Nearly two years after we met (USA Nationals Las Vegas), great convo with Wisconsin HC Kelly Sheffield, sends me some random dm on X asking me to give him a call earlier this week, and at first it scared me a little bit, but when we finally connected, it led to a great 2+ hour conversation.
This podcast is a recap of a good portion of the conversation because we just talked volleyball for 145 minutes, and for me, it was very, very cool. We agreed, disagreed, and respected each other's opinions on several topics. I appreciated Sheff because he was one of the few coaches with whom I could disagree, and he could keep talking with me and not get mad and instantly dislike me forever.
We found that we agree on so many topics and ended up talking about rivalries, crowd involvement, building fan bases, pulling in outside viewership and revenue, and many other topics. In fact, many more than the few things like favorite players and colors that we disagreed on (he was very biased and was not being open-minded at all:)
We talked about the future with this NIL and Portal Era and how much change there will be, and I point-blank asked him what he thought of some of the things that were being said about him or his program. Listen, I've had many coaches "be less than honest with me" in my time doing this, but I will say I haven't had many National Championship HC's take a couple hours out of their busy lives and genuinely take time and honestly show respect for my opinion and what I know and do in the world of recruiting. Coach Sheff and I talked about this.... his simply respecting my work as a recruiting evaluator and how well I understand the recruiting process meant a lot. **In year 1-2 Coaches used to call me like he did quite often and then when word got around that I asked real questions about real topics that most didn't want to address, well those phone calls stopped coming lol so I appreciated this and learned so much from one of the best.
The pod probably didn't turn out that clean because the original was lost last night, trying to load it and record it the 2nd time, I didn't do as well in editing.
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53 mins