In last August’s University Press football preview, former sports editor Dave DiPino and I debated whether the Owls were the best startup program ever. Just weeks before the Owls took the field for their first game of a historic season, I wrote that they still had a way to go to get to the level of the South Florida Bulls.
Man, was I wrong.
DiPino crowned the Owls. And the Owls went out and proved him right. Might as well call him DiPino Nostradamus.
In fact, the Owls are making history at an even faster rate than the Bulls – a team that was briefly ranked second in the country last season after only a decade of existence. At this pace, would anyone be shocked if the Owls ended up ranked in the top 25 in 2008?
A stride of that size would fit perfectly into FAU’s record-setting gait.
As the Owls took the field for their eighth annual spring football game, they crossed a bridge linking last season’s extraordinary success to next season’s unprecedented anticipation.
In 2007, Howard Schnellenberger’s team did things that no other college football team has ever done before. In preparation for this season there is new hope that has never before existed in Owl Country. That hope is the result of victory.
Becoming the fastest team in college football history to play in and win a bowl game can raise the bar a bit. It can get people excited and optimistic. It can also add the unfamiliar weight of expectation. Not that the players would ever admit it.
“It is a very different mind set,” said leading wide receiver Cortez Gent. “We have got to come out all summer and work hard and keep our eye on the prize to try and repeat as Sun Belt champions – we don’t want to go backward, we want to continue to go forward.”
Since last year’s spring game, there have been fundamental changes for the Owls. Last April, they were a team answering questions about who would start as quarterback. Rusty Smith took care of that one.
At the beginning of the semester there was nothing but question marks as to who would fill the wide receiver positon. In fact, star receivers like Gent, Chris Bonner, Conshario Johnson and Jason Harmon weren’t even on the radar. Talented depth at nearly every position was a luxury the Owls didn’t seem to have.
“A lot of the young players have taken steps forward and we find ourselves with more depth than ever before,” said Schnellenberger after the April 19 spring game.
Last April, the Owls were wondering when they would finally have a breakthrough in the now-extinct “advanced training games.” They broke through by beating Minnesota. And after winning the New Orleans Bowl Schnellenberger declared, through a billow of cigar smoke, that the Owls are no longer playing for experience against teams like the Florida Gators and Texas Longhorns – they are “playing to win.”
“We’ve got Texas coming up and we’ve got to get ready for them,” said senior defensive tackle Jervonte Jackson.
Schnellenberger’s declaration and the players’ attitudes are right in line with everything this program had been built on. Until 2007’s New Orleans Bowl and Sun Belt double championship, it had always been about taking the next step for the Owls. From the first practice to the first game, the Division I-AA national semifinal to the move to the Sun Belt and to last season’s unbelievable run, it has been a steady, yet rapid progression of success after success. This program has been more about giant leaps than baby steps in its short, decorated history.
“We are gonna get a lot of good work [this summer],” Schnellenberger said. “We’ve got a major, major undertaking going down to Austin to play Texas and we’ll need every ounce of learning and every day that we have between now and then.”
For over 1,000 fans at the FAU Track and Field Complex, the spring game was about reveling in the result of the latest historic leap and taking a glimpse of what is to come when the Owls attempt to tackle another first starting in late August: title defense.
Besides my predecessor DiPino, who would have thought?
