Willie Simmons remembers driving back from Iowa to Florida in the summer of 2005 and wondering which sales job he’d take. He’d played a season for the Sioux Falls Bandits in the United Indoor Football League, and he figured his next contract would come from a company like New York Life or Pfizer.
His NFL dreams were done. He was ready to begin his life after football.
That’s when a friend of his from Lincoln High School in Tallahassee called with a proposition: You want to coach our quarterbacks?
Simmons never planned to coach. Frankly, the politics of college football during his playing career at Clemson and The Citadel turned him off the profession. But he figured he’d give it a shot and work with a promising quarterback at Lincoln named BJ Daniels, a future NFL Draft pick.
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“I thought I’d kill time and figure things out,” Simmons told CBS Sports. “It took a day or two on the field and I found out that was my calling.”
Twenty years later, Simmons, 44, is back in Florida as the first-year head coach of Florida International. The Panthers are 2-2 and prepping for a Saturday game against UConn (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS Sports Network — Channel finder | Live stream: CBSSports.com | Mobile: CBS Sports App — Free).
It’s not his first head coaching job. Far from it after nine years at the helm of Prairie View A&M and Florida A&M, where he posted a combined winning percentage of .723.
The Panthers are only four games into the 2025 campaign, but there are signs Simmons — who’s never had a losing season as a head coach — could be having a similar effect in Miami. FIU beat rival FAU for the first time since 2016 two weeks ago, and the Panthers are averaging 32 points per game against opponents not named Penn State.
“(FAU) was a huge win for the program,” Simmons said. “Coming in trying to change the culture and mentality of what it means to play at FIU, we can win games, win rivalry games and defend our home turf. That win went a long way in establishing our culture.”
Simmons always wanted to be a head coach as quickly as possible. He wanted to minister to young men and improve their lives through football. That’s what, in part, took him to the FCS ranks after becoming one of the youngest coordinators in the FBS at Middle Tennessee in 2011.
The FCS is where Simmons felt like he could become a head coach the quickest, which he accomplished at age of 34 with Prairie View A&M. He went that route instead of taking position coaching jobs in the Power Four.
“It felt opportunities for minority coaches were more prevalent on the FCS level at that time,” Simmons said.
The Panthers of Prairie View A&M hadn’t had a winning season in four years when Simmons took over. Simmons immediately went 8-2, helping the program finish second in the SWAC. A similar ascendence occurred at Florida A&M. That program hadn’t posted a winning season in six years when Simmons got the job. Simmons went 6-5 in his debut and won nine-plus games every other season afterward, including the 2023 HBCU national championship.
Simmons credits that early success to a culture that he centers around fun.
It can be as simple as an ice bath during practice for players with a birthday or as competitive as FIU’s “Rattle the Cage” moments in practice, a daily (and randomly timed) competition between the offense and defense of one-on-one reps where the winners get pride and the losers are subject to pushups.
“Coming in and we just take over a job where there hasn’t been a lot of success, obviously, the morale is low,” Simmons said. “Losing is not fun. It’s not a lot of fun in the program. So just really coming in and one, getting everybody on the same page, and two, making it fun again.”
It’s also fun to score points, and Simmons’ offenses have historically done so in bunches.
Simmons’ debut offense at Prairie View A&M led the FCS in points per game in 2015. Each of Simmons’ offenses in the years since have ranked fourth or better in their conference in terms of points per game.
The offenses can vary in terms of scheme and emphasis. His debut Prairie View team was fronted by running back Johnta Herbert, who led the team in rushing, receiving, touchdowns and even kick returns. When he had future NFL receiver Xavier Smith at FAMU, Smith twice cleared 1,000 yards. It’s all part of a tempo-based system that Simmons adapts for each roster.
“Just really trying to maximize the talent that we have,” Simmons said. “So really, taking advantage of the personnel that we have and getting the playmakers the ball in space.”
There certainly won’t be a lack of playmakers to recruit at FIU.
Situated in South Florida, one of the most talent-rich areas in the entire country, Simmons always eyed FIU as a program that could win big. He was a finalist for the job in 2021 and eventually landed it last offseason following a year at Duke as run game coordinator to add a Power Four stop to his resume.
The Panthers are still a reasonably new FBS program in their 22nd season, but there have been pockets of success under Mario Cristobal and Butch Davis.
Simmons, back home in Florida, hopes to do what he’s done everywhere — win. And in a league like Conference USA, which has seen six different programs play for a conference title over the last three years, there’s a path to do that with the Panthers.
“It’s the same vision I’ve had for any job … I think we can build a roster that can compete yearly for C-USA championships, and that should be the expectation here because of where we are and what we have the ability to attract,” Simmons said. “This should be a program year in and year out that should be in the championship conversation.”