We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. Today we are joined by coach Bill Courtney. He
has partnered with the nonprofit Iron Light Labs to launch an Army of Normal Folks,
a movement, a podcast. You may know Bill Courtney has the founder
of Classic American Hardwoods. In two thousand and three, he became a volunteer
football coach in America's third course zip Code, and yet thirty one out of
thirty two seniors in his last two seasons went to college. All of those
successes on and off the field were the subject of the doctr Memory film,
which ended up winning an Academy Award back in twenty twelve, called Undefeated Coach,
Thanks for joining us, Thanks for having me, Jay Dog. I
was just gonna say I was gonna tell the listeners that before we started recording,
I always asked what people prefer to be referred to as and you said
you know anything, Coach Bill. I think you also said even fat butt,
which I wasn't gonna go with. But then you said you were gonna
call me jay Dog, which I love family. I don't even know how
to pronounce this last name, but you would do it. If you grew
up Memphis, you would have immediately been a Jay Dog. See in Milwaukee,
everyone knows that pronunciation pretty well. It's just sinski. I think,
yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. I think jay Dog's way cooler.
I agree with that. I'm gonna go with that from now on. So
so, coach, tell us about your background. For folks who didn't see
Undefeated, let us know that. You just bring the audience up to speed
on how you ended up doing the film, how you ended up coaching,
how you ended up actually this is a lot, I know, but founding
your business, all of that stuff. Where'd you come from? How'd you
get to where you are? I grew up in Memphis. My business is
Memphis. I'm a Memphis Tennessee guy. Dad left home when I was four.
I had no relationship with him at all. In fact, he died
earlier this year, and I got a phone call telling me about it after
the fact. Mom was married and divorced five times. For Daddy shot at
me down the hallway. I had to dive out of window to say to
myself that night. And so the reality is that's how I grew up.
I went to Ole, miss the University of Mississippi. It's about about a
mile I mean, excuse me, about an hour south of Memphis. Got
a degree in psychology in England and really wanted to go into the developmental psychology
field shot psychology. So when I graduated, I came back to Memphis and
enrolled at the University of Memphis to start working on my doctorate. Needed to
pay the bills, and I took a job coaching football and teaching school for
a living. And candidly, that's kind of where my passion always was because
of the way I grew up. My coaches and my teachers, specifically my
coaches. They were the counterbalance to the trauma and ridiculousness that I was living
growing up. And I saw that I saw teaching and coaching not really as
a profession but a calling and an avenue to give back in ways that changed
me and stabilized me as an adolescent. When I needed it, and so
I started teaching and coaching while I was working on my doctorate, and I
ran into this person named Lisa, And if you saw me, you would
understand I'm just kind of a dopey guy and Lisa's a straight up dime.
And so you know, I married her because what else am I going to
do? And we're in the South, and Emily, I don't know how
much fishing you've done over your life, but if if you're on eight pound,
lots of it, lots of it, all right, Well, you're
if you're on an eight pound, eight pound test and you light into a
thirty pound slab, you're doing everything you can not to let that line break,
right, You're reeling it in. That's right, that's right. So
that's kind that's kind of me metaphorically. I mean, I'm an eight pound
test and I lit into this thirty pound slab named Lisa, buying as hell.
So the only thing I knew to do to keep on the line was
start having kids. So we had kids, four kids in four years,
and that was great and beautiful in my family. But teaching school and coaching
football for seventeen thousand dollars a year with a wife and four children, while
also spending money to try to go to school to get a doctorate. Just
the calculus didn't work on it, and so I left teaching and coaching as
a profession. I had to abandon the idea of becoming a psychologist, and
I got into the private world. But in the city of Tennessee, you're
allowed to if you take a bunch of classes and get certification. There's a
handful of us in the state. You can be what's called a certified non
faculty coach, which covers you under all the TSA regulations and insurance, and
the schools can bring you into coach and you can do that without actually being
on the faculty if you go through this accreditation, which I did because again,
you know, making money became a paramount requirement for this family, this
very young, growing family. But my passion was still coaching, and so
in two thousand and one I started a lumber company off my couch. Was
seventeen thousand dollars in my pocket and we now have one hundred and thirty employees.
We do business in forty two different countries. I have a fifty acre
manufacturing facility here in Memphis, as well as my domestic sales offices, and
I have international offices in Shanghai, China and Coachman City, Vietnam, and
we did about eighteen million in sales last year, so I've been very blessed
there. But at the same time, I continued to coach because that was
my passion, and the reason I ended up at Manassas is because it's only
a mile from where my plant is. And when I got to Manassas,
I found seventeen kids on a team that won four games in ten years.
Their previous ten years record was four wins and ninety five losses. We started
coaching, and seven years later some goofy guys from La wearing skinny jeans and
scarves. And for those of you not from the Southeast, nobody wears scarves
in Memphis is too hot. But they did because I think that was cool.
I guess I don't know. They show up and they say they're gonna
make a movie, and I'm like, okay, well, we'll see this
on channel three hundred and sixty two when Wednesday at two am buried on your
cable channels, and they left Memphis with five hundred and fifty hours of film
edited, and a year and a half later, I'm walking down the red
carpet with P Diddy and George Clooney and we win an Academy Award, which
is ridiculous. And that led to speaking engagements, which led to my book
Against the Grain, which is done very well, which led to more speeches,
and you know that's it. I'm a guy from Memphis who grew up
without a pot tapean or wanted to throw it out of got lucky and married
a beautiful woman who I'm still married to thirty two years later. We have
four children. Twenty eight, twenty seven, twenty six, twenty five.
I've been blessed beyond anything I ever deserved, with an amazing company full of
really hard working, dedicated, good people, and I continue to coach football,
and somehow my passion landed on the radar some guys who made a movie
and I accidentally ended up winning an Academy award, which led to books and
speeches and interviews, and to get you all the way up, about a
year and a half ago, I was being interviewed about something and that particular
day I was extremely frustrated Emily because I can't remember exactly what happened, but
some national thing had occurred. And I remember watching Fox and News Max and
CNN and CNBC's coverage of that, and it was like four different planets about
a very obvious thing that happened that was any common sense, clear thinker could
understand the dynamics of that issue. Yet it was completely represented differently from all
these different viewpoints. And so I was particularly frustrated that day, and I
got asked about what I thought could fix the proverbial it in quotation marks it,
and I said, you know, the every day we drive by and
every city in the country, Memphis, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Chicago,
New York, pick a city, and we drive by these neighborhoods and we
looked down the road, or we drive on the on the flyway, we
look down the viduct and we see to despair and disenfranchisement and poverty and loss,
and we think to ourselves, you know, somebody had to do something
about that one day. And we say it with true concern in most of
our hearts, but we say it as if the sentiment matters, and the
sentiment doesn't matter. And my suggestion is we kick that review mirror about fifteen
degrees to the left and look ourselves done, and that they say, maybe
I could do something about that one day. And I submit that our government
has proven woefully and adequate and serving the most disadvantaged among us, and the
smart people on CNN and Fox Newsmax and CNBC and all the rest of the
national media, they're not fixing anything. They're just talking to choirs trying to
continue to divide and bring into their listenership more power and money. Social media
is not fixing anything, you know, I really think it's just going to
take an army of normal folks, just normal people with normal problems, seeing
little corners of the world that they have a passion for whatever's going on in
that, and the skill set to do something. They're just looking at themselves
in the mirror and saying, you know what, maybe I can help a
little bit. And if we had hundreds of thousands of people across this country
and a literal army of normal volks serving, we could fix the proverbial li
it. We could change the trajectory of this divisiveness and this victory all that
we seem to be surrounded with every day. And so when I said that
nine interview. I went about my business, and about eight months later,
this guy with Iron Light Labs out of Chicago that you mentioned at the top
called me and said, I can't quit thinking about what you said in that
interview, and I thought maybe I cussed. I was like, what do
you What did I say? And he reminds me and he said, I
want to start a podcast where you're the host and you interview normal people all
over the country that have done extraordinary things, and we start bringing to light
these stories of a diverse group of people doing these things, and in doing
so, try to build a movement and actually get people to not only listen
and be entertained, but also be inspired to join this army of normal folks
in community doing things across our country, absent government, absent all the political
and media banter that divides us, and just celebrate doing positive things in our
community and build this army that you talked about. And I thought, okay,
I'll give that a shot. Sounds pretty good. And you know,
Emily, we've been as high as number ten in the country on Apple's charts
and we only released about ten weeks ago, so it's crazy. So your
question was, where'd I come from what I do way I coach football,
what do I do for a living? The movie and the podcast. I
think I just answered all of it. I was gonna say it was a
very civil question. Thanks for listening to the Federalist. This is Sarah Carter,
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two two one my pillow dot Com backslash Carter promo code Carter. So I
want to ask about the story of Sam Quinn because you told that story in
an article for the Federalists recently, so some of our listeners may have seven.
I wrote an op ed and you guys were kind enough to print it
for me. A little inside baseball actually from our end on the editorial side.
When that op ed was submitted, editors, multiple editors, so that
they were brought to tears when they had read the draft of it, that
it was just incredibly moving. Our team was honored to run that story,
and I think it's great, A great story from your army of normal folks,
Coach. So if you could tell all the listeners here a little bit
about your friend Sam Quinn, that would be great. When I started my
business in two thousand and one. Now, I remember I told you where
I came from, right, So there's no family money. It was literally
winging a prayer we started. I opened the doors to my business September one,
two thousand and one, ten days later was maybe the most catastrophic event
our public and culture has had since maybe even Pearl Harbor, right, and
the world shut down. Now my plight, and that hails in comparison to
the people and families and the Pentagon and the World Trade Tower in New York
and all of that. And so I am in no way comparing myself to
that. I'm just saying the fact of the timing is I started a business
with very little capital on a wing and a prayer ten days before nine to
eleven. And I was pretty convinced I was going broke the minute that happened,
and we persevered and made it through. But I was, you know,
running old used equipment that I bought at auctions and you know, duct
tape and baling wire and really just barely keeping it going, try to generate
some cash flow. And I started with eleven employees and word of mouth,
you know, and they were common labor. I'm in the hardwood lumber business.
We manufacture hardwood lumper and man, it is hot when it's summertime,
it is cold when it's wintertime. There's nothing pretty about the work we do,
with hydraulic oil and saws and lots of noise and sawdust in the air.
It is an old school, hard working manufacturing environment and you need common
labor that's willing to go to work. And Sam Quinn was one of those
first eleven. Sam grew up and was a marine. When he left the
Marines, he got off track. And from the time he left the Marines
in his mid twenties to the day I met him when he was forty years
to old, he'd fallen into addiction, alcohol abuse, some trouble with the
law, and was living at Lighthouse Ministries, which is a kind of a
halfway house. And that first day he went to work. And after a
couple of weeks, I noticed this forty year old guy out working twenty two
year old guys and was kind of impressed by and I gave him a fifty
cent an hour raise, and I told him just keep your head down.
If we can build this minute business and it goes somewhere, I need people
like you, and maybe a week later. All of our lumbers run on
production lines. If you'll just imagine just conveyors and chains and everything moving lumber
through saws and all this stuff will what the very beginning of a production line
and the lumber business, there's a thing called a tilt hoist that actually takes
a full pack of lumber. It tilts it at a forty five degree anger
angle and then hoist it up so that boards slide off the top of the
packs, layer by layer to become singulated onto the chains and the conveyors so
that you can surface them and rip them and do all you need to do
to make it ready for shipment. And that thing broke. It is a
big, heavy piece of machinery with lots of voltage, a massive hydraulic unit
with a ninety horsepire electric motor on top of it that drives the hydraulics to
the pistons to lift all this weight. And it crashed. And without it
you can't get lumber run. And if I can't get lumber run, I
go broke, especially when every day and every board matters early on in my
business. And so it was clear that it was yet another weekend for me
and my maintenance manager and my key guy, crawling around all over equipment getting
it running through the weekend, to try to run on a Monday. And
we all went home, got in a sandwich, got to change your clothes,
and came back for just an hour and started working on it, welding
torches, electrical stuff. It's nasty, dirty work, you know, crawling
around on concrete, over metal chains, all of it. And I'll look
up about six o'clock and Sam's standing there, walking over to me and said,
Sam, what are you doing? And he said, I'm going to
help you. Tildoy said Sam, We're gonna be here. We're probably gonna
see the sunrise three times before you know. I can't pay you. I
can barely pay you straight time. I can't pay you time and a half,
and I sure can't pay you all weekend. Go home. And he
said, Bill, this is my company too. I don't want you to
pay me. And he threw down his box and he got to work.
And we literally finished that thing about six fifteen, six thirty am Monday morning.
Our shift starts at seven and covered in grease and oil, exhausted and
chain starts up and after all that he goes back to the line and spends
eight hours pulled the lumber all day before he goes back home. I could
not believe that guy's commitment and willingness. And over that weekend, you know,
there's nothing else to do but talk. I found out about his past.
I found out about a brim marine. I found out about the troubles
you found himself in. I found out he really was trying to right himself,
but he couldn't get a license because of the problems he had with the
law. Noting nothing overly felonious or anything, but you know, not paying
tickets. Stuff that mounts up on a guy. And the next two years
we went to work with an attorney friend of mine, getting all of that
handled, got himself into AA. He became sober, and twenty years later,
Sam is a homeowner, married, not living with somebody shocked up and
an actual marriage certificate, married three children, a homeowner, and a very
important manager at my company. And Sam died six weeks ago of cancer.
And Sam was so dedicated that he would schedule his chemo at six thirty or
seven, the earliest they would schedule it, and he would get to work
at some time between seven thirty and nine am and put a bucket in the
corner so that he could continue to managed and run his irresponsibility. And the
buck in the corner was because the chemo would make him sick. And he
wouldn't even take off for that, and I begged him to, and he
just kept saying to me, don't you, don't you ever, I do
not want to leave. Don't make me leave. Don't make me leave.
And he literally worked until the day he died of cancer. He inspired me.
I have never seen and when I say faithful, he was a Christian,
but I mean faithful more to his wife and his children, faithful to
the people around him he worked with, faithful to his job. I've never
seen him more committed, faithful, dedicated human being and tough than Sam Quinn.
And I miss him today and I'll always miss him. And the world's
a smaller place without a minute. But the truth is, that's the power
of a normal person. If we had an army of Sam Quinn's. The
proverbial it gets fixed in three months. We sit there and we talk about
all these A listers and names you know, and people on Fox and CNN
get on there and destroy each other. And I understand politics is a full
contact sport, but it's gotten to a place that if you don't think like
me, worship like me, look like me, or believe like me,
you're my enemy. And that's destructive. Normal people don't think that way.
Normal people don't act that way. Normal people can celebrate running other's differences.
And men like Sam sam Quinn. You know you look at you look at
a forty year old black dude who was once in the military that's living in
Lighthouse Ministries with an alcohol problem. You saw him up pretty quickly. You
think you know what he is, But let me tell you what he is.
A father, a husband, a manager to business, a homeowner,
and a dedicated employee and friend. That's what Sam Quinn is, which doesn't
agree with the picture you might first think when you see him. And I
think we need to start breaking down our political and societal preconceived notions about one
another. Remember we're just normal folks and joined together, there's an army of
normal folks to serve one another, and we can change this place. I
want to ask what you think it is or why it is that people you
know I'm here in DC, I'm not from here, but I've been here
for a while and it is very different than the rest of the country.
Why do you think it is that people who are just going about the business
of normal life in the United States of America have these incredible stories, And
I like the way you put it. They have this power, the power
of the normal person. What does that come from in America? You know,
boy, that's a loaded long question, but I really do think people.
Well, I did another op ed that you may not even know of,
but to do it, we did some Pew research and it was interesting.
For the first time in the history of our country, we have a
fifty percent lower than a fifty percent approval rating of the Supreme Court. We've
got lower than a forty percent approval rating of the White House, and we've
got a nineteen percent approval rating in Congress. Well, there's Republicans and Democrats
all throughout that all that big bunch of disapproval. Seventy percent of people in
this Pew research also said that they believe that any national news they get is
tainted politically by whatever version of news that particular side puts out. They also
believe that social media eighty percent of respondents or seventy seven percent respondents thought thinks
that social media is also completely tainted. But in the same breath, Pew
Research found out that the average American spends just under three hours a day either
listening to the national news on social media or inundating themselves with content either out
of New York or DC. So isn't it odd that none of us research
shows that we don't believe in the narratives. We do not trust in the
people who are crafting those narratives in DC, and it and it divides us.
Yet we inundate ourselves with the very information and adventu all we don't believe,
and that divides us. I mean, we're being a bunch of sheep.
We're literally being led around by hooking our nose. Meanwhile, when you
think about all that frustration that those that the narratives create. Meanwhile, all
over our country, there are Sam Quinns. All over our country. There
are amazing people that are doing phenomenal things and their corners the world, and
we never hear those stories because the national news and national media and the big
political class in DC man they are incented by an enormous amount of money and
power to continue to divide us and continue to tell us things about ourselves that
if you don't think and worship and look and vote and believe like me,
you must be my end and me. Because they're supported by their power and
their money to continue to bring sheep into their corner. And I think,
I think people are sick of it. And when you can tell them a
story about Tommy Norman and North Little Rock who's a police officer who's redefined community
policing, don't have the problems you see when we're talking, you know,
the national conversation about police reform and justice reform. Tommy Norman is one guy
who has changed policing in North Little Rock. Or a mallam who as dealing
with addiction in her family, herself and her own mental illness as a result
of it, started a running club for the homeless, which is the most
ridiculous thing in the world. As a twenty six year old girl and now
back on my feet. Running club is in thirteen different cities and has found
has found ways for the homeless to create seven thousand people who now have homes
and full time jobs as a result of the discipline and lessons they learn from
just running. There's stories like this all over the country, one after another.
And as we tell these stories, we are saying, look, I
don't care if you're Christian or Jewish or agnostic, or black or white,
or Hispanic or Asian, or male or female, or right or left or
demo Republican, all that stuff that these power people in New York and DC
use to craft narratives to continue to bite us, to serve their own power
and their own wealth. I don't care about any of that because it doesn't
matter which group you come from. There's one thing we can all celebrate in
unity, and that is the simple service of another human being in our country.
And if you really do want to fix it, drop the narrative that
you're being fed and let's start looking low school at people who are doing amazing
things to our community. And regardless of how they look, how they vote,
what they think, I can celebrate you if you're doing something good for
another human being that needs it. And that's the power of an army of
normal folks. We can't be divided by the narrative, and we can take
back control of the narrative by celebrating the good that we can do. And
so you're a coach, and the experiences of Undefeated, which millions of people
have watched, I want to ask whether those or how those inform your perspective
on the power of a normal person. You know, if you had to
coach someone who wants to be a part of this army as you're talking about,
wants to channel their power into you know, being just one more normal
person out there who's doing good. What would you tell people if they want
to start this in their own lives? What do they need to do?
Do you think? One, shut your mouth and listen. You don't go
in to serve somebody by telling them all they're doing wrong and how your perspective
is dead nuts, right, Because until you really seek to listen and understand
those seek those you seek to serve, Until you get their perspective and why
they may be where they are in the first place, you can never be
authentic in the work that you do. And to do that you have to
ask lots of questions with an open, civil, non threatening mind and listen.
Too often we see an area in need and we already think we know
the answers of how to fix it without first understanding the root and the perspective
of the real problems. When I first went to Manassas, I'm a perfect
example of how screwed up a wrong approach. Z. When I first went
to Manassas, you know you heard how it came up. Yet I figured
out a way to get a scholarship and go to college. And once in
college, I've worked three jobs and had a scholarship and got out of college
and got married. And look where I am now. And before I went
to Manassas, I would have told you that we have a free education system
in this country. It's the freest country in the world, with money all
over the place and just tons of opportunity. And it still was the greatest
place on earth in regards to the freedoms and an opportunity. And I do
believe that, And I believed if you, if you, if you were
stuck in poverty, you just weren't fully taken advantage of all the opportunities our
country has to offer. That was my mentality, and not from a white
paternalistic standpoint. But where I came from, I didn't have anything. Well,
once I got him an assets, I found out that's a croc.
There are barriers two entry. There are systematic issues that do exist that make
it much more difficult for some people in our culture to pull themselves out of
the way. And I'll give you an example, because I would imagine some
of your listeners right now might have got a little hairstick up on their back
of the neck when they hear that. One of my guest name is r
Sha Cooper Marshay grew up in West Side Chicago. He could see the top
of the Sears Tower from his apartment, and as a twelve or thirteen year
old, his life's biggest dream was to get to downtown Chicago and see Sears
Tower. Now he live five miles from downtown Chicago and his dream, his
dream was something simple as getting five miles to go see downtown Chicago and see
Sears. But he couldn't because migrating through the neighborhoods to get there meant he
would have crossed four or five or six different ganglands and he probably wouldn't have
survived the hype. He wasn't allowed to go more than a couple of blocks
from this house ever. And I asked him, I said, our say,
why can't you learn when you're from West Side Chicago? Why can't you
go to school and learn and get yourself out of the way. And he
said, Bill, we had a fan in our apartment that the blade was
out around a little bit, and so it clicked. So when the fan
goes around, it's click click, click, click click. And if you
walked into our sche's apartment having never been in it, you would have heard
that clicking, and it would have driven you nuts. But our sha never
heard the clicking. And the reason I never heard the clicking is because after
living in that environment for a week or two weeks or whatever, you just
ignored the clicking because you need the cool air. And he said, I
never left my apartment without smelling weed and crack smoke. I saw. I
couldn't even make it down the hallway of my apartment without some junkie shrewn out
in the hallway. I've stepped over pulls of blood. I watched people get
beat in the street. I've seen people shot and killed. I've seen people
defend themselves and shoot and kill another. The sounds of sirens and the whales
of mothers losing another son were commonplace. All of this was no different to
me than the clicking of that fan. It just became so monotonous and so
normal that I didn't even think about it anymore. And he said, I
was thirteen. People go after Afghanistan and a rock and come back with PTSD
and need all kinds of help to get over the trauma and the devastation that
they've seen and learned, and rightly so they need that help and we have
to support our veterans that way. But as a thirteen year old, he'd
seen all that those men had seen, and all they were told was to
go to school and get an education. He's like, when you live that
and you're just trying to survive, you're not thinking about who discovered America.
You don't know the three boats that the pilgrims came on. You don't know
what half of fifty percent is. You can't learn in that environment because you
are. You are traumatized by your environment. And when you understand that,
then you also can understand why my mentality was wrong when I first got to
an Assis and why it's changed, and also why if you really want to
help, you first have to understand the truth on the ground where you want
to serve, and the only way you're going to stand the truth on the
ground. We serve is you ask questions, observe, shut your mouth with
telling people what you know, and listen and learn. And then when you're
full equipped with that knowledge, you can serve and lead and make a better
life. That is incredible perspective, important perspective. Coach Bill Courtney is hosting
the podcast An Army of Normal Folks. Bill, thank you so much for
joining us and for sharing some of these amazing stories. Thanks so much for
having me, Jay Dog, Jay Dog, I'm gonna roll with it all
right. Well, you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Emilijasinsky, Jay Dog, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray right. Were you wrong?