Roughly 22 hours before Saturday’s kickoff, Mike MacIntyre’s club sat on an airport runway 200 miles away from Apogee Stadium due to storms throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Whether or not that played a factor in the flat performance from FIU (4-5, 2-3) is anybody’s guess. However, North Texas (6-4, 5-1) made the Panthers look like a junior varsity squad in a 52-14 rout of FIU.
“North Texas kicked our butts today, I’m very disappointed in myself, our coaching staff and our players,” said MacIntyre.
The JV line comes from MacIntyre’s weekly presser following the Charlotte game when he noted that at the start of the season, they resembled a “junior varsity team” — but grew into a team actualizing their potential — which is what made the loss more bewildering than the 73-0 rout that Western Kentucky put on the Panthers earlier in the year.