Kennnesaw State gained national attention winning C-USA

0:00We hope you are having a great day. Come on out and join us, man. We'll be at Twin Peaks on Thursday and Kinesa Friday. We'll be at Buffalo's Cafe, Hamilton Mill, as we get our Labor Day weekend started, right? And the college football season kicks in the high gear tomorrow. No better place to get the season started. Then at Twin Peaks and Kinesa, as we'll be up there, getting you ready with all of the latest news and notes on these games, drinks, scenic views, great eats, obviously at Twin Peaks. And that's going to be from two till six tomorrow. As we talk about, you know, our football team, it's front and center. We're counting down to the start of the season. I don't know if you guys realize this, like Wednesday, that the season starts on a Wednesday this year, which is weird, but the kickoff game is a Wednesday, right? We get the day-treats and Seattle, right? Yeah. In Seattle. And then we get the, we get the game down, which is crazy because the 49ers are flying out for like a full week and the Rams are going to basically fly out 36 hours

1:00before it. It in and out, which we'll see which one works. It sucks at the 49. And by the way, how do you feel if your San Francisco, you lose a home game? Hell, when you play in LA, it's a home game. That's true. You know, but you lose a home game to go to Australia and what could have, if everything goes right, potential ramifications for a number one or two C, the NFC. Yeah. So, but the season is right around the corner. And, you know, now with the roster being what it is, I think they've got the guys in the building they want, whether that's on the practice squad, because you can adjust that, you know, with roster moves. And, you know, this week's 53 is not the same 53 that might happen next week. So, Emel will talk, you know, more about that and what he had to say. But right now, we got to say good afternoon to a guy that's doing a hell of a job up there at Kennesaw State coach Jerry Maxx joining us here on Dukeson Bell and coach appreciate you jumping on with this. We're going to be up there right around the corner from the stadium tomorrow at Twin Peaks as people make their way over to get ready for West Georgia. How you doing, coach? Tell us about how things are going, how things winning camp and where your team is right now. Well, right now things are going good because we haven't played any game.

2:06That's the best part about right this moment. But, no, but, no, I meant that the camp went extremely well. In the biggest thing you try to do when you come out of camp is trying to make sure the bodies are healthy. And we came out of what pretty good success. You know, we got everybody really locked and loaded and available for tomorrow. We saw the team grow a lot. You know, one of the things I talk about when we start a camp is exactly every week we're going to reveal more layers about like what we are as far as good at the bad to ugly. And we were able to come out of those 15, 17, whatever it was practices. And we were able to figure out from a team standpoint, what do we need to attack to try to make this run and be the best version of ourself this year? Showed so much poise in that conference USA championship game against Jacksonville State. I bet on you. How much turnover on the roster? Propulsion don't follow the owls. How many of the same guys? How many new faces do you have on this year's team? Yeah, so we're probably about close to like 50 50. Okay, so somewhere in that range. So we lost a lot of good players and all conference players and second team all conference players from last year. But we did inherit some

3:10good some good high school students. Perth of all, but also to some good transfers that you know, went through spring and went through fall camp with us and had some success. And you know, that's kind of the name of the game right now at this level football. You're going to have some attrition and new stars are born every single year. So we're looking forward to see who emerges out of this group that guys that people did not know about last year. Uh, Kennesaw State finished 10 and 4 last year. One, the CUSA championship made its first bowl game in program history. That's what Mike's alluding to only the second year of eligibility in coach Max behind that. And they open up tomorrow against West Georgia. Um, and then Georgia state on September 12th coach. And by the way, limited tickets can be purchased at ksu owls.com. That's ksu owls.com. If you want to go check them out. Uh, I want to talk to you about this retention thing and, and you know, keeping guys in your program. And how difficult has that been for you knowing that, you know, money's just being thrown around out here, coach. It's crazy. Yeah. So we feel like at our level,

4:11you know, we can be very competitive with some of our counterparts. And I'm saying that we have the most, not saying that we have the least, but we're, we make it very competitive, uh, argument to keep some people internally. Now sometimes like, you know, big fish, you little fish, we're going to get out here sometimes by, you know, bigger, bigger schools. But, you know, the thing that we have, the biggest thing that we have going for is right now. Obviously we've had success, you know, under my regime. And then the second thing is our community and our fan base is really been a positive thing to try to keep guys. So sometimes guys see the bigger, bigger picture and they see, you know, how they've been treating the building along with, you know, saying financial because everybody wants to get paid. Nobody wants to do a job for free. Uh, so like they, they kept compared all those different things that are presented in front of them. And they feel like staying in Kinosaur, uh, is the best situation. Give you example. We were able to retain the conference because of the player of the year, uh, at our level. And normally to be honest with you, you know, you're not going to find many schools that play at the GC level. Sometimes you don't even find them at the powerful level. They're not going to be able to retain their player of the year,

5:14just because they're going to get, they're going to get put by some bigger schools. You know, he saw the bigger picture. He saw that it's an opportunity to not only be successful here again. You know, he's going to go in the hall of fame at this university one day. He's going to, you know, get it, he has an engineering degree here. He's working on his master's degree. So he just, he's long termed what Kinosaur state can do for him and his family. It's great to hear, man. And again, you've got to get a great staff. And you're going to keep that staff from getting pushed as well. Mitch Miller, tell it again, coach, for guys who don't follow the program, what, talk about your style and what you're looking to do offensively. Yeah, offensively, you know, we're always kind of be the same, same situation. We're going to be high paced. And, you know, we're going to push the ball down to feel vertical, but it all starts with the run game. We're going to always keep a load, a backs that can run the football and we're trying to continue to build our brand and get bigger and stronger upfront. So we're always looking for big, strong me and a front that can move the line of the screen. On the defensive side of the ball, we want to cause defenses in the lead last year, especially from an aggressive style. We led the leading tackles for loss and sex. So we're constantly

6:14continue to try to, you know, put pressure, apply pressure to offenses. So that's one of the things that on both sides of the ball, we pride our cell phone office and defense just in a tag mode, you know, always pushing the tempo on off the side of the ball and defensively always get knocked at the quarterback. By the way, coach has an undefeated team last year at home. You guys were six, you know, you've got a seven game win streak heading into Thursday's game. That dates back to 2024. Do you bring that up with the guy that we don't lose at home? I mean, like, this is our defend this. We don't lose. I mean, what do you say, coach? Yeah, you know, we always talk about, we don't want anybody to come in here, rob the bank. So we're always trying to protect that that brand at home. So so far, so good. It has worked out for us, but we understand that everybody's going to come in here and they're going to want to knock us out the block, not only because of what we've the success we've had at home, but also to just for the simple fact, you know, we've had success in the lead. So that's one of the things we try to pride our cell phone protecting, you know, protecting our home base and our fan, fan base, you know, our students are our band and our alumni.

7:19They're a big part of making that environment as hostile as possible. We always say, ask yourself, Carl, who's the Mac? He's on the show. It's coach Mac with us from Kenneth's state. Your quarterback is kind of a sign of the times from LSU by way of Syracuse. Talk about Ricky Collins and how we won the job. Well, the first thing you did when he walked into the building, extremely impressed with how Ricky handed itself from a standpoint of just understanding football, his football IQ, and then also to his leadership ability. He's a very charismatic character, you know, and he just gained more and more confidence as he went through the process, it started back in January. He continued to learn the system and learn the offense, but most importantly, he started to earn the trust of his teammates. And that's one of the things that, you know, as we looked at, you know, the battle that we had going all the way deep into Falc County, that's one of the things that continued to separate from him. And I said that the guy, the young man that did not win the job is in his list, but Ricky just shows a little bit more poise and a little bit more understanding of what we were trying to accomplish, you know, doing it time. Now there's a second part

8:22of that, you know, we were looking to see if those things apply to when he gets under the lights on Thursday night, you know, we need to see the same thing that we've been seeing in camp. We need to see it come to life tomorrow night. So coach, what do you think the CUSH championship did? For not only the program and the players, but for the school. I think it helped put the school on national stage, you know, when you go back and you wipe that game, we played on national television and just not only that, just what centered around our whole program and the success that we had last year, we were on the tip of the tongue on national media outlets. We tried to do a great job just all season of making sure we told our story about how we built it and how we want to try to continue to sustain it, which is even harder. So like, I think that just helped bring in more eyeballs to Kinosaur State, you know, hopefully more people understand where we're located at and they look us up. They Googlers and chat GBTS and try to find more and more out about the university itself. And I think that just helps the entire brand as we continue to grow as a school. Well, again, we always talk about the big

9:25games last year for those folks that are memory play, Wake Forest really close. Couldn't have won that game. And then the Indiana game went another way. But how do you get guys? I mean, is it easy just to walk? You go to Neal and Stadium and just the the size and scope of it. Everyone just gets hamped up for a game like that. You know, I think that the Neal and Stadium situation, when you go to the University of Tennessee, it's going to be a great atmosphere. It's going to be our first night home game that they're going to have this upcoming season. So we understand it's going to be juicy. We understand it's going to be a hot style environment. I was there for three years on to understand what that looks like. But we try to pride ourselves on not playing logos. You know, we have a certain process that we want to go through. We certain things that we want to try to accomplish every single week. And if we do that piece, we feel like we got an opportunity to be in a lot of games throughout the course of the season. It's when you get enamored by the stadium or enamored by the logos that you end up losing focus. So we're just going to apply the same process as the same things that we always do. And hopefully, you know, give us a certain chance to have a chance in the full quarter. All right. Before we let you go, I got to ask you about West Georgia. Don't want

10:27to disrespect your opponent. But what have you seen? What do you know about them? And what do you expect in the moral? Yeah, very good football team. The last couple of years, you know, they were in the game all the way to the full quarter of this last game. And they didn't kind of got out of hand really in the full quarter. But good football team coaches done a really good job of his career, building programs and having success. And like you said, you know, there's some players on our team that played there. So we understand the caliber players that those guys will bring in here. And anytime you get a chance to face a team that's in the state, these guys grew up playing Peeley football or I know one another will be playing high school football throughout the entire state. That's always going to be everybody's always going to be on high alert. So we're looking forward to the challenge. We know those guys don't come here ready to play a football game. You always get better from week one to week two. And the thing that they have that we don't have, they've actually played a college football game this year. So we're just trying to just trying to make sure that we got our eyes and cross our teeth Thursday night, seven o'clock ESPN plus and in Kinesle guys at the

11:34bank. And as he said, don't let anybody come in here, Rob the bank tomorrow's going to be a lot of fun. West Georgia, Kinesle state gets their season kicked off. Coach, congratulations on a great year last year. But I'm sure you said nobody cares. It's all about this year. And now the season starts for you guys tomorrow. We appreciate the time. Good luck. No, of course, we appreciate your guys. Coach Jerry Mack, ask yourself who's to mag love the guy.