Camp Randall Stadium on a Monday afternoon is typically a quiet place. Instead of the nearly 80,000 fans that populate the facility on Saturdays, empty red chairbacks dot the Wisconsin stadium. The whir of passing cars replaces the raucous crowd on gamedays.
But this Monday, Camp Randall welcomed a new tenant _ Florida Atlantic's football team.
The Owls, who lost to No. 9 Wisconsin 31-14 on Saturday, are still in Madison as they wait to return to Boca Raton after Hurricane Irma went through South Florida. They practiced Monday afternoon at Camp Randall and will until they can leave and play their scheduled game Saturday against Bethune-Cookman.
Wisconsin has opened its facilities and training tables for the Owls in addition to helping offset hotel costs. FAU coach Lane Kiffin said his team would "try to make the most of it."
"Obviously, it's very different," Kiffin said. "Wisconsin has been awesome to us, letting us practice over there and they fed us over there. That's obviously helped. But it's obviously strange. It's been a strange, whatever it's been, four days."
FAU had Sunday off, as usual, and have been holding film sessions and meetings at the team hotel that its stayed at since Friday night. Kiffin said he wasn't sure when the Owls would leave Madison, and would simply adhere to what the FAU administration tells him.
The school announced Monday that classes would not resume until Sept. 18. Resident students can return to campus Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Faculty and staff can return Thursday. The Bethune-Cookman game is scheduled for Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
"I was hoping to leave on Saturday after the game as normal," Kiffin said. "We would leave as soon as we could so we could get back to our normal place and the kids could get back to their places."
Kiffin said at one point, he wasn't sure if the game would actually take place. Around Wednesday or Thursday last week, when schools across the state were altering their plans for weekend games, some concerned Owls players approached Kiffin.
"A lot of our kids were very concerned and obviously didn't want to leave their families with, at the time, what was supposed to be the worst hurricane to ever hit the United States," Kiffin said. "But we were told that we're going. So we came and we're still here."
It has been an unorthodox start to Kiffin's tenure at FAU. The opener came against Navy's triple-option offense and included three lightning delays. The game lasted nearly six hours and didn't end until 1:47 a.m.
Now, his team is stranded in Madison because of a hurricane. He said he's never experienced anything like these situations.
"I don't think anybody has," Kiffin said. "This has obviously been very abnormal: a six-hour game and then at one point, we think we're not playing this game."
