So... the Committee was invited to the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Awards.

Something happened on January 22nd that remains a fever dream to myself and VP of the Committee, Jordan. We were invited to come to the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Awards at The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown in Houston. Now, we just weren’t invited to show up and watch; we were actually allowed to interview coaches who were nominated for the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award and the Newcomer of the Year Award Winner. I really don’t know how this happened. Leading up to the award ceremony, I kind of felt like this was a bit of an elaborate prank on us for all of our ridiculous social media posting, and we would be the Joe Pesci character in "Goodfellas" as he was about to be made.

Since this is mainly our side hustle, hobby, passion project or whatever you call it and trying to make this thing a sustainable media thing, Jordan and I had to drive to this event on the morning of the event. Mother Nature said let’s dump an incredible amount of snow on the city of Houston and make the drive from Dallas for Jordan and the drive from San Antonio for myself a *little bit* more interesting. Thankfully, the weather cracked into the high 30s and low 40s, melting the snow. However, as I entered Houston, some folks on the Interstate didn’t really seem to bother with clearing the snow off the top or back of their vehicles.

I arrived at The Post Oak hotel first around 11:00am after my 3 hour and 15-minute drive with a stop at Buc-ee’s in Luling, TX, for a breakfast taco and Celsius *Arctic Vibe* energy drink to match the cold weather.

I messaged Paul, the gentleman who was nice enough to invite the committee; I was in the lobby. Upon meeting up with him, I immediately thanked Paul for the invite and profusely thanked him for this opportunity throughout the entire day; he was probably tired of me thanking him. We walk past a Rolls-Royce dealership, which was inside the hotel, and up to the area where the awards were being held.

We walk up the circular stairway, and Paul walks us over to this area that is outlined as a private area. On our way, I see the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are staying at the hotel, *Holy crap, that’s Donovan Mitchell*. We get to our spot, and it’s a library of sorts overlooking the pool with snow-covered chairs. I am just flabbergasted; this is too nice for us, and I could not believe this was happening. Jordan arrived shortly after, and I dropped me so much swag from the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, I had to go back down to drop it off at the valet to put in my car.

Our setup for the event. Look, I know we need more stuff for this, but it was our first time doing something like this. You can see my fancy Adidas zip hoodie and my laptop with so many stickers.

The pool area behind us.

We were set to start interviews around 2:45pm. I take our camera and start to scope out the area for some photographic evidence that this was actually happening in case I wake up and this was all a dream.

I am a bit of an over-preparer, and I prepared a background and tried to list some questions for all the coaches who were nominated for the award. On the list of nominees, we knew would be in attendance were Newcomer Coach of the Year Fran Brown, Curt Cignetti, Spencer Danielson, Rhett Lashlee, Kenny Dillingham, Jeff Monken and Shane Beamer. Marcus Freeman was a strong possibility of attending, but this was just two days after the National Championship game. Coach Steve Sarkisian was not able to attend.

Paul gave us our times we could expect each coach to come by to sit with us for about five to seven minutes. I personally wanted to be a little comic relief for all the coaches and see if we could get them to laugh. I mean it’s not like football coaches are intimidating at all, should be easy right?

So, we learned pretty fast the times we got from Paul were just estimates and surprise Syracuse’s Fran Brown arrived 20 minutes early to us. Apparently he knew who we were too?? We had some fun questions around “winners get washed,” told Fran he was our Sickos Committee Coach of the Year (we will have to mail him a trophy, I think), talked Safe Reliable Honda McCord, and praised LeQuint Allen. Jordan and I could feel Fran Brown staring into our souls when he responded to our silly questions. For our first interview, I think we did well and hid our “oh my god, we’re talking to a real coach in person in a 5-star hotel, oh my god, oh my god, what the hell are we doing here” inner thoughts.

Up next was Army Coach Jeff Monken. We introduced ourselves as fans all of the teams of college football and of course I mentioned ULM. Coach Monken remarked “one of the worst losses of his career.” I wanted to say but it’s ok Coach, Nick Saban also lost to ULM. You’re in great company *wink*. I wasn’t fast enough. We got him to tell us how he went from DIII Millikin in Decatur, IL to Hawaii as a Graduate Assistant. Then he linked up with the Offensive Coordinator Paul Johnson at Hawaii and the rest was history. We told him we loved his ball possession offense and got a deep introspective into his coaching philosophy. It was awesome.

Then next was Coach Shane Beamer. We told him he was one of two former long snappers turned Head coaches in all of FBS. We asked him questions about being an assistant coach in the infamous game between Virginia Tech and Wake Forest in 2015, also known as VT00WF, praised his punter Kai Kroeger, talked about his special teams prowess, and how other teams are overpreparing for his special teams now. Also, we asked how hard it was to ignore a Cheez It Wedding and Ched-Z flying through the goalposts.

Things start to get rapid fire at this point, and my memory is a bit of a blur from all the overload of things. We go through Kenny Dillingham of Arizona State, discuss his career and talk about Cam Skattebo. At one point, I was talking, and I realized in the middle of talking I didn’t even have a question for him and would only end up saying this was an amazing turnaround. At the end of the interview, he was recruiting Jordan to come to Tempe to show him 108 degrees was not actually that hot.

Spencer Danielson of Boise State came in, and we talked about Ashton Jeanty and breaking records, changing game plans on when all 11 on defense were targeting one singular player, how he had to manage Ashton chasing records and awards with balancing out what was right for the team and development of the other players, the amazing blue turf, and Boise State’s Bronco Nation and their unheralded defense.

SMU’s Rhett Lashlee was next; Jordan mentioned he went to North Texas, and that set off a little bit of a Dallas turf war, which was fun to watch. We discussed how SMU’s travel really didn’t change much from the American to ACC. Also, Rhett was wondering why SMU wound up at #21 in our Sickos Year End poll and just really had no clue what to say up front, but at the end I was like, First year in ACC, makes the playoff on an unexpected run. He said he would take that and leave the #1 spot to others. What the hell, I am having a conversation about our completely idiotic poll with an ACTUAL HEAD COACH???? This isn’t happening??? Right??

We got a bit of a breather as we waited for Curt Cignetti. Also, we got late news Marcus Freeman was coming. So, we scrambled to prepare for questions for Marcus.

We see Curt Cignetti interviewing with others across the area, and his incredibly nice staffer came to say hi and introduced herself. She said she knew who we were, and that continued to catch us off-guard that people knew who the hell we were.

Curt Cignetti sits down with us, and personally, I was a little intimidated. This man is intense. So, I decided to try to loosen things up for myself and him. I used the questions submitted by our Central Pennsylvania podcast hosts Beth and Pitt Girl. We asked Curt about his favorite pizza spots in Indiana, PA - 9th Street Deli or Bob’s Pizza. Then we asked if he had a go-to Sheetz order, and if so, what is it? He said no (HOWEVER, *REDACTED*). Then asked if he had ever done Gobbler’s Knob on Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney. He also said no. We went over his historic turnaround of Indiana and now his encore season and incoming QB situation. We finished the interview and took a giant deep breath.

We wait to see if Marcus Freeman arrives in time for interviews, but he was unable to make it in time due to travel issues. Completely understandable, there was snow in Houston!

We start to pack up our things to leave our library area, and we see Marcus Freeman come out the elevator right as we see a tweet saying his defensive coordinator, Al Golden, is going back to the Bengals to be their defensive coordinator.

All the coaches are now fully dressed up for the award ceremony, and it is time for us media folks to head out of the area as our work was done. We stop in the media hospitality suite and see a bar with some food. We grab some food and wait for the Houston traffic to calm down. People start to file in for the award ceremony, and both Jordan and I take that as our cue to leave. As we start to head out, we drop a ton of stickers off to Paul, and we both thank him again, probably a hundred more times (thank you again, Paul). We get an invitation to return next year, and I’m just glad we didn’t mess up anything too bad. Thankfully, our patron Saint Big Red was with us and guided us through this process.

*Yes, we had that picture on our table during all the interviews.*

Jordan decides to head to his friend’s house, and I decide to make the three-hour trek back to San Antonio.

Before I got fully going on the road, I had to make one more stop on the way back on Interstate-10 back to San Antonio.

I grabbed a Sliced Brisket sandwich, another Celsius *Arctic Vibe* energy drink, and a bag of Buc-ee’s Kettle Cooked Sorta Spicy Cajun Boil chips. The chips reminded me of Zapp’s Cajun Crawtators which were a perfect fit for the evening, and all of that was more than enough to keep me awake for the drive back home.

What a special occasion to cap off a fantastic year of College Football. Thank y’all for reading.