It’s a custom of the college football season for head coaches across the nation to meet with the media towards the beginning of the week and discuss the prior week’s matchup and preview their upcoming test. Fans are often privy to the quotes coming out of their own team’s HQ, but what about their upcoming opponents’?
Let’s take a look at some of the quotes that Old Dominion head coach Ricky Rahne had to say that referenced Indiana specifically in his Monday meeting with the press conference.
Opening Statement
“Obviously, we’ve got a great opportunity and challenge against Indiana, a College Football Playoff team from last year. I know our team is looking forward to it and we’ve had nice prep, so this will be a good opportunity for us.”
Q: With your experience in the Big Ten (positional coach at Penn State), how does that help your team in preparation?
“Well, very bluntly, I’m probably expecting a more raucous crowd than any one I’d ever dealt with at Indiana, you know. They’re coming off a little bit of a different season than the ones that I dealt with. They’ve had some good other seasons before that, but I’m expecting that place to be popping pretty good…
“But yeah, it’s a good environment, and a passionate fan base. And obviously changing from what it used to be from a basketball school to just an athletic school.”
Q: Football wise, what challenges does Indiana present?
“Well, first and foremost, they’re well coached. That’s a challenge. They’ve got a sound scheme on both sides of the ball and special teams. So, I think that’s one of the challenges. Number two, they’ve got a bunch of guys that have played in big time football games and been successful. And have played a lot of football.
Defensively, they’ve got a very good defensive line. They’ve obviously got a middle linebacker that has put up some big time numbers and is a good player. The one corner is an excellent player and the other one that we think is going to play there…he’s good too. They do a nice job of not playing a million defenses or a million calls, but executing well with what they do. And I think that execution is probably going to be the biggest problem that we have in.”
Q: How will it be different going against Coach Cig this time around?
“I think the one thing you were able to see from last year is that he has a way he wants to do things, he has a formula both offensively and defensively. Did it look exactly the same as at JMU? No, but the overall feel of it was the same. And that’s how he was raised in this coaching profession and how he was raised literally. But also from Coach Saban and things like that, you have philosophies that are unbending things in there. And he has those, and then you adjust to the personnel you have. Over time, he’s done a great job at that, particularly at the quarterback position. It’s looked differently with the quarterbacks, but at the same time you can see that it’s the same offensive scheme and offensive philosophy.
Q: On music played at practice…
They use both generic college football sounds/music and the opponent’s fight song in preparation.
Q: Is JMU film incorporated into your preparation?
“I mean, you’re going to take any information you have on them, right? So, there might be some of that mixed in there at times. But again, Coach Cignetti and his staff have done a great job of adapting to who they have, so we have to also understand that they’re going to be different. They’ve grown. He talks about how he likes to add one to two wrinkles every year based on the trends of college football. So, you see those show up where there’s differences from what they were to what they are now, but then there’s also some things that are similar. So, JMU film helps show you what you know or what we begin to think of as their core tenants for how they want to play.”