Paul Horne: Welcome to Trenchometry. If you've spent any time in or around the trenches, playing offensive line isn't just blocking, it's chess at light speed. You're controlling angles while a 280 pound defender tries to destroy your running back. Every snap, calculating leverage, mirroring footwork, and anchoring against pure violence. Miss one step and your franchise player gets flattened. We're here to discuss the most undervalued aspect of the game of football, the offensive line. Remember, you master the trench, you win the war. My guest today began his football journey at Weatherford High School in Weatherford, Texas. He distinguished himself there and was recognized as a two-time member of the 5A THSCA Academic All-State Team. He would then take his talents to Baylor University as a walk-on wide receiver where Coach Brials would recognize his effort with a scholarship before he finished his playing days. He would begin his coaching career in Salina before becoming the head coach and athletic director at Rivercrest. He would help fashion this program into a state playoff qualifier. However, after two seasons at Rivercrest, he would move to assume the same role with the Mount Vernon Tigers, following in the footsteps of his college coach and mentor, Coach Brials. Despite a rich football tradition, the Tigers finished a difficult 2024 season and brought in our guests to right the ship. This past season, the Tigers averaged over 33 points a game, and I can only assume It will not be long before the Tigers are back in the hunt for another state finals appearance. Today, I'd like to welcome to Trentometry, Coach Travis McLean. Coach TMAC, how you doing today?
Travis McClain: doing very well thank you for having me
Paul Horne: Hey, this is exciting. I have five kids and at this point in time, three of them have spent time in Texas at Fort Hood and are up in Wichita Falls at Air Force Base Shepherd. So I've driven through your town a couple of times, I think, on the way out to visit those guys, you being there in Eastern Texas. But first question for you, did you always want to be a football coach? How did you get into the coaching aspect of it?
Travis McClain: I had no idea what I wanted to be to be completely honest. I am I love sports grew up playing them all got into high school really focused on football and baseball and I had an offensive coordinator who was our receivers coach when I was in high school that planted the original seed and he never really pushed too hard but coach glaze told me. this is something you might ought to consider. I'm 17 years old. How serious are you going to take a statement like that? I'm to go to college, live the greatest life I've ever had, and then I'll figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life way after that. And when I got to Waco, when I got to Baylor, I ended up in a receiver room with a great group of guys who I'm still very close with, have a super unique bond and friendship with, but with a position coach and Dino Babers, who again, watered that same seed and put
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: the but he didn't do it directly. did a lot of these things of putting onus on me in meeting prep and would ask my input on personnel scouting of opponents and things of that nature. But it was done in a very informal way. So I had no idea that it was some sort of evaluation test. Does he enjoy this type behavior? And I spent most of my collegiate career as a whole under the impression that I got the chance to do this for five more years than 99 % of the country. So when these five years are over, hey, we had a good run, pack it up. It's time to lock into the next phase, which is family, which is work, which is paying bills, et cetera, et cetera.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: So when I graduated, I got a job for a Fortune 500 company. I was working. I was doing what I was supposed to. I was starting to have some relative success. and I was not happy. was relatively miserable. But I gave it that one year. I gave it the full 365 that I had promised and I just decided that I'm not getting any younger and if I really want to go pursue this and see if it's something that's long-term, sustainable, I need to do it right now.
Paul Horne: So then you took the vow of poverty and went into the coaching and teaching world and got out of it.
Travis McClain: Correct, correct. was under the impression originally that, I'm going to go pay my dues and do these things that young coaches do, but I feel like I still have a decent network at the college level between the guys that I played with, the coaches that I had worked with, and I had actually had a conversation right before the Alamo Bowl with Coach Babers because he had gotten the Eastern Illinois job. We had had a very brief encounter. him inquiring if I would be interested in going up there to be the receivers coach. Timing didn't work out. I strung out my fifth year like a very responsible 22 year old does stay in school as long as you can don't ever graduate.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And because of that, it didn't work out. I took that as a sign that you're not supposed to be a coach. But when I went back, when I went to work in in the corporate world, when I decided I was going to re venture into coaching and sports and football, I still had dreams of jumping back into the division one ranks. I was going to be a big time OC. I was going to call these plays that scored all these touchdowns, I, I. And then I went to a place like Salina and my whole perspective on the profession and what's important and all of those things really shifted.
Paul Horne: When you were considering the level of where you wanted to coach, high school, college, pro, Europe, whatever, some level, what was your decision making process? Did you consider the amount of required moves at the college level or at the professional level and the instability that those jobs have at those levels? Was that something that entered in your decision making?
Travis McClain: It really didn't and it's part of its blissful ignorance. I didn't know any better when those guys got to Waco. They were in the time that I was making this decision. They were still in Waco. They they had only ever. I only knew coaches. I only had personal relationships with coaches who had moved for success, so I hadn't seen any of that. The everything that went on that that led to the exit of coach Brows and his staff from from Baylor hadn't happened yet, and so it those thoughts never really crossed my mind. I spent. When I originally left the corporate world, I actually went and enrolled in master's program at Tarleton and I GA'd for one season with the football team. was still division two at the time. And I saw that as this is my foot back in the door. I'm just biding my time for a few months until I can knock on the door of these people that I know, division one opportunities to go in as a GA analyst, QC, whatever it's gonna be. And I got some... Bad advice, I heard some bad advice in my time in Stephenville of the opportunity to go from a Division 2 to a Division 1 isn't there. They're not looking to hire those guys. And that's just factually off base. It's not true at all. Division 2 guys get Division 1 jobs all the time. It
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: happens every day. Juco guys get Division 1 jobs all the time. But because of that and based off of what the market was, I saw that I could go make more money right now. at a high school program and I would still be young enough in my network I felt like would still be strong enough that if I was I could do one year there and still make that jump back to the division one. had teammates that had done it Clifton Odom. who's now the special teams coordinator at Mississippi State, went and coached for a year at his alma mater in Arlington Martin, and then made the jump back to the Division I level. And there were some other guys that had done it as well. So I knew the opportunity was there. So I went, I just was going about it a different way. I thought I've kind of always been a little bit of a gypsy. I'd moved
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: a lot. And so the movement part was exciting to me, load the truck up and drive to the next place and, throw all your boxes in an apartment and... and go coach ball. And then when I got to Salina and I saw a completely different perspective from the high school experience I had and the coaching perspective from what I had ever really been around, it was one that I started to alter how I viewed all of these pieces.
Paul Horne: What was that? What was that big thing that you saw? What was the big change that opened your eyes? The aha moment there.
Travis McClain: The biggest one was is that it took some time. took year two into year three. But I started to realize how little it was about me. And that I was a cog in a wheel and the wheel was much bigger than the game. It was much bigger than the job. It was much bigger than that. The reason I was so excited to be in this profession was because I had been around people who were excited to be in the profession and they made me feel excited when I was a kid. They told me, hey, you're good at this. or hey, you could be good at this and all we need you to do is X, Y and Z and then you can be even better and you can have all of these cool, successful moments, right? And when I got to experience those, they made me feel really good. They made me feel important and they made me feel like I could do anything and all of these things. I got to be around people who had completely different backgrounds than me and I got to become really close with them and rely on them. And that's what this whole picture was about. It wasn't about me and the plays that I was going to call and the touchdowns that I was going to tell those kids to go score. It was going to be about those kids and it was going to be about submitting to something way bigger than yourself and understanding that I already felt that way because that's why I was excited. I just needed to to be in an environment that promoted that as the main message. Yes, we
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: want to win. Yes, we want to do these things. But more important than that, we want you to be freaking awesome people. And so when that shift happened, then I understood that I don't have to go chase this all over the country and I don't have to go chase this on Saturday mornings. And I can be in a place that I get to do those things on a Friday night in a community. And I can do it in a place where I might be able to plant some roots, raise my family in a really cool environment and experience some of the things that I got to experience in my childhood because I didn't come from a coaching family and I got to stay in one town my entire life. And there were aspects of that that were really important to me that as I got older and I wanted a family and I wanted kids, that I wanted to make sure I was giving those people, my family the same opportunity.
Paul Horne: Yeah, that's I have the similar ideas as you touching that three dimensional coaching aspect of of what you bring to the table as a coach, the demands, the bonds that you create, the push in the kid to go farther than what they think they can and then celebrating that those little victories and even the big victories and accomplishments that they might have. I was always concerned that if I I feel like if you go to that next level. If go to that collegiate level, you have, you're on a carousel and you always have to be looking to jump to the next biggest carousel. You always have to be looking for the next bigger ride. And so consequently I was afraid of me having kids and like my biggest fear was to have two or three, four kids and end up having five, which is, if you have one, you can have five. That's what I always say, but people don't believe me. You have a couple, you have a few yourself. So know that you understand what it, what it feels like there, but I didn't want my kids to have one person. have a hometown in Georgia. And then the next kid is born in Tennessee and the next kid's born in Indiana. I didn't want to have five different hometowns for my kids. I just felt like that would be something that would detract from the family. And so it pulled me away from the college ranks pretty quick. as far as when I was trying to make that decision process as to where to get into the coaching aspects at, but I like, I like what you're saying there. There's, there's a bigger purpose. You're, you're coaching with a bigger purpose than Then winning games. Of course you want to win games. makes your platform bigger. It gives you more credibility. It gives you the people are willing to give you their ear and give you the time and the stage and the microphone to speak into. And so you want to win because they're not inviting a whole bunch of one in nine coaches to come speak or guys aren't going to spend a whole lot of time listening to that one in nine coach. So the winning is important in that regard, but the platform that you're, you're teaching those kids how to be young men, how to be, you're prolonging the, their respect for the authority in their lives because at some point they're going to have to be that authority for other people in their lives. And that's something that you got to learn. And if you don't have a good teacher, it's hard to learn that on your own. But I think coaches and football coaches in particular are valuable aspect to our culture as far as putting young men and making them do things that, you nobody wants to go out and run when it's a hundred degrees, but there you are. And they don't want to do it, but they look over their shoulder and I see you standing there. with your whistle around your neck and they're going to go do it because coach said, the most powerful words in high school coach said, and that goes across your athletes and your students and anybody else in the school for that matter. So I think that's a, I think that's a very valuable insight to have. Coach, I was listening to you on one of your podcasts and I don't remember what the title of it was, but I caught a clip of it this afternoon and in it, you said this quote and I'm read it so I don't get it wrong. Life is not all about football, but football is all about life. think that applies in what you were just talking right there. Talk to me about that quote. Where'd you get that quote and sounds like you embody that when you go out on the field.
Travis McClain: I heard that from a coach and of course I'm gonna draw a blank on his name but I heard that from a coach at THSCA a few years ago and even at the point where I was newly married, newborn, all these things, I was in a place where I didn't fully embody and comprehend that and it's 100 % true and I think that there's a duality where there's a portion of the coaching world that doesn't understand that. And there's a large portion of the parent, kid community world that doesn't know that at all.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: We don't do these things just to make our head rattle. We do these things because I can sit here and walk you through a 90 minute practice script and explain to you, here's the reason we do it in football and here's the reason we do it in life. This period correlates to this stage of life and this period correlates to this stage of life. And there is no other dynamic. where you get that in such a large audience. There's no other sport that requires so many people to participate to be successful. There's no other sport where you have to rely on so many people to have success. And it would be a disservice to my program, to our staff, to our kids, to our community if I didn't keep that at the core of our decision making. We are doing hard things and we are doing uncomfortable things and you the parent may not enjoy seeing your kid have to suffer through hard things, but I can guarantee you, I can walk you through every step of the way why this suffrage is necessary, why this level of submission is necessary and how it's going to help your child in the future. Football is the greatest example or the biggest stage for that because it requires so many people, but you definitely get it. in basketball, in baseball, in track, there's all these other sports, you still get those aspects, just not as on as big of a scale as you do in the game of football. And I 100 % believe that football is is 100 % all about life. But life if life is 100 % all about football, then you're going to miss out on so many great things. And we want
Paul Horne: Yeah, you're out of whack.
Travis McClain: to make sure that when we have you in that football environment, we are pouring into you nonstop and investing into you, the football player and the person because we play a guarantee of 10 games a year. Not counting playoffs that can go to 16, to scrimmages, whatever culmination of numbers you want to look at. At most, you practice football for 19 weeks. A year is 52. So
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: if all I care about is what happens in those nights, if everything I'm investing in, is to fulfill those 19 weeks, then I am wasting all of these opportunities I have to make these people better people, to make these kids future high quality men in their communities. If I'm not investing in our coaches to make them the best version of themselves, then I'm doing them a diss... It's not just at the kid level, it's at the staff level. Our program has to be entrenched with the understanding that... We're gonna play great football and we're gonna coach these kids and we're gonna give them everything we have to be both the best football player they can and the best person they can.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I used to tell my kids that, what do you think Tom Brady's bedroom looks like? He's the best quarterback ever. Right. I mean, you could have debates, but let's, let's just, let's just give him that award. Do you think his bed's sloppy? You think there's clothesline all over the floor? Do you think he leaves his shoes out? I think as you do one thing, you do all things. And I think that is a, what you're saying there, I think lends itself to the, to my, my approach right there. And then this next question, how many kids have yet have come back to you you don't quite have as many. years around the sun as I do underneath my belt. But I'm sure you've had these kids come back and they say, coach, and you're like, Hey, great job. You did this. And they're like, it's not as hard as such and such week, fill in the blank, whoever it is, or that off season, that winter conditioning or camp two days, whatever you want to call it, right? Fill in the blank. There's something that they're going to relate back to that you were directly responsible for that pushed them. That was the hardest thing in their mind. It's the hardest thing that they've ever gone through. in their mind and they're going to compare everything else for the rest of their life. That's the benchmark that they're going to use to compare what's This isn't as hard as camp. I wasn't as tired as that day. You got pissed out. It made us run until we threw up, all those things that are, that were difficult in their life. Now they start to pale in comparison from the physical, how many times you can go out after you stop playing football, whether that's as a 23 year old, fifth year senior like you and I were, um, or if that's a 17 year old, high school kid, or if that's a 35 year old NFL player, nothing after that's going to be as hard. Unless you go into the military, you're Pat Tillman and you're over in Afghanistan or something like that, nothing's going to be as hard as those days on the football field. And I think you bring up a good point there as a, as a football player and as a coach, you know what you got to get out of these guys. And it's not just for that game. It is for the game when it's, two in the morning and the baby's crying, you gotta go change the diaper and you gotta get up and go to work the next day. these guys, they're tired and don't come to school and they had eight hours of sleep. What's that going to be like when you have demands that you can't ignore pulling on you when, you least want to do it? the discipline of doing what you got to do when you have the least amount of desire to do it. That's, I think that's a big muscle that you guys as football coaches and as I, as a former football coach are putting ourselves into that situation. So you're at a small town, right? I'm assuming that Mount Vernon is a smaller town, a smaller district.
Travis McClain: Yeah, we're about 2,500.
Paul Horne: Okay. And so some of the challenges that go into that, how many kids do you have in your football program?
Travis McClain: So our school operates somewhere between about 425 to 450 students in the high school. Somewhere between 15 and 1600 from pre-k through 12. In our program, We are anticipating in the football program to have about 104 in high school next year. So roughly 25 % of the high school student body, over 50 % of the boys in the high school, we anticipate playing. And that is, it's a unique situation for me because I've never been, I've set in on interviews for head jobs and AD jobs and said, you're a numbers driven. If that's what you want out of this, I'm not your guy. Because
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I'm not gonna lower my standards so more people can be a part of it. And we're just extremely fortunate. I've been very blessed and the coaches who entrusted me to come be a part of our staff and the kids that we have, that they've responded in a way that even though the bar is very high, it's done in an environment where the motivation is breeding excitement. And more people want to be a part of it. So we anticipate between our three teams at the high school level next year to have about 104 kids.
Paul Horne: phenomenal. But big band also.
Travis McClain: Ish it's a I wouldn't say bit. It's the it's a very good size band for our size high school
Paul Horne: So you're talking 30 to 50 kids probably between cheerleaders and not chillers, but flagline girls and band members
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: and all that. And then another, how many cheerleaders? 20, 30 cheerleaders. How many? 26. So
Travis McClain: We have 26 high school cheerleaders. 26. Between JV and varsity.
Paul Horne: I mean, you're talking, you darn near have half the school on the field Friday night or Thursday night, whenever you guys are playing. you have half the high school involved in a football week. Is that safe to say?
Travis McClain: Absolutely,
Paul Horne: Yeah, that's great.
Travis McClain: absolutely. And we're sitting in a situation where we've got our AV department has for the past few years, they do live streams of the games. And so they have some pieces that they're involved with as well. But yes, we over half of the student body on a weekly basis is in some way, hand in the cookie jar involved in a Friday night production.
Paul Horne: I love that. That is awesome. That is such a cool thing. And then are you the small town feel like everybody's going to game, everything shuts down for the game on Friday night?
Travis McClain: Yes, absolutely. And that was one of the things that really drew us to the idea of being in Mount Vernon is my wife grew up in Salina in the 2000s when they were winning back to back to back to back state championships. And then again in 2005 and 2007. And Salina was a small town that absolutely shut down. Last one out of town shut off the lights environment. We were very much that way this year. We had a great level of attendance week to week for our home games. We traveled really well to our away games. And it wasn't just the Timmy's mom and dad are going. We started to see a level of excitement because I think the kids were having a great time and we were putting together some pretty decent football. And. people wanted to see what was different about our staff and our staff
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: is elite. mean, bar none, know guys say it all the time, but I truly believe that we have one of, if not the best staffs across the board in the entire state because of the level of commitment they have to every kid that's in our program.
Paul Horne: Which leads me to one of my other questions is about your staff. In a small school, typically those small schools, you're borrowing guys from the community. Do you have a lot of guys on staff? Are you taking guys from the community to come in and coach from outside?
Travis McClain: So public school Texas is a little bit different than a lot of other states because to be a coach for any extracurricular, you have to be an employee of the school. And so
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: from a football standpoint, we operate with 12 football coaches, including myself, and all of them are employed. within the school, but they
Paul Horne: Nice.
Travis McClain: also coach at least two if not three sports. So these guys are with these kids year round.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: Our head track coach is our defensive coordinator. He also multiple times this year drove the bus for junior high basketball away games. And not
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: by force. It was this is a need and he goes, I'll do that. No big deal. Our offensive coordinator is an O line guy. He's a former AD. Same situation. He coaches football and track. He drove the bus for some junior high away games. These were things that they were in need and guys were excited about the opportunity to pour back into the kids because we have great kids and it makes it a lot easier to do those things because of the investment we see they make in the workouts. and in the stuff they're doing on their own. So we want to continue to pour into that cup until it's overflowing because of the excitement that the kids are showing.
Paul Horne: And in a small school, I was at a very similar size school in Georgia, I don't know, one of my first couple of years teaching and coaching, and those kids have to do everything. They're the lifeblood of the school. They're in the student government, they're doing the science club, they're playing football, they're doing the homecoming parade, and they're probably doing Boy Scouts or in the church, volunteering at the church or whatever, and have a part-time job. They're doing 10 different things, which is super impressive. Do you find that being the case there with your guys at Mount Vernon?
Travis McClain: It's the expectation we we will not we will not sit around and allow the specialty to to entrench itself within our the culture we have in our field house the expectation is that at a minimum our kids will play two sports and We have six kids right now that are on our football roster that are in one act play my first spring here. We had three of our top end returning starters high level expectation kids that were in young leaders of tomorrow and they're going to meet with these, business official or these community
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: city officials or these corporate level employees at such and such business and starting to understand what their expectation would be as a community member that's has the influence that they're expected to have and we want them doing all those things. We're also not remiss on the fact that if they're going to do those things, we can't just have a blanket expectation of routine. All we expect is that when the routine is going to be broken, you communicate and to me, That's a huge part of growing up. It's not good enough just to say, I wasn't here yesterday because of XYZ. No, you knew you weren't going to be here. Just tell me. Let me know. Because the sooner you let me know, the sooner I can alter not just my expectations, but the schedule for you
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: to be able to maximize your day. You need to go do that during that time. Sweet. Come in at this time. Knock out your Lyft. Right? Meet me after school. I'll be up here. drive by my house, come grab my keys, you can come lift. All of these things are, we're perfectly capable of them. We just have to entrench those kids and do it all, but do it all at a high level and have great communication so we can take care of everything we need to.
Paul Horne: Yeah. And that's crazy as a, as a coach, that's, wanted to know which one of my offensive players, if somebody was absent or if they're hurt or if they're sick or they got run to the airport with their mom or dad, whatever is going on that alters my, my game plan, my game plan preparation. If we're running a scout period. And I know that I have three plays designed for this specific kid to be on the field and he's going to not be at practice. I'm not going to put. I'm not putting the second string or third string kid in to get a rep doing what the first string kid needs to do. I'm just cutting those plays out. We're not even going to do those for those guys because they're not going to be, if I have to put the third string kid on the field during the game, I'm for sure not calling the play I designed to go to the first string guy and letting him run it. So that was something that I wanted to know for just to be efficient with my time and my energy and my reps. Cause you only get, and, and which leads by my next question here, but as, as an offensive coordinator, I'm planning on like 110. good scout reps during the week and we two platoon. So I'm assuming at the smaller school, are you guys two platoon or are you guys going both ways?
Travis McClain: We two platooned mostly this year, which
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: was new for me. We had never really done it when I was at Salina, even though we had had the success and really we had the numbers we probably could have. But we also were aware enough that if something happened, our backup strong safety was probably our starting receiver. And so we needed to maximize practice to make sure that he was prepared. If it happened in week seven in a game that we got a
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: win to win district, it's not just like, all right, I've got five minutes on the sideline. Remember inside leverage, get hands on, don't lunge. now go cover him, right? We don't want to put ourselves in that situation. So we spent a lot of time with a split practice where everybody was doing offense and defense. And then my first head job at Rivercrest was at a very small school and we had to. We had eight guys that started both ways. And so this was the first year that we didn't do that. We said, let's just let's sit down early. And when we feel like we have the best understanding of our roster, let's pick and choose. And we had three kids. four kids throughout the year that played on both sides of the football, but they never did it in a way that we had to change or alter our practice structure. It was, okay, I need Bryce in this period. Perfect. I will put it. I'll put something from an offensive standpoint where I don't need him that period and we can do something else and he can go down there. And because we kept the number low on the number of kids that we were sharing, it allowed us to maximize our efficiency and keep practice time shorter.
Paul Horne: Did that alter your approach to the season as a head coach and your organizing skills? Because that is a little bit different if you're not doing the split stuff and you're too platooning. Did you feel like you had a whole bunch of time now that got freed up?
Travis McClain: It actually created new opportunities for us to iron sharpens iron. We
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: did more good on good periods than probably anybody else at our level. And it was because we wanted to make, we knew that because both groups weren't having to do offense and defense every day, we knew that we were gonna, that alone limits the number of reps that are gonna be on their legs, that are gonna be the thud up and all of that. So we're going to maximize as we learn a new defense and a new offense with a new staff, we're going to maximize the quality of look reps that we get. So every day for either six, eight or 10 period, 10 minutes, our first O and our first D went against each other. That
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: doesn't mean they went to the ground. That doesn't mean that everything was, was exotic. DC would come to us and say, these are the things that I need to see, whether it was in card form or Hey, I need you to do it with tempo. So use our verbiage and just play fast. and hit power and then hit stretch and then hit quick game and then throw a deep shot right like though give me that structure and we'll just roll within our system but if it's a little bit more non-traditional or if it's completely different than what our kids do we'll huddle up we'll look at the scout card but it's going to be the ones and the reason it's going to be the ones is because they understand the expectation and they need the
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: defense to be good and we know that we've already saved their reps just through a practice length so let's take care of each other by being smart, but let's also give each other a great look.
Paul Horne: Yeah, we were excited about being able to platoon and hone technique. were, we were solid technique driven program, making sure that our guys had the latest technique and you know, takes those guys so many times, particularly upfront in order to be able to do those reps, develop that muscle memory. And if you're doing it on the split time there, they got so much memory in those muscles that they got to be able to do both ways that You can't get as complicated. You can't get as complex. And not that it's all about being complex. think simple is the best way to do it. If the kid's not thinking, he's just reacting, that's the level you want to get to. And I think the two platoon allows that to happen. Did you expand in your special teams at all? Did you pull out a whole bunch of special team, fill that extra time with special team reps or anything like that?
Travis McClain: We spent a lot of time with how we were gonna structure our days because of our school schedule and still make sure that we were taking care of business from a special team standpoint. we, during the football season, our kids lifted four, if not five times a week. And that was all done outside of school and practice time. We would do it before school. And then during the period, we would have some sort of light walkthrough and then a heavy. special teams emphasis. So that gives us a loan when you take out the get changed and transitional stuff that gives us 40 minutes of time to work with for four days when you look at Monday through Thursday. And if we spend Monday, we spend half of that on install walkthrough and then half on special teams. We've got 20 minutes of special teams and then we lower it to a cleanup walkthrough on Tuesday. Now we're getting 30 minutes of special teams Wednesday, all special teams. That's all we're doing. So we're putting in over an hour of special teams every week in preparation for the game, which allowed us to take that one thing off of our after school practice script.
Paul Horne: Yeah. So how long is your after school practice going? What's the length?
Travis McClain: We never, I never wanted to go over 90 minutes.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: And the biggest reason is because of the amount of things we had the opportunity, our job is to be efficient, their job is to give great effort. And if we can maximize the 53 minutes we get in the middle of the day during school, if we do that, there's no reason that we should go over 90. And really we should never go over 80. Between.
Paul Horne: So you're talking that's like what 15, 16, 17, 18, 18, five minute periods during practice? Yeah.
Travis McClain: So probably, I don't know, I've never been a period guy. What I've always done and what my defense coordinator and I did, we would sit down and say, okay, Monday is 85 minutes. what do you need and how long is it gonna be? We would try and mirror our period changes, our transitions to be the same, but sometimes they weren't. They would
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: do a tackling circuit, which meant they were on a 90 second whistle. We're doing pops, right? And that's a five minute period. So I would have, I have exterior period links that are five, seven, 11, eight,
Paul Horne: Right, right.
Travis McClain: and then I just make sure that the math adds up to whatever that number limit is. Yep.
Paul Horne: to when you need to service each other for whatever perimeter or inside drill, you're trying to get done with your ones, your one-on-one looks.
Travis McClain: for sure.
Paul Horne: That's really neat, that's unique. So your heavy walkthrough, that's a big part of your preparation with your guys is the walkthrough aspect of it.
Travis McClain: With our kids, I think that it's something that if done efficiently and coaches don't get long-winded, I think it's something
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that saves us lot of reps going into the practice. So if I can line up and say, hey, we use technology. I don't want to say that we're technologically advanced. That's not what I mean at all. But we use technology to our advantage. Our staff, I'm not going to ever expect my staff to come up on a Sunday and meet and do those things. You're a grown man. Do your job. We're going to Zoom. Sunday evening, we're
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: gonna walk through the game plan. We're gonna walk through the practice structure We're gonna walk through any hey, don't forget We got little kids night with we got to go to the peewee kickoff whatever on Tuesday We're gonna talk through those things on Sunday, but you stay home. Take care of your business at home Go to church, be with your kids do those things and just make sure you take care of business And then after that meeting I'm gonna record in a game plan install Our defensive coaches are gonna do their version of the same thing. I'm gonna walk them through Here's their primary alignments and this is all the scout team stuff that everybody's staff makes. Here's their primary alignments Here's their best players. Here's their strengths. Here's their weaknesses. Here's the new stuff. We're putting in this week Here's the signals that go with them Here's everything that we feel is new to you and it needs to be taken care of then I'm gonna attach it to a Google quiz It's gonna have four questions. The purpose of the Google quiz is to make sure that they One's gonna be from the first five minutes, one's gonna be from the second five minutes, one of them's gonna be from the last minute to make sure that they cover all bases, that they watch
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: the whole thing. It's not necessarily to test them, it's to engage their full attention span. So our primary walkthrough on Monday is going to address all of that stuff.
Paul Horne: And it's. Hold on, let me interrupt you there. Let me interrupt you for a second. Is that like a you're putting something like a huddle? You're doing like a huddle video type of thing or some other.
Travis McClain: So I record it through an app on my computer, and then I put it
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: in a Google Classroom that we create for the team.
Paul Horne: Okay. Okay. That's unique. have, I've never heard of that before, of someone doing it that way. I like that. That's a, okay. So I interrupt you go back to what you're, you're, you're putting your, your practice schedule there. You got to your Google quiz and pick up from that. just was curious about how you, what your format was.
Travis McClain: So we do, no, you're good, you're good. Once we, so the expectation, and we're gonna see him Monday morning. So I'll throw a pop quiz at him while they're lifting. Hey, what does this signal mean? And then when only one kid knows the answer, okay, you better know it by fifth period, because you know it's gonna be in the walkthrough. And so that way, we're speeding up that learning portion
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that takes up every Monday. And when we go to that walkthrough, I'm gonna cover everything that was in the install. What's their base alignment? Boom, four, three. What's their primary coverage? Cover three. Who's their who? Who do they roll down to the flats from the safety? It's going to be number five.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: OK, awesome. You guys watch. All right. Line up in black one. What does black one mean? Well, they should know because it was in the install guys go running.
Paul Horne: Right.
Travis McClain: And so we're we're just we're just checking. to make sure that they did their homework. And if they did their homework, it's going to speed up and eliminate some of those like, crap reps, right? Because every coach goes, you get a chance on Monday. And if you really like it, you get another chance on Tuesday. But if it's not good on Tuesday, you throw it out on Wednesday. And
Paul Horne: That's right.
Travis McClain: I want to make sure that I'm not going to put 15 things in the install. I'm going to put five. And if I only put five, I'm going to want all of them. So I want to give you every chance to be successful and understand what we're trying to accomplish. And so we're just using the walkthrough to reinforce what the install was and practice is going to cement what the walkthrough was.
Paul Horne: I love that approach. It's a very similar approach. didn't I like the technology aspect of it. Never thought of recording a video and having those guys watch it to expedite and hurry things up rather than we'd always do it in person, right after school. And we lifted four days a week, usually to do you guys lift on game days?
Travis McClain: We don't lift on game days. lift, but we do lift. Now we have kids that they'll go in there and they'll get a Muscle Beach lift in and hit their curls and stuff. But we lift, got to. But
Paul Horne: Gotta look good, Coach, you gotta look good.
Travis McClain: we'll hit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning. And then we give them, again, a Muscle Beach. We call it a beefcake. We give them the option to do a beefcake lift Thursday after school, because our
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: coaches are dispersed to sub-varsities and junior high and this, that, and the
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: other. And so we don't have after school practice. We take care of everything we need to during the period. and then they can come in and hit their curls, their back, their triceps, and do all that stuff.
Paul Horne: And then you mentioned earlier before we started talking that you guys don't have school on Friday and you guys play games on Friday. So what's your, do
Travis McClain: Correct. Yes.
Paul Horne: have a Friday routine? Do you do with your guys since there's that's throughout the whole fall throughout the whole season, you have no Friday school. So I'm assuming you guys play Friday nights. What's your, what's your game day routine with these guys not in school? The, the, lack of structure that would make me really nervous.
Travis McClain: It can and so we implement we implement just enough to not drive them, to wear them down We
Paul Horne: Hehe.
Travis McClain: bring him in at 830. They have breakfast. We've got a great community We got a great group of moms of the kids that support the team So they come in at 830 the moms have breakfast all laid out. They got breakfast burritos donuts seven rolls fresh fruit They got all they got chocolate milk apple juice. They got it all they come through they make their plate and then while they're eating DC is gonna go up and he's gonna give his last Tip sheet reminders. Hey, remember, here's our key. Here's the new. Don't forget this adjustment. Here's what we
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: learned last night watching the JV game. we heard them because there's only 75 people at a JV game. We heard when they made this call, they played this coverage. When they made this call, it was this, this was their protection, whatever it is. We're to go through that defensively. We're going to go through it offensively. We're going to clean up our plates. We're going to tell the moms, thank you. Give them all hugs. We're going to go to the turf. We're going to do a walkthrough. Just as a reminder, hey, these are the things we like. This is probably what we open the game with, right? On both offensive defensive side, and then we're gonna go through a special teams roll call, make sure everybody's there. Hey, remember, if they line the ball up on the left hash, we slide here, here's the audible call, we're gonna have a special teams roll call there. So they're in and out hour and a half, hour 45. Well, now they have three hours to themselves. If it's an away game, before we dismiss them for a few hours, we have them pack their bags. And once they pack their coach my bags packed okay see at one o'clock or you
Paul Horne: Yeah, smart.
Travis McClain: know whatever that time is determining when we need to leave. They get three to five hours off and go home. But we bring them back in plenty of time to if we get a no crap Timmy's not answering where's Johnny I had a flat tire those guys have they know when they're supposed to be back but we're we're a place of of understanding if you communicate coach The last thing you want to hear is coach the battery died on the troll motor. We're stuck on the lake. Okay, well,
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: could have fished from the bank, but you know, do I need to send somebody to get you and we've got two hours to solve this problem for they're supposed to be back. They did a great
Paul Horne: boat's on the way.
Travis McClain: job. They did a great job communicating. I explained to them that sitting in the sun is probably not the best idea. Next time stand under a tree. But
Paul Horne: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I, you're a 16 year old kid. We're going to be fine. Drink an extra bottle of water before kickoff.
Paul Horne: Yeah. Yeah.
Travis McClain: Once they come back. We do our TSA pre-check. We check their bags. If we're traveling, make sure they have everything. We load them up, and we go send them to lay down for 45 minutes. If it's a home game, we bring them back a little bit later. And once everybody's here, we have a walkthrough, and then we send them to lay down. So we're getting to have multiple walkthroughs and roll calls
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: on game day because we don't have the distraction of class. We have kids that won't leave. They get dropped off. They don't have their own vehicle. Mom and dad got to go to work. Cool. Bring your PS5, plug it into one of the projectors, hang
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: out. There'll be food left over from breakfast, no big deal. And the kids have responded really well to, have expectations, but you have freedom within those expectations. And unless you give me a reason not to trust you with that freedom, I'm gonna continue to give it to you.
Paul Horne: It's all yours. Yeah, I love that. That's great. All right. So let me focus drill down here on your offensive line a little bit. What are you looking for as a head coach? What were you looking for in your offensive line coach?
Travis McClain: he had to be the guy right next to me in the foxhole. When I got this job.
Paul Horne: Hmm. Cause he's big and strong and protect your back if you have any physical problems.
Travis McClain: because he is the most important. That position is the most important. I truly, without a shadow of a doubt, believe that. When I took this job, the first phone call I made when I thought I was gonna have the opportunity to get it was to our defensive coordinator. We had had conversations that I told him, I'm not going anywhere unless you're coming with me. I'm not taking another head job unless you're gonna come be my DC because... We're he has young kids. have young kids. I do have an eighth grader, but we we both family super important. So the next job I take is going to be centered around. Can we have great football in a great community that I feel good about raising my kids? So we were like minded in that insurance. I trust him. I know he's a saline guy. I know what I'm going to get. He understands the core values of our program. Boom, done. We're locked in arm. The next phone call I made was to a guy that I I GA with at Tarleton. I said, I know I can't afford you. I need an O-line guy. I gotta have somebody that you would put your stamp of approval on and you would say, he's the creme de la creme. He's the guy. And he gave me a name, said he's gonna be at the DFW clinic. I went to the admin and said, I gotta go to this clinic. We need to book a hotel, register, yada yada. I drive to the clinic and I basically just pestered this guy until he gave in. Mike Adams, ROC. is our online coach. He is a former head coach. He is coached in multiple state championships. He has coached multiple Division 1 and NFL players. But more important than all of that, he has done a phenomenal job of working in hard areas and creating great people. And he is he's a family man that is driven by the right core values, does does the job for the right reasons. And that's who I need standing next to me. I mean life changers. It just so happened that our line coach is a life changer and a game changer because he did. He gave us the opportunity to be whoever we needed to be in the run game.
Paul Horne: That's phenomenal. did. I did watch a little bit of your all's film. I will say I liked how you mix it up in the, in the passing game and confused some coverages there. He shook some, shook some guys loose, and got them down the field and got some throws wide open. I love the little, looked you're out of like a tight end trips look and you got a little wide delay there on one of the guys and got a little nice little third, third and long pick up on a, on a tight end delay being a former tight end. like that's one of my favorite plays there. So I was fun. It was fun to watch that and see that happening out there. When you, when you came into Mount Vernon, did you bring an offense in or did you, was that your offensive coordinators? Is that his baby? How did you go about doing that? And it'd been a wide receiver,
Travis McClain: It's.
Paul Horne: man. I got to think that that's kind of near and dear to you.
Travis McClain: It is and I've I started calling the offense in 2020 in Salina and then I called it my two years at Rivercrest and so I've my play calling I haven't been doing it as long I've only got six seasons of play calling under my belt. So I'm not quite ready to let go of the Friday night play calling but coach Adams. did a great job of understanding who we were, what can we be good at? And it was a very much a collaborative effort. I would never sit here and pretend like this is my baby, I did all this. I can't tell you the number of times where we bust a big play and I know what I'm gonna set it up with, right? This 30 yard run means that I'm going straight to this, this is the next play. But hey, Coach Adams, we're going to Purple Left. All right, I need something in case it doesn't work and boom, as soon as that ball may hit the ground, he's in my ear saying you need to get in this and run power, right?
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And we get into third and one, we're gonna check at the line. Coach Adams, I'm putting them in tray. All right, have your eyes on where you want this ball to go, right? We faked the clap, nobody jumps, quarterback looks at me, he's telling me, boom, run inside zone, whatever it may be, right? extremely collaborative. My trust is that if I never call to play again in Mount Vernon, we'd be just fine. Because he's done it, he's been successful at it. He's done it at the 5A level, he's done it at the 4A level. He's had extreme success at both of them. I don't worry about that at all. And that also gives me great confidence to know that if we reach a point where I feel like I need to step back from that because I can't give it what it deserves, I don't
Paul Horne: Hmm.
Travis McClain: have to worry about who's going to do it. I know exactly who's going to do it. I know he's going to do a great job.
Paul Horne: Do your athletic director responsibilities impact your ability to do that offensive core dating during the week? That you have a named offensive corner, but as a play caller, as a contributor, as a collaborative effort and play calling that you just described, you still have preparation you want to do. You want to study the film. You want to grade your guys. You want to make sure that you know what's going on. on the defense so that you can predict what the defense coordinator against you is going to do and how, like you said, setting up plays and knowing what you can take advantage of. Is that something that prevents you from doing as much as you want or can you, are you able to compartmentalize that and take care of everything the right way?
Travis McClain: Yeah, no good question. I feel like right now I can still do it at a high level. Our school district and our community does a really good job of giving me the opportunity to just coach ball in the fall. We have a girls coordinator who's been here for 30 years who when when it's football season, he's the head girls basketball coach, but he's been an assistant football coach before. So when it's football season, he does a great job of handling some of those things. Those administrative type things that in the spring I probably would just. Very smoothly take over and it not be a big issue. Our principals are central administrators. They understand that or they give me the opportunity. to stay focused on game plan and logistics of the game and the football aspect and keep some of that athletic director, that administrative side of the position kind of off my plate. So I haven't felt that way. But like I said, I do know that there's a chance, there's an opportunity that that may be the case. And if I, I'm very fortunate in the sense that if I ever feel that way, I know exactly. what the transition looks like and I don't lose sleep over it.
Paul Horne: Yeah. You guys, would you say you're run heavy or pass heavy? You're run heavy.
Travis McClain: We are we are especially this year. We were probably 6535 leaning on the run game. We had 2100 yard rusher with almost 30 total touchdowns and we had an offensive line that we started four seniors and most of them had started at least 20 games. So we felt really good about our ability to run the football. we took an undersized offensive lineman and made him fullback and the like I said, I can't I can't. sing his praises enough, but knowing that Coach Adams has that group of guys for 30 minutes essentially by himself every day. I told him after three days of him moving his family here and being around the kids, I said, who are we going to be? What like what's our baby? Are we are we zone scheme or we gap scheme? He said we're going to be whatever they let us be because we're going to be able to do it all.
Paul Horne: Nice.
Travis McClain: And all to me was exactly what I know that there's people who we didn't do this. You didn't do that. Well. We had games where I called power eight times in a row. We had
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: games where I called inside zone eight times in a row. We had games week 11, hadn't run GT all year, we called it 19 times in the game. And we won it, and we won that game, and we ran the ball for dang near 300 yards, So we really, in my mind, we could do it all, because he was so good at what he does.
Paul Horne: What, so, and again, I watched a small sample in a film, a very small sample in a film. What's your base? What are you guys doing? What's your rhyme and reason there?
Travis McClain: We so, so we're gonna, I'm a browse guy and my, the formation of my football brain started in Waco, 11 P, stretch horizontal so you can run vertical, whether that's run game or pass game. So at the end of the day, I'm gonna wanna run split zone, zone, insert and power. I wanna be able to do those every day, right? That doesn't mean we can, but that's where I'm gonna start. I'm gonna make a conscious effort to do those things. And then once somebody finally tells me, once somebody I trust says we just aren't very good at that, then we'll move on and grow. But foundationally from a run game, that's where I'm gonna start 99.9 % of the time.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I saw one of the your I guess you're in some sort of two by one set with the running back fullback kind of looking guy kind of in a big gap look. Maybe I don't I don't know what you would what you call that. But
Travis McClain: We just call him a sniffer.
Paul Horne: yeah. And running that power. And it was it was fun to watch your guard and that that sniffer back run that power scheme. And it was cool. I don't know what game it was. It was down on the goal line in the And the, the defensive end slanted down and the sniffer back picked him up and the guard and the sniffer back switched responsibilities. And it was, was awesome to watch that. Cause then the guard comes around the edge, turns up field and the linebacker tried the wrong army. And he just flipped his hips and your running back just kind of bounced and ran out and scored a touchdown. And it was, it was nice to see it was, it was evident on the film that those guys had been coached up and the guard knew what to do. And he knew how to. change responsibilities with the sniffer back when they, they had those guys trying to cross face like that. And it was fun to watch that little scheme. And I got to say, man, you got, look like it looks like you got a bunch of cookie cutters out there that you just punched out like seven or eight looking wide outs that all look the same and, and run it down the field. If you don't see what their Jersey number is, it looks like you got about septuplets running out there from the same family. So that was, that was fun to watch that little bit of a film that I got to see on you guys. So coach, what's your biggest challenge? going into your second year here. You came in and the year before the staff and the program was, took some beatings. I was looking at the records there. The scores were lopsided in the 24 campaign for Mount Vernon there. What did you do to, what was the difference there? Is it just you coming in and focusing on the kids and investing in the kids and pouring into the kids and they responded or was there something that was out of whack that you guys were able to correct?
Travis McClain: I think that there was a lot of factors that played into that 2024 season. Kid rushes for 2100 yards for us, he only plays in five games in 2024. So that right there hurts, right? There were some other kids that they were seniors may have been relied on a little bit too much, maybe mis-evaluated there. But I think the biggest thing is that we felt like because we were going to be so senior heavy again, we're a school of 450 on a good day, really probably more around like 422, 425. And we graduated 26 football seniors,
Paul Horne: Mm.
Travis McClain: which is huge. You know,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: we, we had, we dressed 44 kids on varsity and 26 of them are seniors. that's, that's a lot of football. And so understanding that these kids had been around success. They were in junior high when coach Braille was coached here. And when they were freshmen or sophomores or when they were freshmen, they were part of a program that, they saw in seventh grade, they saw the football team go to the semis in eighth grade. They saw the football team go to the semis and their freshman year. They had a division one running back and a division one mic and all these guys and they break all these records and go to the third round. Right. So they had all this success and then they just they got off track for a little bit. So we knew the The competitiveness, the attachment to that success was gonna be there. The experiences was gonna be there. It was our job to evaluate them and put them in the best situation to be successful. Does this kid need to play guard or tackle? Does this kid need to play offense or defense? Does this kid need to stand up or does he need to have his hand in the dirt? What's gonna give him the best chance to produce and help our team? And we felt like we had a really good beat on that and again, I can't sing their praises enough. staff does a phenomenal job of connecting with these kids, understanding them, holding them accountable and building them up. not letting them screw up in a slide, but also being the first one to pat them on the butt, love them up and say, you did awesome. Love you to death. So proud of you. And I don't know what the disconnect was, but those kids respond. They saw that they they understood that that's what they were going to get. It was genuine and and They just went above and beyond. As soon as they knew that we gave a crap about them, they gave a crap about doing anything and everything we asked.
Paul Horne: Well, which leads me to the, my next concern, which that's the only word I have to use right now. So I'm going to use it and not necessarily mean it wholeheartedly, but my concern is that you'd graduate 26 of 44 kids. got a, you got a light group coming back next year. what are you doing to develop those 18 guys? Those 18 returners? I mean, they're going to have a, they're going to have it a big piece of the puzzle there that they're going to have to put together. Is there anything you're doing differently with these guys?
Travis McClain: our approach to the offseason is it's structurally the same, but it's it's communicated differently. These kids are in the pressure cooker. Last year we had to win the the win the love back. We had to convince these kids to fall back in love with hard work, sweat, all that sweat equity. We had to go get them to be excited about that because we knew that they had the ability. We had seen it from their sophomore year tape. We knew that there were pieces there now. These are kids are not they're not afraid of the work by any means. They just don't have the experience. So now we approach it in. We're still going to do the work, but we're going to make sure that it's explicitly clear why we're doing it, what the expectations are. You guys are in the pressure cooker and the time runs out on August 27th. So you better be done. we can't undercook this thing. You guys got to meet that expectation because there is no one else, This is Friday Night Lights. This is big time football. We have high expectations and I'm looking at you and we find different ways to put competition into our daily activities. We find different ways to put competition into our weight room because no one's coming to save you. The
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: people in this weight room are the people that we have, right? There is no transfer portal. There is no recruiting trail, okay? So you either figure out a way in the next five months to get to 300 pounds on your bench press. Or when you got a block down on that guy from Malakoff, you're going to have a long night.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. I don't like the long night speeches. Those make me nervous.
Travis McClain: You
Paul Horne: I don't want long nights. want short nights where I can put my game plan in my back pocket and just call whatever sounds like fun. That was the fun.
Travis McClain: 100%. We just feel like, we feel like the relationships that we have with our kids have, in the last year and four months, have been built and cemented in honesty and truth. That even when it's an uncomfortable conversation, even when it's a competitive conversation, that's, the approach that we're gonna have. And I'm still gonna tell you that I love you, and I'm still gonna push you. And I understand that even though we're saying, hey, this is the goal, we got to go get it. If you fall short of that, I don't think less of you. It just means we got to be better in some aspect to make up that difference. So we're going to approach that preparation head on. We've got 100%.
Paul Horne: And that's your job as the coach to figure that out too, to figure out what was it, was this process lacking? What's his effort lacking? Does he just not have the capacity to do it? where's that fall in that, that continuum of variables there? And, and it sounds like you've, you've solved a lot of those issues and I'm, excited to follow you guys and see how goes this year and see how these, these, young guys, have a big group coming up behind them. You have a big junior class.
Travis McClain: Junior classes, small, sophomore and freshman class are really big. We're gonna be young
Paul Horne: Okay, so you're gonna, you got some young guys, you're have to step up.
Travis McClain: and, it's was, I was a different way of thinking, like traditional Salina when I got there was like, you know, they would start four juniors on JV and then that kid would start as a senior and he'd be in all state. Like that was a regular
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: thing. And I've always come from, I say always, since my time in Waco, I have come from the idea that, The greatest teacher is experience. So if we have the opportunity to play young kids and then be successful on more successful than they are at falling short, then throw them out there. Let's let the best guy plays and let's see what happens. And our young guys know that they know that there are opportunities abound to go earn right now. By the time we get to the fall.
Paul Horne: in that competition you're throwing out there, you're Breeding, I don't know, I've thrown this phrase out here, I've never heard it before, maybe somebody has, breeding the dog into those young guys, a
Travis McClain: That's,
Paul Horne: little bit of dog in them.
Travis McClain: that's, and that's a, that was something that we saw early with our current freshmen. When I got here in the spring and they were eighth graders, great kids, worked their tail off. They just didn't, they just didn't have a lot of that like grit that like,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: ball your fist up, what has been, he grabbed, grab that dirt, rub it in your hands and, and then, go out there and make something happen. They would do the hard things. They would show up. They would lift the weights. They would run the workout. But then when adversity hit, how did they respond? Whether it was body language, whether it was outward emotion, how did they respond? And we just kept being consistent with the environment, applying the pressure, and not too much pressure. We're not trying to break them. We're trying to teach them. And
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Travis McClain: they have shown immense growth. The best athlete in that grade has become a kid that we just kept looking at when he was in junior high saying, and he's got a chance. He's got, he could be somebody that helps us on varsity as a freshman. And it just, it wasn't quite there. He didn't handle certain aspects well. Well, now he is we're into the spring of his freshman year and he's found ways to contribute in this and that and varsity, this and varsity, that, and you go, okay, now we're, on the right trajectory. We got a chance and that's what we're working towards. We're just working towards putting great kids with great effort and great ability. in a situation to have a chance. Because if they got a chance, then we'll have a chance.
Paul Horne: Did you find when you got there at Mount Vernon, did you find some inertia in the football program that you guys had to just invest some energy to get the ball rolling? And then once the ball gets rolling, you get the synergy behind it and you you teach the tradition, which you've put the groundwork down for the last year and another year of groundwork of, of tradition laying there. That's going to, that's going to be great. Was there a lot of inertia that you had to overcome or like we took over program in 1998 that had had one winning season in 18 years I think they'd been 0 and 10 the year before we got there and there was just this stagnant. big concrete ball of football program that just was stagnant. It wasn't wanting to move. And it took a lot of energy to get over that inertia. But once we got that ball rolling, it took on a life of itself. What was the levels of resistance that you had to overcome?
Travis McClain: It was minimal to be completely honest. were I was really fortunate because that, you know, when coach brows was here, everybody loved coach brows. I love coach brows. Why would you not? Right. And then his predecessor was one of my teammates. So it, nothing changed. Right. The, the, the ship was being rode in the same direction. And then when change did happen and it didn't go the way that people wanted, right. They're super open to, to something new. But that something new was coming from something that they perceived to be familiar because I had played for Coach Briles. I will never claim to be Coach Briles. There are certain things about him as a coach that I can never live up to. And there's also certain aspects to his style of coaching that don't fit my personality. But I had a warm introduction to the whole community because of that connection. And so they were fired up just with the idea. So anything that we introduced, if we did it in an environment that it didn't matter if it was hard, but it was done by people who the tone and the message was that of care, they were all in. my first,
Paul Horne: board. Yeah.
Travis McClain: when I got hired, I spent the first week, I said four days or three days. I got hired on a Monday night. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, guys, I'm just here. I'm a fly on the wall. will, I'm not going to talk to anybody till Thursday. I will introduce myself and talk to you if you come up, but keep operating as as you have been. I want to evaluate the coaches. I want to evaluate the kids. I want to see where we are. And I did and I told him next Monday. You need to be in the weight room. You need to be in the turf room at 620 because we're starting at 630 and your world is going to change. It's going to be completely different. And nobody was late. We had almost 100 % attendance and we wore those kids out and and they smiled and took a drink of water and said, see you tomorrow.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And to me, that was something that you're immediately like, okay, but is this just new car smell? Is this the honeymoon phase? And it never did. It never wavered. Because each time we introduced a new face, each time we officially added somebody to the staff, they added to the environment positively.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And when they added to the environment and positively, the kids became more entrenched in it because there was more of that personable expectation. It's not just, the new head coach, it's the new linebackers coach. It's the new O-line coach. It's the new DC. That's my position coach. That person's gonna know my first name, my last name, my home address, my cell phone number, my little sister's name. He's gonna know what I'm allergic to, cuz he's probably gonna buy food. He's gonna
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: have a cabinet up here where he's feeding me snacks to make sure that I can make weight. He gives a crap about me 24 seven. Those were the people that I was very focused on bringing into our staff. And I got extremely lucky because they all are. And it takes so much pressure off of me because I know that they care about the right things and they care about the kids and they're gonna push them and they're gonna hold them accountable. And I firmly believe that the community that we're in, that's what they were looking for. They just, yes, run our kids, lift our kids, hold them accountable, do hard things, just make sure that they know you give a crap. And if you do, they'll...
Paul Horne: Yeah, was gonna say the final phrase there would love our kids, right? Yeah.
Travis McClain: 100 % and as long as they know that you will and you do those kids will run through a brick wall for you
Paul Horne: Yeah, I like that. I had an opportunity to go down to Judson. I think it's down in San Antonio.
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: A friend of a friend, we were down there for probably a coaches convention and one of the guys that we coached with went to school with one of the guys who was the head coach at Judson at the time and invited us in to see their mat program in the off season. And a what you're talking about kind of sounds like the same thing, man. Those kids would come, that bell would ring for activity period. And those kids were ripping down the hallway so that they could get there and get changed and get out on the mats. And one was they didn't want to get, they didn't want to be late. The punishment for being late was worse than what they were getting ready to go through as was. But, the other thing was they were, they loved it, man. Those guys were all about the hard work and I envision that in my mind how you're, you're describing your program. Now it looks like that in my mind. And it's a cool thing to witness when you see the bell ring and there's 150 football players sprinting through the hallway and to get into the locker room and change and get into the mat room on time. And it sounds like that enthusiasm is, there for you guys at Mount Vernon. Coach, we're getting ready to wind down here. got a couple, couple questions, two fun questions I'll ask here at the end, but the, the third to last question, often slimy. We talked about this a little bit before we started our characters and funny guys. And I hope your offensive line coaches is, has that character aspect to him too. It sounds like he works hard and plays hard. Hopefully that's a component to his character. any funny stories to illustrate that you either played with guys or you've experienced as a head coach or an assistant coach as an offensive coordinator, any kind of stories that would illustrate how funny the offensive line guys are as a unit.
Travis McClain: Well, one thing that for sure comes up is so when we were in Waco, the locker room at our at our on campus facility was was aisles. and it's there's a hierarchy, right, you get the single digit row. Okay,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: and that's anybody that's got a single digit. And then they're going to start grouping by positions and O line because everybody is, 50 through 79.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: they're all gonna be together even even if there was if there was a guy who there wasn't enough space but his number fit like they would change the order the equipment guys change the order so all those guys were next to each other because they were crazy and you couldn't put anybody else over there or they just gang up on them and there were two paths from my locker because I was on the road with the the receivers right I'd I graduated from walk on row to receiver row and I was on the row with the receivers and there were two paths to get to the equipment window where you throw your laundry in the chute. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt the shorter path was to go left and go down the O line row and because the chute was right there. I couldn't tell you what that row looked like. I didn't know that they had put in a vent mount for us to dry our cleats by last year. I didn't know that that existed because I refused to go down that aisle. Not because anybody was, I just knew, I knew that I had no idea what I'd be walking into and I didn't want to risk it. And just insanity. Correct.
Paul Horne: not physical harm, some sort of seeing something you didn't want to see or hearing something you didn't want to hear or yeah.
Travis McClain: Correct. Who's gonna, who's gonna talk about their lack of baby powder and the amount of chafing that they want to make sure that you witness with your own eyes, right? Who's gonna, right, who's gonna, who's gonna, who's
Paul Horne: Yeah. What does this look like? Smell this.
Travis McClain: gonna throw their 17 pound equipment or laundry clip to you and say throw it away and you're gonna get
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: slapped by a six pound shirt that has somebody else's, like all their sweat from the past four hours and it's gonna leak on your face after you took a shower. I don't want to deal with any of that. I'm gonna walk the long way home. I'm gonna stay on the street lights. I'm not going to take the shortcut and I'm going to see you guys tomorrow. See you guys at training table. And the fact that, one of my close friends who played offensive line, his nickname alone was Napoleon Dynamite, pretty much,
Paul Horne: well.
Travis McClain: encapsulated everything that was that that unit. But those are also some of those are the guys that like you knew that they were the group that if you earned their respect on the practice field. They, you're good, you're solid. And something comes up in real life that they don't even need you to finish the sentence. If it starts with, I need your help. They're gonna be there before you hang up the phone because yes,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm You got six two o'clock 2 a.m. Friends that you could call 2 a.m. And they'd be there for you
Travis McClain: correct.
Paul Horne: That's a great, I like that not taking a shortcut, walking the long way home. That's a great way to put
Travis McClain: Correct.
Paul Horne: it. Yeah, because who knows what you're gonna see here, smell, be forced to taste or whatever. It's not, yeah, how long has this dip cup been sitting here?
Travis McClain: Who's growing what in the top of their locker? All those things. Mm-hmm. Correct.
Paul Horne: Is there any mold on top of this dip right here? I can't see. Yeah, I like that, that's a great story. Second to last question here, pizza topping, go to pizza topping.
Travis McClain: I'm super simple. am, if it's New York style, I lean cheese and then if I want to get crazy, I'll go pepperoni. I am, I'm very much in that, I love simple. I've eaten, I've eaten pizza the same way for over 30 years. And you know, if I, if I venture to a Supreme, that's... That's a nuanced one off that better be because it got rave reviews from somebody else. But if it fits just me and I'm making a phone call and I'm something up, I want New York style and I want it cheese or pepperoni.
Paul Horne: And what restaurant? You have favorite pizza place?
Travis McClain: Pizza place, so here in town, Milano's is the go-to. I will tell you that in my humble opinion, there is no finer pizza than a slice that you get from one of the window places in Austin after the sun goes down.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: Those pizzas hit different for whatever reason.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: I'll let you fill in the gaps.
Paul Horne: Well, I'll be, I'm to be heading down that way a little bit. My daughter's down there at Fort Hood. her and her husband are down there. So I'll be heading that way probably the summer. I hope to get down to Austin and, and I'll have to check out, check out those window places down there in Austin and see how it goes.
Travis McClain: Well, make sure that you, whenever you're heading down there, make sure you schedule early and stop by the mothership. Catch a comedy
Paul Horne: yeah.
Travis McClain: show at Joe Rogan's.
Paul Horne: that is a hundred percent on the, on the things to do list. My, just had one daughter that left, left down there and my other daughter just is she's on her way there. So, no, Nolanville, I think just, just, kind of Southwest
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: of Waco there and Nolanville and, and my other, I don't know, my daughter's house is still down. I can't remember what the name of the clean clean. That's where
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: she is. so I had one daughter who has a house in clean another one in Nolanville. The clean daughter just moved up to Fort Sill though. So, but I'll be heading down that way. I'm definitely going hit the mothership and definitely get some pizza going. And then my last question, coach, you're getting ready to go down the tunnel. You can go back to your playing days. There's probably two ways to answer this now. I'm guessing, but go back to your playing days. You're going to take those earbuds out and run down the tunnel and catch a pass from RG three out there on the field. And what are you listening to? What's in the earbuds? What's your lock in song there?
Travis McClain: Man, one of my good friends, one of my old teammates, Stacey Williams will love this. But the two songs that 100 % we're gonna be listening to, if it's 2010 or 2011, and I've got headphones in and I'm about to go play a football game, I'm gonna listen to Mo City Don by Zero, and then I'm gonna listen to South Side the Realist by Big Tuck. So we're gonna
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: get a little bit of Dallas and a little bit of Houston, and then we're gonna go get ready to win.
Paul Horne: You guys did a lot of that too. Was, was coach Acuff there when you were there? Yeah. Okay.
Travis McClain: He was, Coach Aykof was there. That's my guy.
Paul Horne: I, Chris and I, I met Chris when he was, he might've been a restricted earnings coach or GA at Penn State when I was working to Penn State football camps back before all the, all the bad stuff happened to Penn State and, and he was the defensive line GA with, Coach I can't remember who the coach Johnson. I don't remember who the defense line coach was Larry Larry Johnson. Larry Johnson Up there so I'd go to work the Penn State football camps in the summertime and earn some money to pay bills and met Chris This is probably 2000 Gosh 2002 1 2 3 4 somewhere around there So this is
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: long long time ago and what a great do what a great coach to a phenomenal great defensive line coach Yes, yes
Travis McClain: motor guy he's he's full tilt 24 7
Paul Horne: 100%. Yeah. With that short like Marine cut hair and,
Travis McClain: Yep.
Paul Horne: and, uh, I hope he still got here. I haven't seen Chris. I've talked to, I've texted Chris a few times over the years. We, we touch base every once in a while, but, I haven't seen him probably. It's probably been seven or eight years since I've seen him last. Has your, did your pregame routine switch as a coach? Are you still listening to the music beforehand?
Travis McClain: yeah, I am listening to music but the playlist got shorter because the everything else right like it started in Salina. We taped everybody's ankles and the coaches helped tape ankles. So
Paul Horne: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I'd go in, I had my three kids that I would tape and that was when I would be able to listen to music. And then when I would transition out of that, it would be to go last minute, game plan check. Do I have? I'm not an air raid guy, but I'm a big believer in the Mike Leach, like Andy Reid approach of the note card, like keep it simple. So anything
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that I needed, it was going to be on that note card. And if I couldn't fit it on the note card, I probably didn't need it.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And so I'd go make sure that my note card was ready, start getting dressed, and then we're rolling into our pregame routine, which I'm heavily involved in the pregame routine. And so I've I kind of pushed. I don't need, 90 minutes. of pregame routine, I pushed it back into trying to get it into like a 20, 25 minute window. That way it happens quick, it's efficient, step on the field. When first group heads out to start warming up, like I'm locked and loaded, got a whistle on a stopwatch, ready to roll.
Paul Horne: Did you get to put any requests on the stadium music playlist while you're out there throwing the ball around on the field?
Travis McClain: So we build our own playlist. We have what's called Game Time Radio. But we can build our own playlist. it's a collaboration of the young coaches and the seniors. I
Paul Horne: Do you get a did you get a song on there? Do you get one selection at all?
Travis McClain: saved mine because I gave them that. And then I went full dictator on our entrance. So we
Paul Horne: okay. Give me the entrance then. What's the entrance look like?
Travis McClain: shut down the lights. Hold on. So we shut down the lights in our stadium and then we have a walk. We walk from out the weight room in the dark to our tunnel. And when we walk. We it starts with the purge the the air horn
Paul Horne: Okay. huh.
Travis McClain: and then I made. I gotta find it, sorry. Where is it? No. crap, I can't find it. But I made a, it's got the purge and it goes straight into, I believe, Metallica. And so
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: it's timed up. We've got a bunch of parents that are standing right at the tunnel that have our flags and the smoke bombs and all the things. And the kids know when they hear the bass drop, they run out and the press box hits the sparkle on the lights and it's a whole production. But it doesn't take as much effort as it sounds like because of modern technology. So.
Paul Horne: Yeah. Well, that's for now. That's, that's a, a cool entrance that you have it all timed up. You have to practice your interest. You can take the guys out and practice it once or twice to make sure they're timed up right.
Travis McClain: So the coaches I did, I timed the walk, right?
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: And so it's all based off of like the first two kids, right? The first two or three that like walk out of the door. If you're one of the cool guys that you take your time, well, you don't get to be a part of the base drop, that's on you. But I timed it, the walk from that door to the tunnel, and then how long they need to sit in the tunnel before they run out. And so. The PA got the press box guys know that when the first person comes out, they're gonna count to three and hit play. And then the first kids know once they get in when. when they hear me like tap on the helmet or they hear a certain part of the song, they know they're going to break out and take off. And so the helmet flies open, right? Like the entrance flies open as the kids break out and it's right when the bass drops and all the things. So I didn't want to like spend a whole day of like, we got to our entrance down. It's like, why don't you just focus on scoring touchdowns? Right. But I did try and put a little bit of effort. we looked, we wasn't a ragtag promotion.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I was gonna say you got it. That's right. You don't want to look like a bunch of like runaway jailbreak guys coming out of there just going every which way but loose and not you want to, it's got to, it's got to serve a purpose, right? It's all
Travis McClain: for sure.
Paul Horne: got to serve a purpose. Well, coach, I'm so thankful. I really enjoyed our conversation and it's so much, it's so fun for me to hear the other perspectives from around the country, to hear what's the priority. You are in a unique position. There aren't a whole lot of athletic director head coaches. I mean, there's some still out there, but in our part of the country here, the athletic director head coach job's not, that's not something that's happening in the public school system. That's maybe a private school probably if it's happening. So it's unique. I definitely wanted to chat you up and hear that, the nuances and the challenges that you have there. Last thing before we go, I know that you do some podcasts and yourself. Why don't you give me your... any of your socials or your podcast address if people are interested to hear more about what you're doing and consume more of Mount Vernon football, where can they find that?
Travis McClain: Yeah, so our podcast is called the quick six. I say our I used to have a co host. He's he's big time SEC quarterback coach now. So, I just kind of stand in front of my camera and ramble, but it's called the quick six.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: We're on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Our socials handles are quick six pod. Q, U, I, C, K, S, I, X, P, D and. trying to an episode every week i don't make any promises i don't have a backlog i'd try and keep it pretty current so things that happen i'd just step in front of my camera and say this is what's been going on in my world and here's some things that people said they want to hear me talk about my perspective so it's not like a live interactive but it's something that i rely heavily on that doesn't or so people that actually listen it's it's just my modern day coaching journal. It is successes, failures, frustrations. Here's how the dynamic is changing in the coaching world and the profession of Texas. Here's what I'm hearing from other states. You guys think we have it bad. Let me tell you about what they're doing over here. here's some hurdles that we're dealing with. Are you dealing with the same? And guys share with me, same thing, successes, failures, frustrations. And it allows me to be they're out there into the internet world voice of, this sucks, right? Or this is awesome and let me tell you about it. And like I said, try and post once a week and it's lighthearted. I'll embarrass my kids and show clips of them, whether it's my four year old daughter singing Jolene, or it's my 14 year old in her quest to have TikTok win her a golf cart, whatever it may be. So we talk about... school ranks and how high school ranks affects college ranks and how the NFL is affecting high school and all the things in between.
Paul Horne: Yeah. And it's changing so quick on the high school level with all the stuff that's happening on the college level. NILs and the money that's out there and now they're trying to bring that down into the high school level. It just makes me sick thinking about all that stuff that's that could happen in the traditional aspect of growing up in a community, wanting to play for that high school, knowing who your coach is going to be and showing up at that first day of high school football practice that you've spent. eight years as a little kid going to the games, hearing about the football program, seeing the football players around town, all that stuff's being threatened right now with all the NIL and it's seeping down into the high school levels, the absolute most ridiculous idea that I've ever heard anybody propose. so I hate that for you guys as coaches and particularly as athletic directors, you're to have to maybe deal with some of that stuff. I don't know if that's going to impact your program at all, but it is starting to show its ugly head down here in Florida and I'm not a big fan of it, as you can tell, but it is what it is. So we're to have to have a plan of attack to deal with it as coaches and former coaches. so good luck with that as you might have to come across that in your day to
Travis McClain: Yeah, we
Paul Horne: day ventures.
Travis McClain: Mount Vernon is is one of the places and they're all over the state. We can we call it community based sports, right? We this is this is a one horse town and people will move here. Absolutely. But we understand that the successes and the foundation of our program will come from those that grown within and. We are in a constant struggle of making sure that kids understand that, that's our program is based around the idea to give you every opportunity to be successful. But we're going to do it in ways that are going to make you uncomfortable. And if your response to discomfort is to run, well, I'm going to tell you that that person may say one thing, but what they're not telling you is the long term effect of that problem solving approach. And and we're seeing it at yes, the local level, but we're really blessed in the fact that the Texas High School Coaches Association does it. They are very involved with state level legislature and having those conversations with with representatives in Austin to thwart off the attempt to infiltrate community based and public based sports with NIL and any type of transfer portal and one time only and things of that nature because they understand that you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: And Texas is extremely unique in the environment that the UIL has created. And we understand that change is inevitable, but that doesn't mean we have to give up. And we just have to let the Wild West win. despite the fact that the dynamic is changing and that it's changed even in the 12 years that I've been doing it, it's still... very unique compared to most of the United States and we need to fight every day to make sure that we maintain that unique aspect and we maintain those things that have kept it special.
Paul Horne: Well, I'm in total agreement with that and it's good to hear that. So well, as we sign off here, remember if you want to check coach T Mac out on his quick six pod, please do that. He's got some good stuff there. Really wise man here, given insight into the football world and doing a great job with his program. look forward to seeing Mount Vernon out there in the state finals next year. It'd be cool. Cool. Be able to say, I, I knew it here first. I knew he was going to be successful here first. So.
Travis McClain: That's right. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
Paul Horne: Well, I appreciate you very much. So remember as we sign off here, you master the trench, you'll win the war. Have a great night.
Travis McClain: doing very well thank you for having me
Paul Horne: Hey, this is exciting. I have five kids and at this point in time, three of them have spent time in Texas at Fort Hood and are up in Wichita Falls at Air Force Base Shepherd. So I've driven through your town a couple of times, I think, on the way out to visit those guys, you being there in Eastern Texas. But first question for you, did you always want to be a football coach? How did you get into the coaching aspect of it?
Travis McClain: I had no idea what I wanted to be to be completely honest. I am I love sports grew up playing them all got into high school really focused on football and baseball and I had an offensive coordinator who was our receivers coach when I was in high school that planted the original seed and he never really pushed too hard but coach glaze told me. this is something you might ought to consider. I'm 17 years old. How serious are you going to take a statement like that? I'm to go to college, live the greatest life I've ever had, and then I'll figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life way after that. And when I got to Waco, when I got to Baylor, I ended up in a receiver room with a great group of guys who I'm still very close with, have a super unique bond and friendship with, but with a position coach and Dino Babers, who again, watered that same seed and put
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: the but he didn't do it directly. did a lot of these things of putting onus on me in meeting prep and would ask my input on personnel scouting of opponents and things of that nature. But it was done in a very informal way. So I had no idea that it was some sort of evaluation test. Does he enjoy this type behavior? And I spent most of my collegiate career as a whole under the impression that I got the chance to do this for five more years than 99 % of the country. So when these five years are over, hey, we had a good run, pack it up. It's time to lock into the next phase, which is family, which is work, which is paying bills, et cetera, et cetera.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: So when I graduated, I got a job for a Fortune 500 company. I was working. I was doing what I was supposed to. I was starting to have some relative success. and I was not happy. was relatively miserable. But I gave it that one year. I gave it the full 365 that I had promised and I just decided that I'm not getting any younger and if I really want to go pursue this and see if it's something that's long-term, sustainable, I need to do it right now.
Paul Horne: So then you took the vow of poverty and went into the coaching and teaching world and got out of it.
Travis McClain: Correct, correct. was under the impression originally that, I'm going to go pay my dues and do these things that young coaches do, but I feel like I still have a decent network at the college level between the guys that I played with, the coaches that I had worked with, and I had actually had a conversation right before the Alamo Bowl with Coach Babers because he had gotten the Eastern Illinois job. We had had a very brief encounter. him inquiring if I would be interested in going up there to be the receivers coach. Timing didn't work out. I strung out my fifth year like a very responsible 22 year old does stay in school as long as you can don't ever graduate.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And because of that, it didn't work out. I took that as a sign that you're not supposed to be a coach. But when I went back, when I went to work in in the corporate world, when I decided I was going to re venture into coaching and sports and football, I still had dreams of jumping back into the division one ranks. I was going to be a big time OC. I was going to call these plays that scored all these touchdowns, I, I. And then I went to a place like Salina and my whole perspective on the profession and what's important and all of those things really shifted.
Paul Horne: When you were considering the level of where you wanted to coach, high school, college, pro, Europe, whatever, some level, what was your decision making process? Did you consider the amount of required moves at the college level or at the professional level and the instability that those jobs have at those levels? Was that something that entered in your decision making?
Travis McClain: It really didn't and it's part of its blissful ignorance. I didn't know any better when those guys got to Waco. They were in the time that I was making this decision. They were still in Waco. They they had only ever. I only knew coaches. I only had personal relationships with coaches who had moved for success, so I hadn't seen any of that. The everything that went on that that led to the exit of coach Brows and his staff from from Baylor hadn't happened yet, and so it those thoughts never really crossed my mind. I spent. When I originally left the corporate world, I actually went and enrolled in master's program at Tarleton and I GA'd for one season with the football team. was still division two at the time. And I saw that as this is my foot back in the door. I'm just biding my time for a few months until I can knock on the door of these people that I know, division one opportunities to go in as a GA analyst, QC, whatever it's gonna be. And I got some... Bad advice, I heard some bad advice in my time in Stephenville of the opportunity to go from a Division 2 to a Division 1 isn't there. They're not looking to hire those guys. And that's just factually off base. It's not true at all. Division 2 guys get Division 1 jobs all the time. It
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: happens every day. Juco guys get Division 1 jobs all the time. But because of that and based off of what the market was, I saw that I could go make more money right now. at a high school program and I would still be young enough in my network I felt like would still be strong enough that if I was I could do one year there and still make that jump back to the division one. had teammates that had done it Clifton Odom. who's now the special teams coordinator at Mississippi State, went and coached for a year at his alma mater in Arlington Martin, and then made the jump back to the Division I level. And there were some other guys that had done it as well. So I knew the opportunity was there. So I went, I just was going about it a different way. I thought I've kind of always been a little bit of a gypsy. I'd moved
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: a lot. And so the movement part was exciting to me, load the truck up and drive to the next place and, throw all your boxes in an apartment and... and go coach ball. And then when I got to Salina and I saw a completely different perspective from the high school experience I had and the coaching perspective from what I had ever really been around, it was one that I started to alter how I viewed all of these pieces.
Paul Horne: What was that? What was that big thing that you saw? What was the big change that opened your eyes? The aha moment there.
Travis McClain: The biggest one was is that it took some time. took year two into year three. But I started to realize how little it was about me. And that I was a cog in a wheel and the wheel was much bigger than the game. It was much bigger than the job. It was much bigger than that. The reason I was so excited to be in this profession was because I had been around people who were excited to be in the profession and they made me feel excited when I was a kid. They told me, hey, you're good at this. or hey, you could be good at this and all we need you to do is X, Y and Z and then you can be even better and you can have all of these cool, successful moments, right? And when I got to experience those, they made me feel really good. They made me feel important and they made me feel like I could do anything and all of these things. I got to be around people who had completely different backgrounds than me and I got to become really close with them and rely on them. And that's what this whole picture was about. It wasn't about me and the plays that I was going to call and the touchdowns that I was going to tell those kids to go score. It was going to be about those kids and it was going to be about submitting to something way bigger than yourself and understanding that I already felt that way because that's why I was excited. I just needed to to be in an environment that promoted that as the main message. Yes, we
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: want to win. Yes, we want to do these things. But more important than that, we want you to be freaking awesome people. And so when that shift happened, then I understood that I don't have to go chase this all over the country and I don't have to go chase this on Saturday mornings. And I can be in a place that I get to do those things on a Friday night in a community. And I can do it in a place where I might be able to plant some roots, raise my family in a really cool environment and experience some of the things that I got to experience in my childhood because I didn't come from a coaching family and I got to stay in one town my entire life. And there were aspects of that that were really important to me that as I got older and I wanted a family and I wanted kids, that I wanted to make sure I was giving those people, my family the same opportunity.
Paul Horne: Yeah, that's I have the similar ideas as you touching that three dimensional coaching aspect of of what you bring to the table as a coach, the demands, the bonds that you create, the push in the kid to go farther than what they think they can and then celebrating that those little victories and even the big victories and accomplishments that they might have. I was always concerned that if I I feel like if you go to that next level. If go to that collegiate level, you have, you're on a carousel and you always have to be looking to jump to the next biggest carousel. You always have to be looking for the next bigger ride. And so consequently I was afraid of me having kids and like my biggest fear was to have two or three, four kids and end up having five, which is, if you have one, you can have five. That's what I always say, but people don't believe me. You have a couple, you have a few yourself. So know that you understand what it, what it feels like there, but I didn't want my kids to have one person. have a hometown in Georgia. And then the next kid is born in Tennessee and the next kid's born in Indiana. I didn't want to have five different hometowns for my kids. I just felt like that would be something that would detract from the family. And so it pulled me away from the college ranks pretty quick. as far as when I was trying to make that decision process as to where to get into the coaching aspects at, but I like, I like what you're saying there. There's, there's a bigger purpose. You're, you're coaching with a bigger purpose than Then winning games. Of course you want to win games. makes your platform bigger. It gives you more credibility. It gives you the people are willing to give you their ear and give you the time and the stage and the microphone to speak into. And so you want to win because they're not inviting a whole bunch of one in nine coaches to come speak or guys aren't going to spend a whole lot of time listening to that one in nine coach. So the winning is important in that regard, but the platform that you're, you're teaching those kids how to be young men, how to be, you're prolonging the, their respect for the authority in their lives because at some point they're going to have to be that authority for other people in their lives. And that's something that you got to learn. And if you don't have a good teacher, it's hard to learn that on your own. But I think coaches and football coaches in particular are valuable aspect to our culture as far as putting young men and making them do things that, you nobody wants to go out and run when it's a hundred degrees, but there you are. And they don't want to do it, but they look over their shoulder and I see you standing there. with your whistle around your neck and they're going to go do it because coach said, the most powerful words in high school coach said, and that goes across your athletes and your students and anybody else in the school for that matter. So I think that's a, I think that's a very valuable insight to have. Coach, I was listening to you on one of your podcasts and I don't remember what the title of it was, but I caught a clip of it this afternoon and in it, you said this quote and I'm read it so I don't get it wrong. Life is not all about football, but football is all about life. think that applies in what you were just talking right there. Talk to me about that quote. Where'd you get that quote and sounds like you embody that when you go out on the field.
Travis McClain: I heard that from a coach and of course I'm gonna draw a blank on his name but I heard that from a coach at THSCA a few years ago and even at the point where I was newly married, newborn, all these things, I was in a place where I didn't fully embody and comprehend that and it's 100 % true and I think that there's a duality where there's a portion of the coaching world that doesn't understand that. And there's a large portion of the parent, kid community world that doesn't know that at all.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: We don't do these things just to make our head rattle. We do these things because I can sit here and walk you through a 90 minute practice script and explain to you, here's the reason we do it in football and here's the reason we do it in life. This period correlates to this stage of life and this period correlates to this stage of life. And there is no other dynamic. where you get that in such a large audience. There's no other sport that requires so many people to participate to be successful. There's no other sport where you have to rely on so many people to have success. And it would be a disservice to my program, to our staff, to our kids, to our community if I didn't keep that at the core of our decision making. We are doing hard things and we are doing uncomfortable things and you the parent may not enjoy seeing your kid have to suffer through hard things, but I can guarantee you, I can walk you through every step of the way why this suffrage is necessary, why this level of submission is necessary and how it's going to help your child in the future. Football is the greatest example or the biggest stage for that because it requires so many people, but you definitely get it. in basketball, in baseball, in track, there's all these other sports, you still get those aspects, just not as on as big of a scale as you do in the game of football. And I 100 % believe that football is is 100 % all about life. But life if life is 100 % all about football, then you're going to miss out on so many great things. And we want
Paul Horne: Yeah, you're out of whack.
Travis McClain: to make sure that when we have you in that football environment, we are pouring into you nonstop and investing into you, the football player and the person because we play a guarantee of 10 games a year. Not counting playoffs that can go to 16, to scrimmages, whatever culmination of numbers you want to look at. At most, you practice football for 19 weeks. A year is 52. So
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: if all I care about is what happens in those nights, if everything I'm investing in, is to fulfill those 19 weeks, then I am wasting all of these opportunities I have to make these people better people, to make these kids future high quality men in their communities. If I'm not investing in our coaches to make them the best version of themselves, then I'm doing them a diss... It's not just at the kid level, it's at the staff level. Our program has to be entrenched with the understanding that... We're gonna play great football and we're gonna coach these kids and we're gonna give them everything we have to be both the best football player they can and the best person they can.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I used to tell my kids that, what do you think Tom Brady's bedroom looks like? He's the best quarterback ever. Right. I mean, you could have debates, but let's, let's just, let's just give him that award. Do you think his bed's sloppy? You think there's clothesline all over the floor? Do you think he leaves his shoes out? I think as you do one thing, you do all things. And I think that is a, what you're saying there, I think lends itself to the, to my, my approach right there. And then this next question, how many kids have yet have come back to you you don't quite have as many. years around the sun as I do underneath my belt. But I'm sure you've had these kids come back and they say, coach, and you're like, Hey, great job. You did this. And they're like, it's not as hard as such and such week, fill in the blank, whoever it is, or that off season, that winter conditioning or camp two days, whatever you want to call it, right? Fill in the blank. There's something that they're going to relate back to that you were directly responsible for that pushed them. That was the hardest thing in their mind. It's the hardest thing that they've ever gone through. in their mind and they're going to compare everything else for the rest of their life. That's the benchmark that they're going to use to compare what's This isn't as hard as camp. I wasn't as tired as that day. You got pissed out. It made us run until we threw up, all those things that are, that were difficult in their life. Now they start to pale in comparison from the physical, how many times you can go out after you stop playing football, whether that's as a 23 year old, fifth year senior like you and I were, um, or if that's a 17 year old, high school kid, or if that's a 35 year old NFL player, nothing after that's going to be as hard. Unless you go into the military, you're Pat Tillman and you're over in Afghanistan or something like that, nothing's going to be as hard as those days on the football field. And I think you bring up a good point there as a, as a football player and as a coach, you know what you got to get out of these guys. And it's not just for that game. It is for the game when it's, two in the morning and the baby's crying, you gotta go change the diaper and you gotta get up and go to work the next day. these guys, they're tired and don't come to school and they had eight hours of sleep. What's that going to be like when you have demands that you can't ignore pulling on you when, you least want to do it? the discipline of doing what you got to do when you have the least amount of desire to do it. That's, I think that's a big muscle that you guys as football coaches and as I, as a former football coach are putting ourselves into that situation. So you're at a small town, right? I'm assuming that Mount Vernon is a smaller town, a smaller district.
Travis McClain: Yeah, we're about 2,500.
Paul Horne: Okay. And so some of the challenges that go into that, how many kids do you have in your football program?
Travis McClain: So our school operates somewhere between about 425 to 450 students in the high school. Somewhere between 15 and 1600 from pre-k through 12. In our program, We are anticipating in the football program to have about 104 in high school next year. So roughly 25 % of the high school student body, over 50 % of the boys in the high school, we anticipate playing. And that is, it's a unique situation for me because I've never been, I've set in on interviews for head jobs and AD jobs and said, you're a numbers driven. If that's what you want out of this, I'm not your guy. Because
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I'm not gonna lower my standards so more people can be a part of it. And we're just extremely fortunate. I've been very blessed and the coaches who entrusted me to come be a part of our staff and the kids that we have, that they've responded in a way that even though the bar is very high, it's done in an environment where the motivation is breeding excitement. And more people want to be a part of it. So we anticipate between our three teams at the high school level next year to have about 104 kids.
Paul Horne: phenomenal. But big band also.
Travis McClain: Ish it's a I wouldn't say bit. It's the it's a very good size band for our size high school
Paul Horne: So you're talking 30 to 50 kids probably between cheerleaders and not chillers, but flagline girls and band members
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: and all that. And then another, how many cheerleaders? 20, 30 cheerleaders. How many? 26. So
Travis McClain: We have 26 high school cheerleaders. 26. Between JV and varsity.
Paul Horne: I mean, you're talking, you darn near have half the school on the field Friday night or Thursday night, whenever you guys are playing. you have half the high school involved in a football week. Is that safe to say?
Travis McClain: Absolutely,
Paul Horne: Yeah, that's great.
Travis McClain: absolutely. And we're sitting in a situation where we've got our AV department has for the past few years, they do live streams of the games. And so they have some pieces that they're involved with as well. But yes, we over half of the student body on a weekly basis is in some way, hand in the cookie jar involved in a Friday night production.
Paul Horne: I love that. That is awesome. That is such a cool thing. And then are you the small town feel like everybody's going to game, everything shuts down for the game on Friday night?
Travis McClain: Yes, absolutely. And that was one of the things that really drew us to the idea of being in Mount Vernon is my wife grew up in Salina in the 2000s when they were winning back to back to back to back state championships. And then again in 2005 and 2007. And Salina was a small town that absolutely shut down. Last one out of town shut off the lights environment. We were very much that way this year. We had a great level of attendance week to week for our home games. We traveled really well to our away games. And it wasn't just the Timmy's mom and dad are going. We started to see a level of excitement because I think the kids were having a great time and we were putting together some pretty decent football. And. people wanted to see what was different about our staff and our staff
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: is elite. mean, bar none, know guys say it all the time, but I truly believe that we have one of, if not the best staffs across the board in the entire state because of the level of commitment they have to every kid that's in our program.
Paul Horne: Which leads me to one of my other questions is about your staff. In a small school, typically those small schools, you're borrowing guys from the community. Do you have a lot of guys on staff? Are you taking guys from the community to come in and coach from outside?
Travis McClain: So public school Texas is a little bit different than a lot of other states because to be a coach for any extracurricular, you have to be an employee of the school. And so
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: from a football standpoint, we operate with 12 football coaches, including myself, and all of them are employed. within the school, but they
Paul Horne: Nice.
Travis McClain: also coach at least two if not three sports. So these guys are with these kids year round.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: Our head track coach is our defensive coordinator. He also multiple times this year drove the bus for junior high basketball away games. And not
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: by force. It was this is a need and he goes, I'll do that. No big deal. Our offensive coordinator is an O line guy. He's a former AD. Same situation. He coaches football and track. He drove the bus for some junior high away games. These were things that they were in need and guys were excited about the opportunity to pour back into the kids because we have great kids and it makes it a lot easier to do those things because of the investment we see they make in the workouts. and in the stuff they're doing on their own. So we want to continue to pour into that cup until it's overflowing because of the excitement that the kids are showing.
Paul Horne: And in a small school, I was at a very similar size school in Georgia, I don't know, one of my first couple of years teaching and coaching, and those kids have to do everything. They're the lifeblood of the school. They're in the student government, they're doing the science club, they're playing football, they're doing the homecoming parade, and they're probably doing Boy Scouts or in the church, volunteering at the church or whatever, and have a part-time job. They're doing 10 different things, which is super impressive. Do you find that being the case there with your guys at Mount Vernon?
Travis McClain: It's the expectation we we will not we will not sit around and allow the specialty to to entrench itself within our the culture we have in our field house the expectation is that at a minimum our kids will play two sports and We have six kids right now that are on our football roster that are in one act play my first spring here. We had three of our top end returning starters high level expectation kids that were in young leaders of tomorrow and they're going to meet with these, business official or these community
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: city officials or these corporate level employees at such and such business and starting to understand what their expectation would be as a community member that's has the influence that they're expected to have and we want them doing all those things. We're also not remiss on the fact that if they're going to do those things, we can't just have a blanket expectation of routine. All we expect is that when the routine is going to be broken, you communicate and to me, That's a huge part of growing up. It's not good enough just to say, I wasn't here yesterday because of XYZ. No, you knew you weren't going to be here. Just tell me. Let me know. Because the sooner you let me know, the sooner I can alter not just my expectations, but the schedule for you
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: to be able to maximize your day. You need to go do that during that time. Sweet. Come in at this time. Knock out your Lyft. Right? Meet me after school. I'll be up here. drive by my house, come grab my keys, you can come lift. All of these things are, we're perfectly capable of them. We just have to entrench those kids and do it all, but do it all at a high level and have great communication so we can take care of everything we need to.
Paul Horne: Yeah. And that's crazy as a, as a coach, that's, wanted to know which one of my offensive players, if somebody was absent or if they're hurt or if they're sick or they got run to the airport with their mom or dad, whatever is going on that alters my, my game plan, my game plan preparation. If we're running a scout period. And I know that I have three plays designed for this specific kid to be on the field and he's going to not be at practice. I'm not going to put. I'm not putting the second string or third string kid in to get a rep doing what the first string kid needs to do. I'm just cutting those plays out. We're not even going to do those for those guys because they're not going to be, if I have to put the third string kid on the field during the game, I'm for sure not calling the play I designed to go to the first string guy and letting him run it. So that was something that I wanted to know for just to be efficient with my time and my energy and my reps. Cause you only get, and, and which leads by my next question here, but as, as an offensive coordinator, I'm planning on like 110. good scout reps during the week and we two platoon. So I'm assuming at the smaller school, are you guys two platoon or are you guys going both ways?
Travis McClain: We two platooned mostly this year, which
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: was new for me. We had never really done it when I was at Salina, even though we had had the success and really we had the numbers we probably could have. But we also were aware enough that if something happened, our backup strong safety was probably our starting receiver. And so we needed to maximize practice to make sure that he was prepared. If it happened in week seven in a game that we got a
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: win to win district, it's not just like, all right, I've got five minutes on the sideline. Remember inside leverage, get hands on, don't lunge. now go cover him, right? We don't want to put ourselves in that situation. So we spent a lot of time with a split practice where everybody was doing offense and defense. And then my first head job at Rivercrest was at a very small school and we had to. We had eight guys that started both ways. And so this was the first year that we didn't do that. We said, let's just let's sit down early. And when we feel like we have the best understanding of our roster, let's pick and choose. And we had three kids. four kids throughout the year that played on both sides of the football, but they never did it in a way that we had to change or alter our practice structure. It was, okay, I need Bryce in this period. Perfect. I will put it. I'll put something from an offensive standpoint where I don't need him that period and we can do something else and he can go down there. And because we kept the number low on the number of kids that we were sharing, it allowed us to maximize our efficiency and keep practice time shorter.
Paul Horne: Did that alter your approach to the season as a head coach and your organizing skills? Because that is a little bit different if you're not doing the split stuff and you're too platooning. Did you feel like you had a whole bunch of time now that got freed up?
Travis McClain: It actually created new opportunities for us to iron sharpens iron. We
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: did more good on good periods than probably anybody else at our level. And it was because we wanted to make, we knew that because both groups weren't having to do offense and defense every day, we knew that we were gonna, that alone limits the number of reps that are gonna be on their legs, that are gonna be the thud up and all of that. So we're going to maximize as we learn a new defense and a new offense with a new staff, we're going to maximize the quality of look reps that we get. So every day for either six, eight or 10 period, 10 minutes, our first O and our first D went against each other. That
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: doesn't mean they went to the ground. That doesn't mean that everything was, was exotic. DC would come to us and say, these are the things that I need to see, whether it was in card form or Hey, I need you to do it with tempo. So use our verbiage and just play fast. and hit power and then hit stretch and then hit quick game and then throw a deep shot right like though give me that structure and we'll just roll within our system but if it's a little bit more non-traditional or if it's completely different than what our kids do we'll huddle up we'll look at the scout card but it's going to be the ones and the reason it's going to be the ones is because they understand the expectation and they need the
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: defense to be good and we know that we've already saved their reps just through a practice length so let's take care of each other by being smart, but let's also give each other a great look.
Paul Horne: Yeah, we were excited about being able to platoon and hone technique. were, we were solid technique driven program, making sure that our guys had the latest technique and you know, takes those guys so many times, particularly upfront in order to be able to do those reps, develop that muscle memory. And if you're doing it on the split time there, they got so much memory in those muscles that they got to be able to do both ways that You can't get as complicated. You can't get as complex. And not that it's all about being complex. think simple is the best way to do it. If the kid's not thinking, he's just reacting, that's the level you want to get to. And I think the two platoon allows that to happen. Did you expand in your special teams at all? Did you pull out a whole bunch of special team, fill that extra time with special team reps or anything like that?
Travis McClain: We spent a lot of time with how we were gonna structure our days because of our school schedule and still make sure that we were taking care of business from a special team standpoint. we, during the football season, our kids lifted four, if not five times a week. And that was all done outside of school and practice time. We would do it before school. And then during the period, we would have some sort of light walkthrough and then a heavy. special teams emphasis. So that gives us a loan when you take out the get changed and transitional stuff that gives us 40 minutes of time to work with for four days when you look at Monday through Thursday. And if we spend Monday, we spend half of that on install walkthrough and then half on special teams. We've got 20 minutes of special teams and then we lower it to a cleanup walkthrough on Tuesday. Now we're getting 30 minutes of special teams Wednesday, all special teams. That's all we're doing. So we're putting in over an hour of special teams every week in preparation for the game, which allowed us to take that one thing off of our after school practice script.
Paul Horne: Yeah. So how long is your after school practice going? What's the length?
Travis McClain: We never, I never wanted to go over 90 minutes.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: And the biggest reason is because of the amount of things we had the opportunity, our job is to be efficient, their job is to give great effort. And if we can maximize the 53 minutes we get in the middle of the day during school, if we do that, there's no reason that we should go over 90. And really we should never go over 80. Between.
Paul Horne: So you're talking that's like what 15, 16, 17, 18, 18, five minute periods during practice? Yeah.
Travis McClain: So probably, I don't know, I've never been a period guy. What I've always done and what my defense coordinator and I did, we would sit down and say, okay, Monday is 85 minutes. what do you need and how long is it gonna be? We would try and mirror our period changes, our transitions to be the same, but sometimes they weren't. They would
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: do a tackling circuit, which meant they were on a 90 second whistle. We're doing pops, right? And that's a five minute period. So I would have, I have exterior period links that are five, seven, 11, eight,
Paul Horne: Right, right.
Travis McClain: and then I just make sure that the math adds up to whatever that number limit is. Yep.
Paul Horne: to when you need to service each other for whatever perimeter or inside drill, you're trying to get done with your ones, your one-on-one looks.
Travis McClain: for sure.
Paul Horne: That's really neat, that's unique. So your heavy walkthrough, that's a big part of your preparation with your guys is the walkthrough aspect of it.
Travis McClain: With our kids, I think that it's something that if done efficiently and coaches don't get long-winded, I think it's something
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that saves us lot of reps going into the practice. So if I can line up and say, hey, we use technology. I don't want to say that we're technologically advanced. That's not what I mean at all. But we use technology to our advantage. Our staff, I'm not going to ever expect my staff to come up on a Sunday and meet and do those things. You're a grown man. Do your job. We're going to Zoom. Sunday evening, we're
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: gonna walk through the game plan. We're gonna walk through the practice structure We're gonna walk through any hey, don't forget We got little kids night with we got to go to the peewee kickoff whatever on Tuesday We're gonna talk through those things on Sunday, but you stay home. Take care of your business at home Go to church, be with your kids do those things and just make sure you take care of business And then after that meeting I'm gonna record in a game plan install Our defensive coaches are gonna do their version of the same thing. I'm gonna walk them through Here's their primary alignments and this is all the scout team stuff that everybody's staff makes. Here's their primary alignments Here's their best players. Here's their strengths. Here's their weaknesses. Here's the new stuff. We're putting in this week Here's the signals that go with them Here's everything that we feel is new to you and it needs to be taken care of then I'm gonna attach it to a Google quiz It's gonna have four questions. The purpose of the Google quiz is to make sure that they One's gonna be from the first five minutes, one's gonna be from the second five minutes, one of them's gonna be from the last minute to make sure that they cover all bases, that they watch
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: the whole thing. It's not necessarily to test them, it's to engage their full attention span. So our primary walkthrough on Monday is going to address all of that stuff.
Paul Horne: And it's. Hold on, let me interrupt you there. Let me interrupt you for a second. Is that like a you're putting something like a huddle? You're doing like a huddle video type of thing or some other.
Travis McClain: So I record it through an app on my computer, and then I put it
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: in a Google Classroom that we create for the team.
Paul Horne: Okay. Okay. That's unique. have, I've never heard of that before, of someone doing it that way. I like that. That's a, okay. So I interrupt you go back to what you're, you're, you're putting your, your practice schedule there. You got to your Google quiz and pick up from that. just was curious about how you, what your format was.
Travis McClain: So we do, no, you're good, you're good. Once we, so the expectation, and we're gonna see him Monday morning. So I'll throw a pop quiz at him while they're lifting. Hey, what does this signal mean? And then when only one kid knows the answer, okay, you better know it by fifth period, because you know it's gonna be in the walkthrough. And so that way, we're speeding up that learning portion
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that takes up every Monday. And when we go to that walkthrough, I'm gonna cover everything that was in the install. What's their base alignment? Boom, four, three. What's their primary coverage? Cover three. Who's their who? Who do they roll down to the flats from the safety? It's going to be number five.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: OK, awesome. You guys watch. All right. Line up in black one. What does black one mean? Well, they should know because it was in the install guys go running.
Paul Horne: Right.
Travis McClain: And so we're we're just we're just checking. to make sure that they did their homework. And if they did their homework, it's going to speed up and eliminate some of those like, crap reps, right? Because every coach goes, you get a chance on Monday. And if you really like it, you get another chance on Tuesday. But if it's not good on Tuesday, you throw it out on Wednesday. And
Paul Horne: That's right.
Travis McClain: I want to make sure that I'm not going to put 15 things in the install. I'm going to put five. And if I only put five, I'm going to want all of them. So I want to give you every chance to be successful and understand what we're trying to accomplish. And so we're just using the walkthrough to reinforce what the install was and practice is going to cement what the walkthrough was.
Paul Horne: I love that approach. It's a very similar approach. didn't I like the technology aspect of it. Never thought of recording a video and having those guys watch it to expedite and hurry things up rather than we'd always do it in person, right after school. And we lifted four days a week, usually to do you guys lift on game days?
Travis McClain: We don't lift on game days. lift, but we do lift. Now we have kids that they'll go in there and they'll get a Muscle Beach lift in and hit their curls and stuff. But we lift, got to. But
Paul Horne: Gotta look good, Coach, you gotta look good.
Travis McClain: we'll hit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning. And then we give them, again, a Muscle Beach. We call it a beefcake. We give them the option to do a beefcake lift Thursday after school, because our
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: coaches are dispersed to sub-varsities and junior high and this, that, and the
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: other. And so we don't have after school practice. We take care of everything we need to during the period. and then they can come in and hit their curls, their back, their triceps, and do all that stuff.
Paul Horne: And then you mentioned earlier before we started talking that you guys don't have school on Friday and you guys play games on Friday. So what's your, do
Travis McClain: Correct. Yes.
Paul Horne: have a Friday routine? Do you do with your guys since there's that's throughout the whole fall throughout the whole season, you have no Friday school. So I'm assuming you guys play Friday nights. What's your, what's your game day routine with these guys not in school? The, the, lack of structure that would make me really nervous.
Travis McClain: It can and so we implement we implement just enough to not drive them, to wear them down We
Paul Horne: Hehe.
Travis McClain: bring him in at 830. They have breakfast. We've got a great community We got a great group of moms of the kids that support the team So they come in at 830 the moms have breakfast all laid out. They got breakfast burritos donuts seven rolls fresh fruit They got all they got chocolate milk apple juice. They got it all they come through they make their plate and then while they're eating DC is gonna go up and he's gonna give his last Tip sheet reminders. Hey, remember, here's our key. Here's the new. Don't forget this adjustment. Here's what we
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: learned last night watching the JV game. we heard them because there's only 75 people at a JV game. We heard when they made this call, they played this coverage. When they made this call, it was this, this was their protection, whatever it is. We're to go through that defensively. We're going to go through it offensively. We're going to clean up our plates. We're going to tell the moms, thank you. Give them all hugs. We're going to go to the turf. We're going to do a walkthrough. Just as a reminder, hey, these are the things we like. This is probably what we open the game with, right? On both offensive defensive side, and then we're gonna go through a special teams roll call, make sure everybody's there. Hey, remember, if they line the ball up on the left hash, we slide here, here's the audible call, we're gonna have a special teams roll call there. So they're in and out hour and a half, hour 45. Well, now they have three hours to themselves. If it's an away game, before we dismiss them for a few hours, we have them pack their bags. And once they pack their coach my bags packed okay see at one o'clock or you
Paul Horne: Yeah, smart.
Travis McClain: know whatever that time is determining when we need to leave. They get three to five hours off and go home. But we bring them back in plenty of time to if we get a no crap Timmy's not answering where's Johnny I had a flat tire those guys have they know when they're supposed to be back but we're we're a place of of understanding if you communicate coach The last thing you want to hear is coach the battery died on the troll motor. We're stuck on the lake. Okay, well,
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: could have fished from the bank, but you know, do I need to send somebody to get you and we've got two hours to solve this problem for they're supposed to be back. They did a great
Paul Horne: boat's on the way.
Travis McClain: job. They did a great job communicating. I explained to them that sitting in the sun is probably not the best idea. Next time stand under a tree. But
Paul Horne: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I, you're a 16 year old kid. We're going to be fine. Drink an extra bottle of water before kickoff.
Paul Horne: Yeah. Yeah.
Travis McClain: Once they come back. We do our TSA pre-check. We check their bags. If we're traveling, make sure they have everything. We load them up, and we go send them to lay down for 45 minutes. If it's a home game, we bring them back a little bit later. And once everybody's here, we have a walkthrough, and then we send them to lay down. So we're getting to have multiple walkthroughs and roll calls
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: on game day because we don't have the distraction of class. We have kids that won't leave. They get dropped off. They don't have their own vehicle. Mom and dad got to go to work. Cool. Bring your PS5, plug it into one of the projectors, hang
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: out. There'll be food left over from breakfast, no big deal. And the kids have responded really well to, have expectations, but you have freedom within those expectations. And unless you give me a reason not to trust you with that freedom, I'm gonna continue to give it to you.
Paul Horne: It's all yours. Yeah, I love that. That's great. All right. So let me focus drill down here on your offensive line a little bit. What are you looking for as a head coach? What were you looking for in your offensive line coach?
Travis McClain: he had to be the guy right next to me in the foxhole. When I got this job.
Paul Horne: Hmm. Cause he's big and strong and protect your back if you have any physical problems.
Travis McClain: because he is the most important. That position is the most important. I truly, without a shadow of a doubt, believe that. When I took this job, the first phone call I made when I thought I was gonna have the opportunity to get it was to our defensive coordinator. We had had conversations that I told him, I'm not going anywhere unless you're coming with me. I'm not taking another head job unless you're gonna come be my DC because... We're he has young kids. have young kids. I do have an eighth grader, but we we both family super important. So the next job I take is going to be centered around. Can we have great football in a great community that I feel good about raising my kids? So we were like minded in that insurance. I trust him. I know he's a saline guy. I know what I'm going to get. He understands the core values of our program. Boom, done. We're locked in arm. The next phone call I made was to a guy that I I GA with at Tarleton. I said, I know I can't afford you. I need an O-line guy. I gotta have somebody that you would put your stamp of approval on and you would say, he's the creme de la creme. He's the guy. And he gave me a name, said he's gonna be at the DFW clinic. I went to the admin and said, I gotta go to this clinic. We need to book a hotel, register, yada yada. I drive to the clinic and I basically just pestered this guy until he gave in. Mike Adams, ROC. is our online coach. He is a former head coach. He is coached in multiple state championships. He has coached multiple Division 1 and NFL players. But more important than all of that, he has done a phenomenal job of working in hard areas and creating great people. And he is he's a family man that is driven by the right core values, does does the job for the right reasons. And that's who I need standing next to me. I mean life changers. It just so happened that our line coach is a life changer and a game changer because he did. He gave us the opportunity to be whoever we needed to be in the run game.
Paul Horne: That's phenomenal. did. I did watch a little bit of your all's film. I will say I liked how you mix it up in the, in the passing game and confused some coverages there. He shook some, shook some guys loose, and got them down the field and got some throws wide open. I love the little, looked you're out of like a tight end trips look and you got a little wide delay there on one of the guys and got a little nice little third, third and long pick up on a, on a tight end delay being a former tight end. like that's one of my favorite plays there. So I was fun. It was fun to watch that and see that happening out there. When you, when you came into Mount Vernon, did you bring an offense in or did you, was that your offensive coordinators? Is that his baby? How did you go about doing that? And it'd been a wide receiver,
Travis McClain: It's.
Paul Horne: man. I got to think that that's kind of near and dear to you.
Travis McClain: It is and I've I started calling the offense in 2020 in Salina and then I called it my two years at Rivercrest and so I've my play calling I haven't been doing it as long I've only got six seasons of play calling under my belt. So I'm not quite ready to let go of the Friday night play calling but coach Adams. did a great job of understanding who we were, what can we be good at? And it was a very much a collaborative effort. I would never sit here and pretend like this is my baby, I did all this. I can't tell you the number of times where we bust a big play and I know what I'm gonna set it up with, right? This 30 yard run means that I'm going straight to this, this is the next play. But hey, Coach Adams, we're going to Purple Left. All right, I need something in case it doesn't work and boom, as soon as that ball may hit the ground, he's in my ear saying you need to get in this and run power, right?
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And we get into third and one, we're gonna check at the line. Coach Adams, I'm putting them in tray. All right, have your eyes on where you want this ball to go, right? We faked the clap, nobody jumps, quarterback looks at me, he's telling me, boom, run inside zone, whatever it may be, right? extremely collaborative. My trust is that if I never call to play again in Mount Vernon, we'd be just fine. Because he's done it, he's been successful at it. He's done it at the 5A level, he's done it at the 4A level. He's had extreme success at both of them. I don't worry about that at all. And that also gives me great confidence to know that if we reach a point where I feel like I need to step back from that because I can't give it what it deserves, I don't
Paul Horne: Hmm.
Travis McClain: have to worry about who's going to do it. I know exactly who's going to do it. I know he's going to do a great job.
Paul Horne: Do your athletic director responsibilities impact your ability to do that offensive core dating during the week? That you have a named offensive corner, but as a play caller, as a contributor, as a collaborative effort and play calling that you just described, you still have preparation you want to do. You want to study the film. You want to grade your guys. You want to make sure that you know what's going on. on the defense so that you can predict what the defense coordinator against you is going to do and how, like you said, setting up plays and knowing what you can take advantage of. Is that something that prevents you from doing as much as you want or can you, are you able to compartmentalize that and take care of everything the right way?
Travis McClain: Yeah, no good question. I feel like right now I can still do it at a high level. Our school district and our community does a really good job of giving me the opportunity to just coach ball in the fall. We have a girls coordinator who's been here for 30 years who when when it's football season, he's the head girls basketball coach, but he's been an assistant football coach before. So when it's football season, he does a great job of handling some of those things. Those administrative type things that in the spring I probably would just. Very smoothly take over and it not be a big issue. Our principals are central administrators. They understand that or they give me the opportunity. to stay focused on game plan and logistics of the game and the football aspect and keep some of that athletic director, that administrative side of the position kind of off my plate. So I haven't felt that way. But like I said, I do know that there's a chance, there's an opportunity that that may be the case. And if I, I'm very fortunate in the sense that if I ever feel that way, I know exactly. what the transition looks like and I don't lose sleep over it.
Paul Horne: Yeah. You guys, would you say you're run heavy or pass heavy? You're run heavy.
Travis McClain: We are we are especially this year. We were probably 6535 leaning on the run game. We had 2100 yard rusher with almost 30 total touchdowns and we had an offensive line that we started four seniors and most of them had started at least 20 games. So we felt really good about our ability to run the football. we took an undersized offensive lineman and made him fullback and the like I said, I can't I can't. sing his praises enough, but knowing that Coach Adams has that group of guys for 30 minutes essentially by himself every day. I told him after three days of him moving his family here and being around the kids, I said, who are we going to be? What like what's our baby? Are we are we zone scheme or we gap scheme? He said we're going to be whatever they let us be because we're going to be able to do it all.
Paul Horne: Nice.
Travis McClain: And all to me was exactly what I know that there's people who we didn't do this. You didn't do that. Well. We had games where I called power eight times in a row. We had
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: games where I called inside zone eight times in a row. We had games week 11, hadn't run GT all year, we called it 19 times in the game. And we won it, and we won that game, and we ran the ball for dang near 300 yards, So we really, in my mind, we could do it all, because he was so good at what he does.
Paul Horne: What, so, and again, I watched a small sample in a film, a very small sample in a film. What's your base? What are you guys doing? What's your rhyme and reason there?
Travis McClain: We so, so we're gonna, I'm a browse guy and my, the formation of my football brain started in Waco, 11 P, stretch horizontal so you can run vertical, whether that's run game or pass game. So at the end of the day, I'm gonna wanna run split zone, zone, insert and power. I wanna be able to do those every day, right? That doesn't mean we can, but that's where I'm gonna start. I'm gonna make a conscious effort to do those things. And then once somebody finally tells me, once somebody I trust says we just aren't very good at that, then we'll move on and grow. But foundationally from a run game, that's where I'm gonna start 99.9 % of the time.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I saw one of the your I guess you're in some sort of two by one set with the running back fullback kind of looking guy kind of in a big gap look. Maybe I don't I don't know what you would what you call that. But
Travis McClain: We just call him a sniffer.
Paul Horne: yeah. And running that power. And it was it was fun to watch your guard and that that sniffer back run that power scheme. And it was cool. I don't know what game it was. It was down on the goal line in the And the, the defensive end slanted down and the sniffer back picked him up and the guard and the sniffer back switched responsibilities. And it was, was awesome to watch that. Cause then the guard comes around the edge, turns up field and the linebacker tried the wrong army. And he just flipped his hips and your running back just kind of bounced and ran out and scored a touchdown. And it was, it was nice to see it was, it was evident on the film that those guys had been coached up and the guard knew what to do. And he knew how to. change responsibilities with the sniffer back when they, they had those guys trying to cross face like that. And it was fun to watch that little scheme. And I got to say, man, you got, look like it looks like you got a bunch of cookie cutters out there that you just punched out like seven or eight looking wide outs that all look the same and, and run it down the field. If you don't see what their Jersey number is, it looks like you got about septuplets running out there from the same family. So that was, that was fun to watch that little bit of a film that I got to see on you guys. So coach, what's your biggest challenge? going into your second year here. You came in and the year before the staff and the program was, took some beatings. I was looking at the records there. The scores were lopsided in the 24 campaign for Mount Vernon there. What did you do to, what was the difference there? Is it just you coming in and focusing on the kids and investing in the kids and pouring into the kids and they responded or was there something that was out of whack that you guys were able to correct?
Travis McClain: I think that there was a lot of factors that played into that 2024 season. Kid rushes for 2100 yards for us, he only plays in five games in 2024. So that right there hurts, right? There were some other kids that they were seniors may have been relied on a little bit too much, maybe mis-evaluated there. But I think the biggest thing is that we felt like because we were going to be so senior heavy again, we're a school of 450 on a good day, really probably more around like 422, 425. And we graduated 26 football seniors,
Paul Horne: Mm.
Travis McClain: which is huge. You know,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: we, we had, we dressed 44 kids on varsity and 26 of them are seniors. that's, that's a lot of football. And so understanding that these kids had been around success. They were in junior high when coach Braille was coached here. And when they were freshmen or sophomores or when they were freshmen, they were part of a program that, they saw in seventh grade, they saw the football team go to the semis in eighth grade. They saw the football team go to the semis and their freshman year. They had a division one running back and a division one mic and all these guys and they break all these records and go to the third round. Right. So they had all this success and then they just they got off track for a little bit. So we knew the The competitiveness, the attachment to that success was gonna be there. The experiences was gonna be there. It was our job to evaluate them and put them in the best situation to be successful. Does this kid need to play guard or tackle? Does this kid need to play offense or defense? Does this kid need to stand up or does he need to have his hand in the dirt? What's gonna give him the best chance to produce and help our team? And we felt like we had a really good beat on that and again, I can't sing their praises enough. staff does a phenomenal job of connecting with these kids, understanding them, holding them accountable and building them up. not letting them screw up in a slide, but also being the first one to pat them on the butt, love them up and say, you did awesome. Love you to death. So proud of you. And I don't know what the disconnect was, but those kids respond. They saw that they they understood that that's what they were going to get. It was genuine and and They just went above and beyond. As soon as they knew that we gave a crap about them, they gave a crap about doing anything and everything we asked.
Paul Horne: Well, which leads me to the, my next concern, which that's the only word I have to use right now. So I'm going to use it and not necessarily mean it wholeheartedly, but my concern is that you'd graduate 26 of 44 kids. got a, you got a light group coming back next year. what are you doing to develop those 18 guys? Those 18 returners? I mean, they're going to have a, they're going to have it a big piece of the puzzle there that they're going to have to put together. Is there anything you're doing differently with these guys?
Travis McClain: our approach to the offseason is it's structurally the same, but it's it's communicated differently. These kids are in the pressure cooker. Last year we had to win the the win the love back. We had to convince these kids to fall back in love with hard work, sweat, all that sweat equity. We had to go get them to be excited about that because we knew that they had the ability. We had seen it from their sophomore year tape. We knew that there were pieces there now. These are kids are not they're not afraid of the work by any means. They just don't have the experience. So now we approach it in. We're still going to do the work, but we're going to make sure that it's explicitly clear why we're doing it, what the expectations are. You guys are in the pressure cooker and the time runs out on August 27th. So you better be done. we can't undercook this thing. You guys got to meet that expectation because there is no one else, This is Friday Night Lights. This is big time football. We have high expectations and I'm looking at you and we find different ways to put competition into our daily activities. We find different ways to put competition into our weight room because no one's coming to save you. The
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: people in this weight room are the people that we have, right? There is no transfer portal. There is no recruiting trail, okay? So you either figure out a way in the next five months to get to 300 pounds on your bench press. Or when you got a block down on that guy from Malakoff, you're going to have a long night.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. I don't like the long night speeches. Those make me nervous.
Travis McClain: You
Paul Horne: I don't want long nights. want short nights where I can put my game plan in my back pocket and just call whatever sounds like fun. That was the fun.
Travis McClain: 100%. We just feel like, we feel like the relationships that we have with our kids have, in the last year and four months, have been built and cemented in honesty and truth. That even when it's an uncomfortable conversation, even when it's a competitive conversation, that's, the approach that we're gonna have. And I'm still gonna tell you that I love you, and I'm still gonna push you. And I understand that even though we're saying, hey, this is the goal, we got to go get it. If you fall short of that, I don't think less of you. It just means we got to be better in some aspect to make up that difference. So we're going to approach that preparation head on. We've got 100%.
Paul Horne: And that's your job as the coach to figure that out too, to figure out what was it, was this process lacking? What's his effort lacking? Does he just not have the capacity to do it? where's that fall in that, that continuum of variables there? And, and it sounds like you've, you've solved a lot of those issues and I'm, excited to follow you guys and see how goes this year and see how these, these, young guys, have a big group coming up behind them. You have a big junior class.
Travis McClain: Junior classes, small, sophomore and freshman class are really big. We're gonna be young
Paul Horne: Okay, so you're gonna, you got some young guys, you're have to step up.
Travis McClain: and, it's was, I was a different way of thinking, like traditional Salina when I got there was like, you know, they would start four juniors on JV and then that kid would start as a senior and he'd be in all state. Like that was a regular
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: thing. And I've always come from, I say always, since my time in Waco, I have come from the idea that, The greatest teacher is experience. So if we have the opportunity to play young kids and then be successful on more successful than they are at falling short, then throw them out there. Let's let the best guy plays and let's see what happens. And our young guys know that they know that there are opportunities abound to go earn right now. By the time we get to the fall.
Paul Horne: in that competition you're throwing out there, you're Breeding, I don't know, I've thrown this phrase out here, I've never heard it before, maybe somebody has, breeding the dog into those young guys, a
Travis McClain: That's,
Paul Horne: little bit of dog in them.
Travis McClain: that's, and that's a, that was something that we saw early with our current freshmen. When I got here in the spring and they were eighth graders, great kids, worked their tail off. They just didn't, they just didn't have a lot of that like grit that like,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: ball your fist up, what has been, he grabbed, grab that dirt, rub it in your hands and, and then, go out there and make something happen. They would do the hard things. They would show up. They would lift the weights. They would run the workout. But then when adversity hit, how did they respond? Whether it was body language, whether it was outward emotion, how did they respond? And we just kept being consistent with the environment, applying the pressure, and not too much pressure. We're not trying to break them. We're trying to teach them. And
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Travis McClain: they have shown immense growth. The best athlete in that grade has become a kid that we just kept looking at when he was in junior high saying, and he's got a chance. He's got, he could be somebody that helps us on varsity as a freshman. And it just, it wasn't quite there. He didn't handle certain aspects well. Well, now he is we're into the spring of his freshman year and he's found ways to contribute in this and that and varsity, this and varsity, that, and you go, okay, now we're, on the right trajectory. We got a chance and that's what we're working towards. We're just working towards putting great kids with great effort and great ability. in a situation to have a chance. Because if they got a chance, then we'll have a chance.
Paul Horne: Did you find when you got there at Mount Vernon, did you find some inertia in the football program that you guys had to just invest some energy to get the ball rolling? And then once the ball gets rolling, you get the synergy behind it and you you teach the tradition, which you've put the groundwork down for the last year and another year of groundwork of, of tradition laying there. That's going to, that's going to be great. Was there a lot of inertia that you had to overcome or like we took over program in 1998 that had had one winning season in 18 years I think they'd been 0 and 10 the year before we got there and there was just this stagnant. big concrete ball of football program that just was stagnant. It wasn't wanting to move. And it took a lot of energy to get over that inertia. But once we got that ball rolling, it took on a life of itself. What was the levels of resistance that you had to overcome?
Travis McClain: It was minimal to be completely honest. were I was really fortunate because that, you know, when coach brows was here, everybody loved coach brows. I love coach brows. Why would you not? Right. And then his predecessor was one of my teammates. So it, nothing changed. Right. The, the, the ship was being rode in the same direction. And then when change did happen and it didn't go the way that people wanted, right. They're super open to, to something new. But that something new was coming from something that they perceived to be familiar because I had played for Coach Briles. I will never claim to be Coach Briles. There are certain things about him as a coach that I can never live up to. And there's also certain aspects to his style of coaching that don't fit my personality. But I had a warm introduction to the whole community because of that connection. And so they were fired up just with the idea. So anything that we introduced, if we did it in an environment that it didn't matter if it was hard, but it was done by people who the tone and the message was that of care, they were all in. my first,
Paul Horne: board. Yeah.
Travis McClain: when I got hired, I spent the first week, I said four days or three days. I got hired on a Monday night. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, guys, I'm just here. I'm a fly on the wall. will, I'm not going to talk to anybody till Thursday. I will introduce myself and talk to you if you come up, but keep operating as as you have been. I want to evaluate the coaches. I want to evaluate the kids. I want to see where we are. And I did and I told him next Monday. You need to be in the weight room. You need to be in the turf room at 620 because we're starting at 630 and your world is going to change. It's going to be completely different. And nobody was late. We had almost 100 % attendance and we wore those kids out and and they smiled and took a drink of water and said, see you tomorrow.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And to me, that was something that you're immediately like, okay, but is this just new car smell? Is this the honeymoon phase? And it never did. It never wavered. Because each time we introduced a new face, each time we officially added somebody to the staff, they added to the environment positively.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And when they added to the environment and positively, the kids became more entrenched in it because there was more of that personable expectation. It's not just, the new head coach, it's the new linebackers coach. It's the new O-line coach. It's the new DC. That's my position coach. That person's gonna know my first name, my last name, my home address, my cell phone number, my little sister's name. He's gonna know what I'm allergic to, cuz he's probably gonna buy food. He's gonna
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: have a cabinet up here where he's feeding me snacks to make sure that I can make weight. He gives a crap about me 24 seven. Those were the people that I was very focused on bringing into our staff. And I got extremely lucky because they all are. And it takes so much pressure off of me because I know that they care about the right things and they care about the kids and they're gonna push them and they're gonna hold them accountable. And I firmly believe that the community that we're in, that's what they were looking for. They just, yes, run our kids, lift our kids, hold them accountable, do hard things, just make sure that they know you give a crap. And if you do, they'll...
Paul Horne: Yeah, was gonna say the final phrase there would love our kids, right? Yeah.
Travis McClain: 100 % and as long as they know that you will and you do those kids will run through a brick wall for you
Paul Horne: Yeah, I like that. I had an opportunity to go down to Judson. I think it's down in San Antonio.
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: A friend of a friend, we were down there for probably a coaches convention and one of the guys that we coached with went to school with one of the guys who was the head coach at Judson at the time and invited us in to see their mat program in the off season. And a what you're talking about kind of sounds like the same thing, man. Those kids would come, that bell would ring for activity period. And those kids were ripping down the hallway so that they could get there and get changed and get out on the mats. And one was they didn't want to get, they didn't want to be late. The punishment for being late was worse than what they were getting ready to go through as was. But, the other thing was they were, they loved it, man. Those guys were all about the hard work and I envision that in my mind how you're, you're describing your program. Now it looks like that in my mind. And it's a cool thing to witness when you see the bell ring and there's 150 football players sprinting through the hallway and to get into the locker room and change and get into the mat room on time. And it sounds like that enthusiasm is, there for you guys at Mount Vernon. Coach, we're getting ready to wind down here. got a couple, couple questions, two fun questions I'll ask here at the end, but the, the third to last question, often slimy. We talked about this a little bit before we started our characters and funny guys. And I hope your offensive line coaches is, has that character aspect to him too. It sounds like he works hard and plays hard. Hopefully that's a component to his character. any funny stories to illustrate that you either played with guys or you've experienced as a head coach or an assistant coach as an offensive coordinator, any kind of stories that would illustrate how funny the offensive line guys are as a unit.
Travis McClain: Well, one thing that for sure comes up is so when we were in Waco, the locker room at our at our on campus facility was was aisles. and it's there's a hierarchy, right, you get the single digit row. Okay,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: and that's anybody that's got a single digit. And then they're going to start grouping by positions and O line because everybody is, 50 through 79.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: they're all gonna be together even even if there was if there was a guy who there wasn't enough space but his number fit like they would change the order the equipment guys change the order so all those guys were next to each other because they were crazy and you couldn't put anybody else over there or they just gang up on them and there were two paths from my locker because I was on the road with the the receivers right I'd I graduated from walk on row to receiver row and I was on the row with the receivers and there were two paths to get to the equipment window where you throw your laundry in the chute. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt the shorter path was to go left and go down the O line row and because the chute was right there. I couldn't tell you what that row looked like. I didn't know that they had put in a vent mount for us to dry our cleats by last year. I didn't know that that existed because I refused to go down that aisle. Not because anybody was, I just knew, I knew that I had no idea what I'd be walking into and I didn't want to risk it. And just insanity. Correct.
Paul Horne: not physical harm, some sort of seeing something you didn't want to see or hearing something you didn't want to hear or yeah.
Travis McClain: Correct. Who's gonna, who's gonna talk about their lack of baby powder and the amount of chafing that they want to make sure that you witness with your own eyes, right? Who's gonna, right, who's gonna, who's gonna, who's
Paul Horne: Yeah. What does this look like? Smell this.
Travis McClain: gonna throw their 17 pound equipment or laundry clip to you and say throw it away and you're gonna get
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: slapped by a six pound shirt that has somebody else's, like all their sweat from the past four hours and it's gonna leak on your face after you took a shower. I don't want to deal with any of that. I'm gonna walk the long way home. I'm gonna stay on the street lights. I'm not going to take the shortcut and I'm going to see you guys tomorrow. See you guys at training table. And the fact that, one of my close friends who played offensive line, his nickname alone was Napoleon Dynamite, pretty much,
Paul Horne: well.
Travis McClain: encapsulated everything that was that that unit. But those are also some of those are the guys that like you knew that they were the group that if you earned their respect on the practice field. They, you're good, you're solid. And something comes up in real life that they don't even need you to finish the sentence. If it starts with, I need your help. They're gonna be there before you hang up the phone because yes,
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm You got six two o'clock 2 a.m. Friends that you could call 2 a.m. And they'd be there for you
Travis McClain: correct.
Paul Horne: That's a great, I like that not taking a shortcut, walking the long way home. That's a great way to put
Travis McClain: Correct.
Paul Horne: it. Yeah, because who knows what you're gonna see here, smell, be forced to taste or whatever. It's not, yeah, how long has this dip cup been sitting here?
Travis McClain: Who's growing what in the top of their locker? All those things. Mm-hmm. Correct.
Paul Horne: Is there any mold on top of this dip right here? I can't see. Yeah, I like that, that's a great story. Second to last question here, pizza topping, go to pizza topping.
Travis McClain: I'm super simple. am, if it's New York style, I lean cheese and then if I want to get crazy, I'll go pepperoni. I am, I'm very much in that, I love simple. I've eaten, I've eaten pizza the same way for over 30 years. And you know, if I, if I venture to a Supreme, that's... That's a nuanced one off that better be because it got rave reviews from somebody else. But if it fits just me and I'm making a phone call and I'm something up, I want New York style and I want it cheese or pepperoni.
Paul Horne: And what restaurant? You have favorite pizza place?
Travis McClain: Pizza place, so here in town, Milano's is the go-to. I will tell you that in my humble opinion, there is no finer pizza than a slice that you get from one of the window places in Austin after the sun goes down.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: Those pizzas hit different for whatever reason.
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: I'll let you fill in the gaps.
Paul Horne: Well, I'll be, I'm to be heading down that way a little bit. My daughter's down there at Fort Hood. her and her husband are down there. So I'll be heading that way probably the summer. I hope to get down to Austin and, and I'll have to check out, check out those window places down there in Austin and see how it goes.
Travis McClain: Well, make sure that you, whenever you're heading down there, make sure you schedule early and stop by the mothership. Catch a comedy
Paul Horne: yeah.
Travis McClain: show at Joe Rogan's.
Paul Horne: that is a hundred percent on the, on the things to do list. My, just had one daughter that left, left down there and my other daughter just is she's on her way there. So, no, Nolanville, I think just, just, kind of Southwest
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: of Waco there and Nolanville and, and my other, I don't know, my daughter's house is still down. I can't remember what the name of the clean clean. That's where
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: she is. so I had one daughter who has a house in clean another one in Nolanville. The clean daughter just moved up to Fort Sill though. So, but I'll be heading down that way. I'm definitely going hit the mothership and definitely get some pizza going. And then my last question, coach, you're getting ready to go down the tunnel. You can go back to your playing days. There's probably two ways to answer this now. I'm guessing, but go back to your playing days. You're going to take those earbuds out and run down the tunnel and catch a pass from RG three out there on the field. And what are you listening to? What's in the earbuds? What's your lock in song there?
Travis McClain: Man, one of my good friends, one of my old teammates, Stacey Williams will love this. But the two songs that 100 % we're gonna be listening to, if it's 2010 or 2011, and I've got headphones in and I'm about to go play a football game, I'm gonna listen to Mo City Don by Zero, and then I'm gonna listen to South Side the Realist by Big Tuck. So we're gonna
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: get a little bit of Dallas and a little bit of Houston, and then we're gonna go get ready to win.
Paul Horne: You guys did a lot of that too. Was, was coach Acuff there when you were there? Yeah. Okay.
Travis McClain: He was, Coach Aykof was there. That's my guy.
Paul Horne: I, Chris and I, I met Chris when he was, he might've been a restricted earnings coach or GA at Penn State when I was working to Penn State football camps back before all the, all the bad stuff happened to Penn State and, and he was the defensive line GA with, Coach I can't remember who the coach Johnson. I don't remember who the defense line coach was Larry Larry Johnson. Larry Johnson Up there so I'd go to work the Penn State football camps in the summertime and earn some money to pay bills and met Chris This is probably 2000 Gosh 2002 1 2 3 4 somewhere around there So this is
Travis McClain: Mm-hmm.
Paul Horne: long long time ago and what a great do what a great coach to a phenomenal great defensive line coach Yes, yes
Travis McClain: motor guy he's he's full tilt 24 7
Paul Horne: 100%. Yeah. With that short like Marine cut hair and,
Travis McClain: Yep.
Paul Horne: and, uh, I hope he still got here. I haven't seen Chris. I've talked to, I've texted Chris a few times over the years. We, we touch base every once in a while, but, I haven't seen him probably. It's probably been seven or eight years since I've seen him last. Has your, did your pregame routine switch as a coach? Are you still listening to the music beforehand?
Travis McClain: yeah, I am listening to music but the playlist got shorter because the everything else right like it started in Salina. We taped everybody's ankles and the coaches helped tape ankles. So
Paul Horne: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: I'd go in, I had my three kids that I would tape and that was when I would be able to listen to music. And then when I would transition out of that, it would be to go last minute, game plan check. Do I have? I'm not an air raid guy, but I'm a big believer in the Mike Leach, like Andy Reid approach of the note card, like keep it simple. So anything
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: that I needed, it was going to be on that note card. And if I couldn't fit it on the note card, I probably didn't need it.
Paul Horne: Mm-hmm.
Travis McClain: And so I'd go make sure that my note card was ready, start getting dressed, and then we're rolling into our pregame routine, which I'm heavily involved in the pregame routine. And so I've I kind of pushed. I don't need, 90 minutes. of pregame routine, I pushed it back into trying to get it into like a 20, 25 minute window. That way it happens quick, it's efficient, step on the field. When first group heads out to start warming up, like I'm locked and loaded, got a whistle on a stopwatch, ready to roll.
Paul Horne: Did you get to put any requests on the stadium music playlist while you're out there throwing the ball around on the field?
Travis McClain: So we build our own playlist. We have what's called Game Time Radio. But we can build our own playlist. it's a collaboration of the young coaches and the seniors. I
Paul Horne: Do you get a did you get a song on there? Do you get one selection at all?
Travis McClain: saved mine because I gave them that. And then I went full dictator on our entrance. So we
Paul Horne: okay. Give me the entrance then. What's the entrance look like?
Travis McClain: shut down the lights. Hold on. So we shut down the lights in our stadium and then we have a walk. We walk from out the weight room in the dark to our tunnel. And when we walk. We it starts with the purge the the air horn
Paul Horne: Okay. huh.
Travis McClain: and then I made. I gotta find it, sorry. Where is it? No. crap, I can't find it. But I made a, it's got the purge and it goes straight into, I believe, Metallica. And so
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: it's timed up. We've got a bunch of parents that are standing right at the tunnel that have our flags and the smoke bombs and all the things. And the kids know when they hear the bass drop, they run out and the press box hits the sparkle on the lights and it's a whole production. But it doesn't take as much effort as it sounds like because of modern technology. So.
Paul Horne: Yeah. Well, that's for now. That's, that's a, a cool entrance that you have it all timed up. You have to practice your interest. You can take the guys out and practice it once or twice to make sure they're timed up right.
Travis McClain: So the coaches I did, I timed the walk, right?
Paul Horne: Okay.
Travis McClain: And so it's all based off of like the first two kids, right? The first two or three that like walk out of the door. If you're one of the cool guys that you take your time, well, you don't get to be a part of the base drop, that's on you. But I timed it, the walk from that door to the tunnel, and then how long they need to sit in the tunnel before they run out. And so. The PA got the press box guys know that when the first person comes out, they're gonna count to three and hit play. And then the first kids know once they get in when. when they hear me like tap on the helmet or they hear a certain part of the song, they know they're going to break out and take off. And so the helmet flies open, right? Like the entrance flies open as the kids break out and it's right when the bass drops and all the things. So I didn't want to like spend a whole day of like, we got to our entrance down. It's like, why don't you just focus on scoring touchdowns? Right. But I did try and put a little bit of effort. we looked, we wasn't a ragtag promotion.
Paul Horne: Yeah, I was gonna say you got it. That's right. You don't want to look like a bunch of like runaway jailbreak guys coming out of there just going every which way but loose and not you want to, it's got to, it's got to serve a purpose, right? It's all
Travis McClain: for sure.
Paul Horne: got to serve a purpose. Well, coach, I'm so thankful. I really enjoyed our conversation and it's so much, it's so fun for me to hear the other perspectives from around the country, to hear what's the priority. You are in a unique position. There aren't a whole lot of athletic director head coaches. I mean, there's some still out there, but in our part of the country here, the athletic director head coach job's not, that's not something that's happening in the public school system. That's maybe a private school probably if it's happening. So it's unique. I definitely wanted to chat you up and hear that, the nuances and the challenges that you have there. Last thing before we go, I know that you do some podcasts and yourself. Why don't you give me your... any of your socials or your podcast address if people are interested to hear more about what you're doing and consume more of Mount Vernon football, where can they find that?
Travis McClain: Yeah, so our podcast is called the quick six. I say our I used to have a co host. He's he's big time SEC quarterback coach now. So, I just kind of stand in front of my camera and ramble, but it's called the quick six.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: We're on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Our socials handles are quick six pod. Q, U, I, C, K, S, I, X, P, D and. trying to an episode every week i don't make any promises i don't have a backlog i'd try and keep it pretty current so things that happen i'd just step in front of my camera and say this is what's been going on in my world and here's some things that people said they want to hear me talk about my perspective so it's not like a live interactive but it's something that i rely heavily on that doesn't or so people that actually listen it's it's just my modern day coaching journal. It is successes, failures, frustrations. Here's how the dynamic is changing in the coaching world and the profession of Texas. Here's what I'm hearing from other states. You guys think we have it bad. Let me tell you about what they're doing over here. here's some hurdles that we're dealing with. Are you dealing with the same? And guys share with me, same thing, successes, failures, frustrations. And it allows me to be they're out there into the internet world voice of, this sucks, right? Or this is awesome and let me tell you about it. And like I said, try and post once a week and it's lighthearted. I'll embarrass my kids and show clips of them, whether it's my four year old daughter singing Jolene, or it's my 14 year old in her quest to have TikTok win her a golf cart, whatever it may be. So we talk about... school ranks and how high school ranks affects college ranks and how the NFL is affecting high school and all the things in between.
Paul Horne: Yeah. And it's changing so quick on the high school level with all the stuff that's happening on the college level. NILs and the money that's out there and now they're trying to bring that down into the high school level. It just makes me sick thinking about all that stuff that's that could happen in the traditional aspect of growing up in a community, wanting to play for that high school, knowing who your coach is going to be and showing up at that first day of high school football practice that you've spent. eight years as a little kid going to the games, hearing about the football program, seeing the football players around town, all that stuff's being threatened right now with all the NIL and it's seeping down into the high school levels, the absolute most ridiculous idea that I've ever heard anybody propose. so I hate that for you guys as coaches and particularly as athletic directors, you're to have to maybe deal with some of that stuff. I don't know if that's going to impact your program at all, but it is starting to show its ugly head down here in Florida and I'm not a big fan of it, as you can tell, but it is what it is. So we're to have to have a plan of attack to deal with it as coaches and former coaches. so good luck with that as you might have to come across that in your day to
Travis McClain: Yeah, we
Paul Horne: day ventures.
Travis McClain: Mount Vernon is is one of the places and they're all over the state. We can we call it community based sports, right? We this is this is a one horse town and people will move here. Absolutely. But we understand that the successes and the foundation of our program will come from those that grown within and. We are in a constant struggle of making sure that kids understand that, that's our program is based around the idea to give you every opportunity to be successful. But we're going to do it in ways that are going to make you uncomfortable. And if your response to discomfort is to run, well, I'm going to tell you that that person may say one thing, but what they're not telling you is the long term effect of that problem solving approach. And and we're seeing it at yes, the local level, but we're really blessed in the fact that the Texas High School Coaches Association does it. They are very involved with state level legislature and having those conversations with with representatives in Austin to thwart off the attempt to infiltrate community based and public based sports with NIL and any type of transfer portal and one time only and things of that nature because they understand that you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Paul Horne: Yeah.
Travis McClain: And Texas is extremely unique in the environment that the UIL has created. And we understand that change is inevitable, but that doesn't mean we have to give up. And we just have to let the Wild West win. despite the fact that the dynamic is changing and that it's changed even in the 12 years that I've been doing it, it's still... very unique compared to most of the United States and we need to fight every day to make sure that we maintain that unique aspect and we maintain those things that have kept it special.
Paul Horne: Well, I'm in total agreement with that and it's good to hear that. So well, as we sign off here, remember if you want to check coach T Mac out on his quick six pod, please do that. He's got some good stuff there. Really wise man here, given insight into the football world and doing a great job with his program. look forward to seeing Mount Vernon out there in the state finals next year. It'd be cool. Cool. Be able to say, I, I knew it here first. I knew he was going to be successful here first. So.
Travis McClain: That's right. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
Paul Horne: Well, I appreciate you very much. So remember as we sign off here, you master the trench, you'll win the war. Have a great night.
