Episode #40: Mike Jarvis

Coach Mike Jarvis was the quintessential East Coast college basketball coach for 5 decades leading Boston University, George Washington University, St. John's University, and Florida Atlantic's Men's Basketball teams from 1985-2014.  His teams advanced to the NCAA National Tournament 9 different times including an Elite 8 and Sweet 16 appearance and led the St. John's Red Storm to the NIT National Championship in 2003.

Coach is also responsible for the development of Hall of Fame Center Patrick Ewing's illustrious career.  Coach led Cambridge Rindge and Latin School to 3 straight Massachusetts High School State Championships with Ewing as his star pupil.

Coach shared amazing stories of coaching with and against some of the top players and coaches in the history of basketball during our conversation.  He truly is one of the great gentlemen in the history of the game and one of the toughest competitors the game has seen.  Enjoy!

Learn more about Coach Jarvis here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Jarvis

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm coach Matt Rogers. I don't often get starstruck anymore, but I was blessed this week to sit down and talk coaching with one of the great basketball coaches the game has ever seen. And in my eyes, one of the greats at developing young men and helping them achieve their maximum potential. Coach Mike Jarvis has had a legendary career. After winning three straight state championships in the seventies and early eighties at Cambridge Ridge and Latin School in Massachusetts, where he developed and coached future Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. Coach took over the college program at Division I Boston University and proceeded to lead them to two NCAA National Tournaments. In 1990, he took over the program at George Washington University, leading them to four NCAA National Tournaments. In 1993, he His Colonials would beat John Calipari's number one ranked UMass team twice during the regular season. Their national tournament run that year finally came to an end in the Sweet 16 in an epic battle with Chris Webber. and Michigan's Fab Five. Coach would then move on to St. John's in the Big East in 1998, leading the Red Storm to the Elite Eight in 1999, the 2000 Big East Tournament Championship, and topped it off by winning the NIT National Championship in 2003. It's not often you get to talk to someone you idolized growing up, and Coach Jarvis was everything I hoped he would be. I loved his stories about the early years of coaching Patrick Ewing, coaching the U. S. under 22 national team, and the McDonald's All American game. He brought back great memories for me of watching his teams, beat Coach K and Duke at Madison Square Garden, and then again at the place nobody won at. Cameron Indoor Arena. Coach Jarvis is truly one of the great gentlemen of the game and was a true joy for me to spend some quality time with. I'm so thankful for his kindness and generosity. If you're enjoying these conversations, I encourage you to subscribe on your platform of choice and leave me a comment with your thoughts and questions. You can always learn more and schedule with me at CoachMattRogers. com when you want more information. All right, let's get to it. Here's my conversation with legendary coach Mike Jarvis. when you look back at your career, your amazing career, were there games that you That you remember that you're like, I know I can make it cause you, you won three straight state championships. So then you jumped to the college level. Did you know that you were ready for that when you jumped? Well, I believed I was and felt I was prepared for it because I had already. You know, I'd be announced to a lot of people. I was, I had already coached, as an assistant coach in college for seven years, so I brought, I brought a lot of college experience to the high school. And then it was a lot easier to transfer it back to the college level. And I had a great college coach in there. He was like Barty, the, he was the best coach in New England, one of the best coaches ever. And, so I. Yeah, I was ready. And then of course, you know, I, the good Lord sent me a kid by the name of Patrick Ewing and that, that made it a lot easier, but not just Patrick, but a lot of, a lot of really good kids in a, in a city that has a rich basketball history and tradition. It, you know, everything was aligned properly. So you had, the year Patrick left Georgetown and got drafted. That's when you jumped to Boston, right? Was it? let me see. I'm trying to think, cause I stayed at the high school after Patrick left and, for some few years. yes, I think it was the same year that, my first year, at BU, was Patrick's last year, at Georgetown. What was, what was he like as, as a player, how much development did you have to do with him to get him ready to play division one basketball? Well, you know, we got a kid who had not really played basketball prior to coming to the United States. he came into the USA in, I forget what year it was, but he was like in the seventh grade and he was in, a special school, which happened to be housed in the same gym, in the same building that my high school was. So he's. His school occupied space in my high school building, and I first met him, his ed teacher, Steve Jenkins, brought him to the gym one day and introduced me to Pat and Pat to me. And he said, Hey, coach, I'd like for you to work with this young man and teach him how to play basketball. So I said, so I asked Patrick, I says, you know, you really want to play this game? He says, Yes, sir. And I asked Steve, I says, why do you want him to play? I figured Steve would tell me, well, you know, he's tall and you know, and Hey, most people think all the tall kids play basketball. Well, his answer was incredible. He said, I want Patrick to make friends because he said the kids are laughing at him because he's tall and skinny and he's clumsy and I want him to make some friends and I thought playing basketball would be a good way to do it. So he was introduced to the game of basketball. with the express purpose of making friends. Well, during his high school career, he didn't make a lot of friends because he won like 99 percent of the time. And he was a ferocious player. And he went from being that little skinny kid because the first year I coached him at the high school level. He weighed 165 pounds. How tall was he then? He was about six nine then. Wow. And, but you know, by the time he was a senior, he grew to be basically seven feet tall and he was 235 pounds, so he put on 70 pounds, and was pretty much all muscle and all the kids who had beat up on him at the beginning. They got paid back at the end. So he didn't make a whole lot of friends, but he certainly became the best player in the United States. how was his hands and feet when he got to you? I mean, cause he never really played, right? No, he didn't. his feet were good because he. And he had small feet. In fact, I remember one year when, we got free sneakers from a company called spot bill, and then eventually Nike, and I think he wore like a 13, 13 and a half. So he had small feet for a big guy, but. he had great feet. He could run like a deer. His biggest problem was his hands. Typical, you know, for a kid who didn't play basketball or baseball, his hands weren't very good, but as time went on, he could catch it. And, you know, most of his shots were right at dunks, but he eventually became a pretty good, free throw shooter and mid range shooter. So he developed his hands over time because the better he got, the more guys wanted to pass him the ball. How much better did you get as a coach having a kid with that kind of talent? Oh, you know, coaches, as they say, they're only as good as their players. Of course, they're only as good as the players they help develop, but, obviously, You almost think it's a lot easier than it really is because a kid like Patrick, not only was he a talented kid, but he was so determined, right? He would find different ways to help us win games. So, you know, you get better. You know, obviously, because you're able to do and try more things than most guys would, I could, I could, I could experiment with all kinds of things, especially at the defensive end, because I always had Patrick at the back line. So we did a lot of crazy, crazy things, but most of them work because of Patrick. were you pressing at that point? Yeah, we were pressing, we were running, you know, that was the history and the tradition of Cambridge, you know, all the teams ran, they pressed and, so yeah, we pressed that, you know, and then of course it was, you could press with Patrick, you know, especially cause you put them at the back and you almost hope they beat the press because they're not going to score. So yeah, we, but then, you know, as any season goes on, anything goes on, you start, especially when you're playing against really good teams, you can't really beat them with a press. You gotta. Beat them with solid half court defense, especially as the season progresses. Were you all man to man at that point? I, we were, yes, in high school, we were all man to man. I was a Barbie Knight disciple and I sort of didn't believe that you should play any zone. So we didn't play any zone in high school. to be honest with you, you jumped to Boston not long after that, what was the biggest lesson you learned from coaching at Cambridge and Latin? And then how'd you have to adapt? Well, you know what the biggest adjustment, the probably the best thing that I did when I went Cambridge to Boston was to basically. keep it simple. and, you know, we ran, especially the first year or two, we ran the same simple offenses and, you know, that we ran in Cambridge at the high school level. And, we really emphasized and worked probably 85 percent of the time on our defense. Because I always believed that if you worked on your defense, you were working on your offense. So we had tough, and I had tough kids at Boston University. I mean, my players, I mean, they just competed their butts off and, we were able to win a lot of games just because we outplayed a lot of people. I was like you, not with the depth that you did, but I was a college assistant and then I was a high school coach and then I jumped to the college level. The biggest challenge for me was really learning where to find the talent and get that talent. Into my school. was that a challenge for you in those first years or because you had so many good years as an assistant, did you feel like that was nothing? You were prepared for the recruiting side. Well, fortunately for me, I hired a couple of guys that were really good recruiters. And I didn't really, you know, my job was to sort of close the deals. Yeah. And I really relied heavily on my guys to find them and to bring them. And then I, my job, like I said, was to try to close. But they knew the kinds of kids that I wanted and the type of players that we wanted. So, you know, I grew up watching and studying and breathing Boston Celtics basketball I tried to mold teams, build teams, you know, and that sort of with that mindset. And we did the same thing at the college level. So I can, I can thank Red Araback for basically giving me a blueprint for how to put a team together. Absolutely. What was your first thought point guard most years to have that guy, that floor general, or were you, were you thinking athletes, shooters, bigs, where was your mindset when you started recruiting? My mindset was. It started really in the backcourt. Yes, with the guard position, because that's the position I played. I always felt that no matter how good your other players were, if you didn't have a good point guard, in fact, if you didn't have two good point guards, so I always tried to have two at least, and, many times the two point guards would end up being my backcourt at the end of games. When you have to close out games. And that was sort of like another thing that I learned from right out of her back, you know, from the days of Sam and Casey Jones, right after Koozie and Shaman. So, You know, the more gods, the better, you know, and of course, it's a lot easier. There are a lot more gods out there to recruit than big guys. Did you always have, did you always want to have a guy like Patrick on the back that could block shots so you could, you could have that flexibility with your defense to take chances? Wanted to, but not, able to pull that off all the time. I mean, I was fortunate enough to have some really good. Forwards at BU, George Washington. We were fortunate through international recruiting to have some good centers. Like, you know, we had a kid by the name of Yinka Daray, who was in the NBA, and Alexander Kuhl from Belarus. So we had some good big men at GW. St. John's was once again, mainly guards and forwards. So it varied at the different schools. Well, those years I was in high school and early college for me, and I just, loved your teams. I loved how hard they played. I loved how you guys move the ball. I love the diversity of your defenses and all of that. When did you come into your own, where you felt like, I know what I'm doing, or do you feel like you were always adapting and learning as you went on, you know? I was always adapting and learning, but I really felt because of my college coach that, he prepared me to coach at any level. And, as you know, he taught basketball. I mean, he taught the game and every year you go back to the basics, back to the drawing board, as he used to put it. And he would start at the very beginning, no matter how many players are returning. Right. like starting a new year in school, in academia, where usually the first couple of weeks, you know, teachers review, and that's when students normally are at their very best. So that's how we approach basketball as well. When you, if, if, if they put you in a gym with a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds right now, where, where would you start in terms of developing them? Well, I probably would. I mean, I honestly, I, I might start with their conditioning, you know, and just teaching them or getting them to understand how important it is for them to be, stronger, you know, in the, in their core and in their shoulders and hands, and, and then I'd work on their foot for people, footwork. And then, you know, I'd start with dribbling, you know, just basic dribbling, passing defense, you know, footwork. I had such a great high school coach in terms of teaching us pivots and how to use our space. And I'm amazed at how little I see that anymore. You know, kids always ask me, you know, who was the best post player I saw. I think it was Michael Jordan. You know, I love the team. I love Patrick. I love Duncan. I love David. But I'm not sure anybody had better footwork. 10 to 15 feet from the basket than Michael, when I used to run my summer basketball camps, the guys that I still remember to this day were guys that came in and worked on things on footwork on how to make a jumpstop and a pivot, and basically how to use your feet. Whether you're on defense or off it, and a lot of that goes back to red. Doesn't it? Oh yeah. I mean, once again, you know, I mean, some of the most basic, simple drills. You know, the Red Araback used to take the Boston Celtics and, you know, all the Hall of Famers that he had through, you know, they would spend, hours and hours just working on their foot, on their defensive stance and movement. And then of course, you know, getting in condition. Yeah. You know, I read our back. I mean, once again, he kept it simple, I remember once sitting down with him and he says, you know, I had six plays and those six, you know, six basic, very simple plays that I used every year I ever coached. I figured if it's good enough for reps, good enough for me. That's right. it's amazing. I think there's high school coaches and college coaches that are teaching read our back. Systems right now and have no idea where they learned them from, or no idea where the Genesis of those things were from. And I guarantee you that 85, 90 percent of those guys are successful. When you look at your career coach, what are the big challenges that you faced in terms of the other schools that you coached against the teams you prepared for, do you have any memories that kind of jump out at you You're like, gosh, this is when I knew I had my team playing the best. Well, one of the things I can share with you is I remember getting my team at St. John's prepared. to play against, Indiana and Bobby Knight in the tournament. And you know, we took pride in how great a defensive team we were. That was when I had, you know, some pretty good players and we're playing against Indiana. And not too long in the game, I called timeout, I called my team over and I said, guys, you know, we haven't played any zone this year, but if we want to win this game tonight, we're going to have to go play zone because as good as we are in defense, this man is the master. he's tearing us apart. So my guys looked at me and said, are you serious coach? We're going to play zone. Yeah, we're going to play zone and we went to zone and I mean, we almost shut them out for, I mean, I can't tell you how many minutes and we blew them out. that's probably the one night that I realized that, you know what, no matter how good you are at anything, you better be ready to adjust and adapt if you want to overcome. I remember a couple of years later, going to Kuwait with a group of college coaches. To coach, in a program called operation hardwood, where they had was in Kuwait and they had all the different, services there for a basketball tournament. And we went and met with a general and above the general desk was a plaque and it said, adjust, adapt at the bottom. It said, overcome. And that's what we coaches have to do. You got to adjust some time. Want to, and you better be ready to adapt if you want to, because we had got beat that night and our season would have been over. Of course, it ended a couple of games later when we played Ohio state in the, elite eight for a chance to go to the final four, but that happens. Well, it's so hard when you watch. 25 films on a team and they've played this defense all year long. And then all of a sudden they get to you and you're throwing something they've never seen at you. And you know that the other lesson I learned from that night was to try to have something, even if it's just a little wrinkle. On something that you do offensively or defensively, the night you play a team, I mean, like I remember we beat Duke in Madison Square Garden with a team that probably was a 20, 25 point underdog. And I think the main reason why we were able to beat them was we had made a couple of simple adjustments as to how we would enter into our offense and we entered differently than we normally had. And I think it really blew them off and it allowed us to stay in the game until our home court advantage could help us win the game. Right. I remember that game. That was at MSG, yep, and Marcus Hatton, was, uh, was my, was my point guard, he was also my, my second, he was really, he was my all guard, he, he, he ran the point, but he was a great scorer, and he ended up stealing the ball at the very end of the game, I, I don't know if it was J. J. Riddick that made the pass, or, whatever, whoever made the pass, he stole it. He got fouled at the, at the buzzer and he made the free throw, when he won the game. I remember that game. Yeah, I remember that clearly. Yeah, it was like a Sunday, I think a Sunday afternoon on CBS. What does that do for your kids when they win a game like that? Was, was that a good thing the next day of practice or did you have to get them refocused again? Well, you always have to. The hardest thing sometimes is when you have success. So you always got to worry about getting guys refocused, but you have something that most people would never have could always fall back on. Yeah. Teams beat Duke. Very few teams win a game like that. And, you know, but our guys, you know, they, they always believe they could beat anybody. Uh, we just sometime weren't talented enough to do that, but, um, it helped us a lot. The fact that I had a team that went into Cameron and won a few years earlier and, you know, took 25 years for somebody else to go in and win a game at Cameron that in the ACC. Yeah. How do you prepare your team for that? What? I mean, obviously you get the idea of the facility out of their head and where you're going and who they're playing against. You try and treat it like every other day. But how do do you get kids not to, not to buy into the emotion of that type of game? You know what? I don't know if you can. I don't know if you can really, you know, honestly, I don't know if you could honestly say, you know, I, I was able to do that. I was able to do what you just said. It really comes back to how tough, how mentally tough. is your team, how physically tough is your team? And I just, you know, I had, you know, I had a kid, uh, my point, God, the year we went there and one was Eric Barkley, who was a New York kid, uh, all, uh, uh, McDonald's all American player. Uh, Bootsy Thornton from Baltimore and kids don't get any tougher than Baltimore. Um, LaVar Postel had a six, four and a half inch center by the name of Anthony Glover, who used to take seven, make seven footers crack. We were as tough as they were. Niels. We might've been tougher than Niels. So it was basically about the mental, uh, tenacity and, uh, of my kids when we were, to be able to go in there and they, they, they wanted to play at Duke. I wanted to play at Duke. I mean, you know, it's, I, I still think it is the greatest place to go and play a basketball game, you know, probably even greater than Madison Square Garden because You know, uh, you know, a lot of teams, you know, can come into a Madison square garden and not feel as intimidated as most teams would going into Cameron, you know, I think Cameron, uh, I think, um, the fog at Kansas. Um, I think those two facilities are probably as tough. To play in as any, any other, any place in the country. Yeah. The intimacy, the crowd is right on top of you. Yeah. Right on top of you. And they're a great crowd era. They know when to get behind their team. They know, you know, not to get on their team and they have like a Duke. They practice the students and the chair, you know, the chair groups, they practice and getting underneath your skin. They, they actually. They are so well scripted for the teams they play. They know everyone on the team, including the coaches. They know any problems you might be having off court and any problems a kid might be having with his girlfriend. I mean, they just know how to get in and under your skin like nobody else. The depth of the research from the student body is just amazing. And they prepare for the opponents going in there, like they're preparing for an exam. They know you better than you know yourself. That's wild. It is. It's crazy. Did you go in as a coach? You know, there's certain things we just, we don't tell our kids, but we were prepared for the things that we know they're not prepared for. You know, there's certain things we just can't prepare a kid for. Are there things that you were prepared for? If Duke went on an 8 0 run to start the game, did you have in the back of your mind, I'm going to call an early timeout, or I'm going to get a couple subs in, and I'm going to grab a kid and give him a hug, or I'm going to, you know, you know, get him face to face and get, get some confidence in him. Did you go in with some strategies with a game like that, being prepared for maybe it doesn't go the way you want in the first four or five minutes? Yeah, you know, once again, you, you go in prepared, but then, It doesn't mean you're going to carry out your plan, right? And I think the biggest thing you have to be careful of, and I know myself, I, I committed this sin on too many occasions, I would get on the referees. Um, more than I should. And that sometimes sends the wrong signal to your kid. And that was something I don't think I ever really mastered. I wish if I, you know, if, if there were such a thing as getting a mulligan and we had a chance to do it all over again, I would have been a lot better and different in that area on this particular night, when we went in and beat Duke, uh, you also know that most of the time it's not going to be five on five, it's going to be five. Versus six, seven, or eight. And fortunately for us, when I went in, when we went into that game, there were three officials, two, I knew were going to be totally neutral. And one that I was going to, that I knew was going to be totally on the other team. So when we met, when we huddled up the referees, I did something I never did. I told the referee that the Duke, the Homer, I said, listen, I've watched you too many games here at Duke. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't give me a good game tonight, I'm going to try to embarrass you. And I never did that ever, ever before or again. Uh, and you know, for whatever reason he gave us as fair a game as he could give it. team. Uh, you know, I think of a night we were playing at Kentucky when I was at B. U. And it was a 1. 2 point game at the end of the game. And it was a mysterious call made midcourt. And my assistant coach, Bill Herrion, Who later on coached at places like Drexel and, you know, anyhow, great coach. And I said, I said, Bill, go out and just find out what the heck, what was that call? And he went out to the official and the official said, can I help you? He said, yes, I'd like to know, you know, what was the basis for that call? And the official looked at him and said, listen, you guys are lucky to be in the game with us. Go back to the bench. You're kidding me. Um, I mean, Bill almost had a heart attack at midcourt and he didn't, he, he, he didn't tell me what the referee told him at that time because he knows if he did, I would have probably got thrown out of the arena. Yeah, I would have too. And so anyhow, after the game, he told me, and I mean, I never forget that. You're lucky to be in the game with us. Go back to the bench. Was he talking about himself and the other two officials? He was talking about, we're lucky to be in the game when he said us, he was talking about him and Kentucky. You gotta be kidding me. No, I'm not. And they did. That was when I think Rex Chapman was a freshman and, uh, at Kentucky. And we were, we had a good, we had a shot of beating them, but they weren't going to let us beat when, when that game at Kentucky. Was that Patino still? No, that was, uh, who was there? Um, uh, uh, what's his name? The, uh, uh, he retired hall. Oh, that was Joe B. Joe B. Yep, Joe B. Hall. So, Patino was still with the Celtics or the Knicks at that point? Patino, I think, was at, I want to say he was with the Knicks at that time. Yeah. Gosh, that was another guy that was, uh, had quite a name for himself and not always the good way Joe B. Oh yeah. Yeah. And he hit, they, I mean, you know, they, they got, they got whatever player they wanted to get Yeah, they did. You know, and I remember they were, they, initially, they were evolved early in the Patrick Ewing, um, hunt. But, uh, you know, Patrick, he wasn't interested in, in living in Kentucky. What was it like? That was the, I mean, you, you were in the big East. It's, it was some of the best basketball ever, you know, when you were in the, even at Boston, you were at the heart of some of the best basketball on the East Coast. And, you know, that's when teams were just dominating everybody else. What was that like to be? I mean, you never had a night off. No, no. And you know, I mean, it was great. It was also great being a high school coach in that area. I mean, I can remember many a night taking my high school team, uh, teams that included Patrick Ewing over to watch Rick Pitino coach his teams at Boston U or over to see Dr. Tom Davis coach his teams at, uh, at Boston College or go over to Northeastern University and watch coach Duke Shire coach his team. So you could, you could, you could take a. train ride, you know, a 30 minute trip. By public transportation to watch some of the greatest coaches in the game and to see their teams play. So that was, that was a big, big event, big blessing that I had. Well, you were one of them coach you you you're, you're up there with all of those guys. So I want to talk about recruiting just a little bit. And I know, I know you haven't recruited, but a decade, but. What, when you talk to kids these days at a camp or anywhere you're at, or a parent comes up and talks to you, what advice do you give to families about recruiting? Well, I, what I tell them is I said, you know, they're recruiting you, but I said, you got to recruit them. You got to really decide what you want, what type of coach you want, the type of system they use. Are you going to be, uh, a really big piece in their, in their puzzle? you know, what, what's the coach's temperament like? Can the way he coaches his players? Yeah. You know, I, you know, what, what type of person are you looking for in a coach? So that's the first thing. And then, and then I asked, then I told him, I asked him to look at the system that the coach employs. It's the system that he uses. Does it fit your style? You're the way you play. Um, and I always, and I would give them an example of the fact that when I coached McDonald's all American team and Chris Mullins was on my team and he didn't play very much because we had to go small and quick and we had to basically play a real fast paced game. And he was, he was basically, um, best suited for a half court, set type of offense. And fortunately for him, he, he chose St. John's and played for Luke Hanaseka, which was a perfect fit. It is. Yeah. So the fit, I, that's what I would, I always emphasize. And then, you know, you want to prepare for life after basketball. So who's going to best help you do that? What type of programs do they have for their student athletes? What type of support do they have if you need extra help? So those were the main things you, you demanded a lot of your kids. Like I did too. And especially, you know, Bobby Knight was the guy I paid attention to as well. What did you do to make sure the kids you were recruiting, they could handle a guy like you, they could handle what you were going to. You were going to ask them, were there certain things that you did ahead of time or while on their visit? Well, I mean, basically I, I asked them to study me and ask themselves if they could play for me and that I was going to be, you know, Really extremely demanding. Um, and I was going to push him. I was going to push them as hard as I would push myself if not harder. So, um, you know, I tried to set, I tried to basically keep it as real as possible. So I, it decided, and he signed that letter of intent. I knew he knew what he was signing it for. Yeah, with with what's going on today that you really, I mean, rules in place that you didn't have to deal with these kids coming in for a year and saying, I'm not happy. I'm not going to commit. I can go somewhere else. What was that like for you knowing that I've got this kid for a year or probably two years without a doubt, and I can develop them. We've lost that, haven't we? We've lost that ability to give, teach these kids about commitment. Do you feel that way? Yeah, we have. And of course, we're part of the problem too. I mean, and I know, I mean, there's two different occasions in my life where I was part of that problem. I mean, I left, I left Boston university to go to George Washington. I left George Washington to go to St. John's. Um, so, you know, coaches made the moves and then eventually the players said, you know, if it's good enough for the goose, it's good enough for the game. It's good enough for me. Yeah. And, so the rules were changed. Uh, and the game, the game changed. you know, we recruited in the old days up until, I mean, up until I went to, really went to St. John's, you know, you recruited a kid with the idea that you were going to have him for four years. Yeah. And I would recruit, I wanted to recruit freshmen because I felt if I had four years to work with him, I could help develop, really develop him. And also, you know, I just, I enjoyed coaching basically kids, some kids who really hadn't really been coached before. Right. So the game, I mean, has, is totally different. There are some coaches now that won't recruit a kid unless he's got college experience. They'll recruit them through the portal. And also with the NIL now, they want, some coaches want kids that have been part of that system so that, you know, so that he knows that the kid can handle the money along with the basketball in the school. Yeah. And it's, it it's, it's become a, it's become a lost science because I, the part about college coaching that I enjoyed is I knew if I had a kid from 18 to 22 or 23 years old. We were gonna be pretty good if I had five or six of those guys. Oh yeah. Yeah. You could have, yeah, you could have a team with five or six, seven of those guys. Yeah. And it might take you, you may not be good every year, but you knew that every three or four years you were gonna have pretty good team. That's right. And it was worth, and it was worth waiting for. Yeah. I, I, I preached to kids and parents so much, you know, wherever you go, you know, whatever you decide is gonna be your place. Give it everything, make it your home, make it your family. Yeah. If I can give a kid coach Mike Jarvis for four years, that kid is going to be set up for the rest of his life. You know, their, their character's going to be there. Their discipline's going to be there. They're going to know how to stand up for themselves. So, I mean, that's just such a gift that they're, they're passing up. I think when you get a coach for a year and that's it. Yeah. But you know, once again, it's, everything's come, come, comes back to the dollar. I mean, it's great. Not even a dollar. I remember when we would sit, coaches would get together. I was on the board for, for years. And, you know, you're thinking about how can we get help? These kids get some laundry money, you know, some money to maybe go to McDonald's or go to the movies. Now these kids are pulling up in Rolls Royces and, you know, got a 250, you know, necklaces or, uh, watches or, you know, a thousand dollars, whatever. So everything has changed so much. It's, it's such a shame. I mean, you, you had kids that needed just to survive. Oh, hey, you, you needed, you needed to feed these kids and house these kids and close these kids, and the NCAA was slapping your hand for a hundred bucks, you know? Oh. And, and now, and now we're giving away half a million dollars. Like, it's like it's m and ms. Well, you know, I was talking with, uh, you know, Paul bti? Yeah. High school expert who he was. In fact, I remember. You know, Paul coming in, coming over to BU one day, he was at, uh, I think at Suffolk University, it's a real small school in Boston. And he said, coach, I'd really like to, you know, coach it with you at BU. And I said, Paul, I don't have any, any job openings right now. I don't have any. He said, coach, I'll, I'll volunteer. So he volunteered and worked with me. And in fact, I think we went to the tournament his first year with me. And then, and so at the end of the season, I called pull them in. And I says, Paul, I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to give you a 500 percent raise because no matter what you multiply it down to zero, it's still zero. So the second year he went again for nothing, but eventually, you know, he ended up being hired as an assistant at BC. with Jim O'Brien. And then he went to, um, Ohio state with him and his Ohio state team. And I know he had a lot to do with it. Beat my St. John's team in the elite eight. so I was talking with Paul fact last night, we were talking about the NIL and he says, yeah, he says, you know what those letters stand for now. And I always says, yeah, you know, a name, image, and likeness. He said, no, he said, it's now, he says the letters stand for. Now it's legal. Now it's right now it's legal to pay. Now it's legal, you know, because it, this college basketball is now professional basketball. It's, it's such a shame. And, and, and I haven't talked to a college coach that doesn't know that it's broken. I haven't talked to a college coach that doesn't want it to, to get organized. And we have a perfect model. We have the NBA. You know, there's, there's, if we're going to do it, if we're going to treat these kids like, like their employees, let's do it, but let's make it balanced. Let's make sure these kids can stay for a while. Um, let's, let's give them a life. Let's teach them how to put money away. Yeah. So when they do get out, they have something left. Yeah. You know, so do you have some thoughts on that and what you'd like to see them do? Well, I know years ago, I, what we, what we had proposed was that, you know, when schools made this money off of these kids, that'd be put in a And, you know, and, and at the end of the four years or whatever, you know, it would be divided up equally among the players, but it would, but if, but you had to graduate to get the money, love that. Yeah. But, uh, That never, that never flew. And in fact, nothing really changed until I think the NCAA, uh, realized that they were in danger of losing their jobs and going out of business. That's when they basically just said, you know what, do whatever you want to do. And said no real boundaries. So, I mean, it's going to be awfully difficult to change things now, now that the, the gates of hell have been open. Yeah. Yep. I mean, it was, I remember the day when, I mean, I think there was a time when it was legal to give kids quote unquote, um, laundry money. then it went to nothing. I mean, I I've had kids come to my school, like at Boston, you, we had a kid come one year, they sent, they took a collection up for him in his, in his town that he lived in and sent him off to Boston. Part of the most expensive, one of the most expensive cities in the world with 22 to his name and no winter clothes. I mean, coming to, uh, we got more snow. I mean, it, it, it was almost criminal. And if, and if I, you know, were to, let's say, clothe the kid properly or put a few bucks in his pocket, it would have been illegal, right? But you know what coaches sometime, you know, you do what you have to do. And, and, you know, and I mean, Hey. You know, like I always do tell, I would tell all my players, I don't want you ever to be penniless. You may not have more than five dollars in your pocket, but you're going to have at least that. Amen. So, I mean, I can say that now, cause I'm not coaching. You're fired for it. Yeah. But it's, it's none of us got into this business. Just to win. We got into the skillsets to raise kids and, uh, and, uh, and to make them better lives. And when you can't take a kid, take care of a kid, just the basic needs of their life, what's wrong with that? Yeah. You come to Boston, you don't have any winter clothes. You don't have any boots. You don't overcoat. What are you going to do? Just let the kid die from pneumonia. No, you go to your friends and family and say, Hey, listen, do you have anything you can, you can give gift to a needy kid. Yeah. Yeah. And you do what you have to do. It's amazing how far we've come in 10 years, let alone 25, 30 years. And absolutely. And, uh, to see where we're at now, it's, it's, it's disheartening. we, we skipped over the best part of what this could have been. We could have been humble. We could have been generous. We could have been smart. Yeah. Coach, I am so thankful for It's, it's an honor for me to spend time with you. You're one of my favorite coaches and, and in the history of the game, I've always loved your teams. I've always been the underdog coach. I never had the budget. I never had the money. I never had the school name and, you know, I've always had to create things on my own. So you've been that role model for me because everywhere you've been, you took a place that wasn't supposed to be great and you've made a great, and you've graduated kids and, and those kids are great men in the world today because of you. So I'm so thankful for the time I've gotten to spend with you. Well, I thank you very, very much. You know, it's always good to go back down memory lane and to share, you know, things that you may have done right. You may have done wrong with somebody. I appreciate the fact that you called me. I don't get too many calls these days. You should probably, but I guess what, it's, it's, it's the way it is. And, so when I get a call from someone like yourself, I. It means a lot that somebody still remembers you. Uh, because you know, when you were a, when I played, I wasn't a good, I wasn't a really good player, so I didn't get a whole, I didn't get a whole lot of headlines as a player. And, uh, you know, I used to enjoy folks who'd come up and say, Hey, coach and I have your autograph. That's right. It meant a lot to me, as much as may have meant to them. Well, this is my autograph, just so you know. I, I, having a chance to talk to you is, is. Much better than anything you can put on paper to me. So I've got one question I'm going to ask you. I ask all, all the coaches that come on, what's the most significant thing that you can share? And a lot of high school kids and parents listen to this high school coaches, listen to this. What's the most significant thing that you can share with my audience? Um, something that I, a lot of things, but I mean, I know we don't have for another hour, but I always would try to tell coaches. Recognize the fact that the best coach and cheerleader that you're ever going to have is your wife and that, you know, basketball, your family can be a part of. So try to make your family part of the equation. And I think if you do that, and I was fortunate, my son and I were the first African American father, son coaching team in the history of division one basketball. We worked together for 20, almost 20 years. And that's what, other than the money, I missed that more than anything. My wife, my wife basically became my full time coach. So those are the things that, that I, like I said, your wife, appreciate your wife, appreciate your kids. Try to really incorporate them into your. Lifestyle because coach not a job. It's a lifestyle. Absolutely coach. Thank you so much. If there's anything I can ever do for you or your organizations that you work with and people you work with, don't be afraid to ask. So, but I appreciate it. Appreciate your time. The first thing you can do for me is send me a copy of this, of this time that we spent together. Okay, I will serve when you get a chance. For sure, coach. It'll be my honor. Thanks again, coach, for spending some time with me today. I enjoyed every second of it. Please keep being you. And I hope we have you around for a long time. We need your wisdom. We need your passion. Okay. Well, thank you very, very much. Okay. Appreciate you. Well, that's a wrap for this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'd like to thank Coach Mike Jarvis for sharing his wisdom and amazing stories from his legendary coaching career. If you're enjoying these conversations, please click that subscribe and or like buttons. If you are interested in working with me or scheduling me to speak at your school organization, you can schedule a free strategy session at CoachMattRogers. com. Hey, thanks again for listening. Have a significant week. Goodbye, until next time.