MOBILE, Ala. – University of South Alabama assistant football coach Greg Stewart sat down with USAJaguars.com to answer five questions entering his first season as a member of the Jaguar staff.

Stewart brings over 25 years of coaching experience to the Jaguar staff, including serving as a defensive coordinator at four different schools — Delta State, Jacksonville State, Louisiana and Central Arkansas — since 1998.  In his first stint as a defensive assistant at JSU, he helped the team to four NCAA Division II playoff appearances in a five-year span highlighted by claiming the national title in 1992, while in his time as the program's defensive coordinator from 2000-10 the Gamecocks had 13 All-Americans and 33 individuals earn all-Ohio Valley Conference honors after joining the league in 2003 as the school advanced to the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs on three occasions.  Over the last four years, Stewart has been on the staff at UCA working with first-year South head coach Steve Campbell and helped the Bears go 33-15 overall and 24-3 in the Southland Conference during that stretch with a pair of appearances in the NCAA FCS playoffs.  He also played with Campbell at Troy, where he was part of two NCAA Division II national championship teams before earning a degree from the school in sociology/history in 1988.

1: What led to your decision to become a football coach?
GS: I come from a family of four brothers — I was the baby — and they all played football, it was just the thing to do when I was growing up.  That's what we did in the backyard every day, we would go out and my brothers would get on their knees and I would dive over the top.  The sport has been a part of me since I was a little boy.

2: What is your coaching philosophy, and which mentor has played an influential role in your professional development?
GS: My coaching philosophy is being tough, playing hard and doing the right thing every play.  I've had some great coaches over the year.  Tom Calvin — who was my high school coach and is an Alabama legend — taught me to love the game, Hall of Fame coach Bill Burgess taught me how being tough makes a difference; the tough guy wins in football and in life.  Rick Rose helped explain that you're not going to be perfect but to strive to be perfect.  Chan Gailey taught me that you don't have to be a crazy, wild guy to be a good football coach, which I probably am sometimes.

3: What are your goals for the program and how do you go about accomplishing them?
GS: Of course the goal for the program is to win every game we play.  How you go about accomplishing that is doing the things Coach Campbell talks about: being unselfish, getting better every day, going out every day and doing the same thing over and over, and doing the right thing.  You want to try and help them [student-athletes] off the field, you want them to be productive citizens, and you do that through hard work, and being tough and unselfish; that's what Coach Campbell harps on every day.

4: If you were not a football coach you would be a ___, and why?
GS: I don't know anything else.  I can't fix anything.  If I wasn't a football coach I would be a softball coach, I love the sport, but other than coaching I like the outdoors so maybe I would work a job in wildlife.

5: What is the most interesting personal fact about you that can't be found in your bio?
GS: [On how he got his nickname, "Stacks."] When I was a freshman in college, there was a wrestler by the name of Haystacks Calhoun.  Every day I would wear overalls, that's all I ever wore, and one day in the cafeteria one of my teammates — Mitch Geier — said, "What's up Haystacks?"  It was shortened to Stacks, and the rest is history; most people don't even know my real name.

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—USA—