Six questions with Jim L. Mora

As I said earlier, a handful of us were able to chat with new UCLA head coach Jim L. Mora briefly, and here’s our conversation:

JG: Two-part question: Who is James Lawrence Mora, the man?

Jim Mora: “I pride myself on being a good husband, a good father, a good brother, a good son, a great uncle and a man of integrity and honesty.”

OK, who is Jim Mora the football coach, and is there a difference?

JM: “Yes. I bring more intensity to my job than I do to my life. I’m passionate. I’m committed. I’m detailed. I’m demanding. I have very high expectations and I hold myself accountable to what I would hope is a higher standard than anyone else would expect of me. That’s what I want our football team to be as well.”

What do you want to do to make sure that guy number 85 plays to his best level and guy number one plays to his best?

JM: “You have to create a culture of accountability. Not only accountability to your institution, to your school, but to your teammate and to yourself. There’s really not a lot stronger than peer-to-peer accountability. I have a saying that I like, and that’s, ‘Count on me.’ You have to earn the right, first of all, through your actions, to say to somebody, ‘Hey, you count on me,’ and have any merit. Once we get a culture where each player knows beyond a doubt that they can depend on the man next to him to be there for him as hard and as long as they can, then we’ll be going in the right direction. That’s not easy. That’s not easy to create. But that’s what we’re going to create. We’re going to create a culture of accountability. We’re going to have very high expectations and we’re going to push to reach them and we’re going to be proud of them.”

As you said before, this time they’re picking you, you’re not picking them. When you approach recruiting, how important is it for you to have that base of accountability but also to bring in guys who are a fit for that?

JM: “That’s always an issue, I think. Part of the evaluation process is trying to find out if a guy loves to play football. That’s a hard thing to evaluate. You can talk to players and they’re going to say, ‘I love to play football,’ and you talk to a lot of high school coaches and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, this guy loves to play football.’ But one advantage I might have in that area is the fact that I’ve been around so many great players in my career. And I mean all-time great players. Both coaching them, and just being around them. They all have something to them that stands out and I think I can identify it. Can I identify in a 17 or 18-year old kid like I can identify it in a 25-year old kid? I don’t know. But I think I will be able to. Will I be 100 percent? No.

When you think about all you have to do starting now, what is today about for you?

JM: “Today for me is about meeting with the players, starting to put together a world-class coaching staff, starting to identify the players who we’re recruiting who can come in and be the type of men and players we want. Once I’m done with this, next order of business is to meet with the current coaches. I’d like to have a couple hires in place by the end of the day, either from this staff or outside of this staff. And tonight I’ll spend three hours talking on the phone to the 18 kids who have given us either verbals or soft verbals. Tomorrow, I’ll come in, and it will be a continuation of coaches, recruits and then getting around, getting to know people. I’ve got a lot to learn.”

You think about where you come from, the NFL, which is a bunch of millionaires, the best in the business, and they’re pretty much known quantities. What is the transition like from known quantities to unknown quantities?

JM: “One of the things Bill Walsh always made us do is Bill said, ‘I know what the guy is now.’ Your job is to tell me what he’s going to be in a year, two years, three years, four years.’ That’s what Bill Walsh said. He said, ‘Look, I can turn on the film and tell you what he is right now. Your job is to tell me what he’s going to be.’
I’ve been trained to do that. I’ve been trained to look at a junior in college, and say, now where is this guy going to be in his third year in the NFL. Now I’m going to be looking at juniors in high school, and thinking where is this guy going to be in his second year in college? I think it’s probably a little more difficult to look at a junior in high school and predict where he’s going to be as a junior in college, but it’s the same philosophy. And that was Bill’s philosophy.”