Starting the season with a bang

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Of all the numbers that the crop of preseason college football magazines are flush with now, these are the ones that spring out at you: "21 of its starting 22 are back from..."

Nobody, even in the NFL, has that many starters back at the same positions from one season to the next anymore.

"We do," said Howard Schnellenberger, Florida Atlantic University's head coach. "We lead the world in seniors, too, that's for sure."

With 31 seniors (who have played more than 30 games), the University of Hawai'i's season-opening opponent stands as a once-in-a-blue-moon aberration, a team whose foundation has remained remarkably unchanged since it was assembled from scratch three years ago.

That's what makes the Owls, a I-AA team by pedigree, something of an enigma for the Warriors, who are on countdown for their Sept. 4 game at Aloha Stadium.

"We have more (returnees) than Notre Dame, Miami, Florida State, Penn State — or anybody else," Schnellenberger said.

While most other teams — including the Warriors — have starting jobs remaining to be won in the fall, the Owls have, barring injury, already carved their starting lineup in marble. "We solidified our depth chart in the spring," Schnellenberger said.

The Owls are classified as I-AA, a level they have participated at for all three previous seasons of their football history. But even though they have not offered more than 60 scholarships until this year, they have an experience and familiarity rarely seen among lower-level UH opponents. The quarterback, Jared Allen, has played since he was a freshman. So, too, have the leading running backs and many of the receivers, all but a handful gathered from the fertile recruiting area of their backyard.

Even for a program that went 11-3 and advanced to the semifinal round of the I-AA playoffs last year before losing to Colgate, this has become a payoff year of sorts. It is the season to watch in this grand experiment to build a football program from the ground up practically overnight.

FAU, a school that longed for an identity beyond that of a commuter campus of 25,000, asked Schnellenberger to give it one, double-time.

Not that, at age 64 when he took on the task in 1999, there was time for him to waste. After more than a decade in the NFL and college stops at Miami, Louisville and Oklahoma, Schnellenberger said it was one of the few challenges that could entice him out of retirement. "Very few people have an opportunity to give birth to a program," he says.

Sunday, FAU faithful will gather in Boca Raton, Fla., for a Fourth of July fireworks show featuring the football team. It is, the Owls hope, only the beginning of an explosive year.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.