Mikado Hinson reflects on his first year at A&M, shares his role

Key quotes from Mikado Hinson interview

"Coach Sumlin's excitement is contagious. This is my sixth year working with Coach Sumlin, four were at Houston and I think this is the most at peace, but still focused and driven that I've seen him. Some people call it a quiet confidence, but no, he's excited. He's assembled a great staff and we have some great young men that are competing so that makes it a lot of fun."

"The highlights for me in moving to College Station is that my kids have adjusted well, my wife is getting adjusted as well. We found a church home that we're active in and serving in and so that's always a must. I found a great barber, two of my top priorities were a great barber and a great church in opposite order. My kids had the best year academically that they've ever had in their school years. I have a daughter who will be a senior and a daughter who will be a freshman and a son who will be in sixth grade so they kept coming home saying the things that they were learning and that their teachers were teaching them all day and they were excited about school. I told them, 'That's normal, you should have been experiencing that your entire school years.' I think that has been personally one of the biggest blessings for us since we got here."

"Right before I told Coach Sumlin I was going to join his team and join his staff, I started dreaming about this place. I started day dreaming about this place and it was consuming my thoughts. It has lived up to the expectations and more. I am excited to come to work every single day and I'm excited about the new opportunities, the new possibilities and the young men walking into my office, scheduled in or unscheduled, it has been amazing.

I may do a lot of things whether it be boxing, ring announcing, public speaking, MCing events and things like that, but my wheelhouse is with these young men. Every single day that's where you're going to find me, right in the Bright Complex. People always say, 'Well, you're never in your offic.' Well, if I'm in my office then that means I'm not doing my job. I need to be where the guys are. I can't expect them to come see me, I need to go to them and that's what I'm doing. I'm in the locker room, I'm in the training room, on the practice field, in the weight room and it's amazing when you can operate in your sweet spot."

"The director of player development can be a wordy title. I'm not really into titles. But really the job is helping shape and mold the young men that are in our football program. They spend a lot more time with the helmet off their head than they do with it on. Often times playing the game of football, something that they love and that they're talented to do, they've been gifted to do, that sometimes is an escape from all the storms of life. My calling in life, my passion is to walk beside these guys. I'm making phone calls at night just checking up on guys, following up with guys, sending text messages to the entire team and so the director of player development really encases many things. I'm a counselor, I'm a mentor, I'm a chaplain, I'm a big brother, I'm a listening ear and hopefully at times I can become a voice of reason to help walk them and talk them through different things that they may be experiencing.

I have things that are told to me behind closed doors that are real life issues. This part is not the game, this is real life and they're asked to compete and stay focused at the highest level of college football when literally all hell is breaking loose in their life.  I've make a promise to parents when they come to campus to take care of their sons. They are entrusting to us their precious cargo, their child. The things that are already instilled in them, we're not going to try and uproot them, we're going to try and build upon them. I let them know the same guy that's standing before them when you're on your official visits is going to be the same man that's waiting to serve them, to love them, to challenge them and to walk with them. I get parents to follow up with me, 'you staying close to my son?' 'I promised you I would and I'm holding up to my end of the bargain.'"

"Coach Sumlin gives all the coaches complete freedom to do their job and he knew, especially from our time in Houston that a lot of things that the young men share, they're not going to go share with their coaches, let alone the head coach. He trusts me to be able to walk them through whatever situation they're going through. If it needs to be kept confidential, I'll let coach know that so and so came to meet with me and that I want him to know that I'm walking him through it, I'm talking them through it. I do let the young man know that if it's something you're going through that is going to affect this team and if its something that's going to affect you personally then we need to go talk to coach. Either you talk to him or I talk to him, but he needs to know and then coach will talk to their position coach and coordinators and such.

It's case by case and I let them know I'm not the liaison between the coaches and the athletes. I let the athletes know and the coaches know I'm here to serve you, I'm here to walk with you. It is not me trying to get the information out of the young man just so I can run and tell the coach because that doesn't build any trust at all. These guys now, a year later, I really see some trust being built. Guys who may not come to chapel, guys who I may not have the tightest relationship with, the trust is being built. It takes a lot of time and I have to be willing to invest that time. It's the culture we live in, microwave society, instant results, but I have to be willing to go through the slow cooker so to speak and take the time to invest in these guys and at the end of the day say, 'Did I even make a difference?'  It just takes time, once they start to grow, once they start to trust you, they're going to start to open up to you and that's when the relationship becomes real."

The funny thing is I hear people say all the time that the off the field incidents have gone down since I've been here and I will say that one of the big changes is the whole recruiting process, the evaluation of the young men character-wise when they are out at these schools. We have instituted a real evaluation of character and that's talking to coaches, talking to counselors, talking to friends, talking to people who know these young men and it has to clear some things in order for them to even start being recruited. You evaluate the whole person, but no one comes with a clean slate either. I don't, you don't, none of us do and so we're not looking for the perfect young man, we're looking for a teachable, coachable young man that is going to be accountable to what this program and Coach Sumlin have put into place.

People talk about things have slowed down, but I'll tell you it's us as a football staff putting information in front of these young men about being accountable and making great choices. We're only held accountable for what we know. If we don't know certain information we can't be held accountable to that. All we're doing is presenting opportunities for these young men to make right decisions. At the end of the day, they're the ones that have to make the right decisions .But if we have teammates on this team that are being good teammates and being good team leaders they may think twice about a certain situation so all we're doing is presenting information.

In the spring I was teaching weekly to the entire team about a 20 to 25 minute session on just different things that we hold on high regard within our program. Some guys who may not come to my office or may not come to chapel, they see me now as a regular guy.  We brought in some great guest speakers as well that have challenged them and are holding their feet to the fire as well. Brian Dawkins and some others and some local guys as well that played at A&M have come and spoke to the freshmen. We actually have one coming real soon to speak to our team so it's the information that we're putting before the young men.

It's not a magical formula, it is loving people right where they are, loving them hard when they're hard to love. At the end of the day if you keep the standard high, people are going to try and reach that standard. If you lower the standard they'll think that's as high as they have to go. If I can't dunk on a 10 foot goal and you lower it down to eight feet and I say,'Hey, I dunked the basketball' well no you really didn't. You lowered the standard and you think you achieved a goal and so we have to keep the standard high and that's what we're doing. When you put a standard out before people and I don't care who they are, they're going to do whatever they can to reach that standard. If they know they have people that are loving them and supporting them along the way, they'll run through a wall for you."

"I'd say I fit the father figure role more than the friend role. When I first became a chaplain at Houston I was close to the same age as these guy,  now I have young men who's parents are 38 and I'm 40, so more like a father figure. A lot of guys who did not grow up with a father or who have father issues, they put up a barricade and don't want to address that issue too much. Everyone wants that paternal touch so to speak and they might not say anything about their dad and I might try to bring it up, but if they don't want to talk about it then we aren't going to talk about it. Some guys come around and make little references here and there, but I would say more paternal than a friend role."

"During the season we have a chapel before every game and depending on the game time it will be either the night before or the morning of the game and it'll be led by either myself or I'll bring in a guest speaker. Matt Chandler, Ben Stewart, Dr. Rick Rigsby, Gregg Mott out of Houston who started Breakaway here. I reach for the stars when it comes to picking guest speakers because I like these guys, too. I like to sit and soak and listen to these guys speak as well so if they're blessing my life then there's a good chance that they're going to be blessing our young men and the coaches that come to chapel as well.

Something else we also do is, and this is just during the season, at then end of every chapel we give the guys an opportunity to worship as well. Someone will come in either with an acoustic guitar or on a keyboard and lead a song as well. That's been very well received. Chapel is not mandatory, but I'd say if we travel 70 young men I would say 50 maybe come and then we also get a handful of coaches to come so we always have a full room. It's a lot of fun, the guys are really engaged in those chapel services and it's a really good time."

"It's hard to put down specific goals when it comes to player development. I have a personal goal and that's to love everyone as hard as I possibly can and I do have some hidden goals which I can let out. There are some guys that don't want a whole lot to do with me, which makes me draw to them even closer. I'm going to put my arm around them in practice and do any little thing that I can, but as far as written goals, things on paper, it's hard to measure. People could sa, 'Oh, you need more structure.' Well I've been doing this for a long time and I tried to start with some structure, like some real guidelines. We're going to do this curriculum and that curriculum, but it just doesn't work the way I think that it should because things change and you have to be really flexible.

If I were rigid and unflexable then I don't think we could have the impact that we're having because you have to be able to adapt to what young men are going through. For example you can not have virgin ears. When somebody drops a four letter word you can't cringe, you have to look at them and look past all that. You don't condone it, you don't encourage it, but you don't flinch. You have to love them through it and plus I don't have to look too far in my rear view mirror either when I was using words like that. I use that as my testimony. I say look guys, 'I was your age at one time and I've made poor decisions and I'm fighting to not make poor decisions in my own. But I have people that are holding me accountable and holding my feet to the fire and challenging me with certain things as I am challenging you.' I tell them, 'I'm never going to judge you. I'm never going to sit with a gavel in my hand or a robe on and call you guilty.' It's an evolving process because you're dealing with people."

"Winning cures a lot of things. We have winning inside of us. We were born to want to win. Life is about winning and losing, there are no ties and so you feel good when you win and you feel bad when you lose. We try not to focus our entire purpose on the scoreboard, however. Guys may not be as open or receptive when you're on a three-game losing streak. I have to make sure I get myself up because I don't like losing either at anything and someone who likes losing, you'll fight them everyday. I think it was created inside of us to want to win, to have the will to prepare to win. My job stays the same whether we're winning or losing because a lot of what I'm dealing with is not game performance. The coaches are the ones making adjustments. If we go on a losing streak, I kind of have to stay pretty consistent, middle of the road because what I'm dealing with a lot of the time, not all of the time, but a lot of the times has nothing to do with the game."

"I use boxing analogies a lot, I show boxing clips a lot. I taught on toughness over the spring. One of our pillars of truth is toughness; mental toughness, physical toughness. It's easy for the boxer to get in shape, but it's hard for them to mentally stay locked in for a 12-round fight, especially when you're getting punched. I've talked to fighters who have gotten punched and thought about an argument he and his wife had earlier in the week. While they're fighting, their mind just went 'Boom!' so to really go through adversity and stay focused mentally, that's mental toughness. I use that a lot.

"I showed a clip of a guy who punched a guy, well  he swung and missed and dislocated his shoulder, clearly dislocated his shoulder. Physical toughness kicked in, but more than that mental toughness kicked in. He stayed in the fight, shoulder drooped down and caught the guy with an upper cut with the good shoulder and knocked the guy out. After the fight, he just crumbled to the ground in pain, but it was mental toughness. This guy said, 'You know what, I didn't plan on my shoulder going out in the fight, but it happened.' It's not what happened, it's what happens next. Are you going to cave in? Are you going to just crumble?

I use a lot of boxer analogies because the boxer lives a lonely life. They're kind of isolated, especially during training camp, and then they get in there with all these people that are promoting him and managing him and really using him to an extent. Now, they throw him in there and say alright mono y mono. What are you going to do in this ring with the whole world watching? You know what else is still going on? Life, problems, issues, but you're having to stay focused for 36 minutes of fighting, one minute in between each round. So I'm telling these guys, 'You have to do that for a short period of time. Play after play, minute after minute, class by class, situation at home by situation at home. You have to stay mentally focused and locked in.' For me, that mental focus comes when spiritual development also happens."