"That was the first thing I wanted our football program, our football team to do," Gill said on Wednesday during the Big 12 Media Days. "Building relationships from players to coaches, coaches to players, coaches to coaches, and players to players."
To do that, Gill surveyed his team — gave one to every player and every coach. It included eight to 10 questions asking in detail about themselves, who they were and how they came to be where they were that day.
"I had the players stand up in front of the team and talk about certain questions," Gill said. "For example, one question I had everybody answer was who is the most influential person in your life? And why?
"I wanted to make sure that we got a chance to know that there's a lot more in common that we have with each other than we have differences."
That became common practice during every team meeting in the spring, as coaches and players learned to open up about their lives and experiences.
"That's the biggest thing I believe in — in building a program and a team," Gill said. "We start talking about team, we all talk about team. We all talk about teamwork. We all talk about hard work and all those things.
"But the biggest thing is that we got to get to know each other. And I really believe that, as a team particularly, and particularly as young men, we got to know how to communicate... I believe in getting our players and coaches to talk to each other in deeper details than just the Xs and Os of football."
So who inspires Gill?
"As far as from a football standpoint, there's no doubt that Tom Osborne was definitely a tremendous influence," said Gill, who played football under Osborne at Nebraska. "John Wooden, reading his books were very, very influential...
"Obviously, I've got to be who I am in my own way, but those are some of the people that I took some certain things from. I think Tom Osborne was great in relating with people, a lot of ideals and things that he did with the football program that I really believed in."
