Jose -
Love your idea. Just afraid that athletics and the university wouldn't like it unless you went through them - especially if you distribute it on campus. You know how touchy they get.

Why don't you get with Paul Metcalf and the prOWLers/SAB and help with the Owl Book? Although it wasn't what it intended to be this year, it was the first year. Eventually, we want it to be like the UF "F" book, where EVERY tradition, EVERY song, EVERY chant and EVERY on-campus tidbit is in there. We are a few years away from that though…

I believe that athletics is touchy about everything, but yet they do nothing to get the students involved besides post up flyer's.  We are a commuter campus, we need to start thinking outside the box and reaching our students.  They've had 7 years to do something like this for the STUDENTS, but yet no one has come up with something good that attracts the students.  How confusing is it to give out students red BEAT USF shirts and tell student to wear red and then change it to Blue?  I think that a collective group of people can make suggestions because it is obvious that what we have now is not working, we have older fans doing their cheers and we have younger fans doing another when defense is going on.  I think the smart think to do is united both groups and share a common goal on what the FANS think will work.  The reason why we are doing this is to develop a pan and GIVE it to athletics, get feedback from them and go from there.  Unfortunately, there has been a high turnover of personnel in athletics and people change their mind about traditions.  ATHLETIC PERSONNEL AND COACHES at FAU will come and go, but fans and tradition will follow the owls forever.

i'm down… been trying to contact prOWLers director who smitty keeps speaking of, but no return email or facebook message in weeks…

i think everyone here interested should get together one day at duffys or something… invite the prOWLers, someone on behalf of the band, someone on behalf of the dance team and cheerleaders, TRY (keyword: TRY) to get someone on behalf of athletics or administration and work on the OWL BOOK that the prOWLers put together, but get EVERYONE'S input, not just the prOWLers (that's one way they can get out of the "elitist" stigma which you don't see, smitty :P)… we could put together one amazing document with that much input

i've got so many ideas… i had to start a new Word document and keep adding to it HOPING one day someone in athletics would lend me their ear

p.s. i consider myself to be pretty damn good with computers and photoshop and other graphics stuff… i'd LOVE to work on the physical design of the OWL BOOK next book, as well as help with ideas regarding the content of the book

pass that on to bobby if you would, since he won't get back to me :P

He's catching up with Facebook msgs over the break. He has over 175 in his inbox. I saw his Facebook page and he said "I'm way behind because of all the planning I did for the trip(s) and finals. E-mail the same way. I'll pass on the message

Paul Metcalf handles the Owl Book. Contact him.

ok… guys.. I sent this to Paul Metcalf - maybe it's a start.. .maybe not, who knows…

I am a part of the rapidly growing online community The Owls Nest - the online message board for Owls fans, students and alumni to gather and talk Owls sports.  The website for reference is Owl's Nest.

There has been a lengthy discussion over the past 2-3 years regarding traditions, unity, brand cohesiveness, and simple FAU sports education for fans, students and alumni alike.  With this program-setting win at the New Orleans Bowl and unprecedented national and local media coverage of Florida Atlantic, there is great interest from fans, students and alumni to work WITH the university, the athletics department, the alumni association, student government, the band, the cheerleaders/dance team, and all other involved parties to gather (physically in a convention-type setting) and iron out a TRUE, DEFINED set of rules/traditions for Owls fans at football/basketball/baseball/sports events.

Through The Owls Nest board, there has been a very strong interest in seeing if this could come to fruition and so I took it upon myself to speak on behalf of the message board community to ask what can we all do?

The Owl Book, produced by the alumni association and the prOWLers (I believe), is an unbelievably creative idea.  I enjoyed it and think it is a solid foundation to build upon.  The members of the message board, in turn, agree and would love to assist in expanding the book for next football season.

I could write for days and days about all the ideas and tweaks I have in mind for the traditions and The Owl Book, but I don't believe that would be productive over e-mail.  And that is just ME - Imagine a room full of dozens and dozens of fans, students, alumni, prOWLers, student government members, athletics department members, the band director, etc.  This would turn into the most comprehensive, complete, DEFINED set of traditions EVER established at this young school!

So…… how do we do this?  What can we do to help?  Thank you for your time and I hope to speak with you soon.

good? stupid? pointless?

fauowl09 said

good? stupid? pointless?

A.  Good

Bottom line:

we need 20k more Fans just lke you - with passion, heart and dilligence…

keep it up!

Please be advised that Paul is in Cleveland with his family for the holidays and may not get back to you.

And no offense, but Paul and Bobby both realized you heavily bad=mouthed the prOWLers and called them "worthless" earlier in the year on this message board.

smittysahoot said

Please be advised that Paul is in Cleveland with his family for the holidays and may not get back to you.

And no offense, but Paul and Bobby both realized you heavily bad=mouthed the prOWLers and called them "worthless" earlier in the year on this message board.

paul did get back to me and, being jewish, it did not even dawn on me that today was a holiday… as bad as that sounds, it's true… i apologized for poor timing and wished him happy holidays…

as for the constructive criticism towards the prOWLers, i don't remember using the word "worthless" but i do remember referring to bobby's comment on ted hutton's blog, in which he tells an FAU fan to "shut your mouth" - which i thought was extreme poor taste… the post you are referring to was written by me at a time that i was extremely embarrassed that he represented my school and students after his post on hutton's blog… i do regret using words as harsh as i did… that's all… you and i have both spoken about my thoughts on the prOWLers and i have the facebook messages saved in my outbox and inbox… i have respect for them… i love ANY FAU student who goes to games and cheers for our school - especially you and the hard work you did for years building up student support for our football program… somewhere along time, our friendly relationship (limited as it was, yet friendly) went astrayed and i am not really quite sure why

smittysahoot said

Please be advised that Paul is in Cleveland with his family for the holidays and may not get back to you.

And no offense, but Paul and Bobby both realized you heavily bad=mouthed the prOWLers and called them "worthless" earlier in the year on this message board.

Well it is a new year, let bygones be bygones. No one likes to be bad mouthed but let's just forget about what happened and get past it. It's a new year (almost). If something like this can't bring us together as fans then what will? Maybe if he gets a chance to meet Bobby and Paul he can straighten things out. We all want to help and we all are passionate about FAU. I don't know Bobby but I'm sure he'd be willing to look past any criticism for the good of the school he loves.

Only problem I can see with a meeting is that it may get out of hand. I know when I was in a fraternity we had certain rules to follow so nothing gets out of hand. If Jose is going to run this there needs to be some kind of an order or people will just start yelling things out and nothing will get accomplished. If we do it at Duffy's we'd all be distracted with food and beer.

I think it would be a better at the UC or whatever it's called now lol and if we can have some kind of an order so we don't have 35 people yelling 35 different things all at once. Maybe we can bring some pies of pizza in or something and get to work.

fauowl09 said

paul did get back to me and, being jewish, it did not even dawn on me that today was a holiday… as bad as that sounds, it's true…

hahah fauowl being a jew myself I didn't realize either, so you're not the only one lol.