(WSVN) - The Florida International University athletics scene has a couple of new sheriffs in town, who both hope to make the Panther’s sports a powerhouse moving forward.
Last month, FIU hired Scott Carr as their new athletic director.
Less than a week later, Mike MacIntyre was hired as the school’s fifth head football coach.
MacIntyre made quite the introduction.
“Are y’all ready for some football?” he asked the crowd.
Marking his third stint as a head football coach, the Miami native was born for the role.
“I grew up a coach’s son so I probably talk and act like it. You know, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the apple tree and I guess that’s part of it,” said MacIntyre.
Attempting to right the ship for FIU football will be a daunting task. However, the two-time coach of the year and the school’s new athletic director hope to lean on both geography and college football’s new rules to make the Panthers a premier sports program.
“We’ve gotta do some hard work, need a little bit of patience while we’re getting things where we need them to be, as coach has talked about, getting some more student athletes here and taking the current team that we have and just really building that,” said Carr.
“The great thing, that I think is an advantage for us, is this new transfer portal because there’s a lot of young men that said, ‘Well, I kind of want to get out of Miami,’ they go away, they go to some really cold places and they start wanting to come back,” said MacIntyre.
While replacing almost half of last year’s roster, as well as rebuilding a program that hasn’t beaten an FBS opponent since November of 2019 will be on MacIntyre’s agenda, he also has something else at the top of his to-do list.
“We don’t worry about anybody else,” he said. “That’s not a coach cliché. If you start worrying about everybody else, you need to focus on FIU. We need to focus on our young men, we need to recruit for here.”
As far as the notion of FIU being other universities little brother, the head of pathers sports declared his own SoFlo PSA.
“I don’t know what a little brother is, OK?” said Carr. “It all starts with your mindset and your attitude. There is no little brother, we’re FIU. We’ve got Panther pride, we’re the Panthers, we’re not going to back down to anybody.”
AD Carr also mentioned he believes FIU is a sleeping giant and is ready to wake up.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.