FAU_dad

Tough game for the Zips - while FAU spun our wheels to get going through the majority of the 1st quarter, you guys just never did anything offensively. After you got down I would have expected to see some semblance of urgency, you guys going for 4th downs, etc. I kind of expected our offense to wear your guys down with speed and tempo, but I really can't figure out if our D played lights out or if your O was just really bad tonight (I will probably go with a little of both)? Even as an FAU fan, I was not big on going for 2, but right or wrong Kiffin is trying to draw attention to garner additional top-25 votes. I do hope your team and the fans have safe travels back, and best of luck next season.

After things went a little sideways, I refrained from posting - your board, so I was on here mainly to learn some stuff and provide you guys some details. I hope that everybody who made the trip enjoys their time in Boca, and I hope for a clean and injury-free game. I am heading to the stadium now. As for the buyout, we already had a buyout clause on him what would have practically given us Kiffin's services for "free" if he left during the first 2 years. I certainly haven't seen the details of this, but my guess is the length of the contract is specifically to balloon that buyout figure. G5 programs should understand this is where we are at - we either get coaches on the back-half of their careers and hope they are good ones (like you guys with Bowden and Amato), or we get guys who are rising up and using us as stepping stones. FAU has gone all-in on embracing the success for as long as it lasts, and the buyout will be what is used to bridge the gap into hiring the next guy. That is a different place from where the program has ever been, and is primarily driven by our President who gets that football can be good for the school (he is a former Clemson guy). Sorry - bit of a ramble. Hope you guys have a good holiday season and I'll be back to either wish you luck going forward if FAU wins or to congratulate you if we don't.

You guys beat Buffalo by 1 point and we lost by 3. Anybody here going to give me FAU and 4 points? I agree that the whole strength of schedule thing is impossible because neither side knows how good (or bad) the other conference is. Akron fans - as they should - think the MAC is good. FAU fans think our conference is as good or better. I am not sure either team would be eyeing a move to the other's conference (except for maybe enjoying the Southern weather). But I know none of us really know which conference is better top-to-bottom. I am not trying to rationalize our season. We won 10 games and a conference championship and are in a bowl where we are predicted to win. If Akron were to win you will get to 8 wins and can easily claim that the MAC is better (especially if Ohio beats UAB which I am picking in our pool). If you were to lose you'll be the MAC runner-up and have a .500 record. In reality, if we were playing Toledo, and UNT was playing you guys, and on down the line then and only then would we really know about the conferences. In the end, the only match-ups and performance that matter are the ones next Tuesday because for these 2 teams it is now just about the Boca Bowl.

Yep - Buffalo was no doubt way better than Wisconsin!!!

Another C-USA team who finished well behind us is playing FSU - so hard to understand why you think it was far-fetched. It could easily have been Southern Miss vs Akron in Boca and us in the Independence Bowl.

I've seen some of the way too ahead of ourselves comments, but again most projections FAU saw had USF and then a few had FSU as our bowl opponent. And I absolutely wished we would have played either (or both) FSU and Florida this year. Put that in perspective, if Ohio State was having an awful season and Akron was having the best season in school history, wouldn't you want to play them? Even playing a tightly contested game you end up losing can do wonders for your program against the big boys from where you recruit. And most FAU fans readily-admit we have been bad for a decade or more. That's why this season, Kiffin and the staff, and the players we have coming back have FAU fans overly excited.

Today it only got to around a "frigid" 67 degrees in Boca. Starting this weekend, the daily highs should be between 78 and 82 and the lows in the upper 60s through the game on Tuesday. To be fair, it is going to be partly cloudy

Just sharing - FAU has beer in the stadium. We also have an open-air full bar area, but that is on the West (home) side and you are "supposed" to have seats in sections 203-207 to be able to enjoy that (the stadium staff has not always been the best at enforcing that, though). If you look at an image of the stadium seating chart, the bar is the open area you can see between the lower and upper parts of those sections. But there are vendors for beer all over the place - several walking around selling. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to all the beers that are offered, but do know that they are generally $8 for a 16-ounce bottle. Also, parking will be $20 and is first-come, first-serve in all of the lots assuming it is run like the C-USA championship game. FAU has nothing to do with the costs - all of that is set by the C-USA for the last game and the Boca Bowl for this one. Just in case anybody is coming to the game and wondering.

I also was interested in this. I lived in Raleigh, NC for a number of years while Amato was the coach at NC State. He was a player's favorite and usually had some colorful and amusing interviews. But of course I am just as curious to see what he says about the game. And of course Bowden is always a very good interview.

Good to have some back and forth. Honestly I don't know how the past performance and lack of success by FAU (or Akron) or games being referenced from previous seasons have anything to do with this year. Buffalo was probably an outlier of not a very good performance by both teams given the games were close. The MAC has 5 teams with 7 or more wins out of 12 teams, CUSA had 6 out of 14. The MAC had 7 bowl-eligible (6 got in) and CUSA had 10 (9 got in). I'd say both teams and conferences are probably better than John Q Public will ever give us credit for because of the conferences we play in and the football history at each place. Those kind of stats tell us that we have played some pretty decent teams, and the difference will be who can set the tone of the game. FAU thinks it will be us because of the tempo we run on offense. But like many have said, we will see.

Could be - we certainly left 10 or more points on the field in the first quarter with multiple redzone trips, but we still were up 34-0 before we kind of just coasted (similar to what I saw in your championship game with Toledo when they got up really big on you guys). For those who supposedly know what they are talking about and set odds and point spreads, in the Toledo game you were 20.5 point underdogs. In the FAU game you are 22.5 point underdogs (by far the biggest spread of any bowl game). So it would seem Vegas thinks FAU is as good or slightly better than Toledo at least against the Zips. And if you look at the coach's poll, FAU has 24 votes, Toledo has 21, and Troy has 11. I never read too much into that poll, but it at least shows we are considered at least equal to those teams. There are replays of many of our games on Facebook or the Stadium Network, but the only one you can see on the Watch ESPN app is the CUSA Championship. Here are the highlights from the first time we played North Texas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37wAj6-4k5Q&feature=onebox. We had 55 points in the 3rd quarter, and they scored 2 fourth quarter TDs including their last one with about 30 seconds left in the game. Some of the guys you will see running or catching passes in this highlight did not play in the championship game, but will be back for the bowl.

Don't get me wrong @zipsoutsider - I watched parts of your games against Toledo, Kent State, and Ohio (ESPN replays). If FAU plays the way they have played most of the past 10 weeks I think our offensive weapons and overall speed will be too much and it will be a 3-score type of spread. We have 5 or more guys who hurt teams running the ball (2 RBs but then the QB, WRs on jet-sweeps or reverses, etc.). And then when teams load the box we throw it over the top or trick them with something. We have a defense who has given up some yardage and points, but come up with big plays (sacks and turnovers). If you guys are not an elite MAC team, I can tell you for a fact at least for this season FAU is head-and-shoulders the best team in CUSA. But that is why we play the games - nobody wins on stats or what they have done (or haven't done) in past weeks. It all matters about who shows up on the 19th. And just like any game, big plays and turnovers can always make a difference.

Question #1 I think is he will be here. Kiffin really seems to enjoy the current freedom he has, and most think it will have to be a big time job to pull him away. He will be picky, but so will those schools. None of the jobs this year were realistic from both sides - the jobs he'll want still want to see what he does for another year or maybe more. No idea on #2, but it isn't good. We were on the Stadium network, and the quality of the broadcasts were good but are not nearly as readily available as say ESPN3. If CUSA wants to get seen we need to do something different.

I'm new to supporting FAU, so trying to be realistic I would agree some of the fans have gotten a little ahead of themselves. However, this has been a record-breaking, best season in school history. All of the struggles were early on, and I would guess if FAU was playing Buffalo again we would be a similar roughly 23 point favorite to what we are against you guys. I would also guess if we played Navy again we would be favored and would win that game (terrible first game matchup for a new staff with some players who were on the field who just got on campus literally a week before). Easy to say, but if this team and staff had time together before the season we might be 11-2 or possibly 12-1. This is what is great about bowls where teams and conferences really don't know one another. CUSA has teams that are not well known, but we had 10 teams that were bowl-eligible and 9 that made it in. Our schedule included games against 9 bowl-eligible teams (8 that are playing and 10 games against bowl teams with the second game with North Texas). None of that matters, as "any given Saturday" a team can lose. And a huge point-spread and playing at home can lead to a team not getting up for the game. But I will be optimistic that the team keeps surprising me in how ready they seem since about the 5th game of the season. We have a significant amount of the team coming back plus a few transfers who are sitting out this year, so if we have 10+ wins again in 2018 then I'll start thinking we really have something going. Right now we are a hot team who wants to become a good program and after several mediocre to bad season's Owl fans are very happy about that.

FAU's following (and really all of South Florida's) is somewhat apathetic towards sports. People like winners, so I expect the following to get better just like has been seen with Miami playing a couple of high-profile games against VT and Notre Dame a few weeks ago. But with so much other stuff going on in and around the area college football has taken even a worse beating regarding fan attendance here than it has in other places. The bowl season and the number of visitors we always start getting this time of year will help (golf courses are full and charge about twice the normal rate from December to April). Even so, I also don't expect those numbers are butts in seats but are tickets sold. It will help being a night game, it will hurt being the only game on ESPN, and it will hurt being a Tuesday. And if we eliminate a few thousand students attending the game, I am guessing the stadium will be lucky to have 20k actually there in-person but will report 25k as the attendance from ticket sales. The school itself has about 30k students, but that is spread over like 5 different campuses. Boca is the main campus, but is still a relatively new school and is emerging from being a commuter school to a growing university. There are only something like 4000 on-campus beds (dorms and university apartments) in Boca.