Pate shares how leadership, resources are redefining college athletics

According to college football analyst Josh Pate, everything works downstream of football. On Tuesday's edition of TexAgs Live, Pate shares why the "good guy" isn't enough anymore and what it takes to be elite as collegiate athletics grow in resources and athletic prowess. 

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• Everything works downstream of football. I've never met anybody who is "hardcore" into Texas A&M Athletics and not into football. Those people may exist, but I haven't met them.
   
• The vibe of an athletic department, especially in the SEC, works downstream of football. If you pop a 10-win season on me in football, the vibe starts to improve. Conversely, what would it mean for baseball to go to Omaha, basketball to the Sweet 16 and football to go 6-6? Nothing else matters in the grand scheme, not to discount those sports. It's football, first and foremost.
   
• It used to be a nice ornament on the tree in the SEC if you were good at basketball. Because of the infusion of money, I don’t think it's optional anymore. People used to say that we didn’t put the resources into basketball, but now you swim in resources. It has bubbled over to football. Alabama and Auburn are still alive. There's a record number of SEC teams in the NCAA Tournament. That's good in the aggregate. The same thing happened in baseball.
   
• The surge you see athletically in the SEC has turned from optional to mandatory. You used to be a good guy, and your basketball program is average, but no longer. Good guys are going to get fired if they run average programs.
   
• When you walk into the building, everyone carries themselves the same way. When you talk to them, from the front desk receptionist to the offensive coordinator, everyone sounds the same. The vibe is working downstream of leadership in the good places. In the bad places, the head coach has his take, the OC has his take, the athletic director has his take, and there's no alignment. The places that do it right are almost robotic. They are always saying the same thing because there's a vision, and everyone is bought into it. The ability to define the goal, but everyone talks about the process to achieve the goal. People think it's a cliche or coachspeak, but the best buildings we are in do that.
   
• I equate it to the gym. I think it is a big differentiator in my life. Like most people, I thought you needed to be goal-oriented, but that's wrong. Nick Saban made it click for me. You start realizing that focusing on the process might be mundane, but you unlock the keys to success and realize that nobody else thinks like that. Then the bad part comes, and you start shaving out your friends because you want to be surrounded by like-minded people. That gets lonely. Successful people think it is a lonely road to get there.
   
• The best way I can explain it, and Jimbo Fisher was a good example of this, is that if you have worked construction, you show up and see the equipment. All of the resources are there, but it would be ignorant to say, "There's the house." It takes knowledge and work to build the house. It's capable of being built. You have God-given ability, so it's possible.
   
• In my opinion, Texas A&M was the job site with the tools and the materials lying there, maybe the right foreman and the right crew haven't been there. I've never given up on the capability of A&M, and the possibility might not be there at any given moment. With Mike Elko, the capability is there. He just needs to figure out the kind of crew we have on the job site.
   
• You can see it. You can do everything right and go 9-3 if you're a national contender. Maybe the portal raided your depth, and a few bounces of the ball went against you. But you can tell between a 9-3 team that was a tough-out versus a hollow 9-3 team. If you think about college football as a ladder match, the belt is hanging above the ring. You are trying to get enough rungs up so that it is in reach every year. You can't reach it on rung three. Give your team an opportunity to achieve what you want. Of course, Georgia was that last year. I think Kirby Smart said he did his best coaching job last year, but his team wasn’t that good this year. That team had no business winning the SEC last year, but they put themselves in arm's reach.
   
• I'm asking every head coach about how it would hurt them if I told them the schedule in late February every year. They all say that it's probably only travel. From a coaching standpoint, they don't care. They aren't working on opponent-specific stuff until fall. Why would we be releasing schedules multiple years out? As far as out-of-conference, I get it. But I can't believe we schedule conferences multiple years out. There might be a Grand Canyon between how hard it is for you and me in a big conference.
   
• From a conference perspective, we think a win is a win, and a loss is a loss. Take your committee and find a way to roughly determine the strength of the conference in February. It's not going to be perfect, but there is a way to roughly bracket them. I'd love to see the league schedule made in February. Maybe that’s not in the coming year, but I'd love to see it. It also creates a tentpole event in February.
   
• Oregon is viewed as a national title contender, and they should be. They go on the road in Week 5 to Penn State. Penn State will be coming off a bye, and for Oregon flying across three time zones, that’s a 9 a.m. body clock game for an Oregon with a huge rest disadvantage. That is one glaring example of scheduling malpractice. If I were in the league office, I would never expose one of my horses to that disadvantage. Is that favoritism? Absolutely. It's a bit different in the SEC because the pool of legitimate teams is deeper.
   
• I would love for the national championship to be on New Year's Day. If it can't be then, do it on the first Saturday of January. All that takes is cooperation with the NFL. You have to get smart people to negotiate with those relationships and incentivize the NFL to come to the table.