The season's shape explains why the Owls look like a different team than they did on Labor Day weekend. FAU opened by getting run out of Gainesville 66-21 by Florida. Then it rattled off wins over Navy, FIU and, most recently, a 45-17 road win at Louisiana-Monroe. As of September 27 that's 3-1, with a 1-0 mark in American Conference play.
Alcorn State40-43
Prairie View A&M14-52
North Carolina Central42-30
Texas Southern arrives with FBS road experience on its schedule. The Tigers went to El Paso to play UTEP in September and then played SWAC rival Alcorn State in Lorman before this trip. How those games went isn't in front of us, and that matters. How much a FCS roster has left after an FBS road game and a conference fight in Mississippi is the real question heading into a second FBS trip.
Don't expect a comfortable South Florida afternoon. The early forecast calls for 86 degrees, cloudy skies, 11 mph wind and about a 49 percent chance of rain. That's 6 days out, so treat it as a sketch. Still, heat and possible showers are more of a problem for a visiting team without FBS depth than for an Owls roster that lives in this weather.
For FAU, this is a tune-up ahead of the rest of the American schedule. The questions are how early Veltkamp and the starters get to sit, and whether the defense can avoid giving up the chunk plays Navy found. For Texas Southern, it's a chance to measure itself against an FBS offense that's playing well. That's worth something even if the scoreboard isn't kind.