MIAMI (July 21, 2017) – Conference USA held its annual Media Day on July 19-20 at the DFW Marriott in Dallas, Texas. The league's head coaches and two student-athletes from each school were on hand to preview the upcoming season.  Head Coach Butch Davis along with seniors Alex McGough and Anthony Wint represented FIU.
 
Head Coach Butch Davis
On getting back into coaching…
 I think the obvious reason is that you miss coaching, but you miss the kids. If you're going to be a coach you have to love kids, you have to like the idea of being able to make a difference in their lives, whether it's educational or football-wise, and I miss it. I miss being I the locker room, out on the practice field, the meeting rooms, and stuff, and just being around kids. It's a super career.
 
On what his time in television has taught him about coaching that maybe he didn't know previously…
 I worked for ESPN, and I worked for the NFL Network, and both of them were phenomenal. (With) ESPN, one of the things that helped me was, is it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of programs behind the scenes and learn things to see how everybody else was doing it. They would send me to Alabama, to Auburn, Florida State, last year I had the chance to go and spend some time with Mike Reilly at Nebraska, and when you go to these programs, you kind of get a chance to see how other people are skinning the cat. How do they do recruiting, how they do the offseason, how they do training camp; that part was good. But from the media aspect, you also understand how important the exposure is for your program, to get a chance for the media to come and see these guys (the players) and get to know them as people and not just a jersey number.
 
On what the one thing is that they have to do…
I told our team in the very first team meeting; we need to put ourselves in the position that we don't beat ourselves; that we give the opposing team plenty of opportunities to lose the game, that we want to be extraordinarily good and talented offensively and defensively and special teams. We want to be good in all three phases. We want to play as a unit and as a team, and these kids have been phenomenal. I can tell you these two (QB Alex McGough and LB Anthony Wint), but also everybody in that locker room; they have bought in, their effort, their attitude, the work ethic over the last six months has been phenomenal; I couldn't ask for any better.
 
On FIU's defense coordinator/linebackers coach Brent Guy and the FIU defense…
Brent has great experience. He was a head coach at Utah State, but he coached at Arizona State, Tulsa, he's been at places where they have always had great defenses. Growing up and playing for Jimmie Johnson and Pat Jones at Oklahoma State, defensive oriented schools, he understands that you have to get guys that are playmakers. You have to put guys in positions to make plays, Anthony (Wint) being one of those guys, a guy that can fly sideline-to-sideline, he can be involved in the passing game and the run game. I really like the idea of having Brent there. He has a lot of experience, and he has seen a lot of the offenses throughout the country by being in different conferences, so I think that it's a huge advantage for us.
 
On FIU's defense on first down plays…
Obviously, you have to win first down, both offensively and defensively. Defensively we have to put ourselves in the position where we play great against the run, and we have to be able to put pressure on quarterbacks. The success that you're going to have on game day will be the directly related to your ability to give negative plays; sacks, forced fumbles, turnovers, to create those types of things, and those are the types of things that we started working on in the spring and will continue during training camp. 
 
On FIU's offense… 
I've had this belief for the entire time that I have been coaching and right back to the high school days. If you don't have a quarterback, I don't think that you have any chance, and we are blessed. Alex (McGough) is a terrific athlete; he can throw the ball, he's smart, and he has a work ethic that gives our football team a great chance. He wants to be good, loves to watch film, he loves to be able to interact with the players. He has a great relationship with the receivers and the offensive line. I think that they respect him and they believe that if Alex plays well and goes out and does the things that he's capable of doing, we have a chance to win every game.
 
On recruiting players from Miami and Miami-Dade County…
 It doesn't take long living in South Florida, and you realize how great high school football is, throughout the State of Florida. And if we're going to win like the rest of the guys on the coaching staff and the rest of the school wants to, it's going to be built on the back of high school football players from the State of Florida. We're going to go around, and we're going to cherry pick, as we did when I was the head coach at Miami, we'll cherry pick guys from outside the state. There may be two-or-three guys that you may go after someplace else because there isn't a plethora of that particular position within the State of Florida. But for the majority of the positions, there are fabulous, fabulous athletes (in Florida). Guys that love to compete and play other sports and hopefully we'll be attractive enough to attract them to come to FIU.
 
 
QB Alex McGough
On what part of his game he worked on this spring…
 This spring I focused on myself coming off of last season. Coming off last season, it wasn't the best season that I had hoped for coming in, so I went back and watched (video of) myself and the decisions that I made. Sometimes I felt that I was forcing it, so I was just looking at myself and learned from my mistakes.
 
On his touch and accuracy being a vastly improved part of his game last season…
That was one of the things that (former FIU Head Coach Ron) Coach Turner always emphasized to me was you didn't have to throw the ball 100 miles-per-hour to get it to where it needs to go. Last year I tried to work on that and feel that I improved in that area.
 
On what he learned from his 11 interceptions thrown in 2016 and whether it was decision making…
 I think so on the majority of them. Some were just great plays by the defense or a tipped ball here-and-there. But I think that I forced five-of-six of them that I didn't need to. One that I really looked at was the one at the end of the Middle Tennessee game when I threw the pick-six to lose the game when we were tied with a minute left in the game. I think I've watched that play at least 45 times just to figure out if I could have done anything differently, or if I could have held the ball and run and we could have taken the game into overtime. Just watching that game made me want to go back and watch every game and every interception I threw and maybe there was something else I could have done.  
 
On the biggest difference in the offense from last year to this year…
Trust in one another. I think that over the offseason, and under Coach Davis, we've built together and everyone trusts one another. It's been an awesome experience to go through the spring and summer with those guys.
 
LB Anthony Wint
On Defensive Coordinator Brent Guy…
 I feel that he demands a lot out of us; me, (LB Trevon) Treyvon and all of the guys. What we have now he's let us know that that's not enough and that he's going to demand a lot from us with the linebackers being the most experienced group. Us being good enough isn't good enough, we have to be great or even better than that.
 
On emphasizing forcing more turnovers…
Not just for the defense but for myself. I've put it on myself, and I've talked to the other guys too, that we can just be tacklers sometimes we've got to knock the ball out, we have to force interceptions, force sacks and make negative plays like coach (Davis) said. That's what's going to elevate our defense. Just not getting off the field, but catching a pick-six and getting back on the field.
 
On the type of scheme that the defense is running now and how is it different from 2016…
With all defenses a lot of the stuff is similar. We haven't gotten into a lot of scheme stuff, but I feel that we are a lot more aggressive.
 
 
#####
 
The 2017 FIU football season will kick off on Thursday, Aug. 31, when the Panthers travel to Orlando, Florida, to take on the UCF Knights.

FIU's 2017 schedule is highlighted with games against Boca Raton Bowl and 2016 C-USA champion WKU, Popeyes Bahamas Bowl champion Old Dominion, AutoNation Cure Bowl participant UCF, Foster Farms Bowl participant Indiana, Hawai'i Bowl participant Middle Tennessee and Gildan New Mexico Bowl participant UTSA. In addition, the Panthers will face Rice, Charlotte, Marshall and Florida Atlantic as well as first-time opponents Alcorn State and Tulane. 
 
For FIU football ticket information, contact the University Credit Union Box Office at 305-FIU-GAME (348-4263).
 
For the latest information on Panthers football, follow us on Twitter, @FIUFootball, and check out Pete Pelegrin's in-depth coverage of FIU Athletics on his official blog, The Prowl, at www.FIUSports.com.

#####

About FIU Athletics: FIU Athletics is home to more than 400 student-athletes in 18 different sports. Athletic events are played in eight different venues on FIU's campuses (Modesto A. Maidique and Biscayne Bay), including FIU Arena and Riccardo Silva Stadium.
 
About FIU: Florida International University is classified by Carnegie as a "R1: Doctoral Universities - Highest Research Activity" and recognized as a Carnegie Community Engaged university. It is a public research university with colleges and schools that offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs in fields such as business, engineering, computer science, international relations, architecture, law and medicine. As one of South Florida's anchor institutions, FIU contributes almost $9 billion each year to the local economy and is ranked second in Florida in Forbes Magazine's "America's Best Employers" list. FIU graduates are consistently among the highest paid college graduates in Florida and are among the leaders of public and private organizations throughout South Florida. FIU is Worlds Ahead in finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission with multiple state-of-the-art research facilities including the Wall of Wind Research and Testing Facility, FIU's Medina Aquarius Program and the Advanced Materials Engineering Research Institute.  FIU has awarded more than 220,000 degrees and enrolls more than 54,000 students in two campuses and centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell, FIU@I-75, the Miami Beach Urban Studios, and Tianjin, China. FIU also supports artistic and cultural engagement through its three museums: Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. FIU is a member of Conference USA and more than 400 student-athletes participating in 18 sports. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.