Outgoing coach spares no punches over school’s cost-cutting measures

FIU football coach Butch Davis didn’t hold back on Saturday.

“Team chemistry the past five or six weeks has been terrible,” Davis said in a series of text messages to this reporter.

The text messages were sent at around noon — seven hours before Davis was set to coach the final home game of his fiveyear FIU career. This is the last year of his contract, and he will not be brought back.

FIU (1-9 overall, 0-5 Conference USA) has lost 16 consecutive games against FBS teams. The Panthers have also lost nine games in a row this season, and they were hoping to end both streaks on Saturday night against North Texas (4-6, 3-3).

But, in the text messages, Davis pointed out FIU’s many successes in his first three years on the job, including a schoolrecord nine wins in 2018. The Panthers, under Davis, made it to three straight bowl games — a first for the program. They also beat the Miami Hurricanes in 2019, which was another

Davis first for FIU.

“We were on fire building the program,” Davis wrote. “Senior graduation over 90 percent . ... After our victory over the University of Miami, my agent, Jimmy Sexton, reached out to the [FIU] administration to do two things. [First], extend my contract by one year and also go back to what we agreed to on the assistant coaches … coordinators two years, assistant coaches 18 months.”

Taking better care of the assistant coaches was a priority for Davis.

“It’s expensive to live in Miami,” Davis wrote, “and it’s awful to always have your staff looking for other jobs, raises, contracts.”

Davis said FIU’s budget became a huge issue.

“They cut the budget by $500,000 two years in a row,” Davis texted. “We haven’t gone on the road to recruit or bring in recruits or their families for two years. That has saved FIU $500,000.”

To fill in the gaps and try to keep the program alive, Davis said he dipped into his own pocket to spend between $125,000 and $150,000.

He said FIU saved another $400,000 in the

COVID-impacted 2020 season because there were only five games played and just two of them on the road. FIU finished 0-5 that season.

Davis said budget cuts hurt recruiting, but also caused player development to suffer.

“Then, after the second season, we were not allowed to have our players stay for ‘Summer Session A,’ ” Davis texted. “That turned out to be the beginning of no workouts, no group practices, players gone for eight to 10 weeks … and that led to many surgeries.”

Davis said nine players had surgery in 2019, 13 of them got operations last year and 12 so far this season.

“Then, after our third bowl game, came the pandemic,” Davis wrote. “Our players were sent home for almost five months, turning our 2020 season into a disaster.

“We had 47 players in quarantine or isolation for 30 to 55 days. No practices. No workouts.”

After the shutdown ended, Davis said FIU tried to rehire 32 support-staff members who had been let go, including strength coaches, nutritionists, video people, secretaries and more.

Despite all of that, Davis said the worst thing to happen was when FIU’s human-resources department posted his job as open about six weeks ago.

“Players on our team were asking me if I had been fired or let go,” Davis texted. “Their parents were asking me the same thing about me and my staff.

“High school recruits backing away from us, and high school coaches not wanting to help us in recruiting. Committed players backing up. Our assistant coaches worried about their jobs, their kids. … Recruits not wanting to take a trip here because they have no idea who is going to be here.”

But there’s more …

“Now the conference [C-USA] is blowing up,” Davis texted, referring to six teams leaving the conference for the American Athletic Conference. “And I had to do a press conference without any word from our administration as to what is going to happen to FIU.”

Davis said the new rules regarding the transfer portal could crush FIU.

“Kids can jump ship [without having to sit out one year],” Davis wrote, “and because of the [Name, Image and Likeness] rule, they have agents shopping them around.”