A lot of potential Owls will be in the area starting next year.
Nice time to buy that highway advertising board on 95 and the Turnpike.. ;)



Article:

State high school football championships coming to S. Florida

By Dave Brousseau
Sun-Sentinel.com
Posted February 21 2005, 11:16 AM EST

It's been a while. Probably way too long, but the state high school football championships are coming to South Florida.

The Florida High School Athletic Association announced Monday that Miami-Dade County and the Miami-Dade Sports Commission has been awarded the 2005 and 2006 state championships. The Gainesville Sports Organizing Committee was also in consideration for the championship games.


"I'm excited that the finals will be played in Miami for the next two years," FHSAA commission John Stewart said. The FHSAA staff had five outstanding proposals to choose. The proposal by the Miami Dade Sport Commission however, was far and away the most impressive."

Miami-Dade will host Class 1A-1B-2A-2B championships games at the football stadium on the campus of Florida International University. Dolphins Stadium would be the site for the Class 3A-6A games. This is the first time South Florida has hosted the football championships as a neutral site.

"Almost a quarter of our members' schools and a third of state population are located in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties," Stewart added. "Thirty-three of the 116 schools that have reached the FHSAA finals in the past 10 years have come from those counties.

"They have traveled to Daytona Beach, Gainesville and even Tallahassee and not once complained they had to so. We think they are long overdue and opportunity to play close top home for a change."

A Class 6A championship is guaranteed to have a Miami-Dade or Broward County team each year under the current district assignments. That could easily attract more than 20,000.

A state football game hasn't been played in South Florida since Ely High hosted Tallahassee Godby in a 31-3 loss in the class 4A championship.

The last time Miami-Dade host a game was in 1970 when Miami Edison defeated Fort Pierce Central 42-22 in a Class 2A game played at Miami Dade Junior College.

O.G. you are correct about the advertising. Nows is a nice time to get the State to put signs up on 95 and the Turnpike with "Florida Atlantic University Main Campus"
instead of "colleges and universities" next right. I like the Billboard too, Home of the Fighting Owls!!!

Rutgers had a sign promoting their football program, somewhere down there last year I believe.

That's a lot of high school fans traveling in that area!

O.G. you are correct about the advertising. Nows is a nice time to get the State to put signs up on 95 and the Turnpike with "Florida Atlantic University Main Campus"
instead of "colleges and universities" next right. I like the Billboard too, Home of the Fighting Owls!!!

I agree that the sign should indicate FAU instead of a generic sign, up in PGA & jupiter the signs do indicate FAU on them.

With the games HSC in Miami, billboards would be a great way to advertise, heck start putting them up now and leave them up for the season, could be easily changed for each new home games depicting our next opponent - I remember seeing them introducing our inaugural season.

I think that is an EXCELLANT idea, billboards along I-95 will definitly make an impact. I dont know why we never did that.

That would get peoples attention throughout Broward and Palm beach

I think that is an EXCELLANT idea, billboards along I-95 will definitly make an impact. I dont know why we never did that.

That would get peoples attention throughout Broward and Palm beach

Umm, maybe you haven't put up the billboards because you don't have a lot of extra funds laying around. :

I mean that seems like a luxury that will have to wait until after the basics get paid for. But I'm sure you can argue that 'we can't get out of hawk unless we get more attention for our football program'. That makes sense to me, but the admin's and professors of these institutions hate spending $$$ on anything outside of academia. So until athletic programs pay for themselves, it's going to be tough finding extra dollars for 'non-essentials'.

Just my .02

Very true FIUFan, the admin will always scrutinize the dollars and where they are allocated.
As a rule most athletic programs don't make a lot of money anyway. Some actually lose funds or break even.

But in this case boosters and donors may very well be an asset. Heck, even QB Allen Suber had his own board in the entrance to BCC's football stadium in Daytona. Now that all of those YeeHaw Junction signs on the Turnpike are down or damaged from the storm, it may be a good time to invest in one. :D


BTW, Welcome to the board.

It would be hard to justify spending money we don't have, but OG made a very good point about donors & boosters funding - if they see the cause to be worthy they will fund just about anything, just like our Football Digest is being made possible from such funding & also from advertising. I believe the billboards could be done in a very similar fashion - you need to bring attention to a growing program that need to build a fan base and make it attractive to possible recruits, you can't sit on your hands, you must be proactive.