Not a good day for Sunshine State football

[bulls96go]

love seeing the gaytors and seemenholes lose

[Bull Matrix]

FAU is in big trouble because of attendance issues. They only got about 13k fans last week. I believe they need to average over 15k fans before they can become a full fledged 1A member. If the NCAA does not do away with this rule, then FAU is stuck in transition land for a long time. Losing to UL Lafayette really hurt FAU big time this season.

[Markeymark]

FAU is ineligible for the 1-AA playoffs since they are in their 1-A transition year.

I just realized that - they do not appear in the I-AA poll.

They are at least as far as where USF was during our transition year, except (it seems) for attendance... They might be able to leverage the West Palm/Lauderdale media market to get them into CUSA, where they would be at least as good as UCF at this point...They are obviously going to plateau quickly unless they move into a higher conference.

[BullDoug]

M'Mark, they're already scheduled to move into the SunBelt next yr if I'm not mistaken.

[hightechbull]

It is tough for FAU to get attendance.  The main campus is in Boca Raton.  They play in Lockhart Stadium, which is in Ft. Lauderdale (unless I am wrong, and they play at Pro Player in N. Dade).  FAU has a smaller number of students and alumni.  FAU has a serious problem with the commuter image; much worse than the commuter image hoisted on USF.  Sports were never important at FAU until Schnelly came along.  At one time they had the misguided attempt to push women's BB over all of the men's sports because the team was very good at the time.   No disrespect to women's sports, but men's sports generate higher revenue.

Build them an on-campus stadium, albeit small one, and they will do fine attendance wise.  FAU is not like like USF with its multi-county appeal.  FAU is a Boca Raton/Palm Beach school that Broward/Ft. Lauderdale students bregrudgenly commute to for classes.  Holding games in anywhere but Boca or Palm Beach will hurt attendance.