Western Illinois was picked to finish fifth in the nine-team OVC-Big South Football Association preseason poll. (Photo by Barry Bottino, PrairieStatePigskin.com)
By Dan Verdun
Learning never stops. Joe Davis and his Western Illinois football team are good examples of that.
“I’m very proud of this football team, just in terms of how far we’ve come here in my first 16 months, and probably most proud of how far we’ve come academically,” the second-year head coach said during Thursday’s Ohio Valley Conference-Big South Football Association virtual media day.
According to Davis, the team achieved better than a 3.0 GPA for the 2024-25 academic year.
“This was a program that had some loose ends to tie up when I was hired,” he said. “It matters to us as coaches. It matters to the players. It matters to this university that we’re excellent students and represent this campus in a first-class manner.”
Davis counts himself among those still being educated and showing growth.
“The learning component when it comes to the conference probably wasn’t as significant because I had spent a couple of years in this league (as Eastern Illinois offensive coordinator),” Davis said. “Learning for me came as a (first-time) head football coach.”
Davis noted the added responsibilities of the position include everything from clock management to unit coordination to staff communication to managing budgets, NIL and fundraising.
For Davis, it’s all about balance.
“That’s where the learning is still evolving,” he said. “I’m fortunate here to have a great staff that is able to handle some of the odds and ends and so once football kicks off, this team gets my undivided attention.”
For Davis, it’s still about his core.
“I’m a football coach,” he said. “I love being on the grass. I love coaching. I certainly love coaching offense and I love coaching the quarterbacks. That’s who I am.”
A year ago, Davis put his stamp on WIU football.
When he took over the program, the Leathernecks were stinging from consecutive winless seasons and in the midst of the nation’s longest FCS losing streak. WIU was picked to finish last in the league.
Yet WIU not only broke into the win column but notched a 4-8 record. That victory total included a triumph against Tennessee Tech, a team that tied with three others for the league title.
Full steam ahead
Davis isn’t one to dwell on past achievements. A new season presents fresh challenges.
This time around WIU was picked to finish fifth in the OVC-Big South preseason poll.
Like nearly every FCS program, one of the key challenges is molding a team that includes more than 20 new transfers into a single entity working toward the same goals.
“I don’t know if any of us have the perfect solution,” Davis said. “This (is a) new era, which is what it is, a new era of Division I football. There’s not necessarily a playbook for all this.”
Yet Davis and his staff have an approach.
“We treat every player that we take here as if we’re going to have him for all four years,” he said. “We don’t take a transfer and say we’re only going to have him for a season, so we’re going to treat him differently. Or hey, this freshman is really talented. We think he’s going to play for us, (but) he probably isn’t going to stick it out here at Western for four years so we’re going to treat him differently. We haven’t done that.”
Davis the player had a much different experience than Davis the coach.
“I came up in an era where you were recruited, you were retained, you were developed, you grew and certainly that’s transcended into my coaching philosophy,” he said.
Senior defensive end Peyton Bradford welcomes the philosophy Davis and his staff have brought to Macomb.
“There’s a lot of new going on,” Bradford said. “We had the new conference last year. We had the transition phase. We have a new defensive coordinator (Landon Fox). A lot of new faces that Coach Davis brought up. A lot of impact guys.
“I’m really excited about how new everything is.”
Dan Verdun is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin. He has written four books: NIU Huskies Football, EIU Panthers Football, ISU Redbirds Football and SIU Salukis Football.
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