Ron Prince Quotes from Signing Day
Feb 01, 2006 | Football
Head Coach Ron Prince on the press conference...
“I am going to start this press conference by saying that this press conference is in memory of Andre’ Thibault, a 12-year old young man from Halstead, Kansas, who passed away tragically in an accident the other day after school. A young man that was an avid K-State fan, a family that was really terrific in their support and it was a really devastating blow to a family and a community. I was fortunate enough to be invited to go down and celebrate his life and we are going to do what we can here this spring, particularly in the spring game to honor this young man who was such a big K-State fan.”
On the signing class...
“I am really excited about this signing class. When we first came here in that first press conference we talked about wanting to build a team that was fast, strong, tough and disciplined because that is the kind of team that helps you consistently compete for championships. We talked about having a team of people that have integrity and we talked about what some of those things are, like sincerity, candor, truthfulness, but also a team where individuals have toughness and not just physical toughness that people think about, but also competitive toughness and what some people might describe as mental toughness. We are looking for people who are achievement-oriented, people who are really interested in going to college and earning their degree and who in their makeup are really wired for success, and the folks in this class really represent that. We took a lot of time to investigate the people, not just their individual football talent but really who these people are, and who we think they can grow up to be.”
On how he started the recruiting process once he arrived...
“I don’t think that I can give enough credit to those folks who were here like Coach Latimore and those folks who were here in the office who are were responsible for helping us maintain this list. The first four guys that came onto the staff Pat Washington, Mo Latimore, Tim Tibesar and Tim McCarty did a terrific job in many cases of calling, and really taking the temperature of the recruiting landscape to see what was out there. The people we hired were hired because they were very proficient in recruiting and they are very geographically sensitive, and they did a terrific job of essentially starting much of this class from scratch.”
On the Josh Freeman recruitment...
“We were involved with Josh (Freeman) a little bit at
On scheduling official visits...
“It was interesting because we started with a small list of names and there had been very few official visits taken, so we had basically the full allotment of official visits to offer. I was committed to using as many as necessary because, to be frank with you, we had not really been able to gauge the interest of these young people, not only to the new coach, but to the institution. As you will see in the signing material here, there are some young people traveling some distance to come here. I wanted to make sure we had enough opportunities to be in front of enough young people so we didn’t have to have a perfect yield. We didn’t have to bat seven out of eight so to speak. We gave ourselves an opportunity to be in front of as many young people as we could.”
On trying to get up to 85 scholarships...
“The role of the head coach is to put the roster together. I kind of look at this a little differently with the school of thought that I come from. We have a budget of 85 scholarships that the NCAA allows you to give and you can never give more than 25 in a particular year. When you start putting a class together, you can make yourself feel better by recruiting a lot of players at a particular position, but you have to be sensitive to the 85 and the budget of how the roster is put together. Those are some of the issues that I’m managing to make sure that down the road we have some fiscal responsibility that comes to budgeting those scholarships so that the assistant coaches at every position have the numbers to work with to do a good job. We wanted to make sure we were at full strength because we don’t want to operate at any kind of disadvantage to our competitors.
On if there was any one position that needed help...
“Not from a competitive standpoint, but from a roster standpoint. In evaluating the roster, I went back and looked at the signing classes from the last six years and compared that with the other 11 teams in the conference and to see what percentage of veteran players we would be taking the field with. I looked into the future as well and tried to project into the future what the roster might look like in comparison to our competitors in the Big 12 North as well as the teams that we could be playing from the south. That’s where some of the decisions to make moves in some of these positions came from. I really wanted to make sure that we were sound going forward with our roster. So, most of my concern was more from sheer roster numbers than analysis of a particular position.
On redshirting...
“Fundamentally, I’m of the approach that when they’re ready, I’m ready. I never speak to any player about redshirting, while it could be in some young person’s best interest. We had a situation at
On recruiting the number of defensive backs...
“It’s very clear to me when you analysis the current landscape of college football of the style of football that’s being played. If you look at the team that won the National Championship from our conference they played with a lot of spread offenses where the quarterback is the featured player and, at times, is the runner. When you’re in that situation where there are three or four wide receivers on the field, sometimes five, from my vantage point, I felt like we needed numbers in that area. Particularly when you look at some of the teams that you could face in the title game or within your own division, the landscape of college football is becoming a much more wide open game as opposed to a between-the-tackles game.”
On the speed of the class...
“I think what you’re looking for in all cases are functional demonstrations of speed, toughness, strength, and those kinds of things. There’s not question that I think, right now, in college football that the premium is on speed. When you play here in the Big 12, I think being able to play fast through November is critical. If you can make sure that throughout a season you can maintain functional speed and make sure you don’t have any limitations on scheme and strategies because of the lack of it (speed), then I think you give yourself a chance in every ballgame. Obviously I think that plays into a lot of things on special teams that we will be interested in doing and trying to make an impact in the game in that area.
On the importance between K-State and the
“You can argue that there hasn’t been another program that has successfully balanced the junior-college and high school equation than
On mid-year high school signees...
“In the ACC we saw this a couple years ago. There were a couple teams in our league that really had an advantage when it came to the mid-year process. We did not have that advantage at
