Yahoo Sports Source: Former Miami assistant coach Frank Ponce set to join FIU coaching staff
FIU’s football coaching staff – pending a signed contract – is now complete.
Frank Ponce, who has served the past two years as Appalachian State’s offensive coordinator and quarterback coach, is coming home.
According to a source, Ponce and FIU have verbally agreed to terms. Once the contract is signed, Ponce will coach tight ends for the Panthers.
New FIU coach Willie Simmons – hired on Dec. 7 -- now has all 10 of his assistants.
This will be a homecoming for Ponce, a 53-year-old graduate of FIU who coached at Miami high schools for 13 years. That includes three years as the head coach at Miami High and two years as the head coach at Coral Reef.
Ponce has 12 years of experience as an assistant coach in college football, including a stint at FIU mentoring the wide receivers (2007-2012).
He was also the quarterback coach at Louisville (2019-2020), and he was Miami’s passing-game coordinator in 2022.
As a college player, Ponce was a quarterback at Arizona Western.
Despite all that experience, however, Ponce has never coached tight ends, although he has played and coached on the offensive side for his entire career.
As for the tight ends Ponce will inherit, the position was not featured much in 2024. Josiah Miamen, who started his career at Iowa, had 10 catches for a 12.0 average and no touchdowns. Antonio Ferguson, who started his career at East Carolina, caught a career-high seven passes for a 12.9 average and one TD.
In addition, FIU earlier this month signed South Broward High tight end Sean Burke, listed by 247 Sports as the Panthers’ second-best incoming recruit.
Burke, listed at 6-5 and 217 pounds, will need to put on weight and get stronger to play tight end in college.
However, in his final two years at South Broward, he totaled 80 catches for 1,495 yards, three touchdowns and an 18.7 average.
It remains to be seen how the FIU offense in the Simmons Era uses the tight end. The last time an FIU tight end had at least 15 catches in a season was in 2022, when Rivaldo Fairweather had 28 grabs before transferring to Auburn, where he scored a total of nine touchdowns the past two years.
THIS AND THAT
▪ FIU has added two edge rushers in the transfer portal: Aaron Armitage, a 6-5, 260-pounder from Stanford; and Lamont Green Jr., a 6-4, 230-pounder from Florida State.
Armitage, a former first-team All-State linebacker in New Jersey, had 22 tackles and one sack in four years at Stanford. The sack came in the 2021 season finale against Notre Dame.
Green is the son of Lamont Green Sr., who was a first-team All-ACC linebacker for FSU in 1998, when the Seminoles went 11-2, beating Florida and Miami. Things didn’t go nearly as well this year for Green Jr. as he logged no statistics on a 2-10 team that lost to Florida and Miami.
