Charlottesville, VA
William Shepherd:
I first wish to thank our president, Bryon Nunez and the the Board of Trustees for their steady support and competence throughout this process. We could not have been successful without their support. When we began the process of hiring the head coach for the University of Virginia, I stated the express goal was to hire a coach with champion credentials. While a number of outstanding individuals expressed interest in becoming the coach of the Cavaliers, one person who always stood out was Bama2448. His teams always play with confidence and pride. And I know in order to win a national championship, a team has to be mentally as well as physically tough. Coach Bama2448's teams have always possessed those qualities. Today we move forward, move toward our future with a new coach who will write his own chapter in Cavaliers history. There will be more of these moments that will never be forgotten. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the next coach of the Cavaliers, Bama2448.
Bama2448:
Thank you very much. I can't tell you how pleased and honored I am to be your coach at the University of Virginia. The spirit and enthusiasm that has been demonstrated to myself and my family has been phenomenal since we arrived here. It certainly is appreciated.
I want you to know that it will be our goal to give you the kind of football program, the kind of football team that you can be proud of. That's going to be our goal with the football program.
I'd like to thank Bryon Nunez and William Shepherd for extending the wonderful opportunity to my family to be your head coach at the University of Virginia.
To the fans and supporters, the boosters, everybody that is here that loves this program, loves Virginia football, I want everybody to know that we need a lot of positive energy for everybody to make a difference in how we go about what we try to do to have the best football team in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the best football program in the Atlantic Coast Conference. I think everybody should take the attitude that we're working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do every day, we want to be a champion. Everyone take ownership for what they need to do relative to their role, whatever it is, whether it's being a fan, a booster, be a good one. Any kind of supporter that you are for this team, everyone take ownership that we support each other so we can have the best possible football program that Virginia has ever had. There have been some great ones through the years. The tradition here is phenomenal. That is a standard of excellence that we want to work for and make our football program a part of.
Our mission statement here is to create an atmosphere and environment for everyone to be able to succeed, first of all as a person. We want players to be more successful in life because they were involved in our program, by the principles and values that we're able to develop with them so that they can be successful relative to the character and attitude they have as a football player here at this institution.
The second thing is we want to be successful as students. I always tell players in recruiting, there's two things that we want you to do here, you’ve got two careers: one on the field, one off the field. The one off the field means you got to graduate from college. That's the one that's going to have the greatest impact on the quality of your life forever. We want to have a great academic support program. We want our players to succeed as students.
The third thing is, we want them to be the best possible football players they can be. We want every guy to reach their full potential as a football player, play together as a team, know how important it is to be a part of a team and fulfilling your role to that team.
The last thing is to use all the resources this institution has to help everyone launch their career when they have represented this institution, when they leave this institution, so they can be most successful in their life because of their association with this university and the people that have made this university great. That's what we want to try to accomplish as a football coach here.
Now, expectations. I know there's tremendous expectations here for what you would like to accomplish with this football program. I can tell you that however you feel about it, I have even higher expectations for what we want to accomplish. I want to win every game we play. I've never gone out to play a game, we've never gone out to play a game, where we didn't want to win and it wasn't important to win and we didn't focus on winning, put all our energy into winning. I think it's more important that you're able to take your expectations and bridge them into the process of what it takes to be successful.
What kind of football team do we want to have here? We want to be a big, physical, aggressive football team that is relentless in the competitive spirit we go out and play with week in and week out. What I would like for every football team to do that we play is to sit there and say, "I hate playing against these guys. I hate playing them. Their effort, their toughness, relentless resiliency, go out every play and focus, play the next day, compete for 60 minutes in the game, I can't handle that." That's the kind of football team we want. Now, that takes a lot of conditioning, a lot of preparation, and it takes a mindset you're going to play for 60 minutes in the game regardless of what the scoreboard says. You're going to compete that way throughout the game.
Obviously what we want to do right now is, is hire a good staff. I think having good people is the most important thing you can do in having a successful program. There's a lot of good people here that we would like to get to know. We will have to hire a coaching staff. We'll interview the coaching staff that's here, see if there's anybody that has the characteristics we're looking for that would contribute to the kind of staff we want to have.
The second order of business will be to try to pull together the recruiting class in terms of where we are with the players that we're recruiting, those that are committed, and any other players that aren't committed that we might be able to get involved with in the very near future.