Ted Roof speaks

We'll be starting momentarily.

• "I'm excited about the opportunity Coach Chizik has afforded me."
  
  
• Which position will you coach?: "(Chizik) has not made a decision about that."
  
  
• Philosophy: "You've still got to stop the run to win football games. What you got to do is try to get people off kilter with going after folks and being aggressive and try to make teams one-dimensional so you can get creative on defense. It's not the schemes that win and lose for you; it's the players that you recruit and that you develop. At the same time, you're only going to be as good as your base defense and your fundamentals allow you to be. Because when you get in that thunderstorm, you've got to have a place you call home. Your base defense and playing fundamental football, just throwing blocks and getting off blocks and tackling and pursuit angles, all the things that seem so elementary to some people but are really the differences between winning and losing."
  
  
• Any coaches in particular shape your ideas?: ``I've been around a lot of good football coaches. I've learned from everybody I've been around. To say it's one person, that would not be accurate. It's a culmination of being around a bunch of people."
  
  
• "It was huge for our defense that Antonio Coleman is coming back. He has a national reputation."
  
  
• "I don't know Paul (Rhoads)."
  
  
• Timetable of hire: Chizik called Minnesota coach Tim Brewster for permission to speak. Flew into Atlanta on Sunday. Drove to Auburn on Monday. Finalized it then."
  
  
• Minnesota improvements: "We knew we had to do a good job with creating takeaways. We did that. I saw a lot of good things happening."
  
  
• Recruiting: "I'm detailed and thorough. It's built on relationships. In the end, the relationships get you over the hump. I love it -- and I love having a great product to sell like Auburn University."
  
  
• What do you remember about Auburn?: "I made this comment to Coach Dye, when you got done playing Auburn it felt like somebody had taken a rubber hose and just beat you with. Back when they ran the bone and kept pounding you. As a football player you always respect the physical teams, the teams that hit you in the mouth."
  
  (Roof played at Georgia Tech from 82-85.)
  
  
• He doesn't know the other Auburn coaches.
  
  
• Other defensive coaches: "Coach Chizik is the head coach and those will be his decisions."
  
  
• He'll start work on Thursday.
  
  
• "Coach Chizik is the head coach and he has the right to involve himself and be involved in every aspect of the program, which most head coaches do and I'm sure he will as well. I look at it as a real plus to have a guy with a defensive background that Gene has and all his expertise that he brings to his staff and to the table."