Built to Last

Howard Schnellenberger is leading FAU into football with a solid plan and plenty of confidence
by: Jane Musgrave
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When Dimitri Jacques was courted by Florida Atlantic University, the 18-year-old senior at Miami Beach High School didn't know what to think. Since he was a kid he had always wanted to play for the University of Miami. But at 6-foot-4, 200 pounds, he just wasn't big enough to play defensive end for the mighty 'Canes.

On the surface, going to Florida Atlantic seemed like a risky move. Here, after all, was a school that had never even had a football team, much less a winning season.

On the plus side, however, it was near home. Situated in Boca Raton, the campus is roughly an hour-long drive up Interstate 95 from Miami. This meant his parents, his brother and sister, and friends could visit and he might quickly steal home if he got homesick.

Further, the team was scheduled to play its home games in Pro Player Stadium, home to the Miami Dolphins. The idea of standing on the same field where Dan Marino set all those records, where some of the biggest names in football ground it out in Super Bowl match ups, and where he could imagine his future was enticing, to say the least.

But the thing that ultimately clinched Jacques decision was the reputation of FAU's coach. While the name meant nothing to him, people kept telling him about the guy who was heading up the fledgling program. Some dude named Howard Schnellenberger.

"I went back and did some research on Coach Schnellenberger," Jacques says. "I saw how he could turn a program around and how he had sent a bunch of kids to the pros. Everyone I asked knew him and everyone had good things to say about him."

When he finally met Schnellenberger, he was swept up in FAU fever. In fact, he was so excited about playing college ball that he graduated from high school a half-year early so he could practice with the untested Fighting Owls in the spring.

And at the end of spring camp, he said he had no regrets.

The atmosphere, the coaches, his fellow players was like a dream come true. And Schnellenberger is as good as his press, Jacques says.

"He'll get down and physically show us what to do," Jacques says. "For an old guy he has a lot of energy."

And on that point, virtually everyone agrees.

At age 67, when most coaches who have won a national championship and have two Super Bowl rings would be spending time on the golf course, Schnellenberger is birthing a baby.

In fact, Schnellenberger was brushing up his golf game while working part-time as a municipal bond broker when he got a phone call from FAU President Anthony Catanese, asking him to bring football to the 40-year-old institution that has long been viewed as a glorified community college.

Since getting the call, Schnellenberger has worked round the clock, raising money, buying equipment, hiring assistants and recruiting athletes to help him build a program that he plans to take to Division I-A in four years.

While he won acclaim rebuilding both the Miami Hurricanes and the University of Louisville, Schnellenberger says creating a program from scratch is a far different, and far bigger, challenge.

"When you come in to fix a broken program, you bring in new people to already established positions," he says. "You already have a budget, there are booster clubs and alumni groups to build events around."

But when you come into a new program, there is nothing. "We did't have a hook to hang a jock strap on," he says, repeating a line that he has got a lot of mileage out of, since accepting the challenge on May 1, 1998.

In three years, he raised $13.5 million, $6.5 million of which was used to help build an $8 million 60,000-square-foot athletic center that is now being used not only by his team but by all university sports. The remaining $7 million is being used to fund the football program itself.

And while the numbers are eye-popping, perhaps the most noteworthy part of his endeavor is that he is not alone. Just down Interstate 95, at Florida International University, former Miami Dolphin quarterback Don Strock is trying to do the same thing. While Strock has until next year to raise the money and recruit the athletes needed to field FIU's first-ever team, for Schnellenberger time is almost up. On Sept. 1, his Owls will take the field against Slippery Rock University. While the match up sounds like a vaudeville joke, he says it will mark the beginning of a program that one day will be as dominant as other football programs in Florida are today.

The claim sounds like typical Schnellenberger, a man who did't get where he is today by being modest. Still, he readily admits he hasn't had the Midas touch everywhere. Most recently, in 1996 he left Oklahoma awash in controversy after leading it to a 5-5-1 season. In 1974, he was fired by the Baltimore Colts after one year and five games and a decade later he left the Hurricanes to coach the Miami franchise of the very short-lived United States Football League.

"So, I've run the gamut of highs and lows," he says, to shore up his claim that he knows a winner when he sees it. And, he adds, in FAU, he definitely sees a winner.

"My first two recruiting classes here are better than my first two at Miami or Louisville, and my walk-ons are 100 percent better," he says.

Still, even in a state where Bobby Bowden turned Florida State around in four years, and has kept it there for more than 20 years, many are raising their eyebrows at Schnellenberger's ambitious game plan.

In speeches to would-be donors and fans, he says that the Owls will spend three years playing at Division I-AA as an independent, where it will draw an average of 25,000 fans to its home games and prove to NCAA officials that it has the fan base to graduate to Division I-A. That done, he says, the team will join the Big East Conference where it will play schools like his former Hurricanes and Virginia Tech.

To hear him say it, it sounds simple. But those who have tried to do it, know differently.

First of all, only two Division I-AA teams last year averaged more than 25,000 a game, and the vast majority attracted less than 15,000.

Further, skeptics say, Schnellenberger need only look 200 miles north, to the University of Central Florida, to see the difficulty of joining a conference. Since it moved up from Division I-AA to Division I-A in 1996, the UCF has tried to find a conference to call home. Despite a 22-year tradition of football, a 30-25 Division I-A record, and the highly-publicized services of quarterback Daunte Culpepper, no conference wants them.

They've tried the Big East and they have tried to persuade Conference USA that the addition of a 12th team would enable it to break into two divisions so it could hold a potentially money-making conference championship game. No dice.

"It comes down to money," says John Marini, UCF's sports information director. "If they add members, then it takes money away from someone else."

"You have to earn your spurs in this process," agrees UCF Athletic Director Steve Sloan. "A conference wants to make sure you bring something to it."

Among the attributes: a big media market, a fan base, a winning football team and a strong overall sports program.

Situated in burgeoning South Florida, with an average home crowd of 27,279 and a good record, Sloan says he did't think it would be such a struggle for his Golden Knights.

Without directly criticizing Schnellenberger, he says, "You can't build it on hype, you have to build it on a solid foundation."

UCF's Division I-A upstart counterpart in Tampa, the University of South Florida, was lucky. It did what Schnellenberger claims he will do. Finding an unexpected pent up demand for college football when it started its football program in 1996, it broke attendance records immediately. Last year, it attracted an average of 26,414 fans to its home games the second highest among Division I-AA schools in the nation.

Buoyed by on-the-field success and support from Tampa residents, this year it will compete in Division I-A as a member of Conference USA. However, it's a founding member of Conference USA. So, when it's football program was ready to move up from Division I-AA to Division I-A, it already had a home.

Unfortunately, like FAU, Central Florida is a member of the recently renamed Trans Atlantic Conference. What is now called the Atlantic Sun Conference, has no football component.

Strock, meanwhile, has no concrete plan of when FIU will make the move from Division I-AA to Division I-A. But, when it does, the Sun Belt Conference, which launches a seven-member football league this fall, said it will have room for the Golden Panthers.

Schnellenberger waves off criticism about his claims that his Owls will move seamlessly from Division I-AA to Division I-A to the Big East. Comparisons between FAU and Central Florida, he says, are particularly off-the-mark.

"They've been doing their thing for 22 years," he says. "We're doing things differently. Their situation is different than ours."

Then, he stops, taking a minute to chose his words, and then continues: "If you aim at the target, you make the target, but if you aim at the bull eyes you might hit the bulls eye."

He leaves no doubt that he is going for the bulls eye.

But whether he will hit it or even the target - obviously remains to be seen. Forced to play in Pro Player Stadium, some question whether the Owls will even be able to draw enough fans to make the move from Division I-AA to Division I-A.

In the battle for a fan base, FIU claims it has a leg up because it already has an on-campus stadium. In a three-way partnership, involving the university, the Miami-Dade County school system and county government, an old 7,000-seat stadium was moved onto the university's main campus. As part of its $10 million fund-raising drive, the school is raising money to refurbish it and expand it to 30,000 seats.

Having a stadium on campus, where students can easily reach it, gives FIU an important advantage over Florida Atlantic, FIU officials claim. But while an on-campus stadium is a given at old established schools, both UCF and USF play at off-site stadiums and have had little problem attracting fans.

By playing at Pro Player, Schnellenberger says he will be able to grab Dolphin fans who are already in the habit of driving to the stadium just north of Miami, and to others who have always wanted to watch a game at the stadium but couldn't afford the Dolphins exorbitant ticket prices.

Still, while officials at Florida University have different views about what it takes to succeed in college football, all agree that there is enough talent in the state to support the growing number of teams and ultimately expansion will be good for all of them.

Each year, between 250 to 300 Division 1-A recruits come out of the state.

Of those, only 25 could remain in the state at Florida, Florida State, or Miami while others had to go elsewhere to seek fame, if not fortune.

"It's great for football in the State of Florida," UCF's Marini says of the state's burgeoning football landscape. "It's great for the high school kids that they will be able to stay in the state."

FAU's Jacques knows all too well that he is one of the beneficiaries. And, he doesn't disguise his feelings. "Thank God, I'm here," he says.

Whether he'll feel the same in four years?

Only time, and the fortunes of his untested team, will tell.

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