By Brett Shweky/Sports Director
With 52 seconds left on the clock before the Panthers headed into halftime against Louisiana Tech on October 22, 2016, quarterback Alex McGough delivered a 17-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jonnu Smith to become FIU’s all-time passing touchdown leader. McGough’s 48 career passing touchdowns were enough to replace former FIU quarterback Josh Padrick, who had 42 career touchdowns.
Last season, McGough was able to start in nine of the twelve games for FIU, missing the final three games of the season due to injury. The Tampa, Florida native still managed to accumulate 1,891 yards and 13 touchdowns for the season and also averaged 210.10 passing yards-per-game and averaged 18.56 completions-per-game.
McGough currently is ranked second in career pass completions with 574, second in career passing yards with 6,293 and is ranked third career passing-yards-per-game with 190.7. The 6-foot-3 quarterback had 13 games where he has thrown for over 200 yards and also had three games where he has thrown for over 300 yards.
Prior to attending FIU, McGough played for the Gaither High School Cowboys. In his senior season, he threw for 1,258 passing yards and tallied eight touchdowns. FIU receiver Shug Oyegunle was a teammate of McGough’s while playing for the Cowboys. McGough was given a scholarship to play for the Panthers when he attended former FIU head coach Ron Turner’s football camp in Tampa, Florida.
Now a senior, McGough said that the team’s immediate goals for the season are to get better as individual players and also raise the bar as a team from last season.
“As a team, we obviously set goals to win every game, but we truly just want to be better than last year,” the senior quarterback said. “The only way we’re going to be able to accomplish this is if we work hard and come together more. I think so far we have taken tremendous strides for us to achieve this goal and in my mind we have already won many battles as far as the off-season goes.”
With the first season being under the newly appointed head coach Butch Davis, McGough discussed that the transition to the new head coach has been easy and is excited for the upcoming season.
“Every coach is going to have their own style of play, but when it comes down to it, football is still football, ” McGough said. “Since coach Davis has come in, he has made such an emphasis on winning. When we had our first team meeting after the season, Davis explained that why are you going to do something if it’s not geared towards winning.”
The first-game of the season for FIU will be on Thursday, August 31 at 6:00 p.m. as the Panthers travel to Orlando, Florida to take on the University of Central Florida Golden Knights. The game will be broadcasted on CBS Sports network.
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