This is Drive Time with Travis Wingfield.

What is up, Dolf fans, and welcome to the Drive Time podcast.

I am your host, Travis Wingfield on today's show.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Black Friday, everybody. Hope your holidays were good. A little treat for you here. A day after leftovers, the best part of the meal treat for you. Coach Craig Ackerman joins me on the show today. Plus, we'll pick the rest of the week 13 games, and we'll stop by the Dolphins' locker room to talk to four players about their cause and

their cleats ahead of this weekend's my cause my cleats initiatives across the national

football league from the Baptist Hill Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex this is

the drive time podcast dolphin special teams coordinator Craig Ackerman my guest today coach how are, how are we doing, man? I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. I want to kick off the interview here talking about your roots, because I am a true football psycho who loves Macon on a Tuesday night. And you got your start, Miami-Ohio alum, got your coaching start in the Mac as well, right? What has the Mac done to develop this like national cult

following that it has in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an interesting concept that they

end up doing with Macon, you know, the way for them to get some notoriety from national news

where they have games on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, which is obviously very different than what we're

used to.

Even when I was growing up, high school, then college, I was playing on Saturdays, and now you get

games during the course of the week, which is really interesting.

But I think it's brought a lot of attention to the Mac, and I think it's really good for it.

Yeah, it's been fun to see.

I mean, there's a lot of good players come out of that conference and coming to the NFL. I never forget watching Antonio Brown and Dan Lefevre at Central Michigan. That's how far back my Macs know. Well, that's not a good memory for me. Really? Because we got beat in the Mac championship by Antonio Brown and actually J.J. Watt was on the team too at that time. So yeah, I had a great time there in the Mac and it really helped me with my career. I met a lot of good coaches there just starting out with Terry Hepner. And then I think we've got a lot of coaches right now. They're in the NFL from Miami of Ohio. Well, I apologize to bring up old scars like that. I mean, I'm on a roll. I got McDaniel earlier this week too talking about demario davis too so i'm on a role with with that this week but um so you got your start there and you know at finley right yeah and then you make the jump to western kentucky and you coach linebackers and special teams and you went to the defensive side of the ball for a few years but you settle into a special team's job in 2012 and you've been there ever since i'm always curious how coaches cut their teeth on special teams because it's kind of like that the third phase, you know, you go over to that side of the ball and I'm just curious how you got your start in that in special teams. Well, really, I started in high school. You know, I was a punter and did some things there and then college, you know, early on in my career, I ended up playing some special teams. So that's where I kind of

cut my teeth with special teams. And then when I start getting into coaching, it really turned

in effect. And when I GA'd there at Miami of Ohio, where you get asked to coach a bunch of

different positions. So you get to learn a lot of things there. And then fortunately, when I went to

Western Kentucky and got a job there, the head coach said, hey, I really want you to coach special teams and be the coordinator. And that kind of where it took off. And then, you know, in the NFL, I was working defense and then had an opportunity to move back over to special teams. And I jumped at the chance to do it. The more hats you can wear, right? That's how that's the thing works.

That's exactly right.

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