Wells: New players "have to learn Aggie way"

Utah State coach Matt Wells gives his approval after his team scored against Northern Illinois during the first half of the Poinsettia Bowl NCAA college football game Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

LOGAN – It is no doubt that USU football has developed a winning attitude over its last several seasons. Last year’s Poinsettia Bowl victory over Northern Illinois resulted in the program’s first back-to-back bowl wins and the 2013 senior class became the winningest in school history. With the season opener in Knoxville just weeks away, many of the newcomers in their first year of fall camp are coming into a winning program with confidence.

“The kids that have come in, they don’t know what it used to be like when Utah State didn’t win,” said head coach Matt Wells. “It’s not their fault.”

Zach Vigil said he is looking forward to a quiet locker room as fall camp gets going this week. The senior linebacker thinks some of the new football recruits may be a little overconfident and have developed the idea that winning is automatic.

“Obviously new guys come in every year, but what I noticed the most this recent year is these guys, it seems as if they just expect us to win,” he said. “They expect us to be really good. They expect us to go win 9 games or more this year. That’s something why I can’t wait for camp to start because they’re going to shut up about it really is what’s going to happen. Because they are going to find out that there is a lot of work that goes involved with winning and being successful.”

Head Coach Matt Wells said that because of the larger than normal incoming group, he has placed an emphasis this year on the need for the newer players to become followers to the upper-classmen.

“Zach Vigil is exactly right,” Wells said. “The bowl games aren’t automatic. Getting a chance to play for a championship in November is not automatic. Graduating is not automatic – all those kinds of things. They’ve got to learn the way we do things. I feel more of an emphasis of that this year because there are a lot of new kids.”

The team has a little more than three weeks to prepare for Tennessee. Wells made it clear that the younger players need to learn the “Aggie way,” just like the current senior class learned from players like Bobby Wagner a few years ago. He added that as of right now, he isn’t concerned that those things won’t happen.

“They got to learn what we do,” he said. “How we lift, how we run, our nutrition, the way we train, the way we go to school, the way we act in the community.”

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Posted in USU