The Grind-Cast “The Winners Manual 2.0” with Jim Tressel

Count money, man.

Money that grits is fine.

I told him, I'm a beast, but what's up, gang?

Welcome to the grind cast.

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New day.

What's up, gang?

Welcome to another episode of the grind cast.

Winner's manual 2.0, Coach Tressel.

Today, freestyle, I'm going to open up with my first question

is we talked about this before,

but I think it could be very beneficial to others that

are leading coaching.

Let's say you have a player that has an issue with the coach.

They think they're, so let's say you're

the head coach at Ohio State, and you have some defensive backs.

And one of them says the DB coach, I think, is not being fair.

To me, or I'm having issues, and they want a meeting with you.

How would you handle that specific situation?

I think you and I have talked about this before,

but maybe not on the air, if you will.

I have always liked to respond and be able to say, yeah,

let's sit down, but let's sit down with the DB coach, too.

Because so often, let's bring them together.

So often, what happens if a player would say to me,

or an employee now, hey, my supervisor, my coach,

I don't know why they're not giving me more responsibility,

or not putting me in the game.

They're telling me I'm doing OK.

I don't know why I'm not progressing, getting promoted.

I don't know why I'm not getting in the game more and so forth.

And I would always ask, well, has he told you what you need to do?

You know, to progress.

No, he really hasn't.

I said, OK, let me call down the hall.

Let's get coached so and so in here.

And because that's his responsibility,

is to help you know what it takes for you to be successful.

You and I have talked a lot about leadership,

from a standpoint of one of our primary responsibilities

as a leader, serving others, has to help them understand

what it's going to take to obtain the goals

that are interested in.

And so we call the DB coach in and your example,

and say, hey, coach, have you talked about what Johnny needs

to do to move up the depth chart?

If so, I don't think he's clear on it.

So let's have that discussion now.

Well, it's fun to watch supervisors sometimes

because they start to squirm.

They'll be like, come on, Johnny, you know I've told you

you have to do this, this, this, and this.

And then you can get a dialogue going.

And I've found that to be the same case with employees,

with their supervisors is that I'm not a big fan on, OK,

I'm going to get your side of the story.

And then I'm going to get someone else's side of the story

because there's a little bit of truth in both.

But there's a little bit of context

that if you're not in it together, now it takes time.

We always talk about it.

It's exhausting to be great.

And it takes a lot of time and communication.

And you wish you had more time to do that.

But that clear understanding with all of us in the room,

so that when we leave the room, everyone

knows what was said to me is the best way.

So often we get so busy that we don't do that.

And I think it hurts us when we don't.

What the, and I've used that for the last few years.

And it's done wonders for me as a leader in our organization.

One of the uncomfortable parts of that process,

I think people are now used to this.

They probably know what I'm going to say right now.

But one of the uncomfortable parts of that process,

I think, was people not wanting to have that person in with them.

Because they're afraid that the coach will retaliate

or hold the grudge against them for coming to me,

or wanting a meeting or something like that.

Do you have any experience on how to handle those feelings

or how to prevent future issues in regards

to after we bring this stuff up?

I think that's a natural problem that can occur,

is that you can get that kind of thinking.

What you try to do is create the thinking

between the supervisor, the coach, and the DB,

is that they know they're going to need to be in concert

in their communication.

Because at some point, if we do end up having that sit down,

it's going to be exposed.

And so as you just said, your people

are getting a little bit more used to it.

I really think it's a waste of time

and a waste of the ability to progress

if the employee or the player can leap frog over

the chain of command and get the year of the next person

on the total pole that head coached the presidency,

whatever.

If we have that going on, I think there's more problems

with that than the problem you brought up

that the individuals are worried about.

They might retaliate and so forth.

I've seen problems even in higher education

in a situation I was in that we spent hours and hours

and got our data put together.

And we collectively came to decision.

Here's what we want to do.

Well, it really wasn't what someone wanted

and saw the suddenly ran to the president.

And on the president said, well, yeah, you know what?

I'm with you.

And we took all that time and effort.

We as leaders have to make sure we never put all the people

that we're working with in that situation.

To me, that's unfair.

And that ultimately will not allow us to progress like we'd like.

So I think of, let's say you have a situation

where you have somebody that's a defensive back

and the defensive back coach or the defensive coordinator

was the main recruiter.

You know, of that individual, they attracted that talent.

They sat in the living room with the parents.

And then there was starting to become some issues.

Maybe the person isn't playing as much as they like,

but they have talent.

Maybe they're a second string, third string.

And you know, your offense coordinator,

maybe you come with them, you're thinking,

you know what, maybe this person could help us

on the other side of the ball.

Maybe there'll be better as a wide receiver.

You know, if they're a wide out, maybe they end up playing

versus over here, they may not play.

And you find a situation where you may need

to transfer that person to the offense

when moving to the other side of the ball.

Any experience and any advice on doing something like that

because I think that in business,

I've had to make those calls over the years where I say,

you know what, this person, you know, for whatever reason,

you know, two good people aren't really clicking.

This isn't a star over here,

but I think if I were to move them to a separate office

or a different location, they could thrive

and help us out a lot in the other situation.

Any advice in handling that type of a transition to not,

you know, upset the coach and the loyalty of the person

that brought them a board and work with them,

but you know, it may be a better fit, you know,

for both of them, if the person was only

the other side of the ball.

Yeah, I find it kind of interesting

that most of your examples are defensive backs.

Is that because you were a defensive?

Probably a little bit of bias, building bias there.

Why not, D.D., you know, I don't, right.

Detach, I don't really roll to tight end as well.

Well, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned that

because when I first got into coaching 45 years ago,

I worked for Jim Dennis in the University of Akron.

And, you know, I'd never been in a coaching environment.

I played and my dad was a coach and all that,

but I'd never been in the inner workings

of what, how do you coach?

And the thing that really dawned on me,

that we spent an inordinate amount of time doing,

and I never knew the coaches did this,

was at the end of every day,

whether it was the end of a preseason morning practice,

we would have a personnel meeting.

At the end of the evening, before we went home,

we would have a personnel meeting.

Every staff I was ever on, we spent more time

with personnel discussions.

And you always had the depth chart in front of you.

Here's the guys, here's who we've got working with.

The first unit, here's who we've got playing DB,

here's who we've got playing receiver.

And we had a collective discussion of how can we best

utilize our talent?

And as I think back to some of the good fortune we had,

one was I think we spent a lot of time trying to figure out

where our people could be successful.

A lot of time.

I mean, again, it's exhausting.

The number of hours you have to really talk through,

get everyone's input, what did you see from them

on the field?

Where do you see he's most natural and so forth?

And then the second thing that I thought our staffs did a

wonderful job doing for years and years,

was they took the personnel we had,

tried to get them in the right place,

and then tried to give them the things to do

that they were best at doing.

Put them in their strike zone.

Put them in their strike zone.

And so you brought up the example of the DB

that maybe you moved a receiver

and the position coach recruited them

and all that kind of thing.

What you tried to have out on the table,

again, with all of the coaches in the room,

all of the supervisors in the room was,

we've got to leave all those egos and biases and so forth

at the door and what is it that the team needs?

Now, we're all human and that person that recruited

that DB got to know him better.

There's an emotional tie.

They want him to succeed.

They want their recruiting record to look like

they brought in good folks.

And you can err when those kinds of things

creep into the discussion.

And where I think our staves were better,

we became a better team when our staves were better at,

really just looking at the facts,

watching the film, not getting caught up in,

well, hey, that's my guy.

Or, oh, I don't want to lose that DB.

I know I got seven pretty good ones

and we only maybe have three wide outs

that we think right now are ready for us to win

and we let's take one of those DBs

and now we got four wide outs and we got six DBs.

And, you know, we're gonna raise up the rest of them

but for the moment, we gotta play a game this week.

Here's who we think leaving all the biases aside,

trying to have, you know, the needs of the team first

and foremost, it is part of the magic

of working together as a staff.

Yeah, speaking of the needs of the team,

I remember I don't know if you want to bring up

who the player was but I remember months back,

we started talking about you had a specific athlete

that came in that you recognized had a specific amount

of talent that would help you by the end of the season.

And the coach didn't want to put that person in yet.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, by the time we play, you know, at the end of the season

he'll be ready but he's not ready right now.

I remember you coming back saying,

well, how come this person isn't on the field yet?

I'm not watching them, you know,

well, they're not ready.

They don't quite know all the plays

but they'll be ready by the end of the season.

And what you said made a lot of sense.

Do you remember that?

Oh, I remember it vividly.

Yeah, because I've had that example many times.

The first thing we always wanted to do

with someone we recruited to our team.

So it's whether we recruit a student athlete

to play for us or you recruit someone

to work at your business and part of your team.

Is as you recruit them, you really would like them

to be able to do what they are interested in doing.

So Teddy again came in and he wanted to be a corner.

We knew he'd be a great kick-returner,

a great punt-returner, he wanted to be a corner.

And so you always, we wanted him

because he was a great human being.

We wanted him on our team.

He was just, he just clowed.

You wanted Teddy again on your team.

He wanted to be a corner.

So we went throughout the entire preseason

with him playing corner.

Kick-return, punt-returner, we knew he was going to,

you know, be devastating.

He was going to be amazing.

At the end of the preseason, as we were sitting

in one of those long personnel meetings,

we were saying, you know, Teddy's probably not ready

to help us at corner.

He's not far enough along.

He's definitely going to be our kick-returner, punt-returner.

But man, you know, I bet you he could really help us

at receiver.

You know, I wonder if he would have some interest.

So we had that discussion.

Hey, Teddy, you said you wanted to be a corner.

Keep working.

You could be a good corner.

It might help us more quickly at receiver, your call.

Teddy said, well, whatever the team needs, that was Teddy again.

He didn't care about Teddy.

He cared about the team.

So we moved him to receiver.

Well, we had just been through 29 practices in preseason.

You know, you practice twice a day.

You get more practices in preseason.

Then you do really the rest of the season combined.

So he did not know the terminology and the formations

and all that because he was playing defense.

He knew the coverages.

He didn't know that.

And so early on in that first game week,

we were struggling with him getting lined up

because it was foreign language.

He was learning a new language.

And I remember having, again, in one

of those personnel discussions sitting there, you know,

and saying, well, you know, how do you

think the play will get in the game

or receiver and so forth?

And well, the coach said,

Well, Teddy's not quite ready.

He doesn't know enough yet.

I said, well, I was at practice.

Teddy can help us.

Well, he can't get lined up.

I said, well, why don't we just give him a couple things

to get lined up in game one?

And he'll learn more by game two.

And what's most important is the end.

It happens to be the Michigan game,

but the end of the season, the bowl game.

So let's move in that direction.

And we did, and he was a star from game one on.

But sometimes we do get caught up in what someone is today

versus what they can be tomorrow.

And we have to have those discussions.

Another good example of that, it might have been a year later,

we had a young guy that we recruited as a safety.

He'll recognize his name, Anthony Gonzalez.

We thought he could be a safety corner, great kid,

fabulous student, great team member.

You won him on your team.

And he got to preseason camp.

And it was Ignatius.

Ignatius guy.

And Mel Tucker was the DB coach.

And Mark Dantonio was the decordinator, both secondary guys.

And we're about, through I don't know,

a week or so of preseason practice.

And you have to know Anthony Gonzalez.

That's why our country has a chance.

He's a congressman right now from the state of Ohio.

But in his thoughtful way, he came into my office

and coached you have a minute.

I said, yeah, God's all what's up.

And he said, I think my talents suit me better for offense.

I said, OK, let's go.

I want you as a freshman.

I always want my guys to try to do what they have to do.

So I said, well, let me talk to the staff.

I said, I don't unilaterally make decisions.

But I can tell you, chances are the staff

will feel the same way I do.

They want you to be happy about what you're doing

and feel confident about what you're doing.

And as long as it doesn't disrupt something

the effect of the team, let me get back to you.

We sat down with the staff.

And even though it was a DB coach that recruited them,

and DB coach was the coordinator who really liked them,

what the individual needed, as long as it

coincided with what the team, immediate needs were.

Anthony Gonzalez ends up going on the other side of the ball.

And two DBs that we recruited ended up first round draft

choices as receivers.

Through a lot of personal discussion and a philosophy

of we want you to thrive where you would like to and where

you've demonstrated you have the talent to.

Where I was first talking about that you mentioned

and make sense is in business, in my experience,

I've had some people come in.

And they're either young chronologically

an age or young in experience.

But you recognize that they have some talent.

And the only way to get that experience, which is how I accidentally

ended up at the company.

I was looking, all the jobs I really wanted,

they all said, you have to have two years experience.

You have to have two years experience.

I don't have two years experience.

All I've been doing is playing ball.

So I come out and American income gives me a chance.

And I figure, I'll go there, get two years experience,

and then I'll transfer.

Yeah, somewhere else.

And rest is history, fell in love with it.

I see some people coming in and oftentimes

they'll be super talented.

And the way that I see them being able to be ready

is by putting them in the game, like you're talking about.

Put them in the game, let them get some plans.

To the level that they're ready.

That they're ready.

And then you keep, you know, American income

recognized that growing up in young's town

is worth two years of experience.

See, that company recognized that.

That's why they brought you on.

There we go.

So the next thing I would bring up

is we were talking outside about the chapter that Maxwell had.

I think it may have been maybe 21 laws, one of his books.

Everybody that starts the journey with you

won't finish the journey with you.

And so I think sometimes people have a hard time

with that.

It's a little bit different in sports

than it is in business.

You mentioned the example of transferring in sports

that will correlate in business as well,

that the minute that somebody's freshman year,

they're not playing, the first thing on people's mind

too often now is that they're just going to transfer

to another team.

That relates to business, the minute

that they're coming out in the first year,

things aren't perfect the way they wanted them.

They're quitting and they're moving to do something else.

Or on the other side, the coach's side,

the minute that a player isn't coming out as a freshman

perfect, they want to cut the person or not play them,

or write them off and need to have a little bit more patience

possibly with that person.

So could you talk us through that a little bit?

Yeah, I think what John Maxwell was discussing in that chapter

is the reality that what the group looks like today

isn't exactly what it looks like tomorrow.

We might not be the leader that that person

we're trying to serve needs.

It might be a situation where that's not

where they really want to be.

But I always felt as a coach that we

had to have the desire for the group that started with us

to finish with us.

That had to be our goal.

And we were going to do anything we could,

along with making sure we didn't evaluate too quickly,

to communicating constantly, evaluating.

Here's where we need to get better.

Here's what you've got to do, giving them the resources

to grow and so forth.

That our goal was we wanted everyone

to finish the journey with us, knowing

that's not necessarily the case.

Where I struggle a little bit with,

in the student athlete evolution of things right now,

is that I'm not sure that development of that stick

to itiveness, that grit and so forth is.

Stick to itiveness.

Is that a word?

I don't know.

I like it though.

That right now it's, oh, I'm not playing.

I'm going to transfer.

It started in AAU ball, or it started in middle school.

Well, I'm not playing.

So I'm going to go to the other middle school,

or I'm going to go to the other high school.

I'm going to go to the other AAU team.

And I'm not sure we're training them up

because we can't transfer worlds.

I can't say, I don't like what's going on in this earth,

so I'm going to go to a different planet.

We better figure out how we're going to make it.

And right now I think over 50% of the Division I basketball

players transfer.

Let me think about that.

Now, maybe some of them, because everyone

came to their agreement, maybe it wasn't a good decision

to be where they are.

But some of them are, well, I don't

know for sure if I made a good decision.

And I'm not getting the playing time I'd like now.

So I'm going to assume that it wasn't a good decision.

And I'm gone, rather than fighting it out.

And you look at the NCAA tournament,

the mid majors that make some noise

are the ones you see that have fourth and fifth year seniors,

the Gonzaga's in the Wichita states and the butlers back

when the, you know, and the ones that we expected Duke

just to run through it, right?

Top two players coming out in the draft, you know.

But that's not necessarily all that it takes.

Talent is never enough as John Maxwell has taught us.

So I get concerned with leaving before we find out

if we can finish the journey.

But I think what John was talking about

is don't be shocked and don't allow that to really affect you

because the reality is people go other directions.

You know, we talked about Mel Tucker recruiting Teddy

again and Mark Dan Tonio being the defensive coordinator.

Well, after those guys were there one year,

those coaches were gone because Mark Dan Tonio

became the head coach of Cincinnati.

Mel Tucker went to the Cleveland Browns.

You know, that's a good reason.

Some of the 50% that John talks about

that won't be with you is for good reasons.

Teddy again left early for the NFL draft.

Anthony Gonzalez left early for the NFL draft.

Vini Wells left early for those are good things.

So the team does always change.

The group does always change.

And that's what makes those personnel discussions

even more important.

About a third of our team changed every year.

And I think I was just talking with someone,

one of your buddies, when we were having that

inspiring minds fundraiser the other day,

that he was talking about in his business.

He had about a third of a turnover every year.

Some for good reason.

Some just wasn't the right fit.

How you adjust, you know, to that reality.

That's what John Maxwell's challenging us.

How do you, you know, we were also talking about a third

and a third, you know, you were saying, well, we knew that,

you know, probably about the amount of kids

that we were recruiting, we would get a third of them.

And then once we got that third, a third of them

would end up, you know, playing as seniors.

And so let's talk about that first third

in closing out today's session.

You know, the first third of how as a coach, do you mentally,

you know, I think the difference between developing in the,

in the season, that's probably a little bit more fun for people.

You're developing them in season, you know, we're practicing

right now. We got a game in a month.

We got a game in two months.

We got a spring game.

But the recruiting process, there's a little bit more longevity.

You know, we have to recruit them as a junior or a sophomore.

And you got to keep it.

And you may have all this time invested into this person

for two years or a year.

And then all of a sudden they decided to go somewhere else.

You know, you know, if I'm recruiting 40 people,

I'm probably only going to have 13 of those people

that are going to join the Ohio State Buckeyes or the penguins.

Talk to me about the mindset, because I think that that in business,

that's a long term thing that a lot of time people

may get frustrated with that process.

You know, the patience of it may not play out as a reward for you

or the team for six months.

It may, you may have all this time invested and get nothing,

you know, out of it.

How's the mindset?

How would you coach a young coach in business

or in sports on the mindset of handling that mental game?

Well, we always talked about there were certain steps

in our recruiting and recruiting as the lifeblood.

You are who you have around you.

And we used to begin with the prospecting.

You had to find out where the players were.

And so that was that accumulation of names and so forth.

And sometimes we would have a thousand names in our bank

at Ohio State, maybe two or three hundred at Youngstown State.

We didn't have quite the staff to,

didn't have the national reach.

And then the next step was evaluating, you know,

what's their transcript looked like?

What can we find out about them?

Watch the film.

Do they fit in, you know, to our level of play and so forth?

Then after you've evaluated them, now it's time to market to them.

Like get their attention, you know?

And see if they have some interest.

And then really the recruiting starts,

which is the ongoing, get them to campus, show them what we've got.

See if it clicks, go to visit their high school, talk to their coach,

talk to their guidance counselor, talk to the cook in the cafeteria

and find out if they're the right kind of person

that we would want to bring to our university.

And then the last part is the clothes.

The clothes is what it's all about.

So those numbers went from 1,000 to, you know,

we might bring 100 kids in,

counting in the summer and so forth.

Official visits where you're allowed to bring them in for two days

and really go through the whole thing.

At Ohio State, it got to the point

where if we were going to sign 20 guys,

we might have it down to 28.

So you know, Ohio State was a little different.

At Youngstown State, if we were going to sign 20 guys,

we might need to bring 60 because we weren't the first choice.

We thought we could be the first choice at Ohio State.

And so it's an ongoing thing.

Now it's changed a little bit nowadays because it's so easy to communicate.

It's so easy to get information to evaluate.

They now, you know, they sit there and they text back and forth all the time.

The process of a coach to recruit a player,

senior year, junior year, we got a year in.

We've been recruiting them, talking to them, spending time with them,

texting them back and forth on Twitter, whatever.

They decide to go to USC.

You know, they go somewhere else.

Any coaching on that, you know, that coach to keep his mind right.

You know, a young coach saying,

why I put in all this time for nothing.

Well, in our case, because the sale in our case is one,

it's last forever, okay.

And we wanted for sure for the person to be dying to go to our place.

I kind of feel that same way and with employees here at Youngstown State.

We go through these long search committees, this process.

We put all this time in.

We bring them to campus.

At the end of the day, the only one that I want to sign on the dotted line

is the one that can see themselves here.

It's dying to be here.

It loves what we got going on and is going to do the best they possibly can.

So whenever we would lose a kid,

A, I think we probably had the inkling that the connection wasn't totally strong.

Very seldom did we lose a guy that,

man, I thought we were getting him.

I mean, wow, I thought we were really, you know,

at Youngstown State, it was different.

We'd be recruiting a guy for a while.

And all of a sudden Michigan State offers.

Well, I get that, you know, that's fine.

You know, at Ohio State, I didn't think there was any place better in the

world at that level.

One would want to go.

And.

But you could usually tell where their interest would lie.

And so it's like being a DB, I'll bring up your background.

When you're a corner, you've got to have a short memory.

You know, you slip one time and they make the catcher.

You guess one time wrong and they go over top of you.

OK, if you sit around and moping about that,

they're going to beat you again, because you better

have a short memory.

So now you better go back and learn from what you could have done better.

We used to try to do a little post-recruiting survey

with the guys that didn't end up coming and saying,

you know, what was it when they said, you know what?

So, so USC was closer to home.

I got that.

I got that.

USC has one, you know, they think I can get in the game sooner.

They only have four corners coming back in.

That was your evaluation, you know, whatever.

So you always want to go back and study how you could do it better.

But if you die because someone didn't come,

focused on the ones that are enrolling, not the ones that didn't.

Love it, love it.

Well, that'll close out today's segment of the Winners Manual 2.0.

Thanks for your time, Coach Trest.

We'll see you again soon.

It's President Trest, or do you?

Oh, gee.

Old gangster.

Yeah.

Count money, man.

Money back, bitches.

I tried to told him, I'm a beast, but...