2026 Rio Football Season Preview

It starts off with the coaching staff. We’ve been grinding pretty hard since January. The staff that’s been assembled – give God all the glory – they’ve gone above and beyond to give us an opportunity to be successful. At the end of the day, I love coming to work every day. I hope they say the same thing. Team-wise, I think the camaraderie of the team, building up trust – building up playing for, living for and breathing for something bigger than yourself – that’s what we’ve tried to instill. I believe our players have jumped on.

I believe it’s self-discipline. When nobody else is around, who are you? Every time I’m on that elliptical at 4 or 5 in the morning, I did it to get a workout, but I did it just to notice – how did they walk in? On the first day, the tenth day, the 50th day. How did they walk in? Did they walk in with a smile on their face? Were they locked in? It’s all about discipline and self-discipline – that will set them up to be a great father, a great husband, hopefully get their degree – so that we set them up for success later in life. That’s most important.

I’m probably not going to mention names, but we had a kid on the team last year who did a good job, got some accolades – ended up dismissing him from the team. His attitude wasn’t where it needed to be. He had been corrected a few times. So, we just went in another direction. About two days later, 3 or 4 players came to me and asked us to give him a second chance. Everybody deserves it. We’re all sinners, right? I brought him in, had a good talk, [we] had him talk to the staff. He did an apology in front of the whole team and now he’s leading our team.

Defense wins championships. The mentality is that you win from up front. I feel like the D-Line – they got after it. Our O-Line, we had 2 maybe 3 returners from the spring. Now, we’re up to 15-16, so I feel like the potential is really high there. We just got a kid yesterday that I just never thought we’d get, but we got him. He’s a group of five, FCS kid, so we’re really excited.

I appreciate that question. As of right now, we are going to have campus as our first stop for game day, so your game day experience is going to be here first. We’re going to get dressed at the fieldhouse just like we’re playing right outside it. We’re going to jump on those buses with everything on except for our helmet and shoulder pads. We’re going drive twenty-five minutes, we’re going to play the game, we’re going to compete at a high level – hopefully we’ll be successful. Win or lose, we stay there to let them visit with their parents. We’ll come back here (Rio Grande) and we’ll have our showers here back at the fieldhouse. That way, they get the whole experience even though we are playing at a high school twenty-five minutes away.

I think it’s a combination. Something that you can control is your attitude and your effort in everything that you do. Just like Coach (Doug) Peterson would always say, “Everything matters!” How you dress matters. How you talk matters. How you present yourself matters. At the end of the day, everything matters. To go off of a little bit of (Bill) Parcells – he knew how to coach you, and he knew how to coach me, but he didn’t do it the same. Policy and procedures are pretty much the Boy Scout way: Treat people how you want to be treated. Always look out for the next guy. Don’t make it all about yourself. Servant leadership. Love and be loved. Pray and think a lot. Laugh 8-12 times a day, be emotional. Encourage others. Be good to other people. And most importantly, count your blessings because it can always be worse.

I feel that from the community, the faculty here, the president, the people who come watch the games – those guys have each other’s back. I’ve seen a lot of adversity, and I’ve seen a lot of players and coaches whose personality changes because adversity hit. When adversity hits, that’s when we lock in even more. I pray at the end of the day that they know our team came in and competed at a high level – the highest level they’re allowed to compete at right now and they say when they leave “those dudes really played for each other. They love one another.