As the clock struck zero on Saturday night, a disastrous season finally ended for FAU. The Owls coach showed better hands than his receivers in the finale, as he caught an errant pass thrown to the sidelines from ULM quarterback Kolton Browning.“I was laughing,” said running back Alfred Morris. “For an old guy he has pretty good hand-eye coordination.”On any other senior day, the attention would be on departing players, like the record-setting Morris. Yet tonight had little do to with a 26-0 loss to ULM. Coach Howard Schnellenberger, the father of FAU Football, bid farewell to a program he built from scratch in 1998.

“It’s been a joy and a thrill … a father takes great pride in development,” said Schnellenberger. “It feels much more like a family here [than in my previous stops].”

“Schnelly”, as he is affectionately called by his players and staff, struggled to a 1-11 record in his final season as coach. Last week he admitted this season was the toughest experience he’d ever had. That involves an illustrious 50-plus career in football, which includes winning a Super Bowl as an offensive coordinator for the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins and a national championship in 1983 as head coach of the University of Miami. He said leaving Miami while they were on the rise was “the dumbest thing a human being can do.”

“Very few coaches go through this particular thing in their last season,” Schnellenberger told me last week. “To have this happen in the final hour of this foray is hard to deal with.”

Regardless of the horrid end to his career, Schnellenberger leaves FAU football with something few imagined possible when he arrived in Boca Raton 13 years ago: An on-campus stadium.

After FAU spent over a decade as glorified nomads, wandering from then-Pro Player Stadium in Miami to Lockhart Stadium in Ft. Lauderdale to play games, his $70 million, 30,000 seat dream stadium, dubbed by Student Body President Ayden Maher “The House That Howard Built”, was completed in October.

It will aid the recruitment process tremendously, as the Owls now have a home that far exceeds the stadium Sun Belt Conference rival FIU plays in. FAU will be able to competitively recruit the “State of South Florida,” the term Schnellenberger uses for the abundant talent available in the Tri-County area.

Schnellenberger’s worth to FAU cannot be measured in wins and losses, even though the losses have piled on in 2011. When he first arrived at FAU, Schnellenberger ambitiously guaranteed the Owls would contend for a national championship someday. While that day never came and is still far away, his relentless pursuit of acquiring FAU Stadium, which has the capability to be expanded by 30,000 more seats, taught his staff and the athletics department to dream big.

The regression from 4-8 last year to 1-11 this year, while disappointing, should not take away from the accomplishments of Schnellenberger’s tenure at FAU.

He led the Owls to the Sun Belt Conference title in 2007, its seventh year of existence, as FAU became the youngest program to receive an invitation to a bowl game, defeating Memphis 44-27 in the New Orleans Bowl. That’s when he said fans started to take notice of his team.

It could be argued that the 77-year old Schnellenberger stuck around too long and should have retired after a 2008 Motor City Bowl victory over Central Michigan, allowing his legacy to remain untarnished. Common sense may dictate this would have been the proper thing to do, but Schnellenberger, like most legends, are so competitive that they are blinded as to when their time has passed.

In the same sense, Schnellenberger hung around here three years too long. His recruiting powers faded and his teams suffered because of it. Despite sending two FAU quarterbacks (Rusty Smith and Jeff Van Camp) to the NFL in his time at Boca, Schnellenberger’s signing of current quarterback Graham Wilbert was a failure of epic proportions that cost him a chance at one final bowl game. He sent Schnellenberger out with 79 yards and another interception, one of his 15 of the year.

It is only natural that Schnellenberger’s ability to relate to college players waned over time, and that a new voice was needed to lead this program to the next level.

“I’m turning this problem over to someone else,” Schnellenberger jokingly said after the game.

Only those who are short sighted will remember Schnellenberger for his late career struggles, though.  Developing the Miami Hurricanes into a prominent program, building Louisville into a respectable team and his molding of FAU into a Division I school is far more important than three terrible years to conclude his career.

Schnellenberger agrees that his time at FAU was a success.

“We look at the total body of work that has been accomplished in the last 13 years,” said Schnellenberger last week. “The program has superseded what anyone thought could actually happen.”

He laughed that he recently heard whispers from City Hall that Boca Raton was turning into a college town.

For that, FAU and Palm Beach County should be grateful.

Thanks, Schnelly.