It is a strange partnership between the legendary coach and the university in the midst of an image makeover. At first glance, the two just don’t belong together. The coach is a national and Super Bowl champion, an icon revered in Miami and Louisville. The university is known locally as a commuter school with disjointed campuses spread across South Florida. So why on earth did Howard Schnellenberger choose to spend his golden years as the chaperone of a fledgling, homeless, start-up football program at FAU?
The answer isn’t complicated: Where others saw nothing, the legend saw his next great opportunity. Schnellenberger is an architect, a foreman, a construction worker and a salesman all in one. He saved the Universities of Miami and Louisville football programs from near extinction. At FAU, he had the opportunity to start one from scratch.
“The programs at Louisville and Miami were in disarray. Looking at those two teams, it has been very similar [to FAU]. The difference has been we didn’t start this program from birth. We started it from foreplay, through conception, through birth and now we are at the bar mitzvah or confirmation,” said Schnellenberger.
Entering his seventh season as head coach at FAU, Schnellenberger has been remarkably successful. The Owls began the transition to Division I-A and the Sun Belt Conference in 2004 after reaching the Division I-AA national semifinals the year before. His overall record at FAU stands at 33-37.
The only reason Schnellenberger doesn’t have a winning record is his insistence on playing an “advanced training” schedule, also known as “body bag” games. Schnellenberger insists that the only way to become the best is to play the best football teams in the country. So, when FAU is being buried by top competition like South Carolina, Minnesota and, this season, the Florida Gators, it all comes from the tried-and-true Schnellenberger handbook for building a winner.
“We haven’t won any of those games, but we gained a lot of experience,” he said.
With 51 letter winners returning, there is a core group of seasoned players for the second time in the program’s history.
“Now we have two teams on defense and two teams on offense who have played in 24 games. There are a lot of teams around the country who don’t have that kind of experience.”
It’s not like Schnellenberger stepped into a ready-made situation at FAU in 1998. There was an athletics program that competed in the Division I Atlantic Sun Conference, but there was very little money or fan support to work with. There were no facilities for a football team, and no stadium for it to play in. The search for donors began three years before the Owls were slated to play their first game. It didn’t seem like the type of commitment that the accomplished coach would be willing to make: It appeared that Schnellenberger was too good for FAU.
But the legend was out of a job after an unsuccessful season with the Oklahoma Sooners in 1995. With no desirable offers on the table, Schnellenberger left football for the first time.
“I was out selling municipal bonds after leaving Oklahoma, I had spent almost a year getting my Series 7 [investment license test] passed. Here I was, a 65-year-old man and I had never balanced a checkbook, I didn’t know anything about stocks and bonds,
I had to take the test three times [to pass]. I had no idea what a debenture or a stock option was,” Schnellenberger says.
Sitting in his ornate office in the back of the Tom Oxley Center overlooking the practice fields, Schnelleberger is at ease. The artifacts and mementos from a lifetime of dedication and achievement line the walls. His only regret at FAU to this point has been his inability to get a domed stadium built.
“Those [renderings] are a figment of my imagination, and now they are my pipedreams,” he says with a hint of sadness. “There is only one thing that has the power to bring all facets of FAU into one and that is to be in our own stadium, on our own campus, with our football team taking on some major competitor with an opportunity to win the game.”
The artists’ renderings still decorate his conference room even after the FAU Board of Trustees has decided to go ahead and build a simple open-air stadium instead of the dome.
While the stadium of his dreams will not be built, at least in the near future, his master plan for FAU is still in the works.
“The real rewards of college football will be derived as we move on campus… and the students, the faculty and the staff will get the pleasure, the camaraderie and the school spirit that comes on a Saturday afternoon. Those that live on campus can simply walk to the game and the staff and the faculty can come back into their own parking places and spend the day on campus. When the alumni can bring their children back to the school that they attended, it’s particularly nostalgic. That’s what football is all about,” he says.
With Schnellenberger, a simple question doesn’t merely get answered: His replies often begin with an obscure historical anecdote. At first, you think the old man misunderstood the question. What is he talking about? You interrupt, try to redirect. He plays along for a minute, but then is right back on his previous course. You strain to understand the words through his deep rumbling drawl. Trying not to be rude, you wait and wait, at this juncture you have forgotten what you asked in the first place, and then, finally the point comes. There is a purpose to everything Schnellenberger does, no matter how much of an idealist and a dreamer he is.
