Welcome to the Coach Shawn Quinn Mail Bag! Your direct line to Savannah State football! Each week we’ll ask Coach Quinn your submitted questions!

You can either listen to the podcast version or read the text version below!

Want your question to be featured in next week’s edition? Email it to christian@espncoastal.com!

Sam W. – Savannah: Great job this Spring. How many more players do you expect to come out this summer?

Coach Quinn: We want to have a roster of around 100 to 110. I would love to get 150 but I think we are going to get 100 to 110. We are still in the process of signing a few guys. We have a had a few Division 1 guys that are looking to transfer. I am not big on taking a lot of those guys but there are a couple key guys that we may sign. We are going to bring in about 30 to 40 new guys to add to the 70 we have. It will mesh out here in the coming weeks. It is a fluid thing kind of like the NFL where you add and delete guys from the roster. That is what we are in the process of doing and I am excited about the group we have got coming. We just redid our personnel board and we don’t have many seniors so we are excited to have a large group coming back for the next few years. We only have six or seven seniors on the whole team.  

Jackson S. – Savannah: What game are you most looking forward to in the upcoming season?

Coach Quinn: The first one. I learned a long time ago to take them one at a time. You have to crawl before you can walk and you have to walk before you can run. As a coach at any level, you try to take it one day at a time. I am more excited about preseason camp and then we will worry about the first game. We talk about our season in five stages and stage three is our summer program, which we are just getting going. Stage four will be our training camp and stage five will be our season. We just try to win the day each day collectively. I look forward to all of them [the games] because they are all going to be a challenge. I am excited to get out there and see our guys compete, see what we can do and how much better we can be by the end of the season.

DeShawn M. – Pooler: How has the transfer portal changed the way that FCS teams recruit?

Coach Quinn: It is still kind of a working deal to be honest with you. I think the transfer portal as a whole is a bad thing because our sport is one of the ones where athletes have to be tough and stay and compete. When things don’t necessarily go your way, you don’t duck and run. Societally, right now, when things get hard it is okay to quit and transfer. You see that a lot and the interesting thing is that I think 85% of quarterbacks that transfer do not play. The portal has been a realization that a lot of times when an athlete transfers it is not for a good reason. It gives us some insight into people that are going to be leaving and we could add. It gives a little more insight from the Division 1 to Division 2 level. Personally, I am not a big fan of people transferring. I am a big fan of being a man of your word and sticking to something even when it is not exactly going your way… We have offered a ton of local 2020 class guys that have major offers. People ask why we offers these guys well there will be a couple of those guys that will go somewhere and not have a great experience and want to come back.  Later on, some guys may be interested in Savannah State because we have the gumption to offer those top guys. We have to try and recruit and get the best players that we can. There are going to be some good players that will fall in our lap because of the success we will have here, the availability for them to play and the opportunity to be in a great place like Savannah. We have already had a lot of players say we want to come back and we are interested in your place. I think moving forward that will be an even better option for us.

Lincoln H. – Tybee: What kind of game day changes are you making at Ted Wright?

Coach Quinn: We are going to try to make game days a lot more festive and make it a fun thing whether that is with music and the Tiger Walk. The Tiger Walk was a big hit this spring. We had six or seven hundred people there. It is a tradition that we brought back where the team comes to the stadium with a police escort and walks over. Having a festive atmosphere outside is one of the many things we are trying to do. We understand that there are a lot of options in Savannah and that we have to make it entertaining and fun. A: We have to win. B: We have to make it entertaining and fun. Tailgating is almost a rite of passage in the south. We want to make that pregame component more fun so that people look forward to coming over here. I think that it is critical that we do that. Our new athletic director and I have talked and he is adamant about making it a super fun atmosphere and making it so people enjoy the atmosphere much like during our homecoming game. We will have 20,000 people between the stadium and the parking lot and we want to make that every week. We are going into a region that led Division 2 in attendance so we have to amp it up. I tell people all the time that if I have to I will go stand on my head on Victory and hand out tickets to get people to come to the games.