Pac-12 Media Day Interview: Buffaloes Safety Ray Polk

Next, I got ahold of Ray Polk, senior safety for the Colorado Buffaloes. He was nice, especially when I asked him about all of the late hits he had last year. I was half expecting to get punched when I started in with the question, but he was a good sport. He had a nice mixture of diplomacy and bluntness to his answers.

Again, I'm DG and he is RP:

DG - What freshmen have you seen that stood out in some way to you?

RP - You know, all of them have stood out in some way, but you won't really know until camp starts. So, I could single a couple out that are doing well, but until you put the pads on, you're not going to know what you got, until you start doing the install and throwing plays at them, I don't know.

DG - How is everyone feeling among the DBs after everyone spent a season getting pretty beat up?

RP - Yeah, we're doing better than we were about 8 or 9 months ago. But we're hanging in there and we're still trying to keep everyone healthy and keep pushing towards our goal and getting to a bowl game. We're all excited for camp to roll around because summer is too long to go without football.

DG - What goals do you have as a group?

Follow the jump to see Ray Polk do a dance that he calls, "The Polk-a"!

RP - Trying to be ballhawks. Trying to be ballhawks and brawlers out there. We want to be able to hit everything that moves and you want to pick anything that takes flight. I'm excited for this year and our guys back there, it's going to be a good year for DBs because we've got a great defense coming back and that's going to make it easier on everybody.

DG - How do you feel now as the senior, as 'the guy' back there?

RP - The old guy? Yeah, I feel old. But besides that, you feel a certain level of responsibility in getting this team ready for this season, you know, it's all on you and the other seniors on the team. It's exciting and we need to help out these freshmen to come along.

DG - Do you have any personal goals?

RP - Just to improve, honestly, and get to a bowl game, that's the biggest thing that I have. To keep working towards getting better at my craft as a safety.

DG - How has your experience been at CU?

RP - Oh it's been awesome. I can't tell you how lucky I am to go to this University. I'll always love Boulder, it's been an amazing town to grow in, to play football in and to go to school in. I have no regrets.

DG - Have you enjoyed watching the basketball team do well the last couple of years?

RP - Yeah, absolutely, it's been awesome, we're starting to pick up the sports, so it's very exciting. They did a great job this last year. You know I wish them all the best of luck this year, they're going to go out and kill it.

DG - You had a few penalties against you last year, late hits, so have you done anything to work on that?

RP - Yeah...I did. It's just about being disciplined, honestly, and the late hits came 'cause I was frustrated. You get frustrated when somebody runs on your defense. And most of them were 20+ plays, and at the end of them they ended badly. That's all about being disciplined and you realize when you make those mistakes that you can't do that. That it's just going to get you into a deeper hole. I'm working on that, you know, just not doing it. And you know, some of them were pretty close, I didn't know if he was really in bounds or not when I knocked him into the side boards or whatever. But just being more disciplined this year.

DG - Enjoy media day and I appreciate it!