All right everybody. Thanks again for tuning in. My name is Matt Gerber, the executive director of the Diamond Allegiance. I’m excited for today’s conversations conversation with one of my good friends, coach Chuck Jarman from the University of Florida. Chuck, appreciate you joining me today, brother.
Yeah, glad to be here, Curtis.
Yeah, man. Well, let’s just jump right in. I think it’s always a fun story to kind of tell. Obviously you’re at the apex of college baseball, smack dab in the middle of the SEC playing for a national championship last year. Tell me the story about how you got to where you are starting with your playing career.
Yeah, grew up born New York and then we moved down to South Florida. Grew up in West Palm Beach, played for a legendary high school coach and Scott Benedict, a really good high school program. Went to the final four all three years. I was on varsity, then ended up going out of state, went to Auburn University, played Shoreside there for three years, signed with the Red Sox after my junior year. Played up to AAA with ’em. Really good experience and I got to the point I played in the Atlantic League for a little bit at the end of my career, which honestly was as good of an experience as I had my entire time playing professional baseball. Won a ring my last year, played for Andy Etcher Baron, unbelievable manager. Caught more 20 game winners than anybody in the history of baseball one year at the Orioles.
You passed probably four years ago now, but ended up they had it arranged to where I could go back and play another year if I didn’t get the job that I wanted. And we had just had our first son, Owen, and I want to say he was in daycare part-time a little bit, or he would’ve had to if I would’ve left. That’s what it was. My wife was teaching. If I got a job, I was going to go and take the job, but I wanted to make sure I could take the right job because I knew I wanted to coach college baseball.
I did not want my son to go to daycare full time. So they had it set up so I could go late and play. And I ended up getting a job at TCU for Jim Schlau Nagel. I worked there for two years. I liked it a lot. I learned a lot. I definitely learned a lot. Schloss is definitely the right guy that I needed right out the gate because the baseball side is kind of the baseball side, but there’s so much more that comes to this profession than just coaching baseball on the field and the organization and Schloss, he really runs a company man. He knows exactly the way everything could really show you how to do all these things that it needs in the office side of it and kind the game planning and practice planning and all the things that go around it that I had no idea when I was a college baseball player. I swear to you, I thought Finney and RO and Coach Fuller, they showed up at practice, then they went home,
Right.
I didn’t realize
That’s not what happens.
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I thought they’d talk to a couple of kids on the phone every once in a while, go watch a game. It’s very different than what I initially thought as a player and just kind of the window that I got into that early on was really good and I think that really set me up for success. And I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t start off there. And then being from Florida, if I was going to really start recruiting and doing it at a high level, I needed to get back into the area that I knew the best where I had the most contacts. So I left a pretty good situation at TCU to go to Jacksonville University. I worked for Tim Monte and then that transitioned into Chris Hayes. Took over a program that was not in a good spot when it was Monty’s first year as head coach did not come off winning a whole bunch of games with the roster wasn’t special right away.
And we got better every year. We hit the ground running recruiting the 15 class, which was a really, really good class in the state of Florida was our first significant class there. And that’s the one that pretty much changed the program and we got better every single year. Had some really good players, had some really good big leaguers during our time there and then won the championship in the a o my last year there. Then I ended up going to USF and worked for Billy for two years and he really gave me the reins of the entire position player side of it, which is part of what I was looking for as well as the recruiting. Had a really good club the first year. Had a lot of success. We had a bunch of big leaders in that club. Then after two years I ended up coming here to Florida and then I can’t believe it, but this is my fifth year here now. My role has grown here over the years, but working for Sly, it’s awesome, man. I’ve known Sully for a long time and he gives me a lot of freedom as he does with all of us to do our jobs and having an understanding of what the expectation is here. But it’s great, man. I mean this isn’t work, dude. I mean you get to come here, coach baseball and work with players every single day. It’s a pretty cool deal for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. Living the dream. So a couple things just kind of popped to my mind as you kind of told that story starting at TCU. So you get that job there, you’re coming fresh out of playing. You talked about Slosh running it as a business almost and running the organization. What are some things that maybe one or two things that really stand out in your mind that you kind of apply to the way you go about your business that you learned in those two years at TCU
Organization and planning? There’s no question. And the organization, like the office side of this thing, the amount that goes into it so that you’re prepared every single day, whether if it is on the recruiting side and having your contacts and your schedule and your own recruiting database and your group of players that you’re actively recruiting on the playing side. So it’s like planning practice every single day, going through the details of how we’re going to coach certain things. It’s not just throwing stuff on a wall and seeing what sticks. There’s actually a plan to what we do. And then really just the day to day in the office man and creating time for your players. And you learn a lot on the field, man. I mean, you go from playing professional baseball that I was playing GBS for seven years where you’re playing 140 games a year to then you come and play back into college baseball where literally every single game we play is equal to a series in professional baseball.
Like the importance of it and then everything that comes with that. So getting to be able to tap back into that, the competitive spirit of that, it was definitely very different and Schloss helped immensely with a lot of that for sure. And then it was really learning from the ground up, like Gers, I did our dirt too. So I came in, I coached our catchers right away, which I didn’t know anything. My brother caught in the big leagues, but I didn’t know anything about catchers, was a Schwartz saw. And then I ended up taking over our infielders and I helped out our hitters and then I took over our hitters, but I did all the camp stuff, which I had no idea. And I’m in Texas with no contacts, so I am trying to create and keep this camp deal rolling with no idea what I’m doing or the people I need to hit up.
And Schloss helped me work through all of that, which if I didn’t have him kind of in my head leading me the way at the beginning of that, that would’ve been really hard. And I had never worked on a field in my life ever. And we’re a private school, so honestly, and I didn’t make a ton of money the first year at all. My wife, we moved out there, we didn’t have anybody around us. So it was really, I think it was the best possible scenario that I could have had to start out with understanding of what all goes into what we do.
Absolutely. So I get to know you, meet you when you’re at ju didn’t know you obviously when you were at TCU, but I think you nailed it. One thing I would love to know, Jacksonville University is obviously a smaller school. A lot of people around the country may not know the real baseball tradition that is there at JU, right? Really good tradition, have had some great teams over the years. But recruiting at a place like Jacksonville where you were recruiting against Florida and Florida State and Miami and even some of the other mid-majors, what were some of the things that you really focused on in players? What were you looking for in players at JU that made you guys so good when you were there?
So the first thing I think was the most important thing is that we talked about first got there, took over a program that had not had success and they had a longstanding tradition of a lot of success under Terry Alexander for a long time. He was a great head coach there for a long time. But the last four or five years, not a whole lot of success. They didn’t make the ACEs on attorney the year before we got there when they had a first round of throwing on Friday night. That’s not easy to do, especially in a league. The AUN was a really good league, but it’s not as Harold did as these other leagues, right? It’s not a Power five or anything like that. So the initial thing that was the most important was there was a certain skillset that guys needed to have success at the division one level, but we made an extreme precedent to have guys that came from winning programs.
So since we did not have a winning program that the guys were coming into and a winning culture completely yet, we needed to make sure that we recruited guys. That was their experience. They were winners before they got here. So it was a lot easier in the transition teaching guys how to win that had already done that before. So the high school programs that the guys have had a lot of success and the travel programs that had had a lot of success, those were really important to us early on. And honestly that stayed the course the whole time I was there at ju.
Yeah, really good. So winning matters.
Yeah, dude, winning anything matters, there’s
Nothing. And then we transitioned to USF and you said the first time getting the full reigns of position players and getting to really grind your teeth and get after it. I remember us having a conversation about you being able to come in and completely redo the way that hitting had been going at that place at that time. And so this is a good transition not only as a coach, what did that look like for you? But then also start to begin to talk about your philosophy as a hitting guy and what you like to do with your players.
Yeah, so I think first of all jus me and Hayes worked together with our position players every day and we are truly on the same page as what we did. I mean Hayes ended up growing, had become the head coach my last year there. And when I say I took over the reins, I was like, I had it by myself pretty much and K would help me out at USF when I was at ju. It was completely together and everything we did, which was awesome. It was a really good experience and I love hazy. I think our players grew and got better because of it for sure, but being able to come in right away and what they had done prior to getting there, it works for certain guys. I felt like it didn’t really work for that group at USF. And over time I think you have to adapt in coaching, you adapt or you die in all areas, but especially in coaching.
And I think you have to have certain foundations that are important to you. I came into USF and those guys, they had done a ton of machine work just velo machine every single day and they didn’t really learn to hit with their mind quite as much. They didn’t really have a mindset or approach or kind of an identity to who they were. And that was important. And the biggest thing was since they did so much of the velo machine stuff all the time and that was their consistent work, none of them really understood rhythm or how to get a load in. So that first fall, the main focus was teaching guys how to load and have rhythm when they hit. Because when you’re hitting off a machine, the thing’s humming like 90 miles an hour, you’re in a hurry, you’re just rushing. And I feel like with hitters, I’m trying to slow guys down more than I’m trying to speed them up for sure. And I think that was kind of going away from it and we made a really big jump offensively in that now there’s certain principles that we use every day that I think is really important and there’s certain goals that guys need to try to shoot for all the time to have success at our level, but those change player to player for sure. But as a group there’s certain things that you have to do I feel like to have success here for sure.
So I think there’s a kind of team philosophy when it comes to hitting and then an individual approach to doing what your job is, identifying who they are. So what would you encapsulate, I don’t know if it’s one word, three words, four words, but what do you want the identity of a Florida offense to be?
I want it to be super aggressive. That doesn’t mean swinging. That means our mindset and our approach, trying to develop players into hitters. Hitting is an act of aggression is offensive. You cannot be passive or defensive and have success. So in order to have success at our level, I think you have to be able to handle a fastball. And if you can’t handle a fastball, you probably need to go play a different sport.
So that’s the premise of what we do. We work through the middle of the field all the time. There’s a bunch of different ways that we do it, but that is the base of what we do. Be on time, hit a fastball and be on time to smash it through the middle of the field. And then the aggression side of it, I mean that’s more mindset and thought process and I mean I don’t think I could get into as aggressive as we tried to get it out of them on something like this, but we have a pretty good idea. We try to turn ’em into killers, bro. That’s kind of what we’re trying to do.
And I think you look all the way to the top of the food chain per se, at Florida with Sully, with you, the whole staff, you guys exude, you go to a perfect game or PBR event or whatever it is. And when the Florida Gators show up all the way from recruiting to, I was at the SEC tournament this year, just the way you guys carry yourself, you can tell that that’s preached from the top all the way to the players. And there’s no doubt about that aggressiveness and that style play that you guys have. It’s something that I know back when I was in my travel ball days really drew me to sending my better players to the University of Florida because I knew that they were going to be challenged. And that kind of brings me to my next question. So in today’s day and age and the kids change and times change and kids are able to, especially at your level, kids that are good enough to play at your level are able to read about themselves and see how highly they’re ranked and all those things.
So a lot of kids come in with maybe a conception that they might be better than they are or maybe that’s not the right wording, but they’ve got less to prove. What do you guys do to put them in the right place mentally to understand that they are part of a team and that, like you said, at the end of the day, winning matters. You sully the whole staff, you guys are judged on whether you win and what your record is at the end of the year. So what do you guys do to really foster that? I guess that team atmosphere with a bunch of really, really good players.
Yeah, I think your older group is really important in that. That’s something I think that we’ve gotten better with every year that I’ve gotten here and we’ll see how this club handles it. Last year’s group, the leadership that we had at all three levels, those guys would handle it. Wyatt, he was kind of quiet, he’s down there hitting right now, but those guys, they’re a little bit quieter in times, but when they speak, I think the guys have a pretty good idea of what’s important and what matters. Josh would run our infield and run the show and then BT the same thing. And on the pitching side, spro and wall drip, they were good, they were different in their way, but they were good. Whether if it was leading by example or they could knock you down pretty quick. I mean I think these guys come in here. We have really talented freshmen on our club right now.
We also have extremely talented sophomores and juniors. So for a guy to come in here, I think they recognize right away they’re no longer the only big dog in town, which is kind of what they’ve experienced leading up to. And I think that the success that the program’s had leads to them buying in a little bit faster than probably they might initially at some other places. When we tell them to wrap themselves up in the glove and to focus on winning and the rest of it’ll take care of itself and all the individual goals that you want. If you attack your opponent and you’re the one that’s going out hunting rather than the other way around, then everything that you want individually, you’ll not put pressure on yourself. If you truly do wrap yourself up in the club and your individual goals, you’ll end up preaching.
But if that’s your focus, it’s really hard to have success. If you think of what Wyatt went through last year, I mean he’s coming into the last year, he’s supposed to go pretty high in the draft and wired to why are he ended up having a good year. And I think that has everything to do with the way he goes about his process every single day and the way he carries himself. He’s not sitting there worried about how he’s performing individually. Although in the back of his mind I think of course, but his focus every single day was how are we going to win? And if you could hear him in our dugout every day, it’s not just coach speaker or anything like that, but that’s truly the way that he felt. I mean hit me up all fall, finding out how these guys were doing here and we got a couple different tech groups and stuff like that with current players on our team that some of the older players are in and they kind of help those guys along as well, like our former players do for sure.
Yeah, you guys have done a really good job for those that really pay attention actually even on the coaching staff where every single year it seems like you’ve got a guy that’s either fresh out of pro ball that’s getting his master’s or finishing up school or whatever it might be. So I see it even start there bringing these guys like Mikey Rivera is there now. Nolan Fontana has been there laying worthy, right? The list is probably pretty long of guys that you guys have done a great job of bringing that back in and them understanding the history of the program and how things are supposed to be done on any successful team. Chuck, I think that leadership from players is really important. And you just named three guys that I’d love to spend maybe just a little bit of time on each of them and what they went through to get to where they were at the end of last year and even moving forward into pro ball for two of them and why a BT and Josh.
So let’s start off with Wyatt when he was recruited, tell us the story from his recruitment to where he ended up being such a high pick, Big physical corner, infield type at bat speed with some questions of swing and miss on the way in. Tougher kid played football and basketball from Trenton, Florida, recruited out of camp, played for the hard ballers with Kolachi and Mays and came in here right away. We didn’t really know what to do with him. Positionally right away when he got here, did not talk very much at the beginning of his freshman year for sure was our number four behind the plate. So he caught a bunch of pens and then he would play a little bit of third and or first in our inner squads start off that fall really good. Ended up coming down to earth a little bit as the fall went on, got four at bats his freshman year. Most of ’em were spent running down from the bullpen late in the game when the game was usually out of hand. It worked really, really hard as he always did. It’s not something new, but he was able, since he wasn’t playing every day to really crush the weight room during that spring and get after it a little bit more than other guys are able to just because his workload wasn’t quite the same. And then he had a really good summer in Charlottesville that came back that fall and was smashing balls right away and we had to figure out where the heck he was going to play.
So we ended up figuring out that he could probably play outfield and Wyatt’s the kind of kid man, if you told him he needed to do anything, he’d be able to do it. If you told me he needed to play second base tomorrow, he’s going to figure out a way. It’s just how mentally strong he is and how tough he is. And it’s a different kid man. He’s a special kid, dude. Everything he’s got now he’s earned. There’s no doubt about that
In this day and age man for it. Back to the freshmen and just looking within to say what do I got to do to get better and what do I got to do to find myself away on the field and committing that processes and then obviously elevating himself to arguably the best player in the country last year if he didn’t have that injury in there, the numbers that he put up are just unbelievable. And some of the balls he hit in Omaha last year were just awe inspiring really. You just look at him and you’re just unbelievable.
Toughest guy in America, dude. There’s no doubt about it.
So toughness is what defines Wyatt. Let’s skip down to Josh and tell me about his recruitment, what you guys saw in him and then his maturation as a player.
So Josh was committed here before I got here. He was signed, so my first year here he was a freshman. I’ve never coached a day a game at the University of Florida without Josh. So he came in, he was not a shortstop in high school, played third base. We did not have a shortstop really on the roster and he really worked to put himself in position to be able to play shortstop. We worked every day, played short every day as a freshman in the covid short year, he got off really good to start and then everything came crashing down with Covid and all that and season was shut down sophomore year, did not go the way you wanted to.
He fought. Everybody was kind of weird man that year playing in front of 500 people. It was a weird year, but I think he grew a lot in that year. At one point in time he played some second base, then he went back over to shore, he sat down for a little bit. He grew a lot maturity wise, both on and off the field I believe that year. And I think ultimately him going through that year is what is led to him becoming the player and the person that he is now. His junior year he had a really good fall and of getting hit by a pitch late in the fall. He didn’t get cleared to play until the week of our opening weekend. So he missed a lot of time in his lead up. We were able to do a lot with him, but he wasn’t completely cleared to do everything until then.
So he kind of played catch up that whole year. And if you look and SEC play, he was probably one of our best if not our best hitter that year during SEC play. But over the course of the year, his numbers weren’t what they definitely could have been or what they should have been because of the amount of time he missed. And then last year, man, he grabbed the reins and I mean it’s like a quarterback that’s been in the offense for four years. He’s got complete control of it. That’s kind of the way that Josh played the game here last year. There was never any thinking through things. He was just able to go out and be aggressive and attack rather than kind of thinking his way through. And I put more on our shore socks plate than probably they usually do at other places. And by the time he’s in his fourth year, it is all easy man. He’s just running the show every single day and what he does and he ended up having, if we didn’t have Josh Rivera last, honestly, if we didn’t have any of those three guys that you just mentioned, I don’t think we end up where we ended up. But the growth that he had and the leadership that he showed with our guys every day, I mean he ran the show on the field, man. No.
Well and then obviously from a national landscape, BT got a lot of pub in the regional super regionals college World series as he should. But one thing I’ve never asked you, BT was a grad transfer or a transfer from Coastal Carolina. I’m not sure grad transfer is the right word, but had a couple years left in the portal, did you know what type of person you were getting in bt? Did you have the opportunity to really recruit him or understand that you were getting that entire package?
So the recruitment happened pretty fast. That was our first, that was easy. The only guy we brought in the portal then he was our first ever guy we brought in the portal, which was good and bad, right, because it was awesome.
Leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you don’t get a BT from me here on out, right?
No doubt man. Now I think the expectations of bring a guy in the portal are probably not realistic. But no, I called Schnall who I’ve had a good relationship with who had him at Coastal Kind, got an idea of why he went in the portal and what he was looking for, asked about him as a player and asked about him as a person. He is like, you’re going to love him to death man. He is like, he’s the kind of guy that when years from now when you’re done playing or when he’s done playing that you would want to go sit down and have a beer with and just check in with him, see how everything was going. And BT at first, he was kind of quiet when he first got here for him. He’s a very talkative dude, he’s awesome, he’s got a good personality to him, he’s very comfortable in his own skin.
But he was kind of getting a lay of the landscape here and an idea of the way things were. And then, I mean Sully always said when BT was here that first fall at the end of the year, he’s going to be in our everyday guy. I can’t see us play a game at the end of the year and him not be a real factor. And he did not have a great fall. So the stuff our guys see in the falls, it is a pretty good jump from our arms. And he had some stuff mechanically that probably that we needed to clean up for him to have success against the level of arms that he was seeing. But BT iss competitive spirit dude, it’s unbelievable man. And he had an opportunity to go out and play after that year and sign and he turned it down to come back because all he wanted to do is win.
So if he got on a guy, whoever it happens to be, if he got on a pitcher or on another player, dude, this guy is literally getting on just because he wants to win. He came back here just to win. That’s why he’s back here. He just wants to go to Omaha and he wants to win a national championship, he wants to win the SEC, that’s why he’s here. So even though you might not like what he’s saying, you might think he’s calling you out or you might think he’s talking down, he’s not. He just wants to win and he wants you to help us win. That’s all he wants to do. And I mean bt, he could hold his ground and at times with some umpires, he was probably a little bit too aggressive at times. But here in our program passive kids do not seem, and I think this that way in our league, they don’t really have a whole lot of success. You have to be aggressive to have success at this place and in this league, that kind of personality. And he’s that to a T and he had an opportunity to go out and play after this past year. He could have gone out and played pro ball, but he had already made his mind up kind of what he wanted to do moving forward. But BT brought so much to our program and to our team and reinstating and reinvigorating into this program what we needed and what this program is.
If you’re a portal guy out there watching and you want to go to Florida, we’ve got some big shoes to fill.
We’ve had some other good ones.
Waldrop, you have. That’s true. You’ve had a couple good ones. Let’s transition and talk a little bit about obviously most of the people that are associated with the Diamond Allegiance, travel baseball clubs and parents and kids and coaches. And I’d like to talk about the recruiting landscape where it’s at, how some of the things, some of the rule changes and things that are going on are affecting you and kind of hear it from your side of the fence. So let’s start first with the rule change with this not being able to have contact with the underclassmen and what that’s done to your guys’ recruitment and recruitment style.
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of people are going to say that they like the way that it is. I like it better than it was for a period of time. What I truly do Miss Gers is when back before we’ve had two rule changes now, but back when I was at ju, if we wanted a younger guy, he could come on an unofficial at any point in time and sit down in our building and talk with us. And I can’t tell you how many guys we end up deciding not to recruit or we end up even potentially giving them more money because of the
Person falling in love with the kids.
No doubt the person that was sitting across the table and you get a better feel for the player and the family and just in your decision, it allows you to make a better decision for both parties for them to have a better understanding of who we are because they’re always going to hear things, whether if they’re good, bad or indifferent about our program from the outside and you’re at a place long enough, they’re probably going to have a lot of people say good things. You’re probably going to have some people say bad things no matter where you’re at, no matter what program you’re in. The only person that doesn’t get that is a person that’s a first year head coach at a new place. Right? Exactly. But if you do a good enough job, we were talking earlier, there’s a lot of people that don’t like us in our league, I think because we’ve had success, but with that, when they changed the rule to where we couldn’t have in-person contact until they became juniors, I think at that point in time, us and the kids a lot of times were kind of taking shots in the dark because you don’t really have an idea of truly what the personality is of the kid and the family and they don’t have the same of us.
So I think if you would probably go back and look at, I don’t have the numbers, but if you went back and looked at the numbers, I bet there’s a bigger rate of, there was a better retention rate before they instituted that rule, right? Things have changed now with the portal and all that, but even before the portal, I bet you the retention rate was better prior to that. And then now I do not love what we have now just because I think it’s easier for the waters to kind of get muddier for the kid and it’s harder for them to have conviction in where they want to go because there’s no communication and then all of a sudden they’re getting flooded. And if they don’t have people that they could really lean on when you were with the scorpions forever, those kids had you to be a liaison that they could lead on to help ’em figure out where they want to go.
And I think, I’m sure most of the programs in the diamond allegiance are the exact same way, but there’s a lot of programs that are not that way. And when you deal with that, you deal with kids that are completely lost in this process because they haven’t had the ability to sit down as an early agent gather information. They just sit there on their phone and look at Twitter and see what looks cool. So I think the phone and the access, the ease of access to programs is good, but in a way I think it makes the kids’ decisions harder at times just because anybody can make something look good on social media is completely different and get a better understanding when you’re actually sitting here talking to us to lean on like yourself.
Yeah, Chuck, that’s a great point. I mean I think that in this day and age you hear you want to play in the SEC, you want to play in the ac, you want to play in the power fives wherever it is. Obviously I’ll argue that the SEC is the apex of college baseball, but there’s a lot of good players in other leagues as well. But you said you’ve got to have toughness, you’ve got to be aggressive, you’ve got to have grit to be able to perform and play in those leagues and in your league in specific. And if players are making decisions based on what they see on social media or a cool interview, the work happens and the guys, whoever it is, if I’m talking about Dylan Cruz or if I’m talking about Wyatt Langford or whoever it might be, those guys work their tails off and are different animals.
And if you’re a kid and you’re listening to this and that’s where you want to be and that’s who you want to be, I think it’s two things that I take away are really important. One, you got to surround yourself with people that have been through it and know the process and have relationships as you’re going through this because the advice and the fit that they can help you find is super important. You and I used to have conversations, there were kids that played for me that were really, really good players, but they would’ve never fit in at the University of Florida, right? Never. And even when you were at USF and ju, and that’s back to why I asked you the question, what type of kid are you looking for and people that fit that criteria. There’s a lot of talent out there, but what truly separates the guys that can play at your level I think is that grit and that winning attitude.
So kids that are listening, obviously if you’re part of the dime allegiance, you’re lucky enough to be with groups that are like that. But if you’re not, you make sure you are because that guidance is really, really important. Chuck, we were talking, I don’t know you agree with this, a lot of times people think exposure equals recruitment and I’m a big believer that being ready plus being surrounded by people that can move the needle for you equals recruitment. I don’t know what you think about that and that equation, but I think that putting in the work and being good enough and then putting yourself in a place where you’ve got people around you that have the relationships that can call you or whoever it might be and say, Hey, I’ve got a guy really matters. How many times are you just rolling up to a field and being like, oh, that guy looks like he can play at Florida.
Never.
Whether if it’s now there’s kids that pop up all the time, but it’s from a call from you or a call from Johnny or Jimmy or Mark or Andy or any of these guys that, Hey, you need to go down there. We have these guys. You need to come check out. We have this guy you need to check out. That’s usually the way it starts. And there might be another kid that jumps off the field, it’s like, whoa, who’s this dude? And he might not quite have quite as much love, which happens a lot as some of these other guys are not the same accolades, but we fall in love with them. That’s the guy we want to recruit. And then we’ll end up going down the road, there’s tons of guys at that
And then all of a sudden he gets ranked really, really high.
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s the way goes. But in terms of what you said at the beginning, I think that’s a huge issue at times right now where I think kids are chasing, they feel like they have to go play games all the time to get exposure to come for us to see them when there’s a lot of kids that get overseen and they’re not ready to be seen. And then it’s really hard at times to get over that initial look that you had or get that out of your mind. On my shoes, I might see something that’s really hard to overcome. The kids do overcome it for sure, but it takes a lot to overcome that. And a lot of times it was because they were getting seen too early. And I think especially now with this rule change, I don’t know why you would play 1 million games during the summer if you’re a freshman in high school.
I don’t know why you would do that. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me when it should be more based off of your development and trying to get bigger and stronger and put yourself in a position that when it is your time to get seen, then you can put your best foot forward. And if you’re not quite where you need to be when August 1st rolls around your junior year, it doesn’t matter if a player’s good enough and they’re the right kind of guy to have success at Florida, we’re probably going to give ’em an opportunity to come here. Whether if that happens August one of their junior year or in the fall of their senior year,
I had a kid that played for me named Eric Handhold that played at University of Florida and Eric ended up pitching a little bit in the big leagues and he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready, but then he was ready and it was literally his last outing of his senior year of his in the fall. It’s like it finally popped. You could always see it was potentially there, but okay, now, okay, yeah, it’s here and he’s ready. And I used to joke with Sully all the time, Chuck, about Nolan Fontana and when the early recruiting was really, really, really going hard. I used to tell him all the time, I said probably one of the, I don’t know, give him top three, right? Top three shortstops that have played there, did a really good job and was Sully’s type of guy said you would’ve never recruited Nolan Fontana in the early recruiting days.
He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready until his junior year. So for those listening, I think it’s really, really important. This idea that you’re going to get left behind is not true. If you’re good enough, you’re going to find the opportunity and the focus on getting good enough and surrounding yourself with people that can help you do that should be one of your major focuses as you look to where you’re spending your time, your resources, spend it on getting as good as you can be. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t play games. I think that Chuck, there’s a fine balance between the two. You got to, we don’t want cage warriors and bullpen warriors. You still got to be able to compete. You still have to learn how to win and win because at the end of the day, like we said, winning is so important. So we talked about the early recruiting. Let’s talk a little bit if you would, about NIL and how that is affecting the game and do you see any changes potentially to the way that it’s administered going forward? Are there any rule changes or things like that that we might be hearing of coming down the pike?
Yeah, I mean I would hope so. I mean, what we’ve been at Florida is what we’ll continue to be is we’re going to continue to recruit the high-end high school player. That’s what our place has been. We haven’t been super active in the portal some of these other programs have been, but I think it is part of the puzzle now. I think NIL is part of the equation too, but ultimately gers, if you’re making your decision solely based off of NIL and you’re coming to the University of Florida, if you’re the kind of guy that could command potentially a good bit of money in it, then if you fall one pick or two in the draft because you went to the wrong place for you, then you end up losing significantly more money than you would ever make an NI. So I think finding the right fit is really important. Finding the right place for you to be around a good team where you feel comfortable, where you’re going to be on a bigger stage. I think all those things are really important. But it is part of it now. I mean right now, dude, I think our league’s probably, if it’s not at the top on it, it has to be right.
It’s got to be right.
And then I think the gap to the next league’s probably pretty good, but within the leagues there’s pretty big gaps too. So I think they’re going to have to grab a hold of this In all sports it’s becoming an issue. And usually the way this stuff works is I think football will probably, if it’s too big of an issue and football, then they’re probably going to look to attack it, which I’m sure is probably coming down the pipe. And then if it’s also a big issue in basketball, then they’re going to attack it. If it’s an issue in our sport, we’re not at the point in our sport where it is in football and basketball, but it is a factor. It is an issue I think at times, but it’s still, when you come to play college baseball, it’s still an investment in your life as a person and as a player.
So the paper that you get wherever you graduate from, that’s not leaving you and that’s going to determine potentially how much money you make whenever your time playing baseball is done with. And then your ability to have these three to four years of your life, having your best experience of your life is pretty important because that’s what, this is the time of your life in college and you don’t want to do it losing, I promise you that if you want to do it around guys that are like-minded to you and that are fighting for a common goal and putting yourself in the best position that you could for when you start your pro career that you’re a priority. And if those things line up, then you end up making the best decision. If you’re just making your decision solely based off of where I can go get the biggest payday in NIL, I don’t know, man. That’s not where the priorities would be, I don’t think.
Yeah, probably a little bit shortsighted as well. And I think we get wrapped up sometimes when we talk about the top half percent of the top 1%. And that’s what you’re talking about when it comes to NIL deals. At the end of the day, I think what you said, whether you’re a University of Florida player, whether you’re a division two guy, whether you’re a JUCO guy, trying to find places that are winning programs and have winning cultures winning’s a lot more fun than losing. I know personally, I spent my freshman year at the division one level and went to a school that did not have a winning culture and couldn’t have hated my time anymore. And then I ended up transferring and getting to play in the division two college World Series and obviously not the level of Omaha, but being part of a winning culture in a winning team is way more fun.
So I would a hundred percent agree with that recommendation for kids and families that are listening to this, right? Look for a place that has a culture winning because that’s not only going to help you. I mean even look even at the SEC, right? And I don’t know the numbers, Chuck, but SEC, the pinnacle of college baseball, how many guys in the SEC are actually making it to the big leagues and then making it past arbitration in the big leagues? I mean, the percentage even at that level is much greater that you’re not going to make a living in actually playing on the field. You might make a living in baseball doing something else, but the coaching and just becoming a man and becoming more organized and understanding all those things that go along with being an adult cannot be underscored as kids go through this recruiting process. So leave you with this last question and we’ll wrap it up. Give me just an anecdote, kind of your favorite story from your guys run through the College World series last year that you can say can on camera.
I know I’m trying, dude, there’s so many that I cannot say, especially one-liners by some of our guys, but I mean the easy one would be why Homer Virginia against Virginia and the College of World series. That moment was electric. It was incredible.
Yeah, let’s go with that one. Let’s break that down. You guys are in game one, right? In Omaha, first game
In wind’s blowing in 20 miles an hour and we are continuing to smash balls to the warning track.
And you guys are down, right? And you going to the last inning, correct? If I remember right. Yeah.
Yeah. We ended up making up a little bit of ground. We had Ty and Dale Thomas come off the bench and Dale worked a walk and Ty smashed a double and that kind of got us going, but we were still down two heading into the ninth then.
So that’s sets the stage and just kind of walk me through that.
So Ty hits a homer and that’s the first time he went on a line kind of snuck out and the wind died down a good bit. Then Mike and then Wyatt came up and hit a ball that has not landed. So I think there was one out Zade I think struck out and why it had changed up off his left. He was the furthest ball ever hit in the stadium. So I think he owns the top two and three of the top four Now, something like that, that’s incredible. But when he hit the ball, it was unbelievable, man. And when he hit that, it allowed our team to relax. That is the thing. It’s just like opening day, opening day. Everybody’s so excited. Something’s got to happen to get everybody you individually to calm down for yourself, but for the whole team and then why it hit that it allowed our team take a deep breath and then just go play. Because up to that point, it’s not normal.
Just play off baseball in the big leagues. It is not normal. It’s not what you’ve been doing all year. It’s a different environment with a lot of people on a bigger stage and it feels different. And until that happened, it felt like we weren’t able to play our game. It felt like stuff kind of wasn’t going our way in spots. Guys weren’t playing loose, they normally are, and as aggressive as they normally are. And then when that happened, it just flipped and we played our game from then that point kind of moving forward. But that was a pretty cool one when we clenched here against South Carolina and we had control of that game, that second game from the beginning to pretty much the end when you’re in the dugout and the eighth inning. That’s the first time I’ve ever experienced it. When you’re in the dugout in the eighth inning and ninth inning and that you’re,
You’re going, dude, it is incredible that feeling and looking around the dugout and seeing all these dudes, seeing all the guys, just the excitement that you feel in that moment. I mean, or would you rather walk in somebody off in the bottom of the ninth?
Yeah, I mean I liked walking off Alabama, the S sec C attorney and being down three runs or whatever it was, and in six pitches we walk ’em off and bt it’s a ball hasn’t come down. There’s so many moments of last year’s team that will live with me and all of our guys and all of our coaches forever. Such a fun group to coach every day the experiences that they went through and all the different things they had to overcome throughout the year that people wouldn’t see from the outside when we lost Neely for the weekend, going to South Carolina, go up there and get swept and end up still winning the SEC like Dale coming off the bench in a homer at Kentucky, the last game that ends up winning us to SEC. All those different moments, man, it is just, there’s so many different things that’ll come up. It’ll remind you of that like, oh, I remember this, or I remember when Josh did this, or Tucker Talbot got the guys ready. There’s all kinds of different stories and things that little things kind of bring back memories of,
Well, what a great experience. Obviously that was a tough one for me to sit and watch on tv, have my allegiances in both dugouts, but just an incredible series. That last series was an incredible run by you guys last year. So Chuck, I appreciate your time, man, as always, great catching up with you. Some really good nuggets here. I think for me, be tough, right? Be recruitable and when you show up, no matter where it is, understand that the winning culture matters and winning games matters. At the end of the day. That’s what I take out of this. So again, appreciate your time and I’m sure I’ll see you in person sometime soon. Doug, thanks for having me on, man. Go Gators. Yep.