Iowa State head football coach Dan McCarney spoke enthusiastically about the 1996 spring football game that will be held in Des Moines at Williams Stadium at 3 p.m. on April 20.

McCarney opened the press conference with a bit of humor about rumors of whether or not ISU basketball coach Tim Floyd will remain at Iowa State.

“Gene [Smith, ISU athletic director] told me to tell all of you that Tim Floyd will be returning. He signed a 20-year deal, with half of that money coming out of my contract,” McCarney said with a giggle.

But the jokes were laid to rest as McCarney immediately got down to business, discussing his pleasure with ISU’s spring football practices.

“It’s been a real enjoyable spring; we’ve made a lot of progress. It’s been pretty lively,” McCarney said.

Saturday’s spring game will also showcase many new faces to the ISU scheme.

“There will be 10 new starters in the spring game, most because of performance, some because of injury,” McCarney said.

McCarney expressed his pleasure with the improvement of sophomore fullback Joe Parmentier, who has won the starting job over senior Rodney Guggenheim.

“Joe has improved dramatically. He used to be a big stiff back, but he was young. If you could have watched him play for five minutes of our last scrimmage, you’d have seen how hard he works. He is what we want every athlete we recruit to Iowa State to be like. If we played Wyoming tomorrow, he’d be our starter,” McCarney said.

Senior Todd Doxzon, who missed five games last year due to injury, has been named ISU’s No. 1 quarterback. But Doxzon is still facing pressure from sophomore Todd Bandhauer, who is a much bigger and stronger quarterback than Doxzon.

“Todd is our number one quarterback. He’s the best quarterback on this campus, and it is definitely his job right now. He’s more consistent, and he’s had a great spring,” McCarney said.

“Both quarterbacks are much better now than they ever were at any point last season,” he added. “Todd is healthy right now, too. Both quarterbacks have had a great competition to this point.”

Junior Heisman Trophy finalist Troy Davis will, as expected, start at tailback for the Cyclones on Saturday. McCarney said that the ISU offensive scheme will not stray from what earned Davis his 2,010 yards last season.

“We’re not going to vacate an offensive scheme that brought a back to 2,000 yards. He’s the best back in the country and we’ll use him. Nobody works harder than Troy Davis. He’s a great, great football player,” McCarney added.

McCarney also spoke about the rebuilding of ISU’s defense, which ranked last in many categories last season.

“We’re not there yet, but we’re making strides. Saturday’s scrimmage was the best defensive scrimmage that I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” McCarney said. “If we don’t slow people down, then there’ll be somebody else up here giving press conferences, and I don’t want that.”

This year’s spring football game, according to McCarney, had better not be as low scoring as last year’s.

“It better not be like last year. Our No. 1 offense better look like it. It’ll be the best against the rest. We have a great offense, and we had better score,” McCarney said.