Dougherty Addresses the Press
3/25/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 25, 2002
"First of all, thanks a lot, I appreciate everyone showing up. This is a lot more than I was expecting. I do want to first comment about this (purple tie). My family, we have been discussing the purple change here. I tease Eric that there were two things that I thought I would never do in my life and that would be to wear either orange or purple, but I am very excited to wear purple right now."
"I do want to thank a few people right now. First of all, I would like to thank Chancellor Ferrari for this opportunity as well as Eric. You don't know what this means to me. I have had different opportunities to either pursue or in some cases accept jobs, but I was looking for the right fit and this place seems to fit just perfectly for me."
"I've always said that I would never want to go somewhere just for the sake of either (1) wanting to coach or (2) to become a head coach, because I felt like I was doing what I wanted to do all along as a coach at the University of Kansas, living in Lawrence, Kansas and that was important to me. But the Fort Worth area is so attractive to me and I just knew deep down that my family would enjoy it and so that made this job even more attractive."
"Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, when you get me, my staff, my family, my parents, children, Megan who is not here today, Ryan, Neil and my wife, Patti, you ARE getting my whole family into your family and we are very excited to be a part of that."
"The other people that I would like to thank right now, some are present and some are not. A good friend of mine, Johnny Jones, who is the head coach at North Texas, who did a good job this year by the way. Johnny, by the way has been one of your best salesman, he's been telling me `you got to get down here, you got to get down here,' and so I believe and trusted him too that this was the right move to make. I also want to thank Charlene Taylor, that is the mother of Keith Langford (Kansas guard from North Crowley) and one of the reasons why you probably think I can even coach basketball."
"One of the things that we have to do is immediately send a message that things are going to change. We're going to take what has been started at TCU. You started playing basketball in 1908, if I am correct, and you've had four coaches complete their careers here with winning records, the most recently is Billy Tubbs, of which I have had the chance to speak with. I really enjoy Coach Tubbs and what I am going to attempt to do is take what he has left as a beginning point and move it into a higher gear. I am not intelligent enough to know any other way than to just `work, work, work' to get this program into place. I do understand the history of this university and the basketball program. You've made several transitions most recently from the Southwest Conference to the WAC and now into Conference USA, which by the way, people, is a very, very difficult, challenging and unfriendly conference. I have jokingly said that we are on the more friendly side of the conference when it's divided up, but it's not that friendly."
"I don't believe that there is any way that you can move on unless you recognize the past and I have had great, great, unbelievable teachers. The feeling that I have for our young people at Kansas are so, so deep from the day that I first met them in recruiting to the first day that I screamed at them on the court to the first day that they told me some silly story on a personal level where you knew that there was a connection made, that they trusted in me as well as I had faith in them and their ability to get some things done. That relationship will never, ever be tarnished or destroyed simply by me changing universities. I bring that up for one reason only, because I am looking so forward to establishing that kind of relationship with the student-athletes here at TCU. Because if it wasn't for those kids, none of us would be here, none of us would have jobs, none of us would have the enjoyment that we have in being able to watch them perform."
"I had the chance to snip this piece of net and it looks so insignificant as it stands right here as I am holding it, but you would have to fight me, every one of you, to pry it out of my hand right now and that is what we want to get to. I want student-athletes to come through this university to have the feeling and sense of accomplishment that those young men had yesterday up in Madison, Wisconsin, because I am going to tell you IT WAS GREAT! It was so good to see the smiles on their faces and that can be done here, it can be accomplished and that is what we are going to set out to do."
"In order to get to that point there are some very basic things that all of us in this room need to understand. It is difficult for someone like myself to go through the interview process because what you are forced to do it sell yourself. On one hand, I already know what I am capable of doing. I am very confident in my ability to coach a basketball team, the x's and o's, to dissect film and those types of things. You can find a lot of people that can do that."
"But what I want to bring to TCU and to the Fort Worth community is much more than just the basketball coach. I am trying to bring to you someone who can run, operate and produce a program that will carry over from year to year to include the past, present and future. I want you to have something that you can grab onto, something that you'll talk about all the time, something that you look forward to being a part of, watching and taking pride in. In order to do that, myself, my staff, we can't do that by ourselves. This isn't just my program, it's not just Eric's program and it is not just the Chancellor's. It is everyone's who follows TCU, lives in Fort Worth, lives in Texas, has purple on. This is all of your program and I want you to treat it like that. There are a lot of different ways that you can. I don't want to get into a whole lot of details, but the first thing that you can do throughout the community is to start talking positive about TCU. All athletics, not just basketball. Because I have had the advantage of coming from a place like the University of Kansas into this great state of Texas where you have a bounty of athletes, numbers of them, and every time I would come into a situation I would get the sense that the best were aiming to leave because basketball wasn't that big a deal in the immediate vicinity. We're about to change that."
"I am just one voice and I'm going to be a very loud and active voice, but I could sure use your help getting the word around that this is going to be something different. That our best can, need to, and will stay here and experience the same things, if not better than they could anywhere else."
"Here is something that I want you to understand, we have to look after our product, which is our student-athlete and in doing so, I'm going to be very concerned and I want to invite you to be concerned with me in three very basic things. (1) Their academic development, (2) their athletic development and (3) then how we are going to let them mesh and flourish and join in our community, the TCU community, the Fort Worth community. Because whether they come from two time zones away or two blocks away, they are leaving home when they get here. And it is all of our jobs to make sure that they are not only comfortable, but have a chance to succeed. It is every one of our jobs, once the recruiting process ends, to put them in a position where they can be successful."
