Sun Belt Sports Fans

Michigan State 30, Florida Atlantic 17

Michigan State, wearing their road whites despite playing less than 100 miles from campus in Detroit, rolled past Florida Atlantic on Saturday to take a 2-0 record into next week’s huge prime time match against Notre Dame.  Florida Atlantic moved their home game up to Detroit because their new stadium is not yet complete.  The move to their opponents’ home state meant a bigger payday for FAU, as the gate receipts surely are more than they could hope to take by playing the game in Dolphins Stadium, nearly an hour south of FAU’s campus in Boca Raton.

Michigan State, perhaps agreeing to go on the road against a Sun Belt team in order to play among the fertile South Florida recruiting grounds, instead played this game in front of a friendly crowd of Michigan State partisans.  The Florida Atlantic “home” crowd left happy after Michigan State’s convincing victory.

Like they did last week against Western Michigan, the Spartans rode on the backs of their two horses, running backs Edwin Baker and Le’Veon Bell.  Running behind a dominating offensive line that again imposed its will on a mid-major defensive front, Baker and Bell’s rushing yards alone accounted for nearly two thirds of Michigan State’s total offensive production.

Bell, a freshman out of Central Ohio, has shown the spark of a superstar in the making during his first two games.  While his numbers were not overwhelming, Bell has shown the power and shiftiness early in his career to indicate that he might turn out to be a gem of a recruit for Head Coach Mark Dantonio.  Bell followed up his 141 yard debut against WMU with a solid 49 yards on 10 carries.  He also added a 10 yard reception.  However, it is not the quantity of his yards that has Spartan fans excited, but the nature of his running.  He runs straight ahead, he runs outside, he jukes, he jives, and he looks good doing it.

On the other hand, his running back counterpart is a bowling ball.  Baker, himself only a sophomore, is a hard-driving workhorse.  He had an outstanding game, rushing for 183 yards on only 15 carries, 80 of which came on a one-play, 80 yard drive early in the second half that pretty much put the game out of reach.

Spartans quarterback Kirk Cousins had another solid, if not spectacular game, going 9 for 17 for 142 yards, with one TD and one INT.

The Owls, who can never quite seem to turn the corner and become the program that it seemed it could under Head Coach Howard Schnellenberger.  The man who turned Miami into THE U came to FAU and built the program from scratch.  After a few successful years as a 1-AA program, FAU seemed to turn the corner as a 1-A program in 2007, when the Owls went 8-5, 6-1 in the Sun Belt and made their first bowl appearance, a New Orleans Bowl victory over Memphis.  It seemed that FAU just might be able to build a power program – a Sun Belt power, granted, but a year in and year out conference championship and bowl contender.  Unfortunately for the Owls, every year since 2007 the program has regressed.  2008 brought another bowl game, the Motor City Bowl, incidentally, but FAU was only 7-6 and only 4-3 in conference play.  Last year, FAU had a losing season at 5-7.

The 2010 Owls are now 1-1 and have a bye week next.  They will attempt to regain their winning ways against North Texas in two weeks.

John Cary
DFN Sports Staff Writer