Chris Torello: “How is everything going? I remember you walking off the field at the Gasparilla Bowl and you have always had that same demeanor, but I saw a different tone to you. You seemed very like ‘we need to change things’ you were a man on a mission walking off that field that night.”

Charlie Strong: “Well, any time that you don’t perform up to expectations and you have a standard of where you’d like to take this program, you need to perform at that level. And I didn’t think that we, as a coaching staff, performed to that level and we didn’t have our players in position to play at that level.”

Chris Torello: “I have seen rejuvenation in this program. The word confidence has come up a lot. It seems the players have bought in, seems like coaches are bought in. It seems like you do have this program where you want it to go.”

Charlie Strong: “Well, Chris, it begins with you having pride. And if you don’t have pride in yourself and pride in your program then it’s never going to change. And when you talk about having pride, guys got to be passionate about what they do and then they have to be willing to make that commitment. You know that you’re sitting at a place that has a chance to really explode, but the thing that we have to do is quit talking about it. Everybody says ‘it’s all there, they have a lot, they can become THIS!’ Okay, well, the talking is over. We know what we have. And now we just need to worry about ourselves and then go and get it done.”

Chris Torello: “The personality on this team is there. Guys are smiling a lot. I remember watching you lift some weights in the offseason, they sent out that video. Your personality is coming out, coach. I think it’s great to see you pumping some iron or doing a little dance. I love all that.”

Charlie Strong: “But I have always been like that it’s just that no one else has seen it. My personality shows around our team. Chris, you have to be comfortable with yourself. And then once you are comfortable with yourself then the players will see that and they will feel comfortable talking to you.”

Chris Torello: “You’re not just worried about winning a game on a Friday or Saturday. You are worried about this players Sunday through Friday as well.”

Charlie Strong: “My whole goal, and I my players and recruits this: I have 10 coaches and their job is the Xs and Os. I will get involved in that, but it’s mainly their job. My job is grow and watch them mature and become unbelievable young men. That is my job. And I tell them that I don’t make many promises. But what I will promise that you will get a degree from here. You will go to class, you will go to your tutor, because they have no choice. You’re here, on scholarship, and I don’t ever want to see someone walk out of this program without a degree in his hand because then he has no chance of being successful. We have to make sure that when they come through this program we have to give them every avenue of how they can be successful.”

Chris Torello: “On that, do you already have an idea with your coaches of what success would look like this year at the end. Or is there not even a thought of how many games or goals.”

Charlie Strong: “What you don’t want to ever do is set it at this many victories and then it doesn’t happen because I don’t ever want it to take away from how hard our players have worked. But we need to go win the conference. That’s what we haven’t done. And that will always be a goal of ours. And then we go do that and everything else after that is icing on the cake.”