Butch Davis and the pursuit of a pro football pipeline

By Brett Shweky/Sports Director

Universities throughout the college football landscape are attempting to become the next pipeline school for professional football talent. For recruits who are contemplating which school they should attend to continue their athletic careers, a highly-considered factor by most is if the university has a history of past players who have made it to the professional level.

College football teams such as Florida State, Ohio State and more have been able to establish a winning tradition at their university partly because they have a proven record of sending players to the National Football League. Since 2000, the University of Alabama had 96 players selected in the NFL Draft and also won four of the last eight national titles. From what history has shown, the two aspects go hand-and-hand with one another.

For the FIU Panthers, this could potentially become a strength for the football program. Recently hired head coach, Butch Davis, has an impeccable resume when it comes to having players join the ranks of professional football.

While Coach Davis was the head coach at the University of Miami from 1995 to 2000, he was able to have 28 of his players selected in the first-round of the NFL draft. Even when Coach Davis was at the University of North Carolina, he managed to have seven players drafted in a four-year span from 2007 to 2010.

Beyond just being first-round draft picks some of these players have gone on to become NFL legends. Players such as former linebacker Ray Lewis, safety Ed Reed, wide receiver Andre Johnson, defensive tackle Vince Wilfork, all went on to have illustrious professional careers.

Coach Davis hopes his proven track record of academic achievements and the success his players have attained in their professional careers will entice recruits to join the team going forward.

“If the parent and the athlete take a look at the places that I’ve been, you would like for them to look a several things,”Davis said. “First, how did the kids do academically? And in my ten-years as a head coach, 85 percent of the kids that I’ve recruited have graduated. That’s the starting point I want the parents and athlete to understand I want you to graduate. Secondly, I hope they look at the success of the guys that I’ve recruited. How many of them actually made it to the National Football League. The average NFL career is about 3.1 years, and I would say for the kids that I’ve coached the average career for them spans between five to seven years.”

Davis went on to discuss that his past NFL experience as coach also plays a factor into his success of having players translate well to the professional level.

“Everything that I’m going to coach and teach them (the players) are things that I learned being in the NFL,”Coach Davis said. “When you share what made teams in the NFL successful with these kids, they have a better chance of having a longer career.”

Coach Davis also spent numerous seasons as a coach in the NFL. From 1989 to 1994, Butch Davis was an assistant coach for the Super Bowl champion winning Dallas Cowboys, before becoming the head coach at the University of Miami. After his tenure with the Miami Hurricanes, Butch Davis returned to professional level when he accepted the head coaching job for the Cleveland Browns, where he coached from 2001 to 2004.

FIU being located in South Florida, a hub for high school football talent, the Panthers coaching staff will be able to recruit talented athletes in their own backyard. Coach Davis explained that FIU has an upper hand compared to other programs due to their geographical location.

“FIU has unbelieveable access to South Florida athletes, from Dade County all the way up to Vero Beach then up the west coast to Sarasota, Fort Myers, Naples and throughout the middle part, there are a ton of great athletes,” Coach Davis said. “If we can find 20 to 25 guys (recruits) every single year that we feel are good enough to win, we’re going to have great teams.”

With Butch Davis now leading a football program which has put up a (17-43) record in the past five years, only time will tell if the once great college football coach will be able to establish a winning and successful culture within FIU.