With the opening of USF’s football season less than two months away, Green, Gold, and Bold will examine each opponent the Bulls will face in the 2025 season.
Here’s the seventh in the series.
Team: Florida Atlantic Owls
When: Saturday, October 18, Game Time TBA, at Raymond James Stadium. This is USF’s Homecoming game.
Head coach: Having bombed with veteran head coaches Willie Taggart and Tom Herman, Florida Atlantic turns to 33-year-old Zach Kittley. This is his first head-coaching gig in college, but he earned renown as the coordinator of the prolific Texas Tech offense. Last season, the Red Raiders ranked 10th nationally in total offense, eighth in scoring, and ninth in passing. They averaged 459.8 yards in total offense and scored 38.6 points per game.
Last year’s record: 3-9, including 1-7 in the American Athletic Conference.
Name to know: Jabari Smith. Sure, he only caught 17 passes last season, but he averaged more than 17 yards per catch and had three touchdowns. With most of the receivers from last year’s team gone, Smith is in a prime position to make a splash. That’s especially true with a pass-happy head coach like Kittley.
The biggest potential weakness: It has to be on the defensive side of the ball. The Owls surrendered 30 or more points in six of their eight AAC games. That includes the infamous “hand-slap” game on Homecoming against USF when the Bulls torched them 44-21, followed by the brushoff USF coach Alex Golesh gave then-Owls coach Tom Herman at midfield after the game.
FAU is counting on band-aids from the transfer portal to make the defense more competitive.
The biggest question mark: Can this program find stability that has been missing since Howard Schnellenberger coached the Owls for 10 seasons after starting the program in 2001?
Kittley is FAU’s sixth head coach since Schnellenberger retired in 2011. None of those coaches lasted longer than three years, and only Lane Kiffin left voluntarily.
Interesting things to know: This is a valuable addition to your resume. As a graduate assistant and assistant QB coach at Texas Tech, Kittley worked alongside future NFL head coach Kliff Kingsbury to coach Patrick Mahomes.
In 2007, Florida Atlantic became the youngest program ever to receive a bowl bid. The Owls beat Memphis 44-27 in the New Orleans Bowl.
FAU’s Flagler Credit Union Stadium is the only major college stadium in the country with an ocean view. The stadium sits 1.8 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
Addendum: The AAC would love for the Bulls and Owls to be blood rivals in the way USF was with what's-their-names from Orlando. It might turn into that eventually, but that day is a long way off.