NEW ORLEANS - Don't blame the Florida Atlantic players for looking a little wide-eyed over the past few days. The Owl football team has never been in this situation before.
It's old hat for Memphis, this bowl stuff, but the Tigers are plenty excited, too. It's here, in the shadows of Bourbon Street, where it all jump-started for the Memphis program.
The two 7-5 teams don't care that they're playing in only the second of what will eventually be 32 bowl games over the next two weeks - or a bowl that most Crescent City fans look on as a stepchild bowl. They only care that they're in the seventh R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, squaring off at 7 p.m. tonight in the Louisiana Superdome.
It's the first bowl appearance for FAU, which didn't have a football team as recently as 2000 but won a share of the Sun Belt Conference title this season thanks to a series of close victories.
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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com