Episode #37: Buck Buchanan

Justin "Buck" Buchanan enters his into his 12th year as the Head Coach of the Hendrix College Warriors in 2024.  Coach Buck rebooted a dormant program in 2013 when he led Hendrix to their first game and first win since 1960.  The Warriors went on to win two more games, finishing 3-7.

Buchanan has coached 26 All-SAA First Team selections, 14 second team selections and 38 honorable mentions. He also coached 39 SAA Players of the Week and 22 D3football.com National Team of the Week selections, eight D3football.com All-Region selections, seven CoSIDA Academic All-District honorees and one CoSIDA Academic All-America Second Team selection.

Buck is one of the truly good guys and one of the great characters in all of college football.  We had a fun conversation about coaching, program building, recruiting and his love of his recruits, his present roster and his very active alumni group.  Enjoy!

Learn more about Buck Buchanan here: https://hendrixwarriors.com/sports/football/roster/coaches/buck-buchanan/1280

Transcript

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Welcome back to the significant coaching podcast. I'm coach. Matt Rogers. I'm excited to share my conversation with one of. The true good guys and great characters in all. All of college sports buck, Buchanan, head football coach at Hendrix. Eric's college. One of the top academic And one of the. Prettiest campuses in Conway, Arkansas. started the program at Hendricks 12 years ago and quickly turned. Turned it into a winning program within three years. Which is darn near. Impossible to pull off at any level. What makes coach buck specialists. As his commitment to helping every young man in his program reached their potential. Uh, Hendrick's warriors. Leave his tutelage better players better. Better students and better young men. It was a fun conversation. And you'll soon hear why. If you're all are enjoying. Enjoying these conversations. I encourage you to subscribe on your platform of choice. And leave me a comment with your thoughts and questions. You can always find me at. Coach Matt rogers.com. When you want more information. Let's get to it. Hey man, how are you? I'm good coach. How are you? I'm better than yesterday. Hopefully not as good as tomorrow. I hear that my friend. I hear that. What's what's center college look like? Good. Like always they've got a good squad and Andy does a good job of coaching those guys up and being ready to play. They play with a lot of confidence and we got to get after it this week. So yeah, it'll be a challenge. What, who's your big rivals at Millsaps? Roads and Millsaps are the biggest geographical rivals, probably. Roads is probably the biggest rival we have because proximity, being in Memphis and us in, in, central Arkansas. That's geographically our best, biggest rival. And of course, that, that game has been four instant classics in a row. We went to double overtime. And then we won, we lost in double overtime four years ago and then we won six to nothing three years ago. And then we won 50 to 49 last year. And then we lost on the last drive. They had a two minute drive down to score. We had 38 seconds, went all the way back down the five yard line and I mismanaged the clock and and we didn't have a chance to score. We probably scored a win. So it's rich and we're good friends and we say like we get our cardio for the year in one game I know that I when I was when I was coaching in the sky and the sly act man it was just you just knew there was going to be three or four games every year where It was going to come down to last play of the game, the last possession of the game. And so I don't think people understand that don't know D three football, how intense it is and how the rivalries are. And yeah. And of course, it's we'll next year to change a little bit too. We'll still play roads and mill steps, we're going from the SAA to the SCAC we'll go back more towards Texas and So that'd be our other rivals, probably Austin College, just because I'm an Austin College grad. And coach White and I are good friends too. So that makes it fun, but that go back on the table for next year. How does that transition into the new conference? How do you feel about that? Is that a good move for you guys? I feel like it's a good move. I, I'm, I love the competition in SAA. I'm not taking anything away from that. One thing I will say every week in this league, if you don't have your mouthpiece in, you'll get your teeth knocked out. Anybody actually can beat anybody. It's one of those leagues where, I think there's a lot of parody and our league has gotten consistently better and better over the years. And I'm, so for that, I'm I'm not happy about leaving that because I think our league has been becoming more and more respected, but I am happier to be back in more of our recruiting area, more of our niche because playing back in Texas and playing back towards the West and still being able to play Rhodes and Millsaps fairly close, shorten our trips down a little bit and for other sports, I think it would be really good too, because they have more day travel trips rather than, multi day travel trips except for Colorado College. It's hard to get there in a day but but for the most part, it's it's gonna put us playing in our recruiting area more And you know our we're even though we're a top 100 liberal arts college in the country And we like to brag about all that I mean, regionally, that's where our, that's where the majority of our students come from. So in that footprint of the SCAC, 92 percent of our student body come from that footprint. So yeah, that's good. And then of course I'm from Texas. And so being able to play back towards family and everything. So selfishly, I like that. Yeah. It's almost like taking a new job for you. You get to be close to home more often. That's pretty cool. What when you look at the SAA, you guys have been known For as long as I've been coaching as one of the top academic schools in the country, how's the transition academically? Do you guys feel like, I know Austin's a great school. How do you feel like the transition is going to be academically? It's I'll put it this way. Most of the guys that come to school aren't really looking at who your school plays against per se. We're still going to recruit the same kids. We're always going to recruit. And again, we match up. Fairly well with some of those schools. Austin College in Colorado College, obviously, top schools as well. And other schools in the league are good schools. It's not like we're stepping out of that realm, not quite maybe in the classification is all the schools. But again, I don't think that really matters as much to young men that are looking at where they're going to play is who they're playing against. I actually told our president, I said, when I went to Austin College, we played Schools that are all D2 now. And, like Tarleton and Midwestern and, and you know what, I got recruited by some of those schools too, but I wanted to go to the more academic school. Not taking anything away from any of those schools, but that's, that was my choice and that's what we're trying to look for. And I think most of all of our schools like us are trying to look for those types of guys. Yeah. When you look back at when you went to Hendricks, a dozen years ago. What were the things about Hendricks at that time? That really got you excited about that job. And are those still the same things that keep you there? Yes. I would say, the thing that was the there's a multi layered answer to that. So when I'd always known about Hendricks, because when I was coaching women's basketball at Austin college back in the day, I we played here and always knew it was a school like us. It just didn't have football, and so I'd come to Conway before and so when I came to Conway again fast forward, whatever that was 20, 15 years or so. Conway was not like this before. It was twice as big as it was. The campus was way different. The athletic facilities were way different. And I was like, I was okay with the way before this is really nice. So Conway's a neat place. Cause it's, it has large town amenities with a small town field. I'm more of a small town feel kind of guy. But I like the large town amenities, but and, but the thing that struck out the most is when I interviewed here, and of course, no one ever thought we could, have football started much less, be good at it over time. But I got to meet with a lot of people and they reminded me of what made Austin college special to me when I went to school there, people that had gone, people had been here in the fifties and sixties. And, one of my professors, brother. One of my favorite professors that also got his brother played football here. Yeah. He was on one of the committees. It was just, there was just all those little things lined up and like a small world thing. So I gave a speech at a beta club convention long years ago for my wife's class. The student, it was the student representative at Hendricks to bring football back. So they had a student on the committee was my boat mechanic in. In Alexandria, Louisiana, his grandson, which was at that beta club speech that I gave back when I first got to Louisiana College, you're kidding me, not kidding. Those little things just kept adding up. And it's man this is just a great place. And really, so what it comes down to is the people make the place. And that's for anything, in my opinion. Those people that I met here, like Coach Strange and Coach Garrison and all, and Coach Kelly and all the people that knew my coaches that were the older coaches here back from back in the day, they reminded me again of what made it special. And I'm like, we can make this special for kids. Had to put up with Rebecca Bagley for a while. She's pretty special, too. Yeah, no doubt. We had a great relationship and I was I'm thrilled that, I got at least I made enough impression that she forwarded me on, right? She's a huge fan of yours. And I, Just because of that, I had to meet you and I had to spend some time with you. She said nothing but great things about you, but I said I would say something funny within the first five minutes too, right? Yeah, that's right. I always learned if you answer people with riddles, they never know what you're talking about. That's right. Yeah, I'm with you there. I was a college basketball coach long enough that I had a lot of riddles I could throw out. Because I was like you, I made enough mistakes on the court that I had to confuse them. If I didn't have the answer, I had to try and confuse them. Coach, I'm just, I'm amazed that anybody that starts any type of college program, But especially a college football program that just seems like an impossible venture to me because you got you're not bringing in 10 basketball players, you're not bringing in eight tennis players, you got to somehow find 6070 kids. That are going to come in and be playing against kids that have been in a program for four years, weight room, strength, conditioning, know the system. And you had to start this from scratch. Walk me through that. Where do you start? You just add flour, I hear that the little yeast. Somebody asked me that one time. It's you just add flour and start mixing, but first of all, so this is the second startup I've been involved with because at Louisiana College, we started from scratch in 2000. I forgot about that. I remember that. So I learned a lot about what not to do and try to not repeat those same mistakes. And we don't want to throw anybody under the bus. But what were some of those things that you learned not to do? What were some of the past you said, I can't take one of the biggest things that I took from that was we started with too many people the first year at Louisiana college. We had some good players and all, but we started with too many because. And I knew for here we need to start small and build big because we needed to get the right guys and we started with 53 the first year, which was a gamble. Like it was a gamble, but I knew if we had 50 to 60 guys. Everybody would travel. Everybody was important. Everybody was all in and everybody got reps every day. And we weren't sitting around not getting reps and everybody got better every day because they were always getting reps. Now we were beat to crap by the end of the year. And that scared the crap out of me. And I'll tell you a funny story. We had a couple of transfers that, that, that really anchored us. Casey, Kate, and one of them, he. He was a scholar athlete from, and he had gone to Harding and he was, he transferred over here because he wanted to catch the ball. He was a receiver. And he's an Air Force Jag now and he's, but he was our kind of leader, and so this is what he said one time. We're like week eight or nine. And there's 38 guys healthy and I'm looking out there going, man, are we going to make it to week 10, and I said, and I just hey, NFL's got 53 men roster. We're just fine. I'm like, building this up to be like, NFL only plays with 50 something guys in case he raises his hand goes. Coach, they have free agency and they can sign anybody anytime because I don't think anybody on the other side of the street here at Hendricks is going to be saddened. And I was like, great point. Not the time. Every, every roster has got a kid like that. He's got all the right answers and terrible timing. I was going to say, I was going to say the NFL carries 53, but you know what I found interesting is since COVID, they've made all these rule changes. Now they're practice squads, but 17, 18 guys now. Yeah, it's really a 70 man roster. Yeah. And so yeah that was, but that was our idea and it was trying to make sure everybody got reps every day and we got better what we did. And we were blessed because we had some talent in that first group. I'd like to say I'm a great coach, but we had a guy named Seth Peters, Dayton Wynn and five offensive linemen that played every snap for 41 ballgames. That was, that made it special and Seth and Dayton were both all Americans in their career and, they were special and, and then we had some defensive guys that, that, grew as the program grew and we were able to put a great team together, but again, I think it, because. We started small and part of that, not just to get reps every day, but part of that was to be engaged on campus, because if we would have started, like we did at Louisiana college, there's in, there's about 50 something guys that are really involved week to week and in game and whatever. And what happens is, 40 or 50 guys, we've got a hundred guys are not. Feeling good about it and they're all freshmen. So they're all seeing as freshmen in front of them going my time here is never going to happen, right? Then you get 40 or 50 guys that are disengaged and they're not trying to be Goal oriented and motivated towards what the team goal is and that's where you have issues with people doing the wrong thing off of camp you know another side of campus and Acting out or not going to class because they don't want to be here And that without having, some stratification of classes that's very hard with all freshmen. Trying that's why starting small was important because everybody was engaged and they were involved in the freshman class and They not only bought into what we were talking about in football, but they also were able to do that on the other side of campus. And, we, that first group had over a 3. 0 right off the bat. And that is so hard to do. Yes. And it's very hard to do at our place. Our typical freshmen don't, our typical freshman classes are under a three point, but our graduating classes are all over a three point but that's just the, That was their mindset that they weren't going to give anybody a reason why Henry's football wasn't going to be here to last. And we were fortunate. We, we won our first game and amazing. In a crazy fashion because I did, it's funny, we, the first play, we took a sack. The second play, we threw interception and they ran it back to the three yard line. The third play, they scored a touchdown. And I swear I heard 3, 000 people behind me go, huh, this is what football at Hendricks is going to be like. But we kicked the field goal with six seconds left to beat those guys like that was like, 50, I don't remember it was, but we beat them by two and it was a scorefest. Wow that's the game you never forget. That's how it was. And no, that's what, that was what was special for those guys. And that's, that was probably one of the top highlights of my career. I remember the last drive, we got a two minute drive. We had to get two fourth downs. Spencer Smith catches two fourth down balls on that drive. It's just, and I'm just sitting there going, Lord, just please give us a chance, just give us a chance to win this game. What that did was it just taught those guys that, man we're not afraid of anything and we'll go out and win. And then. The next week we take our first road trip. We go to Birmingham Southern and you know Never been on the bus more than an hour most of these guys, you know So we get in between Mississippi and Alabama and there's a fatal wreck on the highway And we are standing still in traffic. There's no I mean we don't move for two and a half hours And so we're late to the hotel We don't do a walkthrough. We, we got the food very, like we ate at 10 p. m. Everybody's starving on the bus and we get in here at 10 p. m. We wake up, we go, we're down 21 nothing in three drives, and I'm like, Okay. Reality is about to set in. And then I told coach Neil, I said, Hey, you start letting Seth sling it around. We got an empty, we started throwing it. And we had a chance to win that game. We were up in the fourth quarter and fumbled going in to go two scores. Losing the game. And that was the defending champions. And I'm like, I think we can play with anybody. And I, it's just that group of guys just never felt like they couldn't go out there and play. And it was special. It's so smart, Bob, because whether it was your intention or not, just the idea that in the back of your head, there was that retention conversation you were having, because it's so hard to recruit to D3 as it is. Cause you're not throwing money. You're not throwing, you're not throwing any guarantees at these kids. We throw the ball. You throw the ball. And you hope somebody throws it to you every once in a while. Back. Just the fact that you started with that mindset. Let's get that number where every kid can play. Because if you bring in a hundred, you're probably going to lose 50 of those kids. Because like you said, Everybody's my age and I'm not playing now. What's going to happen as they get older and they bring in other freshmen. So now you're recruiting that 50 all over again, instead of saying, okay, we got 53, we love, we're going to bring in 25 more freshmen the next year. And we're going to build this in layers. So I love that mindset and what you've done in 12 years starting that way is just miraculous. Yeah, we, and we've taken a step, we took a step back when COVID happened a little bit and that, that, that hurt us. We had a huge senior class that year and then the And I just be honest I don't think a lot of the kids were ready for college. And a lot of college wasn't ready for kids, after COVID. We've taken a step back a little bit, but, we tried to take that approach in the last couple of years and we, we only have 11 seniors this year, but we have a great junior and sophomore class. And when. Trying to take that same way to build it back to what we would like. I appreciate you saying that because again, it was a risk and, my staff wasn't all on board with that all the time either because, we're not going to have enough people. I'm like, Oh, yeah, you hadn't been playing. You had to have a couple kids playing both ways by the end of the season, didn't you? We didn't, we were really, we were, yeah, we were fortunate. Like I said, we were we were fortunate to have those linemen played every ball game. And that's really where we were more concerned than anything. And of course they took almost every rep in practice too, but also wanted to be where we coach those guys every day. There wasn't a scout team that just went and did scout team and. Like they weren't getting coached. We want to make sure those guys feel, and we've taken that same approach now. And it costs us reps and practice to some degree, but at least our eyes are on our kids all the time and trying to give them feedback on what to do. And I think that's one of the things that, when you're, whether it's division one, division two, division three, like all small college, you're trying to find that niche to why you would want to do that over something else, And I think that, I think a lot of us approach it that way because we're relational, not transactional as much as relational. Absolutely. You have to be at that level. Let's dive into that coach. Cause I'm really intrigued by what's going on at the division one level and how it's leaking into the lower divisions. Are you finding that the level of, and I hate using the word entitlement, but it's so prevalent right now. I'm talking to division one and division two coaches and they're saying everything is transactional. I'm constantly negotiating with kids and moms and dads. Are you finding that, or are you finding those kids that say, And I want a great education. I want to go somewhere. That's going to set me up for my future. And I want to play ball. I want to be on the field playing ball. Are you finding those kids that have that value system still like you and I played and I want to play, I want to get a degree and I want to play. Yeah, I think eventually, we're going to see more and more of that trickle down at all levels, but the reality is, I think that's one of the benefits of being at an academic school because you're still looking at that, that first and foremost. A lot of times you're looking at guys that, that. Are looking at the end result of college when you're recruiting them. And not everybody. We still got guys that, think they're going to, I'm going to see this, how this works out for a year and then I'm going to there's more thinking like that, but most of the time. Once, once you get them into the culture and the system and everything, they're like, okay, I want to be a part of this, and I said, one time we had, we don't have, I think we had one guy that went to the transfer portal last year maybe it wasn't even, maybe it was a year before, but I just said, I need you to understand, it's not Star Trek. You, just because you go in, you don't get beamed somewhere magically. Everybody that's in there is looking for a place to, and most everybody does, most people don't find a place and Let's be honest, if somebody wanted you, they would have talked to you to get you there. That's right. And it is what it is. Yeah. So I think we're going to see some residual of that trickle down. But for the most part, we're still Recruiting goal oriented career oriented. We talk about outcomes when we talk to parents and students about this is what our 12 years of graduates have done. This is what they're doing. And this is what you're going to achieve through this process of being a Hendricks warrior. And that's really what I'm thankful that we're 12 years in now, because I think it had been harder to start football now, because we would, at least now I can talk about outcomes because all those guys that came in the first few years, they just had to believe in what I was saying. So now I'm like you still need to believe what I'm saying, but this is the proof. That's right. You didn't have any proof back then, which makes it even more remarkable what you did. I'm intrigued coach about how. How your conversations go with your when you're recruiting and then when you get kids on campus. What are you telling them about earning playing time and what that looks like? And the fact that being a college athlete, if you're not thinking about this as a marathon, a four year marathon, instead of a one year sprint, you're really setting yourself up for failure. How does that conversation go for you? One of the things that we talk to, we try to involve the parents too, because that's is understanding that, When you were a freshman in high school, you probably didn't go and play 10 games on varsity. You're, right off the bat and, sometimes you did, but yeah, a lot of times those guys are not division three players when they're graduating, now sometimes, yeah. Like I did get moved up to varsity back in the day, but I still grew square. I didn't grow up. I was a square defensive lineman. I was not, so measurables were not a, I just wasn't gonna, wasn't gonna happen no matter how good it was. Wasn't going to happen. You can't wish yourself taller. I've tried, but anyway, bottom line is is trying to get them to understand You know, we're college football coaches. We're trying to put the best players on the field. And if you're a freshman, you're the best, you're the best. If you're a senior, you're the best, you're the best. And, but you have to look at this as a career over time, not how do I feel as a freshman when I get my first paperback? And it's got more red than black on it. And I failed for the first time because I think, for our guys, a lot of our guys have never failed at anything. And so we talked to him about that. It's not about whether you fail or not. It's how you fail forward that counts. That's right. One of my favorite books, it's on the floor back there, is John Maxwell's Failing Forward. It's one of my favorite books. And a lot of times I give the seniors that book because like when you leave here, it's not going to be easy and you fail forward. But point being is learning how to fail is important in the process of becoming and that everything won't be it's not going to be like you want it to be every day. If it was, we'd never lose a game. We'd never have a bad play. We never, like those things would never happen but smooth sails make bad sailors, or smooth seas make bad sailors. You've got to learn from the experience of things and try to get people to understand that. And. And understand that if you stay you will say if you stay, you'll be a champion. It's not necessarily that we're guaranteeing you're going to win a championship. It's guaranteeing that you're going to have what it takes to be able to be a winner when you leave this place. And that's the part that. Trying to get people to understand is sometimes difficult because we're in a system, our society is instant gratification. You can touch a phone, you can do, you can get anything you want immediately. You can get it immediately. And so when things become hard, It's the easiest thing to go. I want to hit the reset button or this is hard. I don't want to do it. And so trying to coach him through that. And I always tell the parents when they get here as freshmen, like it's some point in time, your son is going to call you and say, he doesn't want to be here. And the worst thing you can do is say, come home. That's right. Because and I've in the first class, there's a great example of this, and I'm not going to say his name, but like his mother came up here with him and goes, I'm not letting him go home. I've only let made him do two things in life. And that's go to the school. He went to in high school and come back here. And that guy, you couldn't have tore him away from here after that year, but like it was kicking and screaming to stay and a lot of freshmen struggle that way. But if they stay, they will be okay. But it's just so much change. And. And so getting them to understand that is, is important. And then. Like one of the things I talked about a couple of weeks ago with our players is you're two months in how are you thinking about things I talked about, getting your first test back, and it's the first time you ever failed something, because you thought you had college figured out, but it wasn't because you didn't study enough, and you didn't, you didn't take an hour out of class to read, and you didn't do the things that we told you should do, And now you have to learn from experience. It's a cruel master and you have to learn. How, now all of a sudden you're evaluating is, playing worth not doing well. And, are you freaking out about your future because you did bad on the first test or you didn't, settle down and do what it takes to be successful. The greatest thing about places like us is your professors are available. If you will go get the hip pocket, they want you to be successful just like we do. And I say, there's nobody on our campus. It doesn't want you to be better tomorrow than today. And I would think that's most campuses because we're not there to see who belongs. That was part of that message and then the other part is like some of you have watched a football game for the First time in a long time because you've been staying on the sideline Special teams player you have and you've never watched a football game in a while and you forgot what that was like And it doesn't feel good and I don't want it to feel good because if it felt good You don't need to be played but you're gonna have to understand that If you will just stick it out, we have three fifth year freshmen as team, three fifth year seniors that didn't play very much as freshmen, and now they don't leave the field. If you will just stick it out, it will all work out. But you, it's, you have to be able to adapt, adjust, improvise, and overcome. And, we talk about those things. And then, and I really highlight that. What's it take to be two months into this thing? And and then, we've lost a game. We've won a game. We won a homecoming game. It was a big deal. We lost the game. We probably shouldn't have lost. And you have to balance all that. And, but the reality is, and it's what I tell them, Just like on the field, we don't, we shouldn't worry about who we're playing. We got to be the best we can be every day. If we're worrying about who we're playing, we're not doing a good job. Yes, we need to know where we're going and we all know the itinerary, but really it's about being the best we can be. And that's exactly how you got to be in class. It's not. Look at the syllabus and go, Oh my God, I got to do all this. It's I'm going to take this a piece at a time and I'm going to take care of it. And I'm going to be my best at each thing I do. And I tell them, Hey, I got Latin letters on my diploma and I never looked at the syllabus I liked. I love it. Coach is so funny. I write a blog every week, recruiting and coaching and the significance is my, I wrote a book called significant recruiting. So the podcast is called significant coaching. It's. And it's obvious you embrace it. Whatever your word you use, you embrace that idea of, I want these kids to learn how and be able to ask why instead of just do, because, it's obvious that you want them to learn how to be an adult. You don't want them to leave you and Hendricks and all of a sudden they're seeing challenges and failures for the first time in their life. And they have no idea how to do it. It's. You want them to fail? You're there. Your shoulders are there to help them the last chance to have to make some mistakes and live with it. That's right. That's what I wrote about this week. And I love that you've talked about your fifth years and your seniors so much already because I wrote this week, as a freshman, everything's overwhelming. Everything is faster than it's ever been before. You're doing so much on your own. You have to get organized on your own. And then you see these upperclassmen and they're doing everything you're doing. And it seems like it doesn't bother them at all. It seems like it's almost easy for them. And you're sitting there going, why is it so easy for them? And we want that eight year old mind to go. They followed the process. I have to follow the process too. I thought you hit a nail on the head because I usually use this as an example for the, for our freshmen. I'm like, for the first month, you're going to feel like a passion junior in your own life. Such a great analogy. And because, but you know what, everybody has been there. We all done. I remember it. I remember, and of course, back in when I was three a day, we practice three times a day and and we ran after every practice. Hey, they put you in jail for that now. I remember going back going, I don't know if I'm cut out for college football, Yes, I was telling this story to a player of my office that day. I was like, I got there. And I was a good player. I'm not saying I was anything special. I played hard. That's what I was good at. But there was a guy sitting across from me, Max Halsey. He's the, he's a receivers coach at Highland park now. And he was, he used to be the head coach at Grinnell and he coached at Colorado college before that. And he, but he was one of my best friends. He had defensive end. He was a year older than me and he was the best looking human being I'd ever seen at the time. And I'm like he won the time. He was a defensive end at a time court. We won the quarter in the conference track meet. And I'm sitting there after our first day and I'm eating dinner and he falls out on the floor in a full body cramp. And I'm like, I ain't never going to make it. That's the best. If he's cramping, I'm in trouble. It's, the college years, I wish I could go back and do it again, which is a completely different mindset. I wanted to rule the world and I wanted to do it day one and I wish somebody would have said, Hey, you got plenty of time. Enjoy the fact that you've got a uniform on, enjoy the fact that you've got your brothers around you. And so it's just great to hear, I was you for a long time. It just hearing how much love you have for these guys. And just trying to just give a little bit of patience is so important. That, that's got you asked what, what the other thing it leads me to be here. And that's the, that's really the other thing is it's the love for our guys. I absolutely love our players. I love our alums that have played for us and. One of the coolest experiences that we've had is we had not had a a a homecoming game here since we dropped football back in 1960. And so this year was our first homecoming that we've had since 1960. No kidding. No kidding. And we had a whole bunch of guys from that first group. And, we. Won a heck of a ball game against Huntington, who was a very good team. And it was in us and we kicked the field goal at the end of the game to win it in the same exact spot that Steve Crenshaw kicked our first winning kick against Westminster in the first game. That's great. And all the alums came and rushed me on the field. And it was like, the winning was fun, but it was probably more impactful me to see everybody that had played here that had come back and enjoyed it. And it was a really great thing for our new president. It was a great thing for the school. And it's things like that, that really just. And I just, I love having a relationship with the guys and I've never been a good business model person of how to do that. And I feel like everybody in coaching needs to find their nature, what they're good at. And I tell families all the time, like I've had an opportunity to coach you every level of football, except the NFL, but I've chosen this level because I get to do what I want to do every day, I work for a great, Weaver and our president's awesome and they let me go fishing when I want to, which is important to and I get to have a relationship with our kids and I know who everybody is. And sometimes, you don't get that in a lot of other places. And. And everybody's different. And I've known a lot of guys at every level that are very relational. And I've known a lot that are not very relational, but I just, this is what I know my niche is because I relate to our guys well. And I'm not saying I do a good job every day. I just relate well to them. Yeah. You say you're not a, you're not a great businessman or a business model. I think a lot of businesses could learn a lesson or two from you and how you run your program. When it starts with, I care about these people first. Instead of I want to win or I want to make money first, I think we start going in the wrong direction. So when we start with that love and that care and that concern about their wellbeing and their future and becoming adults I think we're, I think we're onto something right. Yep. I'm like, I make a joke all the time. I say, yeah. In my previous life, I used to write a lot of letters of appeal and I was planning on being, going to law school at one point, but in reality, now I just write letters of I write referral letters all the time and so it's, I like these much better. I do too. I wrote one yesterday. I know what you're thinking. I know what you're saying. Coach, I'm going to transition into recruiting a little bit. Cause I'm always interested in how coaches recruit. And I have a lot of parents and a lot of. A lot of prospective student athletes that listen to these. How do you go about, you got the class, I'm sure you're getting close to wrapping up or trying to wrap up your class in 2025 and you'd like to get as many commitments as you can probably before Christmas or around the first year. It's really hard with the way the FAFSA is right now and you've got to wait for, you've got to wait for financial aid to come through before a lot of families will commit, I'm sure. What is that? The biggest challenge? Really? What's that process look like in terms of how you begin? When you're attacking a class, what are you looking for? And how do you and your team go about finding those right kids for you? So we're still, old school recruiting wise. We still, when we don't, when we're doing spring ball after spring break, we're, we go to high schools, we see coaches, we still do grassroots recruiting. And again, I have a great staff and they do a great job. And a lot of our guys have played for us and they understand what our culture's and what a guy that, that, that is. That should be here is and you know what guys we should take chances on and what guys we shouldn't. And I'm not saying we're perfect in that but you get, I was again, I was fortunate coach Morris, my, my defensive coordinator in college and my mentor, second diet dad, whatever you want to. And then his son in law was Marty C Cord that we started Louisiana college together and coach Morris had been at Austin college for 25 years and he had recruited many of those classes over the years that were, Great teams and he was just such a relational person and you just learn how to find that it factor in some guys, like you just know when you meet a guy like that, guy's got the it factor and not necessarily what he showed on video, but like how he interacts with the janitor or how he is in the office or, that's what you, that's what you're trying to find. And you're trying to find that guy because. That guy's going to make your program better. And hopefully that guy's really good on the field, but that guy makes your program better. And so when you talk to coaches and you ask them, what's this young man like, what's, how's he off the field. And, fortunately like coach Phillips our offensive coordinator, he coached in Texas for 23 years high school ball coached at Louisville and, Denton Geier and Southlake Carroll. And. huge staffs over the years and knows a lot of people. And of course, a lot of the guys that I've known in North Texas growing up. So when we recruit into Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, it's really hard to find somebody that we don't have a connection with between us. And then coach Dorr played for coach Seacore he coached, he recruits in Dallas. So really understanding that, who we are. The coaches know who, who fits with us too, because there's a lot of people that know us over the years and as people and people that have recruited in that area for a long time. I don't think I would have the same impact if I went to Chicago, because I don't know people there, but again, it's still building those relationships to where a coach goes. This is a guy you want because also I believe that when that coach says, Hey, coach Buck is coming to look at you today. And I've known coach Buck for this many years. And he's had this many players play for him, for me. And this is what they're doing. That speaks volumes in my opinion, because. We're still players. I, if coach Morris called me today and told me to do something, I'd go do it. That's what I do. So I believe that building relationships with coaches is still important. And, that's where I think, that's where I think I would really not like division one now, because. That's sometimes you're dealing with agents and doing stuff. Now it's a different ballgame, you're not dealing with grassroots recruiting like it used to be. No they're sometimes signing a kid after knowing him for a day. Yeah. How do you know what you're getting? After you talk to a kid on the phone a couple of times, they've had him on campus for 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't want to be in that world either. It's like somebody asked me today, you, I say, you know what, anybody tells you, you want to take the pay, they'd be lying to you. But I don't think anybody wants what goes with it right now. You see a lot of coaches leave and coach because of it. A lot of the greats. Anyway, I was getting it like that. There's still grassroots like that. And we still, that's how we, that's how we start. And so we're going to do that in the spring. And of course, the internet's huge nowadays. That's a tool when I first started You didn't have that ability to go do and so yeah I mean we're gonna recruit off of twitter and we're gonna recruit off of some things because We can find people that we might not have found but we're still gonna we're still gonna follow up we're still gonna ask questions about them and then you know, we have you know, we do our database on slate and all that stuff and so And then we're doing a new we're part of a new pilot project as well which is, I think, is going to be really big. I think we're the only Division III doing it right now, but it's called Scorability. And Scorability does a deal where, we can do a personality inventory on that, and we can get a personality inventory from a kid that fills it out for them. It actually comes from, hey, Coach Buchanan has selected you as a possible recruit and would like for you to do this. And it, it has for us, that personality assessment is crucial because what we did, we took all that our current players and did them and put them through that personality assessment. It gives them a score rating. And so now when I'm looking at our recruits that have done that, I can go, all right this guy ranks like these guys in our program, or this guy is way below what we would like as a personality inventory. And so those are things that, that's not hot weight, wingspan, everything else. And that's on that too, but we don't, it doesn't apply to us as much as division ones. But when you're talking about trying to find out when you're trying to be selective and try to make difference and get difference makers, that's. That's what I think is going to be really important in the future. There's academic part, there's that personality part, there's a there's metric part too, but I'm not as concerned about the metrics as I am that personality part. So I'm really excited about that and how that's going to transfer over to this recruiting class. It's the first year of it. And again We're the only division three. I think that's part of that project. And that's it goes. I've been very fortunate to work with those folks right now and and get to be on the ground floor of being able to do this because again, I think as it goes. Not only for us, but I think for division one they need some more data before they start going. All right, let's go to invest. Cause you used to do the scholarship. Now it's extra commas. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to be interested to talk to you in a couple of years to see how those results. Yeah. have evolved over kids being on your campus and on your roster for a couple of years. That's going to be really intriguing to see those stats. Yep, I am. And I have to give credit to Bob Stitt because Stitt was our offensive coordinator at Austin College. And I was, I coached one year before he left to go to Harvard and then Mines and then Montana and, Coach Stitt's Austin coach. But he was in analytics way before everybody else. And, he's part of this process of how to determine, Who'd invest in he does a lot of the NFL interviews and stuff. So some of that data is based on some of that NFL interview process. I feel like it's going to be a game changer in the future. And, of course, I'm fortunate to be on the ground floor of it, but I think it's going to be good. And I think. I think for major college football is probably going to be good too. But again I want to be able to go, all right, when we're talking about this kid, other than, our communication and him coming to campus and interacting, what can we find out about them, I love the idea that you're learning things ahead of time about a kid that maybe is sometimes hard to get out of that kid. And it's harder and harder now because, having a conversation with a kid is difficult. You can call a kid. Back in the day, usually the scheduled times to call, but like you call a kid now, they won't answer the phone, but they'll immediately text you back. So a lot of times they don't want to have a conversation. Yeah, which is which they don't understand. It's just making their recruitment even harder by not having that conversation. Now you're guessing instead of talking. Are you concerned at all about an inventory where a kid may give the answer they think you want to hear instead of The way I've understood this, because I don't see, I don't know what the actual questions are, but this data is backed up over a lot of other stuff. It's not just a there's a lot of things that validate not being able to trick the test. Okay. About how the questions are and about how that score pans out. So again, I'm interested to see. I'm anxious to see how it does transfer but I also know that our guys, didn't this other, our guys that took that inventory on our current team, it did point out some things that were like, okay, that's exactly what that kid hit the nail on the head, huh? Yeah. So if I wouldn't have had that correlation, I don't know if I would have trusted it as much. Exactly. I love that. I love that you did it with your present players too. That's not part of their, that's part of their deal. I think it's really a neat thing. So that's great. It's so smart too from a business model to say, we're going to give this to you first with your old present guys. So you can have a comparison of the reality, your guys already. So we're going to show you what that assessment saying about them. Oh, that's really smart. I love that. It was funny because I'm got to know these guys and they were, they're great guys. And one of them, one both of them's kids were recruited division one to play sports and they got through this whole process and they were like, first of all, this is a racket. We shouldn't have to pay to be recruited. And the second thing is, We gotta find a way to get data to people that can actually assess this and not, and so we're not running around the country spending money going to visit places and all that stuff. So there was, and then they were both computer programmers and so they're like, we're gonna, we're gonna make this And I think it was a, I think it's a great idea. And again they saw it from that perspective of being recruited and going all around the country and. And going, all right, this is, these are things that I saw through the recruiting process that I think we can streamline. I love that. I don't love that. They're trying to put me out of business, but I love the idea. Coach, I talk to families, I speak at events and I talk to families all the time about the numbers that somebody like you has to evaluate the number of kids you have to evaluate every year, what does that look like? Let's say, what's the number you guys are shooting for most of you. You want to get down to 25 recruits or. Last year was a large year for us. So we had 48 guys come in last year, but again we weren't, we have 11 seniors, we're still at that trying to build back up. So next year, our numbers closer to 25, 30. So how many would you look at to get to that 30? That's a moving target. That's it. That's it. We look at I'll tell you what we try to look at everybody in our region that's academically eligible to be at our place. Okay. And then we start whittling it down from there. That might be 1000 kids. Yeah, we're probably about 1000 kids, maybe 700 and something, 700, 1000, fluctuates a couple hundred every year, I'm sure, but this year, last year when we brought in that class, we probably had 300 guys visit, to get to 48. Yeah and again, that's our, we have a summer visit program where we bring guys in and stuff. So I for, I forgone camps. I don't believe in camps because camps aren't camps anymore. I'm just going to get on my soapbox here and everybody can argue me what, but camps not camp. When I was growing up. Camp meant you went and learned football for a week and you went to camp. I refuse to charge a guy 25, run a 40, do a pro gilly and give him the illusion of recruiting. That's just not how I'm going to do it. I'm just not doing it that. I just, I refuse. I agree. The little kids can come pay and do camp and learn football and all the coaches can make money for them. But I refuse to do that to give people the illusion of recruiting. So we foregone that. We used to do, A two day camp where we did it like fall camp and we taught camp but honestly, kids aren't interested in doing that anymore either because, high school runs all the year round now, back when I played, you couldn't do organized stuff in the summer. So there's good and bad with that. I think there's some times where kids need to be kids and they need to quit playing. That's beyond me. And now it's good to have them off the street. Good to have them organized and doing stuff. But. You don't want to take the love of the game out of them because you squeezed it all out. But again, that's a whole nother issue, but I refuse to do the camp thing. And so we've done this deal where we start our recruiting visits in the summer. And so we get guys here look, you're either going to like this place or you're going to scratch us off the list. And we want to know when you leave, are we in the hunt or are we not in the hunt? And we've tried to do it that way and started our relationship that way. And then, that group of summer visits yields very little, in terms of if they don't come back for a second visit. But that, that's probably eight to ten percent of people that visit in the summer actually enroll. But, once we get to out out. After season visits, we're basically close to 30 percent that come to visit and are accepted or come in here. I'm sure it's a big advantage for them to come while students are on campus and they get to see the culture in its fullest where the summer, it can feel a little bit like it's hard in the summer because we don't have summer school here. We do internships and most of it, but we do have enough guys that are staying on campus, working out and stuff that they get a player interview and a player. So we get some interaction and we try to do that best. We can. But then we go, Hey, if you're interested, when you leave this day today, and you come back for a game day visit or whatever, then we can have you. Come back and do an overnight. We can have you come back and eat in the cafeteria and experience a day in classroom. And, But right now is to decide, Hey, is Hendricks on my list or is Hendricks off my list? Yeah, coach. I was a college basketball coach, so your world is crazy to me. I might have, I might've had 30, 35 kids come visit and we would, we would sign five or six of them, you, you've got to bring in three, 400 kids on campus to get to your 25, 30, 40 every year. I know how important relationships. RTU how do you personally build a relationship with 300 kids? How do you find the time? It's it's not really all 300. It's the ones that, that you feel like you connect with. Okay. And for me, it's not just me that, like every recruit recruiting coach that every recruiter, it's really them developing the relationship first and carrying that over. And then. me trying to make sure that the guys know what they're going to get from being here and then just trying to resonate that over the time. And it's the same way with when we're coaching, I don't get like there I've been a part of groups of staff or whatever that they get their feelings hurt when one coach is liked over the other. There's going to be guys that come to my office and they're going to hang out with me. There's going to be guys that go into coach Phillips office is going to be guys go to coach Schultz. I don't get my feelings hurt because As long as they connect with somebody, that's what we want. Because I'm not going to connect with everybody all the time. Are parents looking for that connection with you though, since you're the leader of the program? I think so. Yes. I'm not saying that I don't have that, but I have a availability, but it's still layered to get to that spot, I know you want it and I'm sure the parents want it, but I'm assuming on game day, when you have home games, you probably have what, 20, 30 boys that are on campus. Do you try and do that? You mean like on a game day visit game day visits. So yeah, we'll so we had for the homecoming weekend, we, it blew up on us, like it was crazy. We've never had that many people come, but I think we had 70 guys here to visit. And so we had 70 guys that visit. A lot of those guys were multiple visit guys, though. They've been there in the summer, and so we know who they are. And we had the alums, and we had, so here's how we handle it. And I addressed the whole group. So we went, we don't do the admissions day during the during game day visit. Okay, bring them straight to the tailgate. We have an awesome tailgate here. Our parents run that. And so we let our parents talk to their parents. That's awesome. That's so smart. That's the bridge because good for you. Current parents know me and they know How I am with their kids and all that stuff, and I encouraged all the people that come visit, talk to our current parents. They're the best salesmen, aren't they? And yes, and so they have that interaction there, and then for that alumni day, or for the for homecoming, we had all of our alumni there too, and so our alumni interacted with those guys and it was a really neat experience, and I addressed the group, but. I didn't really get to say hi to everybody. And I told him straight up. I said, I would love to see everybody individually, but I have about 70 former players over there. And I'm going to tell you if everything works out I'm going to hang out with those guys. But if you come here, I'm going to do the same thing for you after you because you have earned that time. The fact that 70 guys are coming back and want to be with me, that should tell you something without you having to say it. That is a great advertisement. That's really smart. Coach I could talk to you all day long. I'm probably going to have you back at some point, because I definitely want to talk about this personality inventory you're doing. I definitely want to talk about everything that you're doing creatively with the program. But I know. I know center college is the focus of your brain right now. I'm compartmentalized. I'm very compartmentalized. And plus it was fall camp today. It was fall break today. So we went back this morning. That's why I'm dressed. It was cold for the first time. And we practiced this morning. We got done. We practiced and we lifted and then we were done at about 11 30. And I said, man, Just enjoy. This is how division one is every day. This is our one day to experience. Yeah, that's right. What's a classroom or what does that look like? Coach, before, before I let you go I always ask college coaches to give one piece of advice to parents and prospective recruits, what are, what's a piece of advice that you think kids need to hear about that recruiting process? Here's my piece of advice. It's multi layered. Number one, Psalms 118. Today's the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it. Look, you have to have a goal about where you want to go. You have to have, you have to have a vision about what you want. But the reality is you're only a singer one time and you get that chance with those guys that you've grown up with one time. So yeah, you got one chance to do that today. And then because fear of tomorrow and regret of yesterday are the two things that keep us from being the best today. So bottom line is you learn from your mistakes yesterday. But you make sure that you're a senior right now, and know that there's a place for you because everybody wants to go somewhere, there's a place for you. But if you focus too much on where you want to go, and you focus too much on wanting to be recruited, rather than enjoying the team that you're on, enjoying the team that you're with, and you grew up with, then you're going to miss the most important things that happen to you every day. So yeah, you dream about tomorrow, learn from your past, but live your todays. And you just can't, you can't want to be recruited more than you want to play. I don't think we could have ended this conversation on anything better, coach. Thank you so much. I'll be cheering for you and the boys this weekend. And I definitely look forward to talking to you down the road. I appreciate that, Matt. I enjoyed it. And and I, I don't, I, since you had sent me a deal, I'd already looked at some of this stuff and I enjoy what you talk about and do. So I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure, coach. I tell kids all the time what you just talked about, and there's so many great coaches in this country, and this is why I do the podcast. I coach D three, I coach NAII coach D two. And there's so many just fantastic human beings that can flat out coach like you. So whenever I get to introduce the world to, to a Buck Buchanan and Hendricks college, which is a fantastic school and a great place to get a degree and learn and grow up it's a joy for me. So thank you for your time. Appreciate it, man. All right. Good luck coach. We'll be, I never turned down luck, money, or prayer. I'm with you, my friend. That's a wrap for this episode of the significant coaching. Podcast. I'd like to thank the great coach buck Buchanan. For sharing his amazing spirit and passion for coaching with me. Um, proud to call him a friend and can't wait for our next conversation. If you're enjoying these conversations, please click that subscribe and like buttons. Buttons. If you're interested in working with me or scheduling me to speak. At your school organization, you can schedule a free strategy session. At coach Matt rogers.com. Hey, thanks for listening. Have a significant way.