Greg Mattison Quotations

When you're a major college football coach and your son is a major college football player, the chances of being together for the holidays are slim to none. But we had talked about this happening.

Bryan told an Iowa announcer earlier in the year that if UF played Iowa, Mom would root for Iowa because she loves her son more. There's probably a good chance of that. I don't know. The thing I keep in mind with her is the car she drives is being paid by Florida.

He's growing up, that's all it is. He's buying in. He's got pride. Joe's got unbelievable pride. Joe wants to be very, very good and Joe's starting to play very, very good.

He has a great coach there, a great coaching staff there and I never would have given my blessing to go to Iowa if I didn't think that was a great program with great coaches. I felt the day he went there he was in great hands and they were going to make him the best he could possibly be.

Here's a kid that came in here at 212 pounds and now he's got himself up to 280 pounds. Kids don't come in and play good at 212 but when they get the experience and keep battling, you never know.

There are no secrets, no gimmicks, no tricks. Players will play hard when they know their coach is giving them everything and is trying to make each player the best he can be. That's all it is.

Joe can also go to end, so I look at it as seven and a half. They've earned (the right to rotate) so far, but you can lose that right and they understand that.

I thought things were heading in the right direction. I felt that wasn't the right thing to do, but it wasn't my decision. I feel bad for the kids because it's a whole new coaching staff.

I think I've spent the last 12 to 15 years and only scored about 14 points a game, and I want you to know it's a lot easier to call defenses when you have a lead. I am the biggest fan of the offense in America.

You know what I don't want to do? I don't want to rile him up. I want to keep a sleeping dog down, that's my goal.

When he broke his leg I said my only hope was that he would play in the bowl game. Here he goes and plays in the bowl game and he intercepts a pass and runs it back for a touchdown -- that's tremendous.

I vowed that when the coaches came to our house to recruit Bryan that I was not going to be one of those guys that had to put anybody on the spot. All I did was listen. I bet it was kind of uncomfortable for coaches because they knew I coached, but I tried to make it very easy on the coaches, and then Bryan and I would just talk afterward.

It was really exciting. To have the opportunity to play against your son and see him start and play as hard as he played, I didn't watch him much, but every time I happened to look up there on the screen up above there, he was playing his heart out, which I knew he was.

The No. 1 thing always will be is that our home state of Florida is where we want to recruit. Two players being equal, we'll take the Florida young man every time.

That's a big battle for us. This is one of those things, as a defensive line, and as a defense that wants to get itself over the hump, you look for games like this ... You've got a lot to prove.

It was like a light went on for him at the end of the fall. And he's keeping it up. He's playing like a starter now.

The thing is, because our staff has been a lot of different places and they have had the experience of recruiting other places, they had built relationships at other places. So when kids saw Coach Meyer got the job down here and some of our assistants got hired down here, they had that trust factor already and they had that interest. So they would either contact us or when we would contact them, they would immediately be interested. Then from there, it's a matter of us evaluating and making sure that that player is better than what's here in the state.

He came very close to playing for Notre Dame. We offered him (a scholarship), we wanted him, but I just did not feel that it was in his best interest to play for his dad. His mother always said he would have gone there, but she didn't like the position coach.

The car she drives is being paid by Florida. That's something she should always keep in mind. But you know how moms are.