welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host at the uva and what we're going to be looking into is some insight on the spread on fence in football my guest today is more collier and he is the founder of spread often stock com and welcome to the show thank you anthony appreciate it yeah no problem so usually i start my guess where they went to college so when you go to school so i went to west virginia university i was born and raised in bergen county new jersey and  know i decided i wanted to go to wait way to school and you know back then i was a football and baseball player in high school and the side i wanted to play baseball and my merican legion coach at the time had a connection at west virginia and he got me in as a preferred walk on so i was invited you know to the fall camp and you know it's a great experience one hundred guys showed up you know so you're one of one hundred you know eighteen of them are from last season and you know i made it to the last cut the third cut i made it through fall season and unfortunately make it on the team but you know great experience i want to stay in there at west virginia you know great school great university and you know that's where i graduated so let's go back in time let's go into high school when did you start thinking about going to college as a freshman year senior year when did this all start so you know i was always involved in sports as a kid growing up in you know really think about college until you know this is thirty years ago you didn't think about it till like your junior in high school it's not like now where kids you know their freshman y in high school are starting to really think about you know the path towards you know a college or university and you know so it started about my junior year i really enjoyed playing football you know i enjoyed playing baseball obviously and you know it and then it starts accelerating more your senior year you know and then that's when i kind of knew that it was so did you just pick west virginia and i was it with the other schools involved there were other schools you know i was looking at rutgers of living in the neighborhood where you were so we used to go to a lot of trips i mean we go to montreal canada every summer playing a big tournament there you know international tournament we we go to pennsylvania we go to connecticut so i enjoyed that whole kind of leaving where you grew up you know hence the reason why i you know was interested in going away good so so now you graduate from west virginia how do you go from there to becoming the founder spread o oh so it's a great question you know again growing up i was a three sport athlete but you know the two sports i really liked were football baseball i always say that baseball was my first love but football was my passion you know and i knew coming out of college that i didn't want to have that last time i put on a helmet you know our uniform in high school be the last time i was involved in the sport of football just it meant much to me and i reached out to my old coach my high school you know that i graduated from four years ago he was still there it just happened to be that an assistant position was opening up and  you know i joined the staff in one thousand nine hundred three i mean twenty three twenty four years ago and you know i stayed there for about eight and a half years and you know during that process i became the office of coordinator you know for  you know for north all ethan which was the school you know my alma mater at the time that i had played at and you know the kind of advent or the whole evolution of the spread often sky started in like the mid ninety's you know where teams you know went from more of a traditional kind of tight formation to more of a kind of spread office where you were trying to you know get your athletes in space and you know really try to you know create more opportunities for your athletes you know not only at the wide receiver running back position but at the quarterback position to so that's kind of where the idea started to really start to materialize and then you know it's funny ten years was that would happen as well yeah so you know it's funny you know so i have a family and you know the interesting thing was i never became a teacher so i was always kind of i worked at a high school as an assistant coach but i was working in you know in another field so it it became difficult where there's just so many hours in the day you know coaching is a very you know it takes a lot of your time especially if you're dedicated and  you want to do you know you want to right by the kids in the school so i had taken a little time off from coaching because and you know a new career opportunity had a rose which which conflicted with the time schedule you know you know for the high school and you know i then got back into it left it again got back into it so i kind of for the last twenty three years been still involved at the high school level and  stock com allowed me to do was kind of stay in the game you know even though i wasn't technically in the game as a coach but you know it allows it allows me to this day to interact with coaches from all over the country matter fact all over the domain name itself or the you know what i guess a techie would call the u r l is kind of self explanatory right it's spread often stock com so if you were going to go to say credit cards dot com you know they would have information on you know applying for and getting accepted for credit cards well spread often stock com is exactly that for football it's a resource it's you know it's a place where coaches can come in and learn about not only running the spread often it's on the off chance of solder to ball but even defending the spread offense so you know everyone thinks about well how do i run it you know as my off and there's a whole other area of coaching that says well you  playing a team that runs the spread off and every you know every play you know can you give me some tips pointers you know some diagrams some play books to help me to defend that so i you know i offer everything on the site there's a you know there's videos there's playbooks there's diagrams the big thing over the last five years has been the social media i mean you know my facebook and twitter pages have over ten thousand followers or likes so you know people from all over the country are you know looking at things that i post and i try to keep it as informative as possible you know for the for the coach and not just a coach even even players so you know i'm a high school player and i'm a you know my you know my coach wants me to be a quarterback in the spread off and so or you know you know i'm thinking about maybe moving from the wide receiver position you know to the quarterback position i'm a kind of a dual threat player you can come to my website and kind of learn about you know how this right off it's works and see if that's you know the right fit so so is it more to tauriel zz that you give as well as diagrams yeah i mean it's again it's online right so there's a lot of reading involved right so you know we may kind of goal for you know like the quick game you know which is like a kind of a short passing game you know out of multiple formations say in the spread off and so within that maybe four or five diagrams but you know above and below the diagrams are also explanations you know like bullet points you know like what coaching points you should be coaching  you know what people that aren't involved with football realizes it's it's really it's the small things it's the you know it's the minute detail yet the details of the sport that really put you over the edge i mean if you think of the super bowl last night right they say bill belichick is like one of the the most detailed oriented coaches you know that you'll ever find i mean he doesn't leave any rock on turn and that's you know to a certain extent what we try to do on the website  and the nice thing is i'm you know i'm always there that to answer questions coaches can send me an email you know they comp they contact me via facebook and twitter via the message service so you know it's a nice it's a nice way for me to stay in the game you know without actually coaching right now and at the same time you know help help coaches you know in a sport that you know i really feel passionate about so no is it a membership  type of environment is it is anybody can go and just look at it freely how does that all work so there's two options there's a if you go to spread office dot com there's a lot of free content that doesn't cost you anything you can go on there you can take a look you know you could you know take a look at the pictures and read about the again whether it's running to spread office were defending the spread office there's probably well over a do n different specific topics that are totally free to you that you could access for for the coach who really maybe wants to dive in a little deeper we do have a paywall service which is like a member a member area that you can pay a small whether it's a monthly fee quarterly fee or if you pay you want to pay one year an annual fee in advance and within there we have about thirty different playbooks that you can download again not only running the spread office from the office of side but defending the spread office which is very valuable the coaches i mean they can go on the site they can download them to their computer or again with the membership they're always there for you so you can log in any time and access them there's also some more details around you know other kind of what i would say more advanced you know aspects of the spread often it's i mean the it's amazing the evolution of just this one type of often it's the way it's expanded over the last ten twelve years there's it's just endless how much you can really dive into it so we try to offer as much as we can and again be that kind of instant resource via social media so if i see something on say e s p n or c b s that's going on in the game right away i can i could talk about it i could maybe pull a clip of it on the video and it becomes instant feedback you know it was think of those fans know is there categories in there is it for pop warner kids is if a high school kids college kids n f l people  you have a wide variety definitely have a wide variety of people who you know follow me on social media and stuff like that but the the website does break it up into different sections you know where we do have kind of basic knowledge type areas for again the you know the youth football coach little more advance for the high school you know college and n i'm not getting any you know the those coaches are at that level for a certain reason i think you know you'll find a handful of them follow me on social media again because that's more kind of updated instant kind of thing but the website more for the coach who you know it's it could be the dad that needs to help out is you know his son's team at the like you said the youth level or pop warner level and he he's going into this like with no idea what's going on i mean he he's heard he's heard the word spread of you know you know from watching e s p n or watching you know a game on c b s but he's going to step on the you know the practice field and you know really feel like he doesn't know what's going on so we feel like we offer him  resource to at least you know the basic fundamentals you know formations you know very simple run plays pass plays that you know will help him be successful now do you find that a lot of females come on there as well to  son who's twelve years old and she may be a single mom or her husband has no interest in football or i don't know what three maybe she loves football just as much as the rest of the family chill you know maybe buy a playbook for her son  you know i've got i've gotten questions from others you know about you know the sport my son's interested in playing you know in his team runs the spread often so you know can you maybe send me something or or guide me in the right path on your website to find the right content so i think it's more again the moms that are really you know their you know their boarding cause their sons board and yeah you know so that's where so you find a lot of majority of the website is  the high school kids i think high school i'm not going to say high school kids i think high school coaches high school high school coaches again it's a you know i would say eighty percent of our you know folks that come to the site are our coaching right you know their their passion about the sport they want to learn as much as they can the interesting thing is they send me a lot of stuff too so it's it works both ways right because they i always when i started the site ten years ago i said to myself i wanted to be more like a like a share site as opposed to just more collier you know putting his information on there you know what good is that there's a lot of great coaches out there was a lot of smart coaches i mean i've done i've done q and a type you know content with coaches from college coaches from high school asking them certain questions you know getting then the think a little more in you know it's been it's been successful so again i always thought about it as a shared service i take it very seriously i think i think the spread often says something that if you look at the sport of football it's been a key part of the evolution of the office of game you know you know if you look at a football field it's a little over fifty three yards wide i think i always used this analogy imagine a baseball field and you know you were only able to hit the ball you know from the alleys to the alley if you couldn't you know use it if you couldn't use the foul lines on both sides how many great hits are hit down the foul line right how many home runs  you know right down the foul pole so i i give that correlation to football i mean i think the sport used to kind of be played what we call between the hashmarks you know which is like the middle of the field and i think with the evolution of the athlete also you know bigger faster stronger they need to they need to maximize the field and i think that's what you know the spread often says don so no what do you find as the future of the spread often s where do you see spread off and start going so i think you know it's all about content online it's all about adding you know it's about adding content that people feel valuable and will keep them coming right i mean because look you know just because i own the the name spread oftens dot com doesn't mean there's i mean there's a lot of other great resources out there that that i'm a big fan of that you know discuss the spread often it's and really put some great content out about it and i think if you ask anyone online there's a couple things that really going to you know explode over the next ten years you know when you look at football you know from like the first thing is video i mean everyone wants to see that you know rich h d good quality  video as opposed to looking at a static diagram you know i mean when i started the site that that was really the only option right you know you put a static diagram on there and you know you write some great stuff about it and people were happy now people want to see  video you know they want to see they want to be able to pause it they want to be able to rewind the other thing i think is a lot of this virtual reality stuff you're seeing i think over the next five six years you know with the sport of football you know  you know people are taking their smartphones or put them on their heads in their you know being able to kind of simulate you know what goes on on the field you know through this virtual reality so i think the you know those are two things i think the video is going to continue to surge and then mobile too i mean people want to be able to access content via their mobile device i mean people just don't get on desktops or even laptops as much as they used to so it's similar to what the n site i think maybe before the game offseason i get my site is more of a resource that they that could help them kind of develop their you know system you know or their  philosophy i think once you get into individual teams you know i but i'm with you on your percent i think within the next couple years just as you see on the n f l sidelines with the tablets you're going to see it at the college level it's going to trickle down into the high school level i mean there are services out there like hoddle you know that are it's unbelievable what they've done for the video exchange portion you know of the game of football at the high school level i mean when i say you know for years we'd have to get in a car you know would a v h s tape you know drive drive ten miles to the you know at some kind of you know middle spot with a coach and exchange a tape now you know you could sit there in your sweats and you know once you're in your l games upload uploaded you just shoot it off to the next coach or you put it into a kind of a you know shared environment and it's there for everyone the watch and then they're you know they're including analytics into that too where you know they're just kind of telling you everything that's going on in the game i mean that's what that's what a game's going is the analytics part of it it's the virtual reality it's the video and the mobile application do you see analytics coming into your site i do it again more on a research side you know not not for x y z high school you know where we would offer that service but i think as as the spread off and continues to evolve i'd like to see my  site my goal is that it's the place where you know coaches fans players are going to come to you know learn more about it and with any reset you know with any research comes analytics so yeah it's people really know about it yet you know yeah if you were a high school player i think you'd get a lot out of it i think if you came on the site and you you know look through the office of side of it you know the defensive side of it the videos we have up again our our facebook and twitter page we have you know well over ten thousand followers you know that's the key area where i really try to keep the content as as fresh as possible right now  but yeah yeah definitely valuable for a so you see social media growing in a particular field or is it going to be more and more as time goes on yeah i you know it's not going anywhere i mean i mean look at our president he communicate via twitter i mean you know it's not going anywhere it's you know it's it's part of this new generation you know this this generation of you know twelve to twenty five year olds it's you know that technology is in you know i kind of mentioned there you know but it's still place where they can go and you know access something via their mobile device and you know again you know it's a cliche but football's a game engine is you know if you can gain any little edge you know by something maybe you see from my site or even it just gives my whole thing is just given coach is just maybe a new thought process you know a new idea i'm not saying you're going to change your whole you know your whole system or philosophy on office or defense but you may see something to say hey you know what i see how they're doing it here and maybe we can incorporate that into what we do you know it may be you know this is vanilla you know ours is strawberry but you know we can take a little bit of that and put it into and t v you see a lot of coaches sharing the information they can actually take from your website and share what well they can via yeah i mean they could take a link in email it you know we always have kind of e mail your friend service kind on the web site i'll tell you where that really kicks in is on twitter because you could read tweets something so you know there's times i'll put out something like a video clip that or a retreat is like one of the ultimate compliments because it's that person's putting that on their page right so you know you know it's their reputation if they feel like it's good content they want to share with their you know social group so well we're coming to the end of our show because i want faster so usually i ask my guests what advice do they want to give to parents out there you know kids are playing in high school or college or whatever and they're interested in the spread out and what advice would you like to give them well i think first of all if if you have a student athlete that you know wants to play the next level i think that's great because you know  i tell kids that you know i've coached high school many years and you know it's ok to be a great high school player you know it's ok just the you know when you get the twelfth grade say all right you know what i've had enough i gave it all i had i was a great player you know i respected the game i represented my my school well you know that's fine but you know what there's also that group of kids you know whether it's you know you know we're talking football here but if it's you know even girls right you know with their sports if you have it you know and there's that word if you have it if you have if you if you can play at a high level and you can go on to play the next level i think it's great and i would say to parents is do your research you know there's a lot of great colleges and universities out there i've met a lot of great coaches you know there are my years of coaching high school  football but do your research because the end of the day there's a reason why they call the student athlete your student first you know and you want to go somewhere where you're going to get a great education and you know what leverage your athletic ability because if that can get you into a better school because of what you did at the high school level you know go for it so thank you for coming so you've been watching the secrets of college planning i'm you know stanton you have until next time