Sunday, November 18, 2007

GAINESVILLE — The Owls were swallowed up at The Swamp.

Saturday's game was an attractive, and relatively easy, road trip for Florida Atlantic fans, but few headed to Florida Field for the school's first game against the Gators.

"Just looking around, it's Gator, Gator, Gator," said Mike Lansing, 30, who was tailgating with a group of FAU fans just a few blocks from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. "It's a little intimidating, but we're not going to be scared."

A tiny patch of Owls fans burrowed into the southeast corner of the stadium by game time, but they didn't get a chance to cheer until Warley Leroy kicked a 43-yard field midway through the first quarter to make it 21-3.

FAU's fans, however, were realistic as 34-point underdogs.

"We play better when we play a better team, so I don't think it will be as bad," said Paul Jaeger, a junior at FAU from Sunrise.

Jaeger made the trip with more than 30 members of FAU's Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter.

"That's half our chapter, which is pretty good," he said. "The noon kickoff made it hard to tailgate, but after the game, it will be better."

For fans used to watching their team in front of small crowds at Lockhart Stadium, experiencing the 90,000-plus-seat Swamp was a treat in itself.

"This is probably like the best environment we've ever been in," said Ursula Chavez, 30, who graduated from FAU in 2003. "Just to be here is fun."

FAU was allotted about 4,000 tickets, sold about 2,000 and returned the rest to UF.

"They are all having a great time," FAU Athletic Director Craig Angelos said. "It's a great experience for our fans and for our team. To be on the same field with the national champions is great for our program."

Nice job with the pre game interview guys…

Having 2,000 FAU fans travel up to Gainsville is not bad, consider the fact that it represents about 25% of our fan base that attend home games on a regular basis.  As our fans base grows so will our travel contigents, plus it's about a 4X more fans that usually travel to away games.

Bytor said

Having 2,000 FAU fans travel up to Gainsville is not bad, consider the fact that it represents about 25% of our fan base that attend home games on a regular basis. 

Don't you mean 20%?

I meant 25%, I know that the numbers I used was a  bit lower then the announce average attendance at games, but felt it was a fair number of the average fans in actual attendance that does not reflect paid attendance.

Regardless of the actuall number, the important part is that the number of fans that did travel to Gainsville did reflect a high percentage of our fan base-  Now the  number of Owl Fans is acually much higher considering we do have numerous fans spread-out across the States from Colorado, Texas, New York, North Carolina, etc…

I just thought that when you look at how many did travel to Gainsville, did represent a good portion of our fan base, a group that is growing and becoming more passionate about their team with each and evry game.

I also believe if the University had done a better job selling the tickets, maybe some promotions and a few giveaways that number could have gone up quite a bit but that would take some organization skills.