welcome to the secrets of college host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight into basketball at the college level my guest today is marlin o'brien he's the president of the bernard group and welcome to the show subsequently i was playing in the georgia shortly and broke my hand my finger so badly that the scholarship offers that i had were in jeopardy so eventually i was told by east texas state university because i had a scholarship offer from maryland george mason and temple few fit a larger well known colleges and this area but when i brought my hand and my my finger that badly they kind of pulled back a little bit so therefore the one school that didn't pull back was east texas state university east texas a university is now texas and i'm commerce most people will note east texas state university because of the football program wade wilson went there harvey martin went there and to top jones went there the white white from the pittsburgh steelers went there so it was kind of a school that was more known for their football program was building their basketball program at the same time because right around that time is when the dallas mavericks expansion team came to the alice and this school is about forty five minutes away from dallas as a matter of fact if you watch the program with  on sanders has his show that he has the football program that he does with in the summer time is at east texas state university that's a school so therefore i went there so naturally i  sat out of school i went to trent state college which is now a college in new jersey for a year not matriculated so i wouldn't use up any of my eligibility right and i was out that was the advice i got from the coach and i thought it staff so eventually after all left and transferred eventually i wound up back in new jersey in a division three program solid college and i played there for my final eligibility year and finished up college  in eighty four and got my degree from uppsala and subsequently i also got a degree from east texas the university later years because i had so many credits that they gave me i also got a degree from them as well just finishing up a couple let's go back into high school first so i'm assuming just for our audience you're not a short guy you know how tall are you i'm six nine six nine so so in high school you said that you would get recruited by quite a lot of schools large some of the larger schools in high school i went to scotland found high school so i was really the first basketball player to get a scholarship in basketball from scratch and i found high school  most of the most of the scholarships were going to kids from linden roselle the powerhouses elizabeth played against mcdaniels that went to elizabeth all the guys that went to linden rosie peoples all those guys they all were you know recruited fairly heavily right so so now in high school when did it when did the recruiting start was a freshman year was it senior year when when do you might remember how i started my senior year because first of all i was born in jamaica and i came to this country and i was almost ten years old and i came here i was really a soccer player and a cricket player for for those of you know a cricket is so i came here really not thinking about basketball then started growing and by the time i got to that's a sophomore in high school i was six six and that's when the coaches are in on me to come out and play basketball sites really started playing basketball you know competitively at the high school level when was a sophomore so my sophomore season was ok but my junior season i started you know put myself on the map and by my senior season is when i started getting some scholarship offers and so now the mom and dad get involved my mother and i basically my mother left jamaica and my mother father divorced when i was probably about six or seven years old so i really my father was never really in the picture summer i graduated high school playing in the jersey shore league and some of you might not know what a georgia surely was the big league back then there was no real a you or anything like that if you didn't play the jersey shore league you were not a player so i went down to the jersey shore league and fell and broke my finger in my hand at the same time so i want to put two surgeries on my hand and you know that's when the scholarships or pretty much in jeopardy because they even though i don't i don't know what the rules are when the n c a a rules were back then because you know nowadays you have the internet and you have all these things you can google everything and find out everything so i was on the phone calling these schools and saying you know my my hand is broken and whatever whatever and they well you know well that we want to doctor's report so i had to go and send them doctors reports and when i saw the doctors reports is when they said well maybe you should sit out this year and maybe maybe you know it was very sketchy and then the best advice i got a again was from the guys at east texas state which was go to school get some classes on the about na matriculated so you don't start your eligibility writing case you know you  eighteen to executive she did not know anything about basketball you know she really was you know relying on my opinion and i really didn't know a whole lot about basketball outside of new jersey one of the he's the one who spoke to left result at the time and left he invited me down to come and work out and i worked out with buck williams albert king  y graham i can almost remember all the names of the other tall guy seven foot and father go so when i went through that workout that's when i said oh you can play and that's when i got the scholarship offer from them so so now you  go to school there first and then you end up in texas correct so what happens when you're down in texas what flips the school house it was texas is definitely a different place i didn't really like texas it was extremely hot they said different style of basketball in texas at that point at that point texas i don't want to call football but it was football it was a football like basketball atmosphere you know a lot  lot of heavy hitting and bowing and punching and pretty heavy duty stuff so i wasn't used that i was an east coast player which is more run and gun and you know that kind of basketball so it was an interesting transition for me but eventually i put on enough weight and muscle to deal with it and practices back then and the way that the games are played a little bit different now coming out yeah i mean anymore you you know that it's a very very it's a shooter's league right now the n b a you know you got that's what it is so now while you're in school and you're thinking about the n b a is this something that you want yes you know i actually they when the knicks were coming in the gym we were leaving the gym when they were when we were leaving they were coming and it was you know depending what time of day it was or practice so he would be brown saw me plain saw saw what i could do and i got into a few of nutshell but you know at the by the end of the day i got more exposure even by coming back home then i was going to go the c d a and everything kind of came together by the time i graduated college i was working i was thinking about going overseas i had a couple of offers to go to south america and a couple of places in south america and at the same time my mother was also looking to resign or  take a package from eighteen to that's how i got into the recruiting business because she said i want you come instead of going overseas right away while you come and help me start this business up and that's how we wound up starting up initially the name of the company was manag doing so well that i said maybe i won't go overseas and play basketball says time when along i wound up staying with the firm so you never went and played basketball at the college no i did not know so so so you started in the  business basically right out of college yes yes and now it's become the bernard's group correct correct we trend we change a name of the company in two thousand and ten ok about seven years ago and so give us a little insight in the company and what it does we are a generalist recruiting firm and we specialize in nonprofit organizations like health care r w j barnabus is one of our clients we've done a lot with the telecom industry verizon's in the eighteen t's predominantly i t accounting finance in general and you know and other general manager type positions and some globally so you between my my children playing basketball and all the coaching and i did some coaching in a you you wind up that's a pretty solid network of people and most most folks that are in you know in the basketball world are there also in the business world and some of them as you know made the transition like i did from basketball to business and some you know and some of us  and then you're one of connecting with so many people over this span of time that we've got a pretty solid database of clients and customers and and so on how do you go about finding these people many ways  have our own database we've got a couple hundred thousand people in our database that are predominantly in the tri state area but for the most part we we've got a global database i mean we've got people in different countries in the database  use different search engines link then we've used the monster board we've use all kinds of different it just depends on what you're going after you know some certain searches work really well when you using linked in because the executive search is work really well with linked in when you look at the technology people then you've got to go and really make phone calls internally to various departments that you know potentially will have these people that you're they are looking for predominantly medical professionals you know nurses doctors medical administrators meaning the folks that manage the medical staff and some of these somebodies folks are retired medical people that are now on the administrative side of of the hospital so that's that's predominantly what we work on with the hospitals and also fund raising folks you know coming out and coming up to say marlon i need many some help here or there do you work with a lot of the kids that are coming out of college i do i do most quote most of our clients will not pay us for entry level college kid but we make it our business to really help the college kids out i mean if i can point them in the right direction help them fix their resume whatever it takes to get them situated and also try to you know mentor them a little bit what do you actually trying to do because if you want to become an accountant are you do you want to go into auditing or do you want to go into forensic accounting or whatever it is and give them some direction because oftentimes you want up wasting a lot of time  not not being informed or not knowing fortunately these days most of the kids that come out of school i think because of the internet and all the activity that goes on the internet they're pretty well aware of what where where they want to go so they're really coming to us to be fine tuned or sometimes they'll limit themselves they'll say oh i just want to work in central jersey and i want to make eighty thousand dollars and i'm saying well wait a minute if you want to make eighty thousand dollars you might have to go to new york city and you're just not going to work in somerset county find eighty thousand dollars coming out of college unless you are a professional an engineer or something like that but you just said let's say you get a b s in marketing you're not going to find a job making eighty thousand dollars coming out of school not in central new jersey won't right and some some kids will go anywhere in the country they'll say i'm open to go anywhere and that opens you up to a lot more client client base now how do they find someone you know in new jersey and you'll find you'll find us there and then you know there's a lot of there's a lot of other recruiting functions that i go to these various recruiting functions you know seminars and what have you go to an all kinds of m b a conferences all kinds of different conferences so do you help a lot of the basketball i'll cut out of the m b a is why i've i've been known to help a few bas players get positions you know so that you know i don't specialize in that per se but when they do come to me we have a special bond and i'll make sure that i figure out what it is that they're trying to do and help them because sometimes getting a job is not so much what you have on paper it's the introduction you need someone needs to introduce you to someone that knows you and can vouch for you and say listen i need you to speak to this person because they got the they need a break they need it they need the first start but the one thing most pass while players are pretty well driven you know so they're you know you don't necessarily have and pretty aggressive so you don't have to push them you know to do too much so now in basketball what you said before you did some coaching and things like that what do you see in today's basketball compared to when you went to school you see the kids bigger stronger what do you see what do you see in this combine i see the kids the kids nowadays  are i want to say they've got most some can shoot a little bit better most of them can juggle a little bit better but a lot of them don't have the basketball i q that somebody older players had  because there are times when we were the bigger stronger team and we got out there and we got pummeled because the other team just outsmarted us and we tried everything in the book we tried to muscle them we tried everything we could but it didn't work and i you know so what i see in the kids nowadays is everybody wants to be a superstar and some of these kids really and truly don't want to work too hard at it figure out that there are good shooter and that's all they need and suddenly they get on the court and this five good shooters on a court and suddenly they just look pretty ordinary yeah so they these kids nowadays they really got to work on all aspects of the game you know rebounding you there talk about schooling grades what's your take on you know the sports versus going to school what's your take on on all of that i you know when i was i was pretty much when i first went off to school the classes that were given to me were not what i would call normal classes these were pretty was brought in and asked what my dough ing and i told them change my classes and they said well the first time you know we see that you cannot manage that we're going to change them back and i said ok and i never looked back so you  got to be a student first i mean the end of the day none of us we can predict you know who's going to make it to the n b a and whatever i mean there are certain kids that you know based on the school they're at and based on their athletic ability they should make it to the n b a but you should always get that degree to fall back on no matter what you do that was my whole push was no matter where i would go i'm going to have to get a degree and get it just a legitimate as myself and someone like yourself that met took it and started their own business you but it also gives you a lot of insight that it makes you feel less you know that's what it does every day when you wake up you don't worry about anything because you're just saying it's going to go the way it's going to go and you're just going to put your hundred percent in  and good things happen when you put one hundred percent in now you say and i you have kids of your own a day in college or i have two still in college one has graduated already he lives in atlanta and i have one son my youngest son a finishing up his senior year well he's going to be a scene of this year he's no basketball fan he's a medical student he's a pre med student my middle boy's about a junior right now he's got about junior status as  well so it's all about schooling you know it's all about schooling you know your basketball is a nice to have at the end of the day you need your you need your college degree yeah that's a little great so we're coming to the end of our your research on the school itself do your research on the academics of the school do your research on what does what does the athletic department provide and support of your student athlete because it's very important you know some schools kids don't get the support their supposed to get academically and some of these kids are coming from schools that are not necessarily academically challenging so  they show up to these large you know notre dame's or what have you and suddenly the mand for academics is right there but then the support mechanism you know the visors to the basketball programs of football programs some of those advisors are not very strong so you really and truly not only need to interview the coaches you need to find out who are the disappoint arm who are these folks and  when my kids on the road and he's got a game on a monday and he's out of town and he has classes monday tuesday wednesday and he's comes back thursday off the road what is a support mechanism that is in place to make sure that although he this person missed these classes they're still going to have an opportunity to get their grades in order that's that's the biggest thing is to reduce your research find out what the support mechanism what support mechanisms are in place