“Your thoughts become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character. And your character becomes your destiny. ... So if you really think about and believe that we can own the Pac-12 South, then we can do it.”
Tyler Owens recently delivered that message to a group of football players hanging on his every word. It came to Tucson straight from Tuscaloosa.
Owens is the Arizona Wildcats’ director of strength and conditioning. He previously played for and worked at Alabama, where he was part of five national championships under Nick Saban.
Jedd Fish hired Owens in January — the official offer delivered via FaceTime just as DeVonta Smith was winning the Heisman Trophy — to see if Owens could bring some Crimson Tide culture to a program struggling to escape from college football’s bottom.
Owens enthusiastically accepted the job, because he and Fisch shared a vision for what Arizona could become. Asked this week on NFL Network how he would define success in Year 1, Fisch said: “We want to be the toughest team on everybody’s schedule. ... If people don’t want to play the Arizona Wildcats, we’ll know we’ve hit our first mark.”
The process in underway to instill toughness in a program that too often has lacked it in recent years. The morning after Alabama won its most recent national title, Owens hopped on a plane from Miami to Tucson and immediately went to work.
The 28-year-old never had played or coached outside his home state. Owens grew up in Clay, Alabama, a town of about 10,000 located 22 miles northeast of Birmingham.
He played football and basketball at Clay-Chalkville High School before accepting a preferred walk-on spot under Saban. Owens then transitioned to a job as an assistant under renowned strength coach Scott Cochran.
But Owens couldn’t resist the opportunity to run his own strength program. Like Fisch, Owens embraces the challenge of building something from the ground up.
Owens discussed his philosophy, his influences and other topics in a recent interview with the Star. The conversation has been lightly edited for context and clarity.
People must ask you all the time what Coach Saban is like. So ... what is Coach Saban like?
A: “Very demanding. He’s very attention-to-detail-oriented, whether it’s the schedule, whether it’s practice, whether it’s lifts. Everything matters. Every day matters. That’s where the whole process comes into play. Each day plays a role into the process. That’s one of the biggest lessons you learn.
“If you waste a day, you’re gonna look back at the end of your time or the end of the season or the end of your career and have regrets. That’s the biggest thing with him — trying to maximize and use each day to the fullest.”
What was it like to be part of the greatest dynasty in college football history?
A: “It was just an unbelievable experience. Getting to see what it takes in a lot of different areas to be successful. You can’t really pinpoint one area. When you’re a part of that at Alabama, you see the hard work, the dedication, the attention to detail, the demand for excellence, the standard, the culture that it takes to have that kind of success.
“You see these high-caliber players work harder than anybody in the country. When you put talent and hard work together, it’s pretty hard to beat. That’s been their M.O. Recruit some highly talented players and then just outwork everybody in the country. When you do that ... it’s amazing what can happen.
“That’s one of the biggest things that I want to bring to Arizona. If you put your head down and work and buy in, trust and believe in the philosophy that Coach Fisch has, the amount of success we can have as a team and a program is however much we want to have.
“One of my biggest sayings is, ‘Every thank-you comes with an IOU.’ I’m forever thankful for my time and every experience and lesson learned at Alabama. I owe Alabama. I owe them to be my best and to bring those experiences to Arizona and help these kids be their best.”
Arizona hired new strength and conditioning coach Tyler Owens away from Alabama and Nick Saban.
Scott Cochran is now the special-teams coach at Georgia, but he was perhaps the most famous strength coach in college football. What did you learn from him?
A: “The biggest thing anybody will tell you they learned from Cochran is his genuine care for people. He can connect with anybody that walks through the door.
“One of the greatest things I learned from him is how important it is to build relationships with players, not just as a coach but as a friend, as a mentor, as almost like a father figure. I look at him like a brother, a best friend, because of all the things he’s done for me.”
Unlike any other assistant coach, you have to build relationships with every player on the team.
A: “Absolutely. I tell every guy that comes into our program, whenever you walk through the door, whatever your goals, dreams and aspirations are when you come to the University of Arizona, that’s my dreams; that’s my goals; that’s my aspirations. And the same with my staff.
“We sit down, and we write out goals as a team. I take those goals, and I’ll look at those like they’re my own, because, essentially, they are. I lose sleep at night if I didn’t do everything possible to help each individual on our team accomplish all those goals ... if I didn’t do everything possible to help them accomplish their dreams.
“I think that’s why I was able to connect with Coach Fisch so easily. When he kept talking about ‘It’s personal’ ... it is personal. It’s personal with every player. It’s personal with every athlete that comes through the door to play for the University of Arizona.”
In what other ways does your philosophy align with Fisch’s?
A: “Just his thought process, some foundations and principles in our program of being physically and mentally tough. That’s what a lot of my program is built on. You have to train that. You have to build that toughness by the level of intensity you train (with) in the weight room.”
You’ve posted a lot of videos of and inspirational sayings by Kobe Bryant on your Twitter timeline. What’s your connection to Kobe?
A: “When Kobe came and spoke to us at Alabama (in 2018), I got to spend some time with him. Just hearing him speak to the team, just his thought process and the way he attacked every day and his mentality, it was so contagious and something that ... just impressed me so much.
“At that time, I probably wasn’t the biggest Kobe (fan). I liked Kobe and I respected everything he had done. But after getting to spend time with him and hear him tell some of his stories and tell his story, and just seeing the impact that he’s made after his passing, his story and his life is a huge inspiration to me.
“If any of our players, or if any young player growing up, watches him and listens to his mentality and the way he showed up on a daily basis and takes that to their own life, no matter what field they’re in, I think you’d have a chance to be successful.”
It’s no secret that this program has been down. When you started working with the players, what sense did you get about their collective psyche?
A: “A lot of people, (when) they heard what had gone on in the past, the record and everything else, they didn’t think it was the greatest idea to come here. I step in and, honestly, I was around a bunch of dudes that were just hungry and want to have success. They want to be taught how to do things. They want to be taught what it takes to win.
“Since the day that I’ve been here, I can’t speak enough of them, the way they’ve just bought in and put their heads down and went to work. I’ve challenged them. I’ve pushed them.
“They’ve showed up with the right attitude, the right mindset, and they’re learning what it takes to play and perform at a high level on consistent basis.
“They’ve been hungry every single day to learn, to grow and to improve so that we can play at a high level ... and put a product on the field that we can be proud of.
“There hasn’t been a lot of questioning, a lot of doubting. It’s just been like, ‘Let’s go to work. We’re tired of the results we’ve been getting. Let’s do this thing a different way. And let’s see what can happen.’
“They’ve been as good or better than I could ever ask for. So I’m excited for what’s to come.”
