One moment, Howard Schnellenberger sounds insane. The next, Florida Atlantic's football coach is waxing passionately and eloquently about the contribution of the on-campus football stadium to the tradition of college football, reciting names and dates and 20-year-old scores.
This will be the sixth season at FAU for the 72-year-old Schnellenberger, who brought programs at Miami and Louisville back to life many years ago. His quixotic plan at FAU, which includes a national Division I championship and an on-campus stadium by the end of this decade, is not exactly on schedule. In their first season in Division I-A last year, the Owls went 2-9, losing their season finale, 52-6, to Florida International. That's a long, long way from the championship of south Florida, let alone the nation.
Schnellenberger didn't mention anything about championships at Saturday's session of the Florida Sports Writers Association Media Days. He did mention that his roster is very young again, a coach's way of reducing expectations. Any chance the Owls had of bouncing back with the kind of seasons they posted in 2003 and 2004 (11-3 and 9-3, respectively) figures to be quickly dismissed by their schedule.
"I'm sure excited about the fact that Clemson agreed to play us at their place, Kansas State agreed to play us, as did Oklahoma State," Schnellen-berger said in Tampa, "and finally, that Steve Spurrier would give us the opportunity to come up to (South Carolina) and learn how to play . . . old-coach ball, is it?
"Those will be FAU's first four games, all on the road."
I doubt seriously whether we'll win the national championship this coming year," Schnellenberger deadpanned. "But once again, we want to start out playing the best teams that will play us.
"It's an admirable concept, and crazy. In 2007, FAU will play at Florida. Schnellenberger has talked to Bobby Bowden about bringing FSU down for the first game in FAU's new stadium, whenever it opens. If ever it opens. FAU has grandiose plans for a 40,000-seat indoor stadium for football and basketball, similar to Syracuse's Carrier Dome. Several hurdles and many dollars are in the way. Even FAU's media guide refers to the project as its "Possible New Cultural Events Center."
By contrast, UCF, which came up with a stadium plan years after Schnellenberger, hopes to have its new stadium up next year. "Right now they have the concrete up and the steel shows up Aug. 15," coach George O'Leary reported.
Losing games to national powers does not worry Schnellenberger nearly as much as losing the battle to get his stadium constructed."Without a stadium on our campus, there's no reason to play football," he said. "Without a stadium, we're not going to get to where we need to get."
Then again, he added, "two and nine is not a death sentence. Two and nine is just a work in progress."
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