Few people know the real story of why Chris Petersen went from being on top of college football at Boise State to building back up the Washington program.
Now, thanks to a conversation between Erik Korem and Petersen on The BluePrint podcast, Petersen opens up about that and a variety of things that will be eye opening for coaches.
Petersen opens up about his decision to leave Boise State, why he ultimately decided to step away from coaching, and what he's learned since.
This is a really thoughtful and eye opening conversation for coaches.
"This was, maybe a longer time coming. So when I was at Boise State, I was energized and really driven for almost all of my time there."
"My last year there, a lot of things started to...I had a lot of chances to leave Boise State at that time, but it never really entertained those offers because I was so driven and excited and energized with what we were building there."
"But my last year there, something really started to change and I felt like I wasn't being that good of a leader, I felt like I was short with people and I started to get cynical. We won most of our games but then the press or other people started coming at us with stuff like 'Why was that game so close?' Part of the job is answering those kinds of questions but that really started to get under my skin and I was really starting to slide backwards as far as the type of coach and the type of leader that I wanted to be."
Petersen goes on share that his wife kind of saw the change in him happening, and after a while suggested that he needed to go talk to someone or get a new job or something.
"The job felt like it was becoming very restrictive and narrow to me and I wasn't enjoying the part of this process that I really needed to embrace."
"So when the Washington job came along, I thought, 'You know what I need? I need a new set of problems.'"
"I am embarrassed to sit here and tell you today that was my thought process, that I was thinking that I'm going to take my old problems, throw them away, and get a new set of problems at Washington, and that was going to solve my problems."
"This job is so 24/7, 365 and it is hard to build in recovery skills and I just didn't have that. I didn't have someone to talk to, I didn't have recovery skills. So it was a long eight years as a head coach of taking calls every day on vacation of something going on in the program. There is no time down."
"I go to Washington and it's numbing and its blurry for almost two years but you're in the fight so hard and its a new set of problems. Then again, I get to the end of year five and I'm starting to have those same feelings because I never really got healthy enough. I didn't have a great game plan for my life, on how I wanted my life to be. I didn't have great self-talk, I didn't have great recovery skills...all these things I've learned since."
Hear more of Korem's conversation with Petersen in the clip. A lot of additional nuggets to learn from.