Under Howard Schnellenberger, the program has grown fast but hasn't drawn enough for a planned I-A move.
By SHARON GINN
Published November 30, 2004
Howard Schnellenberger has a big game to get ready for, but instead he is dashing off a letter that he hopes some editor will publish before Saturday's meeting with rival Florida International.
The grizzled, curmudgeonly - oh, just insert your own version of Wise Old Owl here - 70-year-old Florida Atlantic coach is selling, even harder than usual. Right now, he sounds a little desperate. Mostly, he is frustrated.
"I've been on the phone all morning," Schnellenberger blurted Monday. "(I) just put 3,000 more people in the stands."
Now, he wants to work the newspapers in hopes of luring more fans. He ponders what he will say. "It would be un-American for us not to be able to move to Division I (next year)," he said. "Probably even a violation of the Sherman (Act)."
If it takes invoking the famous antitrust statute to get his 4-year-old Owls (8-3) into Division I-A and the Sun Belt League next season, why not? They've earned it, he figures. Just because FAU is short of the NCAA-mandated attendance figure of 15,000 a game doesn't mean his players should suffer.
After Saturday's meager post-Thanksgiving crowd ("We finished second to grandmother's house," Schnellenberger grumbled), the Owls have averaged 9,415 fans. That's 61 percent better than last year's attendance but still well short.
Barring a Pro Player Stadium crowd of 37,400 at Saturday's game against FIU (3-6), he'll have to go toe to toe with the NCAA to get his team into I-A next season. Not surprisingly, Schnellenberger is ready to fight for a group he says has won its "battle stripes and purple hearts and medals of honor and showed their belief and valor and commitment."
Schnellenberger is known as much for his hyperbole and colorful, mixed-metaphor speaking style as his many successes. So lots of people rolled their eyes when the legendary coach - who played for and coached with Bear Bryant, coached with Don Shula during the Dolphins' perfect season, led Miami to a national title in 1983 and brought lowly Louisville to national prominence in the early '90s - had the chutzpah to hire himself as coach of FAU's fledgling program in 1999.
He had spent a year as director of football operations, trying to find someone to build the team. Upon the urging of the relative few who believed in the project, he ended up giving himself the top job.
If he put himself on a bit of a pedestal, well, what better way to get the word out?
Schnellenberger has an 18-inch-tall section of what he swears came from an old cypress stump in the Everglades, with rope handles to carry it around and "COACH" carved into the front. It has a place of honor in the FAU school cafeteria, where for years he has been climbing on it to blab to the students about Owls football.
At first, "I couldn't keep 'em quiet more than 15 seconds after I blew my whistle," he said.
More people are listening these days. After a rough first two seasons, the Owls have gone 19-6 the past two. They beat a I-A team, Middle Tennessee State, in their 22nd game and made the I-AA semifinals in their third season. This season FAU has gone 3-3 against I-A teams, including a season-opening upset at Hawaii.
"I think there has been three really, really outstanding, great coaching jobs in the history of college football," ESPN analyst Lee Corso said. "One of them is what Bill Snyder did at Kansas State to take that program from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best. The second is what George Welsh did at Navy and Virginia. The last one is Howard Schnellenberger taking a school without football and doing what he has done in a four-year period."
FAU's program has surpassed even USF's early feats. Until the Owls came along, it was the Bulls who were known for executing what easily was the most impressive program launch in modern college football history.
Schnellenberger said his team visited USF, modeled the FAU program after what coach Jim Leavitt and athletic directors Paul Griffin and Lee Roy Selmon had been building and tried to avoid their mistakes. After seeing the difficulties USF had in getting started on its multimillion-dollar athletic facility, Schnellenberger convinced people in Boca Raton that for recruiting purposes, it would be better to spend the money immediately to get a state-of-the-art facility.
The Owls play in 20,500-seat Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, but they hope to build a bigger one on campus, which he said will help the Owls rise to national prominence. Schnellenberger guesses that by 2007, 2008, maybe 2009 - try not to laugh now - FAU will be ready to compete alongside the top programs, those that every year have a chance to challenge for the national title. He hopes to be involved with the program when that happens.
The truth is, he can't resist a team under construction. The one time he tried coaching an established program, it was a miserable fit. He lasted one season at Oklahoma in 1995, irritating boosters and administrators with his brash style while the Sooners went 5-5-1.
"It is a lot more fun to keep saying, "This is a first for this, this is a first for that,' " he said. "Record-setters, foundation-builders, those kinds of things roll off the tongue pretty easily."
Though his trademark pipe sits on a shelf now (a concession to healthier living), his signature thick, white mustache remains, and his voice is as gruff as ever.
He denies that he has mellowed, but he does say that he sees similarities between himself and Bryant in his later years. "He coached like a father at Kentucky and (Texas) A&M, and like a grandfather at Alabama," Schnellenberger said. "That's probably where you'll find me."
The grandfather in him won out when his seniors played an ill-conceived prank last week, deciding to skip Wednesday's practice. He was fully prepared to suspend them all for the rest of the season until they came to him and explained they were just doing something many had done in high school, and because they were the first senior class at FAU, they had no idea they were doing something wrong.
He let himself be angry for a bit, benched them for most of Saturday's game against NAIA Edward Waters and moved on. In truth, he didn't want to do that to players who had worked so hard to exceed even his early expectations.
"To be in the transition period going into Division I and the Sun Belt Conference (in four years) was record-setting, and it's a record I don't think can be broken," he said. "I'm really proud of this group."
