On his relationship with Louisville Coach Charlie Strong: "Our relationship is great. I talked to Charlie last night. He called to congratulate me. We'll have the same type of relationship we had when I was the offensive coordinator here and he was the defensive coordinator at Florida. It will be a little different because we are both head coaches. We'll communicate throughout the year but won't share football secrets, and then there'll be one day throughout the year where we'll be enemies."

On recruiting: "It will be my top priority in the first month to recruit. We'll continue to develop the players we're working with and get players who can play for us now. We want to recruit the best players we can sign out of Kentucky, nationally and in this region,

On advice he received from Rich Brooks: "Don't listen to the noise that's out there. Continue to plow ahead, stick to your plan, and just close out all the outside distractions. And the noise has gotten louder nowadays. One of the things I admired about (Brooks) was that at a time when he had a lot of young coaches, me included, on his staff, who might have taken a different direction the first two or three years, Rich stayed the course. He didn't listen to the noise, didn't listen to us young coaches who thought we knew everything. He stayed the course of the plan, and we broke through."