Brian Gamble
Jay Brooks
Texas A&M Football
Key quotes from Brian Gamble interview
“I’m super excited to speak (at Student Bonfire) tonight. Back in 1998, the last time we won a conference championship – that was my first time to experience Bonfire. To be out there and to witness the sea of people and see Stack burn and to listen to Dat Nguyen and Rich Coady and Dan Campbell get up there and talk to all the Bonfire patrons out there was something that – I was like, ‘I can’t wait ‘til it’s my turn.’ Now, 16 years later, it’s my turn. I’m very, very excited and humbled to have (Student Bonfire) reach out and ask me to do it.”
“The defense that we run down at UIW (where I coach) is basically what we did at A&M at the time. We’ve had to tweak it a little bit, because of how offenses are nowadays. I like to throw myself into that circle or that tree and say, ‘This is R.C. Slocum’s, Phil Bennett’s, Bob Davie’s, Mike Hankwitz’s and now Brian Gamble’s spin and touch on the defense that (those guys) invented and ran so well back in the day.’ I feel very honored to be a part of that and take a lot of pride in it. It still works. We had a pretty good season this year and ended up finishing third in our conference in total defense. This is our second year as an FCS program after moving up from Division II. To have the opportunity to play at Texas A&M and play under so many great defensive minds and to take that with me into my profession was pretty much a done deal as soon as I was born. When your dad’s last name is Gamble, you know you’re going to be a football coach.”
“I was in ‘The Express’ and ‘Friday Night Lights’. I was a (graduate assistant) at the University of Houston for two years, and around the time I was done with that, my – now – wife and I were starting to get pretty serious. We lived in two different cities. She lived in San Antonio, and I lived in Houston. I moved over to see if was going to go anywhere, basically, with our relationship. Before I could get a coaching job or really even look for one, a buddy calls me and says, ‘Hey man, we’ve got this movie opportunity. Do you want to do it?’ How can you turn that down? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal – to say, ‘I’ve been in a movie.’ I went and dabbled in that for a little bit. Hollywood – those cats are different. That’s not my style of work, so fortunately enough UIW was just starting their program around 2008. I had some connections and ended up getting hired. It ended up working out for the best.”
“I do run into (Dat Nguyen sometimes). I tried to get him to come down to – he’s stopped by the fieldhouse a couple of times, and I try to get him to come in, because I know he’s still got an itch to coach and be around football. I tell him, ‘Anytime you want, you come down here and sit in the meetings. Come out to practice. I’d love to get your take on what we’re doing and have you help out.’ He’s really busy with his radio show and with Becky and the kids and all that, but I do bump into him from time to time.”
“I think there’s a lot to be excited about (surrounding the Aggie football program). We want it now, but I think you’ve got to allow a little bit of time for everything to sink in – the new facilities, the new coaching staff. It’s hard (for the new coaches) to come in and make miracles happen in one year. It’s been done before, but it’s hard to do. I like the direction Sumlin’s going. I think it was a good shot-in-the-arm hire to shake things up. The university has invested in being one of the premiere football programs in the country. You can see that in Kyle Field and the weight room and everything that they’ve done. It’s a far cry from when I played. It’s exciting to see. I try to follow as much as I can. I try to watch as much as I can, so I like where it’s going. I think they’re going to do good things.”
“(The ’99 Bonfire game and the fumble recovery) will be a big part (of my speech tonight). It’s funny to kind of reminisce a little bit about that, because when it occurred, I knew it was a big play. Clearly, it was a big play to recover a fumble to seal the game to beat Texas. That was my first Texas-Texas A&M game to play in, but as you get older and you realize what that moment meant to so many people as far as the healing process and what the university and Aggie community went through and to know that that moment touched so many people and helped them get by a very difficult time means a lot more. Just to know that I started 47 or 48 games and played a lot of football at Texas A&M – you always want to leave your legacy in some form or fashion. To know that that play is going to be shown on the jumbotron at Texas A&M long after I’m gone and that you were able to make a mark on such an historic program by making a play like that was special. That’s what you play the game for, and you hope that you are able to be one of those guys and be a part of something like that. I was just very fortunate to do so.”
“The game the year before played into our mentality going into that last drive (in ’99). We knew that Major (Applewhite) was good enough that if he had time, he’d be able to pick you apart bit by bit and drive you down the field. At that point, they needed a touchdown to win. We knew that going in, and I think knowing that going in lets you be a little bit more aggressive, particularly when they get to a certain part of the field. That definitely played into Coach Hankwitz’s gameplan and decision that once they got to a certain part of the field that it was time to heat them up. It was a seven-man pressure. We’re bringing seven; they’re blocking with six. That leaves you with zero coverage on the outside, so if you’re going to do that, you’d better be good on the outside and you’d better get there. Jay (Brooks) came unblocked off the edge. I actually got into the backfield. The back stepped up to block me, and I was able to shake him. You kind of flash back. I see Jay flash around the edge, and I come underneath the running back. If you watch the video, you see my hand kind of slap at where the ball would have been too."
"I just remember seeing the ball fall. Immediately, as soon as I saw it fall, I fell down on the ball. Once I fell on it, I wasn’t going to let it go. It was just that conscious – ‘I am not letting this go.’ There were some things going on at the bottom of that pile that don’t need to be talked about or mentioned. I wasn’t going to let go of it. I was just down there holding on and holding on and holding on, waiting for the pile to clear, which seemed like it took forever. Once I got up from it, it was just the relief. That’s was that moment was. It was relief. It was clearly excitement, but it was relief for everybody. It was all the stress that we had been through as an Aggie family, as a university, that kind of falls off. If you’ve ever been a part of that moment, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got all this stress and everything that’s been built up, and all of a sudden it’s kind of just gone. That’s what that was. There was no other real reaction that you could have had except just to fall down.”
“I was just so thankful that we were able to get it done – for so many reasons. The clearest of them all is for the people that moved on and perished in the whole Bonfire tragedy. For a 19- or 20-year old, which we all were at that time, to go through that experience of having the Bonfire fall and not knowing what’s going on – you just see helicopters around, and it’s before the age of the Internet and cell phones. You’re just hearing word-of-mouth. Going out to the site and helping and moving logs and working your butt off – they tell you that you can’t do anymore, because it’s getting dangerous. At points, you’ve got to stop, because they’ve found someone else in the pile of logs. Not only to do that, but one of the biggest reasons I went to A&M was to play in the Texas game. If you grow up in this state, that’s what you want to do. You want to be on that stage."
"Now, I’m preparing to play that game with all of this on top of it, and it’s a 10:30 a.m. kick or something like that. It was early. I remember we had pre-game meal at 6-something in the morning. I didn’t sleep, because I was so nervous about what was about to transpire. The candlelight vigil (the night before) was amazing. So many people wanted to be excited about that game, but it was hard to with everything. The mixture of emotions going into it and really the way the game played out – we’re down 16-6 at halftime. We had scored right before halftime, and they blocked the extra point and ran it back for two points. They’re the No. 5 team in the country. Then you go through the halftime show with the great tribute that their band gave to us. We came out in the second half, and now all of a sudden the tides have turned. The emotion kind of gets turned up. I’ll never forget when Major came into the game. It was one of those last couple of drives, and they were backed up into the Zone end of Kyle Field. He’s checking something at the line, and the 12th Man is getting louder and louder and louder. I walk up to the line of scrimmage, and he’s checking. I can’t hear him. I’m probably (three or four feet) from him, and I can’t hear a word he’s saying. To play in that type of atmosphere was awesome, but you kind of think, ‘It’s got to be our day.’”
“R.C. never asked us if we wanted to play the game. We prepared the whole way that we were going to play the game. The only break in preparation was the day after the Stack fell. We had had practice scheduled that day, but we decided to go over and help out. That was really the only break. It was just such a weird time emotionally, because you know you’ve got to prepare for the game. You’ve got to put everything that you have into preparation to be able to beat a team – they were good – to beat that caliber of a team. All the while, you’ve got all the other distractions going on. It affected people in different ways. We had a couple of players that actually knew – I didn’t know anyone that happened to lose their lives in the collapse, but some of our guys did. It was a very crazy rollercoaster week of emotions that just kind of led into the game. You go to the night before to the Yell Practice and how emotional that was. Jeff Bailey actually lives in San Antonio. I actually ran into him the other day. He gave that speech, and I can just imagine what he had to go through to deliver that, because what do you say? You’ve got this split deal with emotions. You’ve got the game, and you’ve got everything that went on. How do you tie it all together? It was crazy.”
“Talk about a difficult situation – R.C. was in one of the hardest. Being a coach now, I understand that his position was to prepare his team to win a football game and eliminate as many distractions as he could. That just wasn’t an option at that time. Between all the news people from all over the world coming into town and trying to interview people and with the events that happened and trying to prepare for a game that’s going to be a hard game – first, it’s a rivalry game and second, your rival’s really good. It was a tough situation for him to be in, and I think he handled it with pure class like you would expect Coach Slocum to do. I think he handled it the right way. There was a certain sense for us as players that we needed to be out there. That helped more than any practice could have. To be out there and do what we could for our fellow Aggie brothers and sisters and to help with the effort was probably the most important thing as far as us going out and winning the game. It really was. I’ll never forget being out there and heavy those logs were – how dense and thick. It took twenty of us to lift one of them. Even as we were, we were straining. I remember the whole time, imagining, ‘What if you were caught underneath this?’ It was wild.”
“There’s no doubt that the one thing I’ve always loved about playing sports and love about coaching is that it gives you an opportunity to let go of whatever is going on in your life. For two-and-a-half or three hours – whether it’s practice or gameday or whatever it is, you become involved in all of those emotions that go on during the course of the game. We need sports. We needed to play that game and needed the outcome to be what it was. No doubt.”
Aggie Flashback: Former A&M LB Brian Gamble (w/Jay Brooks)
Key quotes from Brian Gamble interview
“I’m super excited to speak (at Student Bonfire) tonight. Back in 1998, the last time we won a conference championship – that was my first time to experience Bonfire. To be out there and to witness the sea of people and see Stack burn and to listen to Dat Nguyen and Rich Coady and Dan Campbell get up there and talk to all the Bonfire patrons out there was something that – I was like, ‘I can’t wait ‘til it’s my turn.’ Now, 16 years later, it’s my turn. I’m very, very excited and humbled to have (Student Bonfire) reach out and ask me to do it.”“The defense that we run down at UIW (where I coach) is basically what we did at A&M at the time. We’ve had to tweak it a little bit, because of how offenses are nowadays. I like to throw myself into that circle or that tree and say, ‘This is R.C. Slocum’s, Phil Bennett’s, Bob Davie’s, Mike Hankwitz’s and now Brian Gamble’s spin and touch on the defense that (those guys) invented and ran so well back in the day.’ I feel very honored to be a part of that and take a lot of pride in it. It still works. We had a pretty good season this year and ended up finishing third in our conference in total defense. This is our second year as an FCS program after moving up from Division II. To have the opportunity to play at Texas A&M and play under so many great defensive minds and to take that with me into my profession was pretty much a done deal as soon as I was born. When your dad’s last name is Gamble, you know you’re going to be a football coach.”
“I was in ‘The Express’ and ‘Friday Night Lights’. I was a (graduate assistant) at the University of Houston for two years, and around the time I was done with that, my – now – wife and I were starting to get pretty serious. We lived in two different cities. She lived in San Antonio, and I lived in Houston. I moved over to see if was going to go anywhere, basically, with our relationship. Before I could get a coaching job or really even look for one, a buddy calls me and says, ‘Hey man, we’ve got this movie opportunity. Do you want to do it?’ How can you turn that down? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal – to say, ‘I’ve been in a movie.’ I went and dabbled in that for a little bit. Hollywood – those cats are different. That’s not my style of work, so fortunately enough UIW was just starting their program around 2008. I had some connections and ended up getting hired. It ended up working out for the best.”
“I do run into (Dat Nguyen sometimes). I tried to get him to come down to – he’s stopped by the fieldhouse a couple of times, and I try to get him to come in, because I know he’s still got an itch to coach and be around football. I tell him, ‘Anytime you want, you come down here and sit in the meetings. Come out to practice. I’d love to get your take on what we’re doing and have you help out.’ He’s really busy with his radio show and with Becky and the kids and all that, but I do bump into him from time to time.”
“I think there’s a lot to be excited about (surrounding the Aggie football program). We want it now, but I think you’ve got to allow a little bit of time for everything to sink in – the new facilities, the new coaching staff. It’s hard (for the new coaches) to come in and make miracles happen in one year. It’s been done before, but it’s hard to do. I like the direction Sumlin’s going. I think it was a good shot-in-the-arm hire to shake things up. The university has invested in being one of the premiere football programs in the country. You can see that in Kyle Field and the weight room and everything that they’ve done. It’s a far cry from when I played. It’s exciting to see. I try to follow as much as I can. I try to watch as much as I can, so I like where it’s going. I think they’re going to do good things.”
“(The ’99 Bonfire game and the fumble recovery) will be a big part (of my speech tonight). It’s funny to kind of reminisce a little bit about that, because when it occurred, I knew it was a big play. Clearly, it was a big play to recover a fumble to seal the game to beat Texas. That was my first Texas-Texas A&M game to play in, but as you get older and you realize what that moment meant to so many people as far as the healing process and what the university and Aggie community went through and to know that that moment touched so many people and helped them get by a very difficult time means a lot more. Just to know that I started 47 or 48 games and played a lot of football at Texas A&M – you always want to leave your legacy in some form or fashion. To know that that play is going to be shown on the jumbotron at Texas A&M long after I’m gone and that you were able to make a mark on such an historic program by making a play like that was special. That’s what you play the game for, and you hope that you are able to be one of those guys and be a part of something like that. I was just very fortunate to do so.”
“The game the year before played into our mentality going into that last drive (in ’99). We knew that Major (Applewhite) was good enough that if he had time, he’d be able to pick you apart bit by bit and drive you down the field. At that point, they needed a touchdown to win. We knew that going in, and I think knowing that going in lets you be a little bit more aggressive, particularly when they get to a certain part of the field. That definitely played into Coach Hankwitz’s gameplan and decision that once they got to a certain part of the field that it was time to heat them up. It was a seven-man pressure. We’re bringing seven; they’re blocking with six. That leaves you with zero coverage on the outside, so if you’re going to do that, you’d better be good on the outside and you’d better get there. Jay (Brooks) came unblocked off the edge. I actually got into the backfield. The back stepped up to block me, and I was able to shake him. You kind of flash back. I see Jay flash around the edge, and I come underneath the running back. If you watch the video, you see my hand kind of slap at where the ball would have been too."
"I just remember seeing the ball fall. Immediately, as soon as I saw it fall, I fell down on the ball. Once I fell on it, I wasn’t going to let it go. It was just that conscious – ‘I am not letting this go.’ There were some things going on at the bottom of that pile that don’t need to be talked about or mentioned. I wasn’t going to let go of it. I was just down there holding on and holding on and holding on, waiting for the pile to clear, which seemed like it took forever. Once I got up from it, it was just the relief. That’s was that moment was. It was relief. It was clearly excitement, but it was relief for everybody. It was all the stress that we had been through as an Aggie family, as a university, that kind of falls off. If you’ve ever been a part of that moment, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got all this stress and everything that’s been built up, and all of a sudden it’s kind of just gone. That’s what that was. There was no other real reaction that you could have had except just to fall down.”
“I was just so thankful that we were able to get it done – for so many reasons. The clearest of them all is for the people that moved on and perished in the whole Bonfire tragedy. For a 19- or 20-year old, which we all were at that time, to go through that experience of having the Bonfire fall and not knowing what’s going on – you just see helicopters around, and it’s before the age of the Internet and cell phones. You’re just hearing word-of-mouth. Going out to the site and helping and moving logs and working your butt off – they tell you that you can’t do anymore, because it’s getting dangerous. At points, you’ve got to stop, because they’ve found someone else in the pile of logs. Not only to do that, but one of the biggest reasons I went to A&M was to play in the Texas game. If you grow up in this state, that’s what you want to do. You want to be on that stage."
"Now, I’m preparing to play that game with all of this on top of it, and it’s a 10:30 a.m. kick or something like that. It was early. I remember we had pre-game meal at 6-something in the morning. I didn’t sleep, because I was so nervous about what was about to transpire. The candlelight vigil (the night before) was amazing. So many people wanted to be excited about that game, but it was hard to with everything. The mixture of emotions going into it and really the way the game played out – we’re down 16-6 at halftime. We had scored right before halftime, and they blocked the extra point and ran it back for two points. They’re the No. 5 team in the country. Then you go through the halftime show with the great tribute that their band gave to us. We came out in the second half, and now all of a sudden the tides have turned. The emotion kind of gets turned up. I’ll never forget when Major came into the game. It was one of those last couple of drives, and they were backed up into the Zone end of Kyle Field. He’s checking something at the line, and the 12th Man is getting louder and louder and louder. I walk up to the line of scrimmage, and he’s checking. I can’t hear him. I’m probably (three or four feet) from him, and I can’t hear a word he’s saying. To play in that type of atmosphere was awesome, but you kind of think, ‘It’s got to be our day.’”
“R.C. never asked us if we wanted to play the game. We prepared the whole way that we were going to play the game. The only break in preparation was the day after the Stack fell. We had had practice scheduled that day, but we decided to go over and help out. That was really the only break. It was just such a weird time emotionally, because you know you’ve got to prepare for the game. You’ve got to put everything that you have into preparation to be able to beat a team – they were good – to beat that caliber of a team. All the while, you’ve got all the other distractions going on. It affected people in different ways. We had a couple of players that actually knew – I didn’t know anyone that happened to lose their lives in the collapse, but some of our guys did. It was a very crazy rollercoaster week of emotions that just kind of led into the game. You go to the night before to the Yell Practice and how emotional that was. Jeff Bailey actually lives in San Antonio. I actually ran into him the other day. He gave that speech, and I can just imagine what he had to go through to deliver that, because what do you say? You’ve got this split deal with emotions. You’ve got the game, and you’ve got everything that went on. How do you tie it all together? It was crazy.”
“Talk about a difficult situation – R.C. was in one of the hardest. Being a coach now, I understand that his position was to prepare his team to win a football game and eliminate as many distractions as he could. That just wasn’t an option at that time. Between all the news people from all over the world coming into town and trying to interview people and with the events that happened and trying to prepare for a game that’s going to be a hard game – first, it’s a rivalry game and second, your rival’s really good. It was a tough situation for him to be in, and I think he handled it with pure class like you would expect Coach Slocum to do. I think he handled it the right way. There was a certain sense for us as players that we needed to be out there. That helped more than any practice could have. To be out there and do what we could for our fellow Aggie brothers and sisters and to help with the effort was probably the most important thing as far as us going out and winning the game. It really was. I’ll never forget being out there and heavy those logs were – how dense and thick. It took twenty of us to lift one of them. Even as we were, we were straining. I remember the whole time, imagining, ‘What if you were caught underneath this?’ It was wild.”
“There’s no doubt that the one thing I’ve always loved about playing sports and love about coaching is that it gives you an opportunity to let go of whatever is going on in your life. For two-and-a-half or three hours – whether it’s practice or gameday or whatever it is, you become involved in all of those emotions that go on during the course of the game. We need sports. We needed to play that game and needed the outcome to be what it was. No doubt.”
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