Page 26 - Toledo Football Media Guide - 2012

26 2012 OUTLOOK

Q: What do you like best about this year’s team?

Campbell: The best part is the veteran-ness of the players in our program. Many of our key players have been in our current system for four years and 99 percent of the team was recruited by the current coaching staf. The players understand what is expected of them, and the leaders on our team have done a great job communicating that to new players.

Q: What, if anything, concerns you about this team?

Campbell: Asmuch as I consider this a veteran team, there are still a lot of young players who will be asked to play big roles this year. We have some guys who had great springs and we expect great things from them, but the unknown is still out there. Sometimes you don’t know until the lights come on, and you have to go through the grind of an entire season. But I think veteran leadership can help you overcome that as the younger players begin to grow.

Q: Coming of a 9-4 season and a bowl win, I would assume your goals for next season would be pretty ambitious.

Campbell: I think that at Toledo your goals and expectations are always going to be playing for a MAC Championship, winning a bowl game and getting the teamGPA to as close to 3.0 as possible. Those goals have been set in stone for the last three years and it’s something we still aspire to. We have not reached all those goals yet, and I think it something that really motivates us.

Q: You do have a lot of great players returning, as well as the luxuryof having twoaccomplishedquarterbacks. On the other hand, you lost seven players to the NFL, including big playmakers like Eric Page and Adonis Thomas. Does that make Toledo a tough team for the prognosticators to predict?

Campbell: I think so. When you lose seven players who go on to sign NFL contracts, that’s a big loss. We’ve lost a lot of guys who were good players for a long time in our program. When that happens, everybody has to ask the question, what are you replacing those people with? I’ve

said this before and I’ll keep saying this: the attribute of a consistent program is the ability to go out and recruit players to replace your best players. It’s simple. The new players have to be as good or better than the players who are leaving.

We’re a good program right now but we want to be a great program. There are lot of things we haven’t done yet. We haven’t won a MAC Championship title. That’s something the new guys coming into our program want to accomplish.

Q: Do youhave anymotivating themes for this season’s team?

Campbell: Yes. One of the themes we’ve been emphasizing is “Signing Of.”We have a t-shirt that says “Sign Of” with

all our seniors’signatures on the back.We want our players to sign of on everything they do, from how they play the game, how they practice, how they prepare themselves and how they handle themselves of the feld.

Another theme for our team is “A Quest for Greatness.” College football is a process. We want our players to show up for practice with a purpose, with a desire to get better. We have been a good program but we have a goal to become great.

With Coach Campbell

“ I think that at Toledo your goals and expectations are always going to be playing for a MAC Champion-ship, winning a bowl game and get-ting the team GPA to as close to 3.0 as possible. Those goals have been set in stone for the last three years and it’s something we still aspire to. We have not reached all those goals yet and I think it something that is really motivating us. ”

- Matt Campbell