UAPB head coach Logan Stout talks to his team this fall (Photo courtesy of UAPB)
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Much of the X (aka Twitter) of Arkansas-Pine Bluff head coach Logan Stout contains information you’d expect it to contain, such as the fact that he’s been an MLB scout for 22 years and that he’s the inventor of the Dallas Patriots’ walking football. organization.
But it also contains other things you might not expect, such as being an entrepreneur, speaker and best-selling author.
If you read the “About Logan” section of his website, a rare enterprise among college baseball coaches, you see no references to famous baseball coaches he’s rubbed elbows with or notable players he’s had. be trained. Instead, you see references to John C. Maxwell and Zig Ziglar, names more familiar to the C-suite executives of Fortune 500 companies than the coaches who roam the halls of the ABCA.
And that’s exactly why he’s an interesting recruit for the 2024 coaching carousel.
Stout has options at this point in his career. He could have gone on to a lucrative career in business. As a keynote speaker and author, he could lean heavily on that space and use it as a way to meet interesting people and travel the world lecturing on topics of his interest.
And if he wanted to return to college baseball, there would certainly be a lot of interest in someone who worked as Dan Heefner was turning DBU into the program machine it is now, which served as a scout for more. more than twenty years and who founded the travel football organization that can be said to have produced great players like Josh Bell, Trevor Story and AJ Minter.
So, with all due respect to all teams, how did you end up as the head coach at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a program that has never been to the NCAA Tournament and hasn’t been to the SWAC Tournament since 2019?
As it turns out, there are many answers here.
Another thing is that he felt he was struggling to get back into college training to begin with as the sport was taking over his life while he was busy in business.
“I’ve been sitting in these corporate boardrooms and I’m always checking my phone for the latest D1Baseball tweets. It’s like ‘man, there’s a game on Friday at two o’clock on ESPN+, I’ve got to get out of this boardroom,'” Stout said. “I’m sitting there and it’s like ‘I’m in the wrong place.’
The second sign to Stout that it was time to get back into the game was a conversation with his two sons.
“They came up to me one night and said, ‘Dad, aren’t you used to coaching college baseball?’ I said ‘yes, I did.’ They said, ‘Dallas Baptist University, right?’ I said ‘yes.’ And they said ‘we think it would be great if you could go back to college coaching,'” Stout said.
Just when Stout knew he would be back in the middle, a conversation with former major leaguer Torii Hunter helped guide him to UAPB. Although Hunter is not an alumnus of the school, he grew up in Pine Bluff, has made significant contributions to the baseball program and has his name on the program’s baseball complex.
“Torii Hunter is a dear friend. Yeah, he’s a legend of the game in Major League Baseball, and Torii and I have a few companies together, we still do, actually, but he called and said ‘hey, I’m from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I am a big supporter. We need a new baseball coach. Can I put you in touch with the athletic director? I think you can do really special things if you just listen, and I think special things can happen there. It’s a baseball town, a baseball state. I think you can do amazing things and make an impact, not only on the players’ lives, but an impact on the university, an impact on the community at a time when it needs to be made.’ I think that’s what really affected me,” Stout recalled.
Stout has opened his eyes for what he is doing. UAPB is not a turnkey operation, and in fact, it is close to being anything but a turnkey operation.
There is very little history to be found compared to conference mates like Southern, Jackson State and Bethune-Cookman, and while Hunter’s contributions have put the Lions in a position where their position compares favorably to most of the rest of the SWAC, there isn’t much. of additional investment to be made available.
It’s not because of a lack of interest in the program—Stout actually raves about UAPB’s management—but the financial realities are what they are.
“I grew up poor. My mother raised me and my younger brother. Most people don’t know that part of my story. “I’ve worked full-time since I was 12, so I have the heart of an underdog,” Stout said. “I have a big heart for unfunded programs. It’s public knowledge so I’ll say this, this is no secret, our baseball program is the most underfunded program I think in college baseball at the Division I level. Anything that could be a road block, we’ve found it, and for me, that’s why I believe, at least this season of my life. , UAPB is where I was meant to be.”
It is a sad truth that UAPB cannot expect to win by doing what everyone else is doing and trying to do it better. Even if it doesn’t get killed completely, it looks to every corner of the country to look for non-important players and train them better than everyone else, it could be enough to win a big head-to-head against the Lions.
His experience in scouting gives him a keen eye for talent that can be developed into a complete player, but there are many coaches with such experience. The same can be said of him who has worked extensively with a number of great players.
But what every other college coach in the country doesn’t want to connect to is the reality TV show Shark Tank. And that’s exactly where Stout might be able to provide added value.
“I think these college athletes want more than just a college baseball experience,” Stout said. “I have helped other people through a program called Shark Tank. (The Sharks) approved the books I wrote, recently The Grit Factorok (players) love this show. So I think it’s good to teach these kids how to start their own businesses. We had a baby committed to us last night and my mom just told me that ‘he has Power Four specials, but he wants to be able to spend every day with you, learning from you about business and business.’ Another child wants to write a book. You want to learn how to do that. So I think for me, one of the fulfilling aspects of how my life has prepared me for college coaching is that I get to kind of bring things off the field to add value to these kids. “
Will Stout’s connection give the coaching staff the ability to recruit and retain a level of player that UAPB has not had access to before? It is possible. Or maybe not. But the hope is that the creativity they get from those contacts, combined with Stout’s ability to scout and coach, and that of assistants Mark Moyer and RJ Pearson, will be enough to carry the program forward.
It helps that Stout has very little to lose in taking on this challenge. You won’t hear him say it, but he’s made money while in business and those avenues will always be open to him no matter how things go at UAPB.
So to put it bluntly, he doesn’t need this. He’s not doing this to get paid or to climb the coaching ladder, and that perspective can help a coach make decisions and have a long-term perspective that one might not be able to take in the often stressful environments of college sports.
Stout has already made one such decision since taking the job over the summer by not cutting any players from the team who returned to Pine Bluff after last season. In a country where the expectation is that the roster will completely flip whenever there is a coaching change, that is rare.
“I didn’t decide the players,” said Stout. “Can I get better players? Yes, I would have. I think the players know that. They are not dumb; they are smart. But it was the middle of the summer, the end of the summer (and) I have two boys, Miles and Cooper, and I’m a father, and I treat all these players like they’re my son. And if my son is in university and it’s late in the summer and I get a call and suddenly, I’m canned, abandoned, I’m no longer there, and in very little time, if there’s enough time at all, to find a new place to go, I wouldn’t be okay with my son being treated that way. I get it. It’s a business. I get it. I’m not throwing shade at anyone, I’m not disrespecting the way other people work at all. I get it (but) personally, I believe that the right thing is always right, and these are people at the end of the day. This is the son of man. This is a person with a beating heart. So I didn’t turn the list.”
Ultimately, Stout knows that the final result of his UAPB teams will be largely down to the level of talent he can find in Pine Bluff. All the connections and experience and impressive resumes won’t matter if the Lions don’t end up with better players than other SWAC teams.
With so much working against him and his staff, that won’t be easy, but that’s the purpose of doing this at all.
“I love being here, and like anything, there will be setbacks,” Stout said. “There will be walls to climb, but no smooth mountain. If you were, how would you rise up in the world?”
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