going to see. I think we are going to have troubles. I think they are all going to have troubles on the offensive line. Levi can’t carry them all by himself. Shipley, even though he played a little bit, hasn’t played a lot. He is playing against a noseguard that is one of their better football players and he doesn’t offset one way or the other as most of the people we have played take that nose and offset him. He is sticking his nose right up on Shipley. Shipley is not a big man. So I think we have some work to do there. That would be the number one concern I have right now.

I am not sure yet what is going to happen there and I would rather not comment on it until I know what I am talking about.

We are waiting to hear whether he can.

I think Chris Auletta, John Shaw and Levi Brown give us three tackles. A couple of those young kids will come along. It is like putting words in my mouth about being concerned. We have to practice and play. We have to prove some things that we can do some things. That is true to every year, that there is always something that you are not comfortable with and that you are going to have to work your way through it and just hope it doesn’t hurt you early. I think we are going to have a pretty good offensive line before it is all over. If you ask me if we are going to be pretty good Saturday against Akron? I am nervous. I am nervous because Akron does some things that are going to be a big problem for us. I think Akron, defensively, is a really good football team. Yes, I am concerned in that sense, but I am not concerned in the sense that we don’t have this or that. We have a good, young squad and eventually is going to be a good football team. Whether we are good this coming Saturday, we will find out.

There is nothing I can do about it. How can I say whether I am comfortable or not? I have to play with it. I wish they had held off on some of that stuff and give you a chance before they make a decision in some place, in West Palm Beach or some place like that, and then come back with these rules in order to speed up the game. We have talked about them and have had officials up here and spent some time with officials. The Big Ten Commissioner has a meeting and invites some coaches. I had two coaches go out to the meeting. They came back and explained what they think is going to happen. Then, just this morning, I got a fax at 7:00 a.m. with interpretations of what is going to happen. We certainly have got to be aware of them, but there is nothing I can do about them. It isn’t like I can change them or that I am comfortable or not. I have to live with them. I have to make sure that we know what is going on. Right now, we are a little bit up in the air about that because we just got a whole three-page fax today about different interpretations. I think most of it is what we knew, but there are one or two things in there that I am not quite sure about. Tomorrow morning, as a staff, we will go over that.

I haven’t got the slightest idea of whether there will be an impact or why. I don’t know. I think Tony Hunt is a really good running back and I am glad we have him. Hopefully, we can block enough that he gets a little running room. You are looking at it a little differently than, I think, a coach would look at it. I am looking at a bunch of guys that can pass/block and run/block. We are certainly not going to be able to dominate anybody early. We are not going to dominate anybody upfront for awhile.

Nervous isn’t exactly the word I would use. Anxious, but not nervous. Again, I am going back to things that I have said 1,000 times and I know you guys and girls are going to say, “Here he goes again.” You get a bunch of kids who come, work hard all summer, get here and you push them and shove them and try to get them ready to play a football game. Now we are four days away from playing and you have your fingers crossed whether you have done a good job for them. You are anxious to see what is going to happen. I think if you get to the point where you are not anxious to watch your kids play, it is obviously time for me to get out of it. I am looking forward to watching them play. I am not naÔve about where we are. We have a ways to go.

Well, when we opened up my first year against Maryland, I think we got three safeties and Mike Reid blocked two punts for two safeties. The next year, we lost to Navy and I thought I was going to get fired. I remember that. A kid by the name of John Sladki from Johnstown…they threw a pass the last play of the game, he deflected it and the guy caught it and…poor old John Sladki. I go to bed sometimes thinking about Sladki, poor guy. Obviously, the first game I coached as a head coach would be one that sticks out in my mind. There are so many games and so many things that I don’t know how to put it exactly, except that I don’t have time to look back. I don’t mean to cop out, but I don’t go to bed now thinking about what we did in 1962. I am worried about what we are going to do this Saturday. You know what I mean? There are 1,000 things that go through my head about…we have some kids that all of a sudden now we have to sit them down and tell them that this is not your year, a lot of the kids that we are going to redshirt and things like that. Not a lot, maybe, but some kids and we have to sit down and which ones do you this and which ones you don’t do that. Go to bed with a pad and a depth chart with a chance that this kid is going to play. There are a 100 and some kids so, I don’t have time to look back. My first game probably would be the one that I remember the most.

I didn’t know that, but I am in good company. There again, I am just anxious to get on with this season; regardless, of whether it is my first, sixth, 10^th or 50^th. This is a whole new year with a new bunch of kids and new challenges. I just want to get on with this season. I wouldn’t know whether I tied Stagg’s record for longevity or not. I hadn’t thought about that. Now that you mentioned it is the first time that I knew about that. I have his book. When I was a younger coach, (Robert) Zuppke had a book out and Stagg had a book out and a lot of people like that who had a great impact on the game. I read those books, but outside of that I never met him. I met his son, he coached up at Susquehanna with the father for awhile, but I never met the dad. I had met the son.