Northwestern University Athletics
Transcript From Coach Fitzgerald's Monday News Conference
11/24/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 24, 2008
2008 Northwestern Football
Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Weekly News Conference Transcript
Opening Statement...
"Looking back at the game I want to echo the sentiments I had post-game about our seniors. For those 23 young men to be in Ryan Field one last time and probably play our best game of the year was impressive to watch. We had guys step up across the board. To see them play that way is a testament to our coaches. We're playing our best football of the year, we went 3-1 in November, and we finished strong, which was a point of emphasis coming off of last year and at the beginning of this year. Our players took to that, took it to heart and continued to get better and I couldn't be more proud of them.
As we sit here today, there's a lot to be thankful for. No. 1, we're thankful for the health we've had. Obviously we've had a few guys get a little banged up in the course of this year but through some surgeries and some rehab it looks like everyone will eventually be back to 100 percent moving forward in their lives. From the great young men on our team to the all the special people who touch our program, we have a tremendous amount to be thankful for. We're going to recoup a little, we had our typical Monday today and put the game to bed. We have a lot we can still improve on and I liked what C.J. said to our team after warm-up today, which was that we're not done, we're just getting started. With that I'd just like to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Northwestern fans and open it up to questions."
On his upcoming induction into the College Football Hall of Fame...
"I haven't even thought about it. Today is (his son) Jack's birthday so I'm just thinking about that. It's a long year and in August, dad goes away to camp and in December dad shows back up again. I'm so thankful for my beautiful wife and two very wild little boys in the house so maybe after this weekend I'll think about it. But I'm very humbled and honored to represent two incredible football teams that I had an opportunity to be a part of and it's going to be very special. I'm looking forward to seeing Coach (Gary) Barnett and all of our Northwestern football family in Manhattan so it will be a lot of fun."
On the difference between this year's and last year's teams...
"It's the preparation that our guys went about this summer. I thought we came back in tremendous shape, one that was in the best shape of any team I'd been around the last eight years. The credit goes to Larry Lilja, Nick Zostautas and our young men for the way they prepared. Then it's getting ready mentally even if their role didn't dictate them being a starter. They stayed the course and to see those guys step up was tremendous. You look out on Saturday and we have Jack DiNardo and Kevin Watt out there in crunch time, Marshall Thomas in our defensive line, guys who didn't play a lot going into the Illinois game did so much for us, and I'm proud of our young men."
On the journey the seniors have been on since arriving on campus...
"Over four or five years, I don't know if there's a group of young men that have been through as much as they have. To see the way they handled it, how they grew from it and how they matured, looking at them now they're prepared for life. That's one of our team goals, to be prepared for life. I'm not sure how many of our guys will be named first-team All-Big Ten tonight but I think we have a first-team All-Big Ten football team. There's a reason we've gone 1-0 nine times and it's because we've played well as a football team. That's a testament to our seniors and the leadership they've provided. From Arrington to Yarbrough, and every guy in between, everyone has a different role. Kevin Johns joked in our meetings today that Jeff Yarbrough won a new award for dropping every pass in pre-game warm-ups. We're just having fun and we're a great group to be around. There's great chemistry in our football program and that goes to our seniors and assistant coaches."
On how the team will conduct the next month of practices...
"There's a plan. We'll rest and recuperate our veterans and we'll get after it with our young guys. How we determine on that is based on a case-by-case basis. For veterans, we want to use the next couple weeks to get them in great shape. We had a great workout with our developmental squad this morning with our strength coaches. We'll practice Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday next week and we'll do some things split up where the veterans will be in helmets and shoulder pads and the younger guys will get after it. Then we'll have finals week and then we'll have a good game plan for who we're playing and where. Once we get down to the site we'll go with our typical practice routine to get ready to tee it up and go play."
On Tyrell Sutton's status...
"I think it's too early to know. He saw a specialist today to get his nasty cast off, they'll evaluate everything and take some more pictures before they put a new cast on until I think the second week in December. Then hopefully we'll be able to have some direction from there."
On finishing the recruiting season after a nine-win season...
"It's a big difference. Recruiting is going very fast and furious. It's one of my favorite times of the year because it's an opportunity for me to roll up my sleeves and compete a little bit. We had a great group of young men commit before the season who we're very excited about and who had great senior years. I have a strong feeling that we'll get a big group to commit in the next couple weeks and if we're done before Christmas it might be the first time we've had that done. We've got a lot of positive momentum right now, I think if you were to rework the U.S. News and World Report rankings based on the BCS rankings, I think we'd be No. 1 in the country from where we are with academic standards and in the BCS. Obviously this is a significant opportunity in our program's history, a chance to be the second team to win 10 games and to win a bowl game for the first time since 1949. We've got a lot riding on this game and it's the biggest game for our seniors so we'll be prepared after we find out where we're going."
On Northwestern's reputation in the recruiting world...
"I know that we're very well respected among the young men we're recruiting and their coaches. I know that everyone on our team has the utmost respect for being a student-athlete at Northwestern. I know every coach that's been here has loved their time being part of this football family because of the young men that we get to coach. I think that respect that you're talking about that are out of our control, I'm not concerned about. I think our young men go about their business the right way, they have the No. 1 graduation rate in the country, they're bowl-eligible and we've won three Big Ten titles since 1995. If you don't respect the job our young men and our coaches do then shame on you. That's my humble opinion."
On the motivation that comes with having not won a bowl game since 1949...
"I don't think we need the extra motivation at all. I think the opportunity that's in front of us is crystal clear. Our guys can't control the fact that we couldn't get it done when I was playing. I think of Kevin Mims who had a big interception for a touchdown in the (2005) Sun Bowl early in the game, we had an opportunity to get the job done and we didn't. I look at Mick McCall and I don't get very excited thinking about that Motor City Bowl against Bowling Green. What we control now is our preparation and consistently preparing for this game and that's been our hallmark this year. We've consistently prepared nine times very well to go out and play focused football, probably our best game being our last, which is encouraging to me. I like what I heard from our seniors, I like what our coaches told our guys they can do for their bodies besides eating some turkey and getting some rest, so I like where our attitude is at. We're not done by any means and we're very focused on the opportunity at hand."
On junior linebacker Chris Jeske...
"Chris has a special place in my heart because I was the linebacker coach when we started recruiting him as a sophomore. To have him come here, make a commitment to us early in his career, stay the course, arrive early and hurt his back, hurt his knee and then hurt his knee again. You're right, he had a big block on (Brendan Smith's) punt return, he blocked two guys, he barely missed blocking that punt. Chris just loves being a Wildcat. I don't want to speak for him but he's a young man that represents our program the right way. He does a great job academically, he is very giving in the community and all he wants to do is see the team win. He's a lot like the great majority of our players."
On the support from the community this year...
"I think there's a lot of similarities (with his days as a player). When we have success, Chicago takes great pride in that because they know what our program stands for as do our alumni throughout the nation. There's definitely a great sense of purple pride. I liked when Kevin Mims said after the game that Northwestern's just getting started, I'd like to see the whole senior class see things play out the way we aspire to see them play out in the future."
On Stephen Simmons and other young players...
"Stephen kind of falls into that category of a young guy who is a veteran. Same with Nate Williams. We'll be very specific person-by-person on how we're going to go about the next few weeks before we get a game plan. I think Steph is a man who has jumped exponentially confidence-wise in the last three weeks. He played the best football of his career Saturday at tailback and in the kicking game. This will be a second spring practice for a lot of young guys who are true and redshirt freshmen who haven't played a lot of football for us in the arena. We'll go back to the camp mentality of playing ABC football for them."
On how his bowl preparation will differ from past experiences...
"I'm going to try to have more fun than when I was a player. We'll do some things in the community, try to give back to the great community. Again I want to lean upon some of the great veterans we have on the staff -- Jerry Brown, Mick McCall, Mike Hankwitz -- and try to put together the best plan we can to have fun, for us to improve and most importantly for us to win. That's been our goal and we had it covered up on our goal-board all year long but now that it's in our control that will be our focus."
On watching other teams play out their seasons this weekend...
"I'll watch a lot of football. I think Colorado is playing Nebraska and I still know the fight song at Colorado from my time there but I've also got friends coaching at Nebraska. I'll sit down and see where all my friends are coaching and figure out who I'm going to root for. I'm absolutely rooting for the Oregon Ducks although I truly respect the job Mike Riley has done. I hope they play great and stay healthy and Oregon finds a way to get the job done. But I believe from a conference standpoint, the way our conference has played the last month, that we'll have the right to represent ourselves in two BCS games. I don't believe there's any team better playing football than we are right now. We're 3-1 in our last three games against a team coming off a Rose Bowl berth, against a team that went down and won the Capital One Bowl in Michigan. If a bowl site wants to have the best and brightest that college football has to offer, by far the highest per capita income of any Big Ten team among alumni bases, where the economy has affected our alumni the least, we'll be there to sell out our tickets and buy all the purple and white they can sell. We have a young energetic staff that will bring down their smiling families and have a great time. All they need to do is call the Sun Bowl and ask how great a time we had. I think our young men have earned that on the field."
On keeping the program's momentum going beyond this year...
"We need to be consistent in everything we do, from our values to the way we prepare. You guys will get sick and tired of hearing it when it comes out of my mouth and that's why we're successful. But you cannot take that for granted and we'll have to go back next year and start right back over from a competitive standpoint, the way we prepare, our new members of the leadership council and stay the course. In my opinion, there is no better staff at evaluating and developing their young people than our staff, as people and leaders and players. I put our staff against any in the country. I take pride in that and we just need to stay consistent in who we are the young men we try to bring into our team."
On the character of the team last off-season...
"I think our team bought into what we were teaching, which is critical. You can have a great plan but if your young men don't buy into it then you won't achieve it. The credit all goes to our young men. There were 10 guys elected to our leadership council and another eight to 10 that they took under their wing and we went full-speed ahead in competition. Getting out of the conditioning test wasn't even much motivation for them. Peterman still ran the conditioning test. That tells you where our attitude was at the time. When I told C.J.'s team that they were out of the conditioning test they still wanted to run it. We had a hungry team and we need to keep that hunger mentality. You look at our roster and look at all the young guys who have played this year, that will be huge in keeping this momentum going. In 1995 and 1996 we were a lot of older guys playing and when we matriculated out of the program we didn't quite have the amount of young guys with the experience. There were also a lot of distractions off the field back then whereas now we have a lot of consistency and a clear vision in our program about the direction in which we're going."
On the Big Ten's tradition of ending the season a week early...
"I think right now we need all the time off we can get. More importantly, I think for our kids to be able to go home for Thanksgiving break just like all the other kids on campus is one of the best traditions the Big Ten has. Thinking back, it was great to be able to go home and exhale a little bit academically and physically and get ready to come back for bowl prep. When we come back, we're going to scrimmage and play football this month. It won't be Stephen Simmons against Corey Wootton but we're going to go full speed, tackle and block and we think we have a good plan. Our young guys are going to compete against some of our veterans and we're going to see who's ready to play Big Ten football next year and we'll have our veterans ready against whoever our tremendous opponent will be."
