Around The Dog Park: FAU’s Tom Herman Advocates For Florida High School Coaches

American Athletic Conference

• The state of Florida produces roughly ten percent of all FBS college football players. Despite that, pay for high school football coaches is, to put it lightly, quite low. Florida Atlantic head coach Tom Herman was asked about this during his most recent media availability.

“We have to do something to keep our good coaches in this state from running to Georgia, to Alabama, to Texas to get paid what most believe is a fair wage,” Herman said. Read the full story from the Palm Beach Post here.

• We likely don’t need to remind most of you, but Memphis and Tulane play each other this weekend. This could be a preview of the league championship game. The Memphis Commercial Appeal previews the action.

Conference USA

• Liberty remain undefeated this week after cruising to a win over Jacksonville State on Tuesday night. Running back Quinton Cooley, a Wake Forest transfer, had easily the best game of his college career. He turned in a a career-high 28 carries for 163 yards and his first career two-touchdown game.
• Middle Tennessee State football snapped a three-game losing streak and earned its first Conference USA victory with a 31-23 win over visiting Louisiana Tech on Tuesday night at Floyd Stadium. Nick Vattiato had three total touchdowns to secure the win for the Blue Raiders.

Sun Belt

• Grayson McCall had the most Grayson McCall day that we’ve seen from him in a while on Tuesday. Coastal Carolina earned its first-ever road victory versus the Appalachian State Mountaineers after a game-winning field goal by Kade Hensley. Read our recap.
• Georgia Southern and James Madison square off in the SBC East this weekend.

Last season, Georgia Southern beat James Madison in Statesboro. It’s a loss that Curt Cignetti still thinks about. But, Georgia Southern have a good team once again. The Eagles make their first trip to Statesboro since 1991.

Independents

• UMass plays #6 Penn State this weekend. Understandably, not many are giving the Minutemen much of a chance to actually win. To be exact, they’re 42.5-point underdogs as of Wednesday night. It likely won’t be the best representation of non-P5 football out there, but games like this still serve purposes for both schools involved. Penn State head coach James Franklin spoke about that this week.