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I was on the sideline with a knee injury and when I came back, I wanted to play at the best level I could. And that's the case for a lot of players, they want the chance to play against the best competition.

Being at NDSU and winning national championships, everyone's gunning for you. You got a big target on your back, and we had to be ready to go week in and week out. I think playing for a program like that, everyone's going to give you their best shot, and we embrace that.

You always see people coming back to the sport, and I've always thought, 'Gosh, when you're done playing, wouldn't you just want to stay at home?'

When you take a year off from football, you come back for all the enjoyable moments. When you're not playing, you miss out on all the highs, but you also miss these disappointments. But I would rather be in the arena to be excited or be disappointed than not have a chance at all. That's football. That's why everybody plays it.

There's nothing like playing. You can coach and you can be around the game, but there is nothing like playing. It's just so much fun.

I had too much respect for the game to leave it behind or to make it my second or third sport in college.

As a player, I can tell them they don't want to rush to become a coach, because there is a lot that goes on. This is all something new to me. You can talk to a lot of the coaches... and they can tell you. Until you go through it, then you can understand what it's all about.

I like the fact that we have all the teams in the tournament. When I first got here as an assistant, not everyone made the tournament and I think as a coach, you look at it from a job security standpoint, I think that hurt when you didn't have everybody in the tournament.

Some other people are very lucky and always get in to the very best teams at the very best times and therefore go out and score lots of championship points and be in with a chance of the championship.