Bret Bielema goes beyond coach-speak

Arkansas football coach Bret Bielema played and was an assistant coach at Iowa, so he'll always be of interest where I live.

He was interesting to a lot of people Wednesday when he took the podium at the SEC's football media days. Here is a sampling of his comments on several different things:

'I think our biggest asset that we have going right now is we were a 3-19 and became a 7-6 team. 7-6 by no means is a landing point. It's more of a launching point. It shares the same record with the worst record I had at my previous institution. After we went 7-6 on my last stop, we went on to win ten games every year, three straight championships, and had a lot of success. I see a lot of the same things coming for us here, but the bottom line is you've got to make them happen.”

'I think that the role as a head football coach is a lot more than just winning games. Sometimes that's all we're measured upon. I understand it. I get it. I embrace it, I love it. But when you have kids go on to do some things in their life that no one else said they would do, when you see them have success 10 years, 15 years down the road, when you see them go past obstacles that lay in front of them that no one else thought they could achieve, it makes this job so much more rewarding.”

(On wearing sparkly Nike Air Force 1 shoes to the media day) 'I wore a little bling on the shoes just to have a little fun. I saw a coach walk in here yesterday with his Adidas on. We're a Nike school. First thing I said was, hell, let's start a little Nike-Adidas war. That was why I did it. I love (Mississippi State coach) Dan Mullen and everything he is, but we're a Nike school. I didn't have that opportunity when I was at Wisconsin, we were an Adidas school. What that means is you can recruit to Nike, you can recruit to a certain type of style and shoe and product that is second to none, and it's made a difference in recruiting. I thought this was a little way to have some fun with it and bring a little humor, but it's something I hold near and dear to my soul.”

'I think the number one thing that our players have bought into is they realize what I'm saying is really going to get them where they want to be. If they take an attitude I'm going to get better every day, I'm going to work to improve on a daily basis, they'll be rewarded. I go back all the time to history. I remember my last year at Wisconsin, we lost to a Nebraska team early in the year by three points. And at the end of the year in a championship game, I believe we beat them by over 50 points, and it was the same roster and the same people. Just a different time of the year. It showed me how much a team can improve in a season if they have the ability to be led that way. I know this. At the end of the year last year, not a lot of people would have loved to play Arkansas, and that's just fine by me. But bottom line, we're 7-6. That's kind of like pop pop, fizz fizz. It's not a real exciting thing. It's just what it is.”

'I think the number one reason is I believe in a foundation. I believe it's something that is not going to just be graduated or move in or move out overnight. I think, when you have elite players at elite positions, it's hard to recruit guys behind them because you've got a quarterback that might start for three years or a tailback that starts for three years. You've got five offensive linemen every year that can become starters. It's easy to build depth there, and it's easy to build a tradition, and it's easy to build value because running backs will tell you they love great linemen. Quarterbacks will tell you they love great linemen. Wide receivers will tell you they love great quarterbacks and great linemen. I think, if we can build offensive line depth there, like anybody else in our league, we can win a lot of games. There's a reason I let (offensive lineman) Sebastian Tretola throw a pass. I love touchdowns and everything else, but I knew it would create notoriety. I knew I would get interviewed afterwards. I knew I would say, be an offensive lineman, come to Arkansas and I'll make you famous. Those things don't - I'm not that start. I have to be premeditated in my thinking. We were probably the only school in the country to do this maybe not only this year but ever. I can show an offensive lineman when he comes in on an official visit and just went to LSU, Alabama, USC, Michigan and Ohio State, and there's a program cover sitting on my desk that I can tell that mom and dad why that happened, it goes a long way.”

'I learned a long time ago. Coach (Hayden) Fry used to say all the time, you recruit your own problems. All he was saying to us as assistant coaches, if you want to recruit a young man who's going to cause you to have gray hairs or make you stay awake on Friday night or make you have an issue that you don't want to deal with, then you recruit him. If you want to recruit somebody of high character and value, somebody you can trust to not only watch your house, but your children, someone you can count on to share carries of 1,000 yards each rather than trying to get 1,800 for one, now you're going to build something that matters. It's a bunch of we, not me, and I can't stress enough that, just because you're a great player in the United States of America doesn't mean Arkansas is going to recruit you. We have a social media background screening that you've got to go through, and if you have a social media nickname or something on your Twitter account that makes me sick, I'm not going to recruit you. I've turned down players based on their Twitter handles. I've turned down players based on Twitter pictures. It's just that's how I choose to run our program. It's the things that (athletic director) Jeff Long and our fans hold me accountable to. I'm never going to waiver in that.'

'So we went 3-9, 7-6. I don't plan on going backwards, only forwards. But on the same account, I'm not going to skip a step to get somewhere that I'm going to have to come back and fix. I would much rather build it the right way the first time so once we're there maybe we can, like Coach Spurrier said, enjoy vacation four or five days before you all go home. It's one of those things where you get comfortable with your program and then you let it kind of run itself.”

'Surprisingly, I have not had one - I can honestly - one of the great things I learned in life is you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. I have not had one recruiting conversation with a prospect, player or coach, about cost of attendance. Now, we're not the first in the SEC, but we're not the last. So I don't know where that's going to wind up. It's something I'm sure is going to be modified. Everything that the NCAA does, it always sounds great up front and there's a few things they always come back and modify. It seems there's probably some of those things out there. What I'm happy for is young men get to have a little money in their pocket to do some great things. But I'm going to also share with this room, you give a young man 18, 19, 20, 21 with a little bit of pocket change, with a lot of money to make bad decisions, things can go sideways in a New York minute. So you got a kid that's never had $1,000 in his pocket, and all of a sudden he's got $2,000, that's dangerous. That leads to dumb decisions. I think we have to monitor that as coaches and be aware of that. So as much as I love it, I flew in with J-Will and Keon. J-Will is from Allen, Texas, and Keon is from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I said, how many times do your parents come to the games? Both of them said, when they started playing, their parents try to come to every game. I said home game? They said, Coach, home and away. Well, I know how much that costs. Now, kids start giving their money to their moms and dads who don't have that, that's awesome. But sometimes these decisions we make maybe aren't the best thing in the long run. But I'm happy that our players are getting rewarded. I'm happy that we didn't as coaches have to do it. Coach Spurrier offered up $150,000 from each one of our contracts my first year, and I'm like, I'm sure you can sign that contract. I've got to go ask my wife. I can't sign that thing.”

'I am a big believer in life in this fact: Scars are a very beautiful thing. I have scars on my knee from an ACL surgery. I have a scar on my ankle from ankle surgery. I have a scar on my left hand from hand surgery. My mom has scars from 24 years of breast cancer survival. My dad has scars from throat cancer and prostate cancer. Scars remind you of difficult places in your life that you've championed. We've championed those moments. We didn't win them, but they're not going to be a part of our history that's lost forever. They'll be things we carry with us forever, and I'll remind our players how close we are. After those games, our players said, if we can do all this and lose by one or a score, why can't we do all this and win and reap the rewards of winning?”

'I think all the time, my dad raised us on a farm. My brother works in an environment. I went home during my break - he's a welder. One of the things that jumped out to me, when you're walking through his facility and he shows me his place of work, there's only one man that can do the job that he can do. If he couldn't do it, they'd hire two or three guys to replace my brother. If I'm the head coach and walk across the street to get hit by a car, they're going to replace me tomorrow with one man. There's some people in this life, in this world, that the things you can do have an effect on so many different people on a daily basis, you have no idea the effect that it has.”