Florida Atlantic University is making a statement that they want players from the Tampa Bay Area. Last season, there were twelve players hailing from the BCP coverage area and another five signed during National Signing Day back in February. Although the Owls have yet to breakthrough by winning Conference USA’s title since 2007 or make the postseason since 2008, they’ve been painstakingly close in many games that could go either way–especially last season. Coming off back-to-back 3-9 seasons, you would think the Owls would be mired in negativity, but far from it. Take away (literally) a handful of plays, and FAU is 7-5 last season and bowl eligible. Even though that leads to understandable frustration, there’s positivity that can come from being so close. Now, the Owls have to take the next step.

Things couldn’t have gone much better on NSD ’16 given the circumstances that FAU was in coming off that second consecutive 3-9 season. They landed five solid prospects from our area, as well as flipped Class 3A finalist for Player of the Year–Delray American Heritage’s Devin Singletary from Illinois. They also signed Kevin McCrary from Daytona Beach Mainland who is a defensive tackle that could have gone virtually anywhere he wanted. The five guys they signed from our area were Nature Coast Tech’s Cameron Syblis (LB/ATH), Plant City’s Cory Cotnoir (LB), Seminole’s Brandon Walton (OL)–who, like McCrary had the potential to go anywhere he wanted–plus Palmetto’s David Belvin (DE) and Lake Wales’ Ean Biancardi (OL).

One of the reasons you might find FAU in the mix for several more players is that Head Coach Charlie Partridge has added Travis Trickett to the staff in Boca Raton. Trickett is the son of FSU’s OL Coach Rick Trickett, and was a very successful offensive coordinator at Samford wining a SoCon title in 2013 before leaving for the D-1 ranks this season. Trickett had made coaching stops at FSU, Alabama and West Virginia before his stint in Birmingham and has as good of an understanding of our area as anyone. He’ll be asked to find some more of our offensive prospects especially since the Owls were only 10th out of 13 teams in the conference last season in scoring offense. The Owls had their defensive ducks-in-a-row leading C-USA in sacks, fourth in interceptions and and fourth in total defense.

As mentioned, they have several reasons to be positive on the recruiting side even in the face of those consecutive losing seasons. They have their own on-campus stadium mere blocks from the ocean that comfortably seats 30,000, plus every-time Alfred Morris touched the ball the past few seasons for the Washington Redskins, you saw a computer-generated graphic with “Florida Atlantic” beneath his name–which is better advertising than money can buy.

In 2015, FAU opened their campaign with a three-point loss in overtime to Tulsa, then dropped a one-point loss to conference foes Rice. They lost a very “infamous” game up in Gainesville in November when they took the Gators to overtime before losing by six points, and gave up a silly touchdown to Middle Tennessee that cost them a loss by seven. That’s four games with a little more execution and the landscape looks much different, plus they can take solace in the fact that they defeated their “arch-rivals” from Miami–speaking of FIU–by two touchdowns.

This season, the Owls will take on another in-state foe out of conference. The Owls will literally travel a couple of interchanges down the interstate to SunLife Stadium to face the Hurricanes week two of the season. The following week, they’ll travel to the bright lights of Manhattan–Kansas that is–to face the Wildcats of Kansas State. They’ll get the Mid-American Conference’ Ball State at home and then travel to FIU in week five.