Faith, Family and Football: Coach Vince Humphries

Show notes

Faith, Family and Football: Youth Football Coach Vince Humphries on Raising Young Men

Youth football coach Vince Humphries has spent years coaching Pop Warner and middle school football in Austin. He joins Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg to talk about faith, family and football, and why the lessons go far beyond winning.

Randy met Vince coaching Pop Warner, and he explains why Vince's teams win and why that isn't the point. Vince talks about coaching as a lifetime commitment, his weekly schedule across levels, staying in touch with former players, and where he falls between Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll.

He shares stories of kids who didn't want to be on the field, finding the right position for each player, and a team that rallied around an injured teammate. He also covers helping kids through hard situations at home, grades, and his rules for parents.

Faith runs through all of it, as in a parent's note that he showed a team "more Jesus without ever mentioning his name." He talks about leading worship, the coaches who shaped him, teaching without fear, why linemen matter, and what he wants his players to remember.

Youth Football Coaching Tips and Life Lessons for Kids

What you'll discover:

Why winning isn't the point of youth football
Lifting up the kid who needs it most
Finding the right position for every player
Handling parents, grades and hard home lives
Faith in action: "use words when necessary"
The life lessons kids carry off the field

Timestamps

[00:00] Welcome Vince Humphries
[01:24] "Do what I'm doing, coach"
[04:11] Coaching is a lifetime commitment
[08:20] A coach's weekly schedule
[11:08] Staying in touch with former players
[13:54] Coaching styles: Belichick or Pete Carroll?
[15:18] Lifting up the kid who needs it most
[18:07] Finding the right position for a kid
[20:52] The kid who didn't want to be there
[23:40] An injury, and a team that rallied
[26:28] Helping a kid through a hard home life
[29:15] Incremental change
[30:36] Grades and parents
[32:05] His rule for parent calls
[33:30] Parents who coach from the sidelines
[37:41] Being many people for many people
[40:26] Faith: use words when necessary
[41:49] "More Jesus without ever mentioning his name"
[43:13] Leading worship at Easter
[46:00] How faith shapes everything
[48:44] An affinity for young people
[51:31] The coaches who shaped him
[52:56] Teaching without fear
[55:43] Lessons for people who don't coach
[57:04] The light switch
[58:27] Family
[59:50] Are kids getting softer?
[1:01:12] Why linemen matter
[1:03:59] Life lessons through football
[1:08:13] The state-championship team
[1:11:04] A family unit
[1:13:53] What he wants players to remember
[1:15:16] Representing your community
[1:18:04] The light switch, revisited
[1:19:26] Wrap-up

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About Vince Humphries

Vince Humphries coaches Pop Warner and middle school football in Austin, Texas. He is also a worship leader at his church and works in insurance sales.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from a cleaned-up transcript doc of the recording, without speaker labels or time markers. It hasn't been proofread.

Welcome, listeners, to Tales of Abundance.

We have a special guest today, Vince Humphries, dear friend of mine. And I think you're going to find that Vince brings abundance to the world in his own amazing way. And he is.

I met Vince coaching Pop Warner football and what he does with the kids is really, really special. The love, the energy, the heart. And one of the things I love about Vince is that he wins, right? I mean, we had a team that, you know, went one game away from Disneyland, one state.

Like his teams consistently win. But I think you're going to find in this episode that the lessons he teaches are way beyond the wins. It's, it's raising young men and, you know, he works with adults in his church and a lot of other things.

So I just, I think there's a lot of wisdom there. So, Vince, welcome. Thanks for coming in.

Appreciate, appreciate you, sir. That's a really big introduction. That's big shoes to fill.

All right, well, you can fill them. So let's just jump right into it. We have our five Fs, okay, you've got your three Fs already.

Confused listeners already. It's not eight Fs people. It's all right.

Some of them are the same. He's got his three F's. So tell us what your three F's are.

Okay, so. And literally in my desk on my workspace at the house, I have a plaque that says faith, family and football. And my three Fs are non negotiable.

They're in that order. So faith is first, family is second, football is third. And what's funny, I've noticed over the years the Fs tend to merge and roll across each other.

So I started coaching football when my younger brother played. So I was probably in my early 20s. He's in his teen, he's in his, like 12, 13 age.

And so I'm coaching with my dad. I realized, man, this is kind of fun. I enjoy it.

I played baseball. I was a baseball kid. Too small to play football and too scared.

So my coach in baseball, 12 year old season, is my only Year I ever made all stars, that coach was a young adult, 26 year old guy. Him and his best friend coached our team. We won the league that year.

But he told me halfway through the season, he said, hey, Hump, I need you to do me a favor. When you grow up, I need you to invest in a kid the same way we're investing in you. I'm like, so what do I need to do to invest in a kid? He said, do what I'm doing, coach.

Go back and give back to a kid and bring some other kid from where they are to where they need to be. So I started taking that really, really seriously when I started coaching my little brother and all of his buddies get back here in Austin. Another buddy of mine has a football team.

I'm like, yeah, you need a coach, I'll coach for you. And it just kind of started from there. And everything in my life has turned into a coaching opportunity.

Yeah, that's not a small commitment either. I mean, I don't, I don't think every. It didn't register with me when I had all the great coaches I've had throughout the years, how much time, energy and effort they put into it.

I even coached when I was in high school for like a young. One of our family friends had a daughter and I coached their team. But I didn't really fully get it until one of the guys I worked with coached high school football in Texas.

That is a full time job around. A full time job. And the investment of energy.

It's a full time year round. It's a lifetime commitment. Yeah.

Wow. I mean, yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for doing it.

I mean, that investment in community is such an important part of what we do. Can you take someone through it though? Like, what does it really take to be a coach? Oh, wow. It doesn't take anything other than a heart to be a coach.

You don't have to. That is so not true. I had a guy once tell me, I want a job where I make a million dollars a year working 17 Sundays as a head coach of an NFL team.

Like, man, they work 100 hours a week, year rounds. Yeah. That level of coaching, there's no time off.

I don't know how they sustain families. I don't know how they sustain working relationships. Those guys are committed to being in the office about this size, watching film.

Small. We're in a small space. No, the head coach doesn't do anything but sit and delegate to all the other guys that are sitting in this space.

Just like this doing the same thing they're doing at a lower level. To me the best coach is a guy that has a heart for wanting to watch development of people around him, whatever that is you're coaching. I'm not sure if you're coaching a software engineering team, coaching a bunch of singers, if you're coaching football players.

It's a little different with kids because kids have a. My dad told me a long time ago, he said, Vince, if you are coaching a 10 year old kid, teach him with the expectation that he's going to do everything you see my Michael Jordan do, everything that you see the biggest stars on TV do. They're just going to do it at a smaller degree.

You can't expect a 10 year old kid to dunk. Not going to happen. But you can't expect a 10 year old kid to learn how to shoot a layup with his right hand and jump on his left foot properly.

So you expect and you build expectation for them to do exactly what you see in your mind for them to do. So they succeed at what they do. And it's building a process to get from point A to point B to succeed in that process.

Yeah, simple. I, I don't want to hand wave over when what Vince said I think is really telling. That it's a lifetime commitment.

Right. And I've witnessed this firsthand. Not with my kid.

Right. I mean, well, your kid's kind of special. Well, we're biased, but yes.

Yeah. And, and he, to me he's very special. Yeah.

But, but Vince still is in touch with Ryland. It's playing in college, his second year in college. And, and, and to give you an idea of my respect for Vince, when Rylan came to me when he was in, I don't know, 8th grade or something and said he thought he might want to be a coach, it happened to be the COVID year and this Pop Warner team was in the spring and instantly what came into my mind is oh, let's see if Vince will let you help and be a coach.

And I called Vince and I said hey, we you. And he, you know, he was like yes. And then Ryland has been doing that ever since, but he is still in touch with Ryland to this day.

And that's not the only kid. And so you like, you have a full time job, you've got a career, you coach kids every day. Like John said this and this is Texas football.

This is serious. Yeah, I mean I remember when I first started coaching, I'm coaching fourth and fifth graders and we are recording practice and they want me to watch film. Yep.

And I said I'd be part time and I'm like, wait, we're recording? I mean I played in high school. We didn't. We didn't.

Right. Yeah. We didn't record practice in high school back then.

Right. So I mean it was serious. But now you're working with the varsity, the seventh grade, the eighth grade.

How many hours a week are we talking about for football? So. Okay. I just.

So, because you don't know how things have kind of changed. I've had a long time career in the industry. I work, I saw working in insurance sales.

So I work for a major insurance carrier. When I started my career in this, I was working for the carrier I work for now work for United Healthcare. So I was working from working for them.

I worked for them for five years. And then an opportunity came up at one of our competitors. I went to Humana.

I worked at Humana for 22 years. And then Humana changed their selling process and now I'm back at UnitedHealthcare. I've been back here for two, two and a half years.

I work for my boss who worked with me for 15 years at Humana. The entire team in Austin is all ex Humana associates. So I'm working with all old friends and they all know me and they all know I've been coaching the whole time they've known me.

So my boss is like, whatever, just work when you need to work, get your work done. You're good at what you do. So we are getting the results.

Yeah, well, and so the cool thing is I was one of the top sales reps in the country last year. I made our company trip. We go on our company trip next month.

And so the results have paid off. My boss like, you don't need to be in the office, you don't need to be at your desk. Go do what you have to do.

So football for me starts in June, July when spring ball starts. So Anderson has already started their spring practices and we start off season football at Merkerson this week. So I'm blessed.

Late April when we're recording this for the listener. Yeah. And so I'm blessed.

I've got a, like Randy said, it's a lifetime commitment. But what I've tried to do is I've tried to build a tribe or an army of guys who think like I do, who want to empower kids. And I've been so blessed, I have, I call him my little brother.

He's My assistant head coach. And there's no other name I can say for him, but he is like minded. And this man has sold multiple businesses so he can spend time at Merkerson, at Anderson coaching.

And I couldn't do any of this without him. He's the only person I've ever met in this entire world who is as insanely driven to see the improvement of young men like me. And we've been able to find three or other coaches that are just like us.

So our Pop Warner team is coached by five guys that don't have kids in the team. And we spend our time. When practice starts on Monday, I hit the field at Merkerson at 3:00 and I'm on the field until 7:30.

So I coach the middle school from 3 to 3 to 4:30 or 5:00 and I'm with my Pop Warner team from 5:30 to 7:30 and that's Monday. Tuesdays we lift at Merkerson, no practice for Pop Warner. Wednesdays we practice middle school at 3:00.

Pop Warner five to seven. Thursdays we lift and do agility at middle school. No Pop Warner practice Friday the boys usually get off and then we will usually have a walkthrough for our Pop Warner team for a one hour walkthrough for our games on Saturday.

And you're at the high school on top of that and working your job. So. And what's the high school schedule like every day? They're usually 7:15.

7:15 in the morning until 9:00. I usually leave when they go into lift. I'll go give them a little hard time, some grief when they go lift.

But then after that I head home. Yeah. And of course my other coach is there all the time.

And then you've also got to watch film on the weekends. So I'm blessed. I don't watch as much film.

Randy's son Ryland watches film and grades film for the high school. I watch a lot of middle school film because I'm trying to make sure that the middle school kids handle all the concepts we're trying to teach before they get to high school. And how much time do you spend on film in a week? Me? Probably 10 hours.

Okay, so on top of all the other things we just talked about. Yeah. And then you also have, I'm sure, boys and former athletes calling you on a regular basis.

How often are you on the phone talking to somebody unscheduled. Wow. Let's see who have I talked to? So I've talked To two of my ex players this week.

I haven't texted. I owe Rylan a text back. But usually probably two or three calls a week, five or six texts a week.

I've coached in this program. This is my 14th year in this program. I was on the coaching staff when we started the Trojans Pop Warner program.

I'm still in contact with three of the boys from the very first team. So let's talk about how you got here a little bit. I don't want to go real deep on the background, but give us the Reader's Digest version of a tiny amoeba of yes, sorry, Bugs Bunny on the first day.

I mean, give us the quick overview how you got from LA to Austin and just, just a quick. Okay, yeah, overview. I knew I liked you for a reason.

Born in LA and moved to Austin, things are good. Mom and dad are from Austin. They were high school acquaintances.

Dad gets in the military, graduates from ut, goes to takes a job at Lockheed, works at Lockheed for a while, gets an opportunity. IBM comes back and so my whole family is here. Get back here.

When I was four and a half, started first grade and then went to private school through fourth grade. Went to Ridgetop elementary for elementary school, Pierce Middle School, Reagan High School and sorry, it's not Reagan Northeast side High school prep or college prep, whatever it's called. Now I'm a little bitter about the change of the name, but I'm not, I don't, I don't do well with change.

So that's why I coach still. I don't like change, but so then went to UT for three years, transferred to a little junior college in Dallas, Richland College in Dallas, came back to ut, finished things up and then been here. My other big time spend is I'm a worship leader at my church.

So we go to Christian Life Austin down in South Austin and we live in Manor. So I go to church in far West Austin. So it's a 28 mile commute back and forth to church and being worship leader there.

I'm also a coach for our worship team. So I coach our tenors and our new developing singers. So I spend a lot of time at church.

Gunny Acapello, you don't want to hear me sing that now. I sang all Easter. My voice sounds, I sound like Tone Loke.

I could do a really good Tone Loke invitation right now we're coming back because we got all this great recording equipment. I'm a huge acapella fan. My wife will tell you for sure.

It's embarrassing. What a geek I am about that stuff. I love it.

So tell us your coaching style. What is it that you. How would you sum it up? So to put it in terms of NFL coaches, I would be considered a player's coach.

Between my assistant coach and I always say we're. Was it Lethal Weapon, Danny Glover and Good cop, bad cop On a spectrum from Pete Carroll to Bill Belichick, where are you in the spectrum? Of course, you said Pete Carroll, one of the coaches I really don't like. He's a USC man.

Come on. Yeah, but he destroyed usc. Sorry, inside voice got out.

I would put myself. I hate to ever put my name in the conversation with the coach that I admire the most, but I look at what Bill Walsh did and how he developed an offense around a quarterback who had less than ideal physical skills and won four Super Bowls with a guy that no one thought would ever be. He's a fourth, fifth round draft pick.

He wasn't a skilled ball player. You look at him, he just looked like a guy. Joe Montana is.

Yeah, Tom Brady is the goat, but Joe Montana is a close second for me. And the offense that Walsh was able to build and the way he was able to build it and the logic behind how he put a roster together, I admire. He's attributed to a comment that I'm not sure I haven't been able to verify or prove.

He said, I need 10% of my roster to be preachers and the other 10% of my roster to be convicts. And somehow the other 80% are going to make them work together. And I'm a big believer in finding.

I want a really, really bad kid that I can try and change and help him find a different path to walk in. And then a really, really, really good kid that can change his path and dirty him up a little bit so he can reach down and pick that really, really bad kid up and make him better. So you want the good kid to be comfortable getting his hands dirty, to pull other people out of them.

I love that. Well, and so that goes back to the first f the faith. I'm a big believer that we can't be living our lives in a position that we're so holy that we can't interact with people that aren't.

What was that guy's name? Who did that? Yeah, that's kind of Jesus. Yeah, yeah, those commercials. Those collectors and hookers.

Yeah, those commercials. He gets us. Commercials are just.

To me, that's one of the best marketing campaigns I've ever seen because they Literally show somebody interacting with someone that has absolutely. No, these two people shouldn't be in the same space together, but they're interacting, and it looks like it's a positive interaction. So that's a great marketing campaign.

I have just this desire to see people be better. And. Am I the best coach of offensive linemen? Nah, probably not.

But I'm really good at finding what you can do and how I can make you do what you do a little bit better. And if you're willing to go on a journey of finding that. What that better looks like, it's going to be a good.

It'll be a good experience for you to give listeners an idea. I mean, Vince works with the offensive line, right? That is. He's like, this is where the team runs.

He's going to work with the fat kids. Big sexies. Yeah.

I thought we had to call him fluffies today. Is that. Oh, no.

I was watching Gabriel Iglesias. No. Okay.

And so we have. I'm joking because I just saw him on my Facebook feed for the first time, and I don't. Yeah, you know, we don't call lineman fluffies now.

That's what Gabriel Iglesias calls himself. I'm going to be in so much trouble. I'm going to.

Definitely. Okay. Sorry.

But he's not an offensive lineman. He wouldn't fit. No.

Because he doesn't have the attitude to be an offensive lineman. I like the kids who will celebrate their abundance of big. Since this is an abundance podcast, we'll use that term.

I had one kid that played for me the last two seasons. This kid was your perfect example of the attitude of an offensive lineman. He was short first season.

He was chubby, he was hardworking. He did every single thing we asked him to do every single day on the field. He worked harder, 10 times harder than the quarterbacks, than the running backs.

And he just had the mindset of a kid that you want to be an offensive lineman. He would sacrifice himself on plays. Ball's going that way.

I can't beat this kid on this block. Fine. I'm going to just lay out and just get run over so I can make sure my running back gets around the corner.

He comes back the second year, he's probably 4 inches taller, 10 pounds heavier, stronger, and faster than some of my running backs. And I asked him, do you want to be a running back this year? He said, only if I can play on the offensive line first. I'm like, okay.

He ended up playing both ways, almost every game. We let him play some fullback, he played some middle linebacker. One game, I lined him up a cornerback.

This kid did everything. So literally, he went on a journey from being the fat kid and not having great technique to developing outstanding technique by the end of the first season. Comes back the second season.

He's one of my team leaders. What have you. What's the impact on the kids? Tell us, our listeners, some stories about just the impact on the kids.

Okay, so I probably have the. And I hate to tell this story first, but it's a story because you're tied to it. So we had the blessing of coaching an entire family of boys the COVID year.

We had two brothers. The oldest brother, middle brother. The baby brother was playing with the 8 and 9 year old.

So he's watching us, and he would come up at the end of practice. We always do cardio work. So oldest brother is a seventh grader.

Younger brother is sixth. I can't remember if he's fifth or sixth. Anyway, he's younger.

And then the baby brother's, like, in third grade. And so I watched the oldest brother, who's now a starting defensive end at a high school here in Austin, not our high school. I'm working on it.

Still trying to get him to transfer. He's a star. Michelle's got all kinds of UIL problems associated with it, but keep going.

No, because we live in a neighborhood that it's open either way. Open transfer. Yeah, you can open transfer.

So I'm trying. I'm working on it. So oldest brother comes in.

He's got a really, really good, solid skill set. He's tall, thin, really, really long, armed. Okay.

You see defensive end written all over this kid. He's a hard worker, good fighter, and starts to develop pretty quickly. Rylan works with him, and immediately we're like, oh, this kid could play right tackle.

He's strong. He's kind of fast. The other brother, the middle kid, has every type of social disorder you can think of.

He's add, he's dyslexic. He's got social anxiety. He's got explosive personality disorder.

And he just. He doesn't want to deal with people at all. The first day of practice, we're lining everybody up to just do some basic skills and drills.

He said, coach, can I go to the bathroom? Yeah, sure, go ahead. Right there. He goes to the bathroom.

Thirty minutes later, he's still in the bathroom, didn't come back. I'm like, wait, whatever happened to name who will not be mentioned? And I looked at Ray and said, have you seen me? Said, last time we went to the restaurant, I haven't seen him since. He hadn't come back.

So he's just sitting there outside the bathroom, just sitting down. He said, well, Coach, I figured I went to the bathroom. I don't think I want to practice anymore.

I'm like, whoa, you're on the team. You got to come practice. You got to participate.

I can't have you over here by yourself. We drag him back over, he gets back into practice. This kid had absolutely no desire to be on a football field.

None whatsoever. And we'll tell his funny story a little bit later. But by the end of the season, there was an incident in a game.

The same kid in Popcorn. You have a minimum number of plays you have to play. He played his eight plays.

He goes to the sideline and starts taking his pads off. Like, what are you doing? He said, I got my plays in, coach. You can let the other boys play.

No, no, you don't play a minimum play. I want you. That's how many you have to play.

I want you to keep playing. The more you play, the better you get. Oh, no, no.

Let the other kids play, dude, get back on the field. Put your pads on. By the end of the season, he actually started to enjoy the game.

He had come out of his shell a little bit. He was a little bit more socially. Is unawkward a word.

He communicated a little bit better. He and his brother started to get along a little bit better. He had a lot of conflict with his older brother.

Yeah, sure. The younger brother was coming up to run with us after every practice, and he makes the comment. He said, coach, Vince, two years, I'm going to be up on this team, and I'm going to be your best player.

All right, cool. We'll see. Fast forward, older brother moves on.

The middle brother comes back the next year, 3 inches taller, 10 pounds heavier and shredded. He looks like a stud athlete. He's been working out all summer.

He said, coach, I'm going to be your starting middle linebacker, okay? This is the kid who wanted to play eight plays and take his pads off and sit and watch count. Butterflies, really. The very first practice that we had contact, he laid out the very best player on the team.

One on one tackle. Just squared him up, laid him up, drove him back three yards and dropped him on his butt. Sticks his hand out and picks him up, pats him on the helmet and gets back in the huddle.

Every one of the coaches just. We're looking at him with our mouths open. You're not the same.

What demon has possessed you because you're not the same child that played for us last season. He said, coach, I figured it out. I want to play football.

I'm like, okay, first day of the game, very first day of the season, he's my starting inside linebacker. And the very same kid that he t bone tackled was my. I run a 4, 2 5, so I've got two inside linebackers and my two guys on the outside are act like safeties.

So those are my two inside. They're both run and hit guys, fast side to side linebacker guys. And the first game of the season, they had 25 tackles between the two of them.

This is a kid who didn't want to have anything to do with football. Year one. Now he comes back, he's a monster.

Mom says his grades have gone up. He has a girlfriend. He's not a problem in class anymore.

He's not a problem at the house anymore. Second week of the season, he breaks his wrist, and it was on his growth plate. So the doctor wasn't comfortable giving him a playing cast.

He missed the whole season. He could have come back the very last game because we made the playoffs. He could have come back the very last game, but his conditioning was shot and I didn't want him to get hurt again.

He came to every game. He came to every practice. He stood on the sideline with his jersey on, with his cast on, and he would help me call defensive plays.

And the next year he said, coach, I'm done with football. I'm playing basketball now. He's a starting guard at their high school now.

You can't make stories like this up. But then. So the third kid, the third brother played for me to.

The last two years, he's played every position on the field, including quarterback. He's played safety, he played offensive line, take the line back. He didn't play center because he couldn't step or the squat.

He played every other position on the field, but he couldn't play center in the playoff game. Last year, that one kid, the little brother, had 12 tackles in the first half of the game. He scored a touchdown in that last playoff game and he almost had an interception.

So he did everything. His prophecy came, I'm going to be your best player when I come play for you. And he did.

So the tears are about to come right now. So we go to Harvard. We always have a big party and get together in the season.

All the festivities are done. Party's over. Coach Hatcher at the high school, all the other coaches were all sitting together at the bar.

Parents are all leaving. Here comes a family of five walking up. Mom, dad, oldest brother, middle brother, youngest brother.

They're all walking up to me and they're crying, not saying a word. I'm like, hey, what's going on? Mom says, coach, you have changed our entire family. He said, you took a game and made my kids have purpose.

And that's what I coach for. Those opportunities. I don't get an opportunity to change a whole family.

I've never done that before. I've changed individual kids. Never changed a family.

But to see a game that we just. We play for fun, and we teach kids how to be a little bit better at the process of blocking and tackling and interaction and following it. Following.

We give them discipline, we give them structure. And hopefully somewhere in the process, some of the other things I want to teach them about life kind of fall into place. And to see it happen for an entire family, I was blown away.

Mom was a college basketball player, so she knew nothing about football. Dad was a college soccer player. And for the middle kid now to be a stud basketball player, of course, mom loves this, but the two other boys are there.

Football all gone. And youngest kid has transferred over. Yeah.

By the way, you've definitely changed families. I would argue you've changed the whole community for the better. Just you have.

You have. So appreciate that. Let's.

Let's talk about a kid you can. I have one in mind in particular that I. But that's because I know you can pick any story you want that may.

I think, you know, thinks things same can think. Pick any kid that maybe it's not with football. They're struggling off the field.

Yep. Tell a story about that. So I've got one.

I'll pick one from this season. So we had a kid that you. You know, the kid that's probably the best athlete that's ever been through the program.

He's getting a scholarship this year to go to a major. This is our first kid to get a D1 scholarship from coming out of Anderson that we. That played for us.

We got two of them in the same year. So the quarterback for Anderson last year and one of their stud wide receivers, Max Gerlick and Ed Small, are both getting D1 scholarships. Max is going to UTSA.

Ed's going to TCU. And coincidence, the receiver coach at TCU, his brother is a good friend of mine. So everyone knows the great players.

It's the guys that aren't quite as great. Ed was probably the best kid that's ever played for some Pop Warner until this past year. This young man's going to be playing seventh grade football this coming year.

And Ed had the record for most touchdowns scored in the game. In a Pop Warner game, this kid scored seven. Ed's record was five kid scored seven touchdowns in a game.

Now this kid is troubled. When I tell you he's got messed up house, parents issues, social issues, bad friend group. We've been able to help this kid go from not wanting to be in class, not wanting to do his homework, yelling and screaming at mom, angry about the divorce.

And now he sees something that he can. He has a greater goal to aspire to. And he had never played football before.

He was a basketball kid. He said, coach, I don't think I ever want to play basketball again. Now the direction has changed because that assistant coach I have is with him in middle school all the time.

And he still has some discipline issues and some rough edges to rough out. He's got some anger issues and he loves to fight. But we're working on.

We're kind of buffing the edges slowly but surely. That's. I can't wait to see what happens with that kid in four years.

If he stays on the track he's on now, he's going to be amazing. The young man who's the starting tailback at Anderson now, Jay Fulmer. Jay played for us on that Covid season.

Jay's one of the toughest kids, physically toughest kids. This kid that's coming through, Marcus and next could be the next Jay Fulmer. Yeah, tough kid.

And I'm just blown away the fact that we were able to make the first step of incremental change. We only got him for one season, the first step of incremental change for this kid. And I have no idea how good this kid could be.

No idea if we can keep him out of trouble. Keep him out of trouble. But football, Football gives him a much better chance.

Yeah. Much better chance. Yeah.

What are some non negotiables that you have with players? So you know how every season the first practice we get together and I always have my parent gathering. So the boys are still practicing on the field, tail end of practice. I expect all the parents to be there.

We have our parent pow wow. I do have some non negotiables for the players and for the parents. The biggest non negotiable for the kids is no pass, no play.

Because you are a student athlete, you're not an athlete, student. The playing of this sport is a privilege. Once you leave the confines of Pop Warner football, you are turned loose into a world of coaches who have a desire to win at all costs and they don't care much about who you are and all that other stuff.

Yeah, there are good coaches down then, but the coaches are there to win and they're going to pick their best kids and play their best kids. And if you have a grade issue, they really don't care. They'll let you sit and you have to figure it out on your own.

So I start the no pass, no play rule for me because it's going to hit you next year in middle school anyway. So if the parents tell me that there's a grade issue, you're not playing, period. You'll stand on the sideline and you'll face your parents during the game.

You won't face the field. You face your parents. Parents.

Some parents like that, some people, some parents don't. I had a parent that said, well, I'm not going to tell you what his grades look like. I said, don't worry, I'll find it.

I know all the teachers, I'll ask and if he's, if he's got great issues, I'll find out. And if he doesn't pass, he won't play. Well, that's not fair.

It is what it is because guess what? Next year, if he doesn't pass, he won't play. And then you won't have anything to say about it. My non negotiables for parents, don't call me on game day when a game is over.

If you call me on game day, you're. I'm going to answer the phone and you're not going to like the reaction you get. Did you forget the rule? I told you, don't call me on game day.

Now you get to see bad Cop because I'm going to unload on you. Don't call me on game day. I have to process everything I've seen.

I have to talk to my assistant coaches, and especially if we won. I'm worse if we won because I have to find what do we do right that we can replicate and do again. I don't want a parent.

Well, my son didn't get before carries. I don't care. Guess what? You can get out.

And the expletives usually follow after that. So we probably can't say stuff like that on this podcast. But the calls I've had a few calls have gotten pretty bad and I'VE had, you know, one parent.

Maybe you should run it. Are you familiar with Inside Zone? Look, don't tell me about running plays. I could teach you how to run power, things like that.

Very important. Why do you answer? Because I tell them not to call. And if you call me, I'm going to let you see exactly what you get, what you paid for.

Let's work on an AI that can answer those questions for you. No, I don't keep them on the phone for an hour. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Trust me. I'm going to keep them on the phone for about five minutes and they will never do it again.

It'll never happen again. Now, I had one parent that did call and it was a mom. So I kind of censored myself because it was a mom and she called with a specific issue and what didn't have anything to do with playing time.

So I was nice. I was kinder. So, hey, don't forget my rule.

Don't call on game. Well, this is really, really important. I need you to hear this and blah, blah, blah.

It was from her son. Got some stuff happened on the field and he was afraid to talk about it. I said no, tell him to bring that to me while right when it happens.

That one I was okay with. The dad's calling. How come you didn't run outside more? If you want to have something to do with the playbook and play calls, you need to put on a blue shirt and be on the field with us.

If it's that important to you. If you think you know that much about the game. Here's our schedule.

I literally tell every single dad and some of the moms who know a little about the game. And I've had a mom coach. We had a mom that was really, really good that her son played for us our championship year.

And she literally came back the following year and was a team mom so she could learn more about the game. I don't have a problem with mom coaches. I'm good with it.

I love it. But if you know so much that when we sent out the call to ask for coaches, why didn't you come down then? Okay, so you're telling me you're the armchair quarterback and you want to sit back and you're playing fantasy football with your kid? That doesn't sit well for me. It really doesn't.

If you want to commit fully commit. If you want to partially commit, I've got a job for you. I need two coaches that stand on both sides and count.

We do it because we have minimum play requirements. I need two guys that'll stand here and count, but I need you to do something else while you're there. Don't just count.

I need you. You've got all 22 film that you're watching all game. I need you to tell me what you see.

What is the defense doing? I'm standing on the sideline looking at a side angle. You're standing behind it. Where's their inside linebacker lining up? Where's their nose? Do they have a nose guard? Is there somebody over the center? Are they two gapping? Do they have someone lined up in the B gap and the A gap over my right side? I love to run right again.

I've been doing this a long time. My playbook hasn't changed in 10 years. So the coaches that play against me, if you watch my film, the plays are exactly the same.

Yeah. If you're listening on the podcast and you play against us, if you look at a whole film, you're going to see the same plays. Sorry, I don't.

Again, you're going right. Yeah, we. If you give me a good left tackle, I'm going to throw the ball.

If I get a good right guard, I'm going to run the ball inside, period. If I, if you, if I'm blessed to have a good left tackle and a good guard, you might get a little bit of both. And the kids coming up this year, I've got my left tackle starting from last year is coming back and he's bigger and he's faster and he's been doing jujitsu all year.

I'm quite excited, I can tell. I mean, I'm really excited about this kid. He was good last year.

He gave up two sacks the whole year and he was an 11 year old playing left tackle. He's four inches taller, 10 pounds heavier, faster, and he's got better hands. I tried to just.

I was messing with. He's my neighbor, so I was messing with him in the neighborhood and I tried to slap him in the head, slap my hand away. I'm like, ooh, your hands are faster this year, so.

Oh, you're learning a whole new technique at left tackle this year, so. Well, Coach, can you think I can play center? I'll try it. I would love to run the ball inside all game, every game.

If you can push, if you can snap accurately and give me a push from center, I'll move you from left tackle. If I can find another kid that can just stand out there, left tackle, I'll do it. I'm all for it because I know I've got a kid coming in, is playing right guard who's a body mover.

I put those two kids together. I will just let the quarterback take the snap and run straight ahead. Just run right there.

Let's, let's go to break on that. And when we come back, we can, I want to get into the faith a little bit when we come back. And we do want to definitely, the story you referenced, we definitely have to tell that story.

We're going to have to figure out how during the break. A whole bunch of, like, inside stuff I'm going to go figure out at the break. Yeah.

We'll talk to the listeners after the break. All right, listeners, welcome back. We're still here with Vince Humphreys.

Vince, let's transition a little bit into your faith, okay? Because you got your three Fs. We've talked a lot about football, right. But the first one that you have there, obviously important to you is faith.

So it's a little tricky in today's world, right? There's, there's, there's some pushback. Faith isn't, I think it's becoming more popular again. I know kids, young kids are, are flocking back to the church, but there's still a lot of pushback.

So how do you balance that and live with that authentically without being preachy? Which I should mention, one of the things I, one of the things I appreciate about you and John, I think both of you are very similar in this. Your faith is very strong, but you're not out when somebody talks to you, the one of you, they know where you stand, but you're not preachy about it. Randy said, it's tricky for me.

It's not very tricky. No, it's not. And that's, I hate to say it's a balancing act.

I don't change my demeanor, my walk, my personality ever. It's too hard to try and balance being multiple people for multiple people. So you get Vince, and if you like Vince, great.

If you don't like Vince, great. I don't care. Some people I offend working in the same industry.

I've worked with a lot of brokers for 25 plus years. A lot of people I work with, and I will usually tell people when I first meet them say, look, here's Vince in a nutshell. If you like me today, you're really going to like me in six months.

If you don't like me today, you're probably not going to like me. Much more in six months. And we may even get to the point where you just don't want to deal with me at all.

And I'm okay with that. The difference between me now and me in six months is you're going to get to know exactly where I stand on everything I stand on. And you talked about non negotiables in football.

I have a bunch of non negotiables in life. My faith. Every decision I make is based on my faith first.

So you can't come to me and ask me to make an ethical decision that's going to violate my faith. My faith comes first before my ethical decisions. I've had brokers who want me.

Would you be willing to erase the medical condition? No, not as a matter of fact. I don't want your case now. What do you mean? I want the case because I know you'd be willing to violate my ethical standard by lying on an application.

Don't want it. Keep. Send it.

Send it to somebody else. Don't. Well, so you're telling me you want to walk away from business? Not only work away from business, I walk away from you.

I don't need to work with you. If you, if I know that's how you behave, I'll go. So you said something that I just want to.

I want to put a fine point. It's so important. You're like, if you like it or don't like it, it's okay.

And that's because you're not judging yourself based on what they think of. You know, there. There's a bigger much issue.

I talk to people that some people totally get it and some people don't understand. It's like my return on investment. I'm measuring with eternity.

Like my timeline is different than your timeline. And so like if you think 50 years is a long time, then we're just talking about different. Like I'm just in a different conversation.

No judgment from me to you. That's not my job. I'm just telling you that I have a different point of view and I respect that.

You have your point of view, I have my point of view. We can talk about those point of views. Points of view.

But I'm not. I'm not going to even try and change your mind about it. I'm just going to.

Here's where I stand. And we can interact here from the right side or interact here from the left side. It's your choice.

I told my kids there's three decisions you make in life that change your whole life and One of them is deciding what, what you're going to commit to that's bigger than yourself. If you're not going to commit to something bigger than yourself, like we, that it's a cause of depression. It's like all these problems it can have and so, so big.

Yeah. I mean, again, it's not about like me shoving that down somebody else's throat. You don't have to.

What did St. Francis say? You preach the gospel at all times and use words when necessary. Exactly.

Yeah. So I'll kind of seal part of my faith story with a story around a kid. This was shock.

Yeah. Yeah, shocker. Vince is very consistent.

Yep. That is actually what I tell people about me. I am, if nothing else, I'm consistent.

I try my best to be the same today. I follow a savior that says, I'm the same today, yesterday and forever. So I had a kid that played three seasons ago.

Had no idea dad was a youth pastor. No clue. Great kid.

He was smaller. He ended up playing cornerback in safety. He ran the ball a little bit.

He was afraid of contact, but he didn't mind hitting. He didn't want to get hit when he had the ball, but he didn't mind hitting you if you had it. Great kid.

Just a really, really strong willed kid and just one of them. A quiet influence on the team. Really, really, really positive.

Never stepped out of line if you told them, hey, I need you to run an extra lap. He's running an extra lap and trying to drag other kids with him to run the lap and giving all his effort. End of the season comes, we have our end of the season party like we always do, and dad pulls me aside.

He said, hey, coach, I need you to hear this from my heart. Not from my mouth, but hear this from my heart. He said, you showed this team of boys more Jesus without ever mentioning his name.

Because in Pop Warner in Texas, you're not supposed to pray before games. And again, I kind of bend that rule a little bit every game. At the beginning of the game, I'll walk away by myself and I'll pray.

Just me. This past season, I had a whole bunch of boys that were believers and the boys would lead prayer. So the kid Easton, my left tackle, that's coming back, if he isn't a minister by the time he's 20 years old, I'll be shocked because he loves to proclaim the gospel.

So he would. If so, someone would pray. Hands up immediately.

So that team, the dad, just like you, taught so many lessons, almost directly out of Scripture to these boys. He said, you were reading parables in what you said in practices. I'm glad you caught that.

He said, we were talking about it as parents. He said, you literally were giving sermons on the football field without saying Jesus name. I said, then you caught it and you got it.

And that's exactly what I try and do every single day. Not just I do it at work, I do it on the football field. I do it at church.

I'm trying to be the person that empowers people to be the best version of themselves. Not just for today, but for the rest of your life. This weekend was like, we had an amazing Easter weekend.

So we had services all week. We had a night of worship on Wednesday. We had five services for Easter weekend.

So we had a service Saturday and services all day Sunday. The last service on Sunday, I get a text in our family chat. So I have a son, one son.

He's 26. Matter of fact, he turns 27 today. And so he just got married in November.

And I get a text in our family chat from his wife. She said, we're here. No, we're still at church.

We figured they're at the house. No, no, we're here at church. You guys came.

He said, yeah, he lives way up north. So our church, again, is way south. And I'm just blown away.

All of a sudden, you see this large, imposing, hairy figure walk in. It's my son. His wife and her twin sister all came to the last service.

And for. As a dad, to watch my son walking, I'm like, sweet. Raised in Christian, went to Christian school until sixth grade.

So he's had a previous relationship with Jesus. We don't really talk about faith very much. At the end of the sermon, our pastor has an invitation.

And he said, anyone who wants to accept you, just raise your hand. So I know who I'm praying for. I see his hand raised up.

I'm like, wait a second. I'm looking up and I'm looking. I see him.

That big hairy arm. Is that Devin's arm? I look at my wife. She's sitting next to him.

I said, is that Devin's arm? She's like, oh, wow. So he made. He rededicated himself to Christ.

And I had never had a conversation with him about this at all. So I told him, you just gave me the best Easter present that you could have ever given. Because now we get to have a conversation about things on a totally different level and talk about things on a terminal basis instead of a temporal basis.

And that was like, the best day of my entire life. That's like the crowning jewel of a father who wants to see the best for his son. And Randy, you know, I really.

I highly esteem my child. I love him. He reminds me so much of Ryland.

But to see him make that commitment without dad pushing, without dad saying anything, just to drop that in my lap. I was literally standing on stage just bawling. It was amazing.

People were like, vince, you okay? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. You have no idea. So I told everyone on the team about it, and so half of the team was bawling after the service.

It was pretty cool. Pretty cool. It's awesome.

I want to go back. So I said, it's tricky. You both corrected me.

Said it's not tricky. I would argue it may not be tricky for the two of you, but I think it's tricky for a lot of people. Okay.

Because I'm just going to tell you that that's. That's not what I witness a lot going around. Right.

So what would you tell the people that if it is tricky for somebody else or when you watch people struggling with it, what's the disconnect? What's the difference? What would you tell that person? This could be for either one of you. But we'll start with you, Vince. Me personally, I would tell people, if you are truly committed to.

I don't know if we want to. I don't want to inject my personal bias. Oh, he asked.

Inject. Inject away. Yeah, he opened the door.

You should walk right through it. Okay, well, if I'm allowed. Yeah, you're allowed to have your own perspective.

Yes, you are. Well, I didn't know, if you want me to put it. Okay, so I serve Jesus, period, unapologetically.

And if you've invited me into a situation and you already know me, if you knew what you should have known coming in, you know what you're getting. If you ask me to be involved in something, it's easy to represent Jesus when I know what he's done for me. And it's not hard to tell people who he is and that hard to tell people what he's done.

Because, again, I approach the world from a position of humility. I don't do anything on my own. Everything I've done is preordained.

Everything I've done, either he has done it for me or he's empowered me to do it. Every blessing I have came from Him. Every good and perfect thing comes from the Lord.

So that's I live my life from a mindset of everything I have, all the relationships I have, the job, the house, the finances, the son, the wife, everything came out of his grace. And grace is a big deal for me because I've lived through a life of a lot of stuff that wasn't deserving of grace. So I wear that on my sleeves.

And there's a couple stories there we didn't get to. Oh, yeah, there might be a second episode. Vince, as it turns out, wasn't the good kid getting muddy.

He was the bad kid being reached out to. Yes, I was. Yeah.

Episode two. Yes, I was. And that's what turned me into the good kid reaching back to get the bad kid.

So knowing that God had to pull me from a long way. And there's a whole lot of things, a lot of things he's had to dust off of me to make me where I am now. And I'm nowhere near where I want to be or where I need to be, but he just happens to be using me right now in a different way.

We can talk about that, too. So Randy called and invited me to this. I'm sitting on a panel discussion with my wife tomorrow at our church for young married couples, which the thought that they would ever ask me.

I'm shocked. Again, I have a pretty warped personality, Warped sense of humor. The Bugs Bunny comment earlier.

I just see things a little bit different in the young adults. I have an affinity for young people. And the young adult director's like, no, Vince, we slated you for this, and I forgot to ask you.

Are you busy Saturday? I'll do it. I don't have anything of my life that I hide. My past is here.

It is. This is what I've been through. I've done this, this, this.

I've been here, did that because I don't want anybody else to think that God can't make a change in your life or use you after what you've done. The person who's probably the most horrendous in the entire New Testament was Paul as Saul. He was literally taking Christians to be slaughtered when he had his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

So if God can use that guy. I haven't had anybody killed yet. I've thought about it.

I thought about it. Yet you haven't seen some of the kids. I've coached some of them that are trying.

Yeah. I don't want to go too long here. I take a different approach.

Right. I just try to meet people where they are. Like, I think.

I think you know, you're unapologetically. I think that's a great approach. I don't suffer the same like overabundance of humility.

I've been accused of being arrogant my whole life. It's only a problem because it's true. Like that's, I suffer arrogance.

And so for me, what I've got to do is go meet people where they are. And meeting them where they are means that I don't shove myself down their throat. And so I think that's two very different approaches to kind of walking it out instead of talking about it.

My mom, she was great. She said, you know, John, your actions are speaking so loudly I can't hear what you're saying. And that was just like, ouch, you know, and so that could be a good thing.

That could be a great thing. Well, that's not how she was saying it at the moment. I tried to make it a great thing for me, but that's not what she meant.

And it was. And she was on point. Like she, yeah, she's amazing.

But yeah. So I think, I think not tricky is the opposite of not being tricky is being really super clear. And I think for me I've got a super clear path that I'm called to kind of meet people right where they are.

And that means I've got to kind of not make myself the center. Which, you know, you and all my friends know is not always the easiest thing for me. So that's true.

It's feedback I've received on enough occasions to know like people tell me that lovingly. And so as I do it right this minute. So let's get back to you.

Well, let's, let's transition to, let's go into tactics a little bit. And I'm not talking the X's and O's and what defense. And you know, we have our inside joke about teaching how to run power counter.

But the. How do you, how do you get into some more tactics of coaching? Okay, so I think I have a few living examples of guys who are just amazing coaches. So my dad was absolutely amazing.

He could take some of the most difficult concepts for a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 year old kid and boil them down into really, really small pellet sized pieces of things to learn to develop you from point A to point B. Perfect examples of. Again, I was a catcher my whole life, so I didn't.

My dad taught pitching. That was my dad's, his superpower. He could teach anybody to pitch.

He taught me to pitch. I'm A catcher, I'm tiny, no velocity in a ball. He taught me how to throw a slider.

He taught me how to throw a knuckleball. And he taught me how to be accurate in literal, simple things such as developing your mind's eye and learning how to pitch and making everything is based on steps and everything is based on the distance of how far you move your arm back and all those little things. He said you should be able to pitch with your eyes closed.

He said if you can shoot a free throw with your eyes closed, you can throw a pass with your eyes closed. You should be able to pitch with your eyes closed. And he had simple drills and techniques that he would take his pictures through.

And it's disbelief when you tell a 12 year old kid, don't look at it, don't look at the glove, close your eyes. Fear, immediate fear. So he was really, really good at taking away fear in the process of learning something new.

And so everything I do, I try to make sure that I'm teaching kids enough. And even not just kids in popcorn or in middle school and high school. I want to teach you something new, but I want to remove the fear from it so that whatever this first thing we do is so simple that you could do it in your sleep and do it without thinking.

So when I'm teaching offensive lineman the first thing, we've been running zone blocking schemes for 12 years. I've been teaching 10, 11, 12 year olds how to zone block. But I don't tell them they're zone blocking first.

I tell them they're dancing. And boys like, I don't want to dance coach. I don't want to dance.

Dancing, that's for girls. No. You want a girlfriend? Where does she want to go? She wants to go dancing.

So I'm going to teach you how to dance. And the first step of zone blocking is just a six inch step with your right foot. If we're running the right six inch step with your right foot.

So by the time we're through the first two weeks of practice, every single boy knows exactly how far a 6 inch step with their right foot is. And you can do it all day long. And the best kids can do it right foot, left foot from both stances and they've got it mastered.

Before we teach you the second step, the second step is an eight inch step with your left foot. And by the time they've developed this. Now, the best example was one of the boys that played with, played with the year after, Rylan.

He was horrible. He had horrible feet. Once I got him to the point where he could take that second step and then extend with his right hand.

Coach, I get it. I'm dancing. Yeah, you're dancing.

You're not blocking, you're dancing. And is it the same fears? Like, do you find the same three to five fears every year with the kids or does it change every year? Well, for my group, it's the same. Offensive linemen are all the same.

None of them want to teaching an offensive lineman how to just really be aggressive with those first two steps and punch really, really hard with your. With your first. If you're going left or right, either you're a hard right hand punch or a hard left hand punch.

It's the same thing every time. Even if a kid's played offensive line before, trying to get them to commit to just doing. Do this as quickly as possible, as hard as you, punch as hard as you can.

I don't care if it's not accurate. We'll work on accuracy. Next, I need you.

Here's the technique. Here's the first three things we're going to learn. Boom, boom, boom.

That's it. Get that down and everything else is going to come on top of that. So pitching fundamentals, football fundamentals, Faith fundamentals, Singing fundamentals.

Yeah, yeah, you're working in the insurance world. Fundamentals. And that's where I think, you know, with my kids in particular, we've talked about the importance of fundamentals and sometimes they jump right into it, but many times they don't.

They want to skip over it and they want to go hang out in the bathroom for 30 minutes. Figuratively. Not really.

And so if, you know, I'm seeing what the listeners for a minute. So if, like if I don't play football or coach football for young kids, which most of the listeners probably don't, there's still a great moment here, right. Which is teach fundamentals.

What if you don't know what the fundamentals are for your skill or for where you are? Ask. Let's talk about that. Because mentorship is such an important point of what you do later on.

To me, I draw a line between coaching and mentorship. Or like coaching, I have a vested interest. They're on my team.

Mentorship. I don't have a vested interest. I'm investing in a relationship just for the benefit of me.

Investing in you. Because someone invested in me. Right.

That's, that's how I. I don't know if that's the right answer, but that's, that's How I separate the two. And so how do you.

Like, how would you. If someone needs mentorship and they want to learn the fundamentals of a thing that can be embarrassing or vulnerable or what would you say to that? So kid comes to you, he wants to learn the fundamentals of something you know nothing about, but you've coached him before. What do you tell them to do? To go find the fundamentals of the thing.

That's funny. So someone's actually asked me that. So I tell them, find someone that you trust.

And his response will coach, I trust you. I'm like, I know nothing about what you want to learn. So let's find somebody that knows what you're trying to learn, and let's go ask them.

And most people that you talk to, if you tell them, hey, man, you're really, really good at what you do, you. Man, you turn that light on really, really well, you do such a good job of moving that light switch up and down. I want to learn how to turn that light switch on the same way you do.

If you tell somebody that, you're like, oh, wow, he sees that. I do a good job turning the light switch on. Well, okay, let me show you how if you pulled your right arm just this right angle and push this way, it doesn't hurt your rotator cuff.

Oh, perfect. So now I've empowered somebody else to learn how to do this. Most people won't look at that from a point of fear, say, oh, he wants to learn what I'm doing so he can take my job.

It's a kid, especially. Most people are always willing to help empower a child. It's a little bit more difficult with adults.

I would just say that if you. If you ask someone 10 years ahead of you, most people 10 years ahead of you aren't worried about that. And so if you.

I tell people, find someone 10 years behind you, find someone 10 years ahead of you, and then the most important thing, you glazed right over. Give that mentor a feedback loop to tell them you're serious. Don't just take the knowledge.

Show them you've applied it, and then that way they'll keep investing. Well. And so my big thing is building a relationship.

Yeah. And everything in the world we do is about building community, building connection. My wife just started.

She. She owned a hair salon for years. She closed her hair salon during COVID She started a small boutique business.

She sells Paparazzi jewelry, $5 jewelry. So she's built a community of ladies that are supporting her. She's gone from Just starting to.

She's moving up in the company already. She's made platinum this year. So she's.

She's been selling her face off. She gets on Facebook and does a live show three days a week. People come on, they buy jewelry $5 at a time, $5 jewelry.

And she's. We'll have a link in the show notes for that. Yeah, but she's built an entire community.

She has more people buying jewelry from her now than she had when she had her hair salon. Just because I don't take a whole lot of credit for being a great guy, but my wife is a wonderful person. She is amazing.

Everyone that meets her is like, oh, that's why Vince is a good guy. Because of her, she has taken a rough edged, hard headed, self centered, egotistical, loudmouth dude like me and started to buff those edges off between her and Jesus. They turned me into a decent dude.

Decent. This Vince is a whole lot better than the old Vince. A whole lot better than the old Vince.

Seriously, we're just teeing up in episode two. Like, I want to get into all that. There's a lot.

It's a whole lot. We'll give you editorial privileges. We just want to get all the stories on recording.

We'll figure out what we can tell the world. Let's go back to the. I think John hit on a thing about just aggression, right? And it's hard with kids.

Like, there is a. You know, I watch them at the Pop Warner level and even the younger kids, every year they get a little more aggressive. But even at Pop Warner, there's very few kids that have true aggression.

They get to high school, they're a little more. They get to like watching Ryland play in college. It's night and day how much more aggressive aggression there is at the college level and then the NFL.

So what? How do you do that? Because this is uncomfortable. And I think it was uncomfortable when we were kids. I think it's really uncomfortable in today's world.

Kids are. I say all the time, kids are much nicer than we were, but they are much softer. That is true.

So how do you do this? I coach the trench. So I've got offensive linemen on one side, defensive lineman on the other. And I start off with the story that I tell the boys, say, look, I need a few good men.

Yeah, I borrow from the military. I need a few good men. I need a couple of boys who are willing to make a sacrifice.

You're not going to be the person that scores the touchdowns you're not going to be the kid that everyone sees and the cheerleaders are cheering for, but you are going to be the kid that I'm going to come to, and I'm going to grab you by your face mask and I'm going to tell you you did a great job and give you a hug and tell you that what you did was outstanding. Because we can't do all the other stuff we want to do if I can't find some kids who are willing to sacrifice and be linemen. And that's the first step.

So once they buy into being the sacrificial lamb of the team, I'm the kid that's going to get my feet stepped on. I'm going to be the kid that's going to get my face mask pulled all the time once I can get get that empowerment and buy in from those kids. And there's usually two or three that are like, oh, yeah, I'm all for it.

The second piece of the conversation is I said, if you're one of these kids that's coming down the field with me, we're going to speak differently, we're going to behave differently. I'm going to empower you to be violent. And they look at me like, did you say violence, Coach? Yes.

We're going to be explosively violent. I'm going to allow you to hit things. I get to hit things? Yeah.

Your parents tell you don't hit your brother and sister. I'm going to tell you, I want you to hit everything that you see in front of you. If your mom stands up in front of you and she has pads on with a different color jersey on, hit her.

I'm in. I'm in. So at that moment, then we start the process of learning your first steps and teaching kids how to strike that first punch.

And there's something that is so different for young men at this day and age, because we've kind of emasculated men a lot and taken that aggression away from them. Once a kid learns how to put their right foot in the ground the minute their left foot touches, and you punch something as hard as you can with your right hand. And I'll usually bring a pair of MMA gloves for the boys that first couple of practices, I don't want you to even have your hands right.

I just want you to punch this as hard as you can, hit this pad as hard as you can. I want the coach that's holding this pad to feel you punch him in the stomach. Hit it as Hard as you can.

I don't care if you swing from California, I don't care if your technique is bad. I want you to hit this as hard as you can. Everything you have.

The first time they do it, it looks horrific because most of these kids have never gone through actual training and it's ugly, it's just miserable. But over the next two weeks, you start refining that. So it goes from this stupid, ridiculous, crazy looking, extra movement punch to a 6 inch BAM.

A quick hammer. And when that happens, the light bulb goes off and they realize, oh, this is what coach Vince means by aggression. Boom.

A quick violent thrust here and this hand can do anything it wants. You can punch him in the stomach, punch him in the groin, slap him in the head. Whatever this hand does, I'm not telling you what to do with that hand.

Do it, whatever it takes. If that guy's bigger than you, punch him where you have to. Bring that left hand in and hit it where you have to.

And that's the dirty part of the offensive line that I coach. That's the fun stuff. So that's on the field.

And I think the fear for the kids is, my observation is they're worried about a society's been telling them you can't do that. But then I think if people are listening and they're not familiar, they think, oh, you're making little monsters off the field. Oh, no.

Right, go with that. So the next piece of this conversation is, so, guys, just so you're aware, we're doing this against your brothers, our own team, right now. There's going to be another team of guys in front of you that you're going to do this to them.

But when the game is over, when this is all over with, that punch that you just threw doesn't happen again until practice on Monday. Because this is what's going to make you a better steward of who you are and the community you're in. Because you have the ability to really devastate somebody with that punch that you're about to throw.

But the strength isn't in making the punch. The strength is knowing that I can throw this punch and do something to devastate somebody with it. But I only use it on the football field.

This is reserved for here. So the kid that's at Merkerson now, the one we're trying to, I'm trying to get him to understand that you're about to unlock a door for you that can pave the way to the rest of your life by playing a game someone's going to walk up to you and say, hey, we want to give you money to come to our school and run the football for us. But if you keep fighting and doing this punch that I'm teaching you off the field, that door is going to be closed for you forever.

And someone's going to put you in a small room that's got metal bars on the front of it and they're going to tell you what time to wake up, what time to go to the bathroom, what time to shower. If you can't control that aggression and make yourself focus this to just the football field. Someone's going to take away every privilege that this game can give you.

They'll take it away from you and they'll lock you up. And there has to be this, this beautiful point counterpoint with the kids so they understand. What I'm giving you is I'm giving you something that could be lethal or life changing if you take it and make it life changing, which I think a lot of these boys have.

I look at Ryland is the best example. An undersized kid who wanted to aspire and caught the vision and learned how to dream. I want to play college football.

The fact that he said he wanted to play NFL football, I was just blown away. Dream. Dream big.

I want you to dream. Whatever you think you can do, reach for it. We have a term in our worship team.

People will meet you below the level that you set. So if I tell somebody, hey, you can be a really, really good middle school football player, then they'll be a horrible middle school football player. I tell you, hey, you could be a great college ball player.

They might be. They might actually make it to play college ball. Because whatever level I set for you, you're going to come in underneath it.

Because no one wants to do the work to get to the upper end of the level that you set. So I'm trying to take limits off of kids. The one thing I do want you to do, understand that what we're doing here is for here.

The lesson I'm teaching you is for out there. So it's a life lesson. And there's so many different life lessons that they learn.

Understand humility, understand sacrifice. Understand that there's something bigger than you. This, this field is a fight.

It's a 60 minute game. It's finite. It ends at that.

When this game is done, it's over. You shake the other team's hands, we go home and you go back to being a big brother, a little brother, uncle, a nephew, A dad, a worship leader, a pastor, a business owner. You go back to being what you.

What you are. But all the stuff that we did on that football field has something to do with everything else that you do with the rest of your life. Yeah.

And I, for one, greatly appreciated that. Right. The class, the.

You know, we played some teams that weren't necessarily classy. You know, I, you know, I remember a place a little west of here that we had a game once where they hit. They hit Fred after the whistle.

And I was. More than once, I think I told you I couldn't go shake hands after the game. I was.

Because I was afraid that I was going to literally attack that coach because he allowed his players to attack our kid. Yep. And I remember.

And you kind of looked at me, had never seen that look. And you were like, okay. And then I came, I was like, I gotta go shake hands on.

These kids are watching me. I have to. I have to go do this.

Right. And so I did. But it.

There is. I, I appreciate that. And I want to brag on you.

I want to brag on you a minute as well, please. When it talks about the, the tactics. The first year I coached with you, that team that we talked about winning state, that was so good.

That team was not filled with an unbelievable amount of talent. We took. That was a combination of three teams from the one that I was involved with and went 0:12.

We had about, I think, eight kids off that team. There was another team that went 0:12, and we had about six, eight kids. And then the team that you had coming back from Pop Warner, that I think won two games or whatever, they won.

And this was your first year of being head coach. And I remember it was one of the first days of practice. And I remember you pulled together three or four key kids after practice.

And I just happened to be kind of walking by and you had a conversation with them about being leaders. And I watched in that moment, those kids, they changed. You gave them a mission, you gave them responsibility.

They were whatever, 11, 12 years old and they took it seriously and they led that team. I mean, and it just to give listeners an idea, this blew my mind. The kid on the team that was definitely the least talented, he just hadn't grown into his body.

He kind of had big feet. We used to do this run around Merkinson, right. And the kid, when all the other kids got done, this kid was halfway around.

Well, those kids that were the leaders that you had pointed out said, let's go get blank. They ran Back down the field and ran with that kid at the end. That's what I'm talking about.

Kids are nicer now. That would have never happened in my day. Nobody would have done that.

But that also. That's part of. That's the kids.

But part of that is you instilled that in them and created leaders that. I think there's probably benefits of that today. Right.

Those kids are college age now that they don't even realize. You don't realize. Their parents may not realize.

Well, what's funny. So that group of kids again. I'm still in contact with a few of them.

The two brothers that were the. The running back. That was our stud.

He's still that same leader. Still. I haven't.

I owe Fred a text as well. Our quarterback. He decided not to play ball in college and he was fine with being done.

He's still that same kid. Still the same kid. And I know Ryland is still the same kid.

That team was unique. Did we have 24 boys in that team? I think we only had 24. 24 or something.

But give or take, it was a small number because that was one of our smaller teams. That was the. That is still probably the best team as far as coming together, building relationships and making a family unit.

Every single kid would have taken a bullet for any other kid on the team. The number one all the way down to number 24. The worst kid on the team would have stood up in front of a train for any of the kids on the team.

And the best kid on the team would have stood up in front of a train for every other kid on that team. That team was probably. I've only had one team that was better connected in my entire history of coaching the team that I took to San Diego, my son's team, when we played for the national championships, that team.

We had two parents on the team die during the season and something like that happens. The team falls apart. Not that team.

We went on a run. We won nine straight games, won the state championship, won the regional championships and went all the way to San Diego to play for a national championship against a team that hadn't lost a game in three years. And we lost them six to nothing.

And they had junior, 10th grader and a ninth grader illegally on a sixth and seventh grade team. And they beat us six to nothing. With the.

With my starting. My starting cornerback's dad died the night before we left for San Diego. Wow.

Our quarterback's grandmother had died at the beginning of the season. And that's what started the big run. And that team overcame so much adversity.

That team compared to the team that we coached was just absolutely so many mirror images. But that's when Devin decided he wanted to be a football player. And that lasted till high school.

He got mollywopped by a 315 pound kid. He said, I'm done, dad, that's enough. Unlike Rylan, Ryland's like he faced a bigger kid.

He made him want to be better. You have to find out where. Is this something you like or is it something you love? Devin liked it because all of his buddies were offensive linemen.

And a couple of the guys on the line were also in band, they're also in debate together, they played golf together. So that was his community. He played the game so he could be with his boys.

When he got realized, like, yeah, I don't like being in the gym that much, like, okay, don't play. Well, are you going to be mad at. No.

Because I don't play. You play. I don't want to see you get Destroyed by a 315 pound kid who's looking for a way to get into college.

You're doing this because the kid sitting right next to your guard has been eating dinner at our house on Thursdays for the last four years. That's your best friend. You tell your best friend goodbye.

You can cheer for him from the stands. I don't want to see you get killed if you don't want to do it. And he quit and he was fine with it.

There's just something so special about the bonds. I look at some of the guys, that very first team, the very, very first season, all the key boys, the leaders of that team are all still friends. They were roommates in college and they're all still friends.

Well, let's legacy 10 to 20 years, you coach a kid 10, 20 years later. What do you want them to remember? What do you want their takeaways to be? Number one. I want them to receive the fact that there's something bigger than they are.

That's the first thing I always tell the boys. Look, there's no I in team. And every year I have some smart butt kid that said, yeah, coach, but there is a me.

I want kids to realize the team is bigger than you. Just like we serve something that's bigger than us. The community that we have is bigger than us.

We are as one piece. The Bible says we're one. Part of the body is the eye not a hand.

Is the hand not a foot. Everybody Is part of a bigger picture. I want the boys to receive that.

This is part of a bigger community. And the whole idea is for you to be your best self. If I can train my left arm so it's really, really strong, it'll support my right arm when I need to lift something.

If I can get my legs really, really strong, it'll help support my lower back when I'm lifting a bed. We're part of a bigger community, and if I can get one kid to be a better steward of the gift that he has, it'll make the whole community better. And over time, I hope that that's my legacy.

We pushed a bunch of kids through that. Don't make this community worse. I want kids that come out that are leaders.

I tell the boys, it's the exact same speech every year. I don't know if you're going to be a football player or a doctor, a pastor, a convict. I have no idea what you're going to be, but whatever you are, be the best at it because I want it to reflect on the community that you're a part of.

I look back at our high school and the boys I went to high school with, and we did a really, really good job of representing Reagan High School in the community that we lived in. Our neighborhood still talks about those, the four years I was in high school as being great years. Did we win a state championship? No.

We got beat three out of the four. We made the playoffs three of the four years I was there. We always lost in the division championship.

Like one shot before state to Alice. Bitter party of one still. Yes.

Guys. Really hasn't gone away. Yeah, that pain never goes away.

But I want to make sure that Northwest Hills has a legacy of kids that come through the program, Kids that get into middle school, into high school, and then leave and come back and give back to this. And if I can impact the kids, to make them come back and impact another kid, that's it. The same thing that coach Randy told me I tell the boys every year, and it works.

If we always have the beginning of the season, the the boys from the teams prior will come out on the first couple weeks of practice and come and work through and walk through the kids. It's been a lot the last two years. I've had 20 or 30 boys that have played from prior seasons to come out and work that first week with the boys.

And that's huge because kids look up to older kids so much. And that's the one thing that, like with Ryland I could count on if he's in town. Hey, coach, when is practice? And he'll call and ask and he loves coming out to give whenever Fred's in town.

Hey man, what's your quarterback look like? Come, come look for yourself. Come check it out, Ivy. Whenever he's around.

That group of boys just loved to be on the field. They loved to be around other kids and just talk about football. I don't care if football is not your thing.

You might be in band, you might play golf, you might be a student. If I can find kids that love what they do, I can empower them to tell somebody else to love what they do and just spread it. Take that and give it to somebody else.

Infect somebody else with what you've got. Well, it's probably the wrong way to say it, but that's what we want. I want more kids to empower each other, make your community better.

Final question. If you had to leave our listeners with one final message, especially fathers, coaches, mentors out there, what would it be? Whatever you do, do it with the intent and the purpose of empowering people to be their best selves. Don't leave anybody with, don't do half of anything.

Give me all of what you have and we'll work on everything else. If you're a mentor to somebody and you're teaching someone to do how to turn the light switch on, tell them everything about the process of turning the light switch on. Even the details of the science behind the light switch.

Whatever you know about this process, give it to give all of it. Don't hold anything of yourself back so that somebody, everyone learns differently. So when I teach the offensive lineman, some people are visual learners, some people are hands on learners.

Some people have to hear it over and over again. So I've done myself a disservice if I don't teach you at least three different ways how to do something I still regret. Rylan and I had an idea a while back.

We were going to do videos for teaching offensive line technique and I regret that we never did it. He got busy, I got busy. We just never did it.

I want to be able to make sure people know. Give everything you have to the people you're working with every single time you have the opportunity to interact because you don't know when your next interaction is going to be. If you're a leader, give the best to the team that follows you.

If you are on that team, do the best you can to fill the responsibility and the role that your leader's given you to be. If you're the left tackle, do everything you can to empower yourself to be the best left tackle you can be. If you are the water boy, make sure the water's cold and hand the water out.

Whatever you do, be the best that you can do and give all of yourself to it. Don't under commit over commit to everything. Give all you have, every chance you have because you never know when the last time you get to do whatever that thing is.

Vince, I just. Look, I want to thank you for being here and just everything you've done, I've watched it, it really is amazing. And we talk about abundance and you are definitely spreading abundance in the world, making the world a better place.

So on impacting people that have no idea you're even impacting them. So I appreciate you and just watching it and even. Just everything you've done for my kid, for Ryland, really has changed his life for the better.

He is eternally special in my eyes. Yeah, I mean, I. I look at you as another father.

I really do. So. And I really appreciate that.

So anyway, to our listeners, if you like today's episode, download. Tell your friends, tell. Tell your neighbors, tell people you don't like.

I don't care, Tell everybody. Check out our website, talesabundance.com but again, download, subscribe and keep listening because the listeners are what make this all possible.

So thank you and have a fantastic day. Thanks, Vince. Appreciate it.

Faith, Family, and Football with Vince Humphries