Part of the festivities for Saturday’s FIU home opener against Akron will be a 10th anniversary celebration honoring members of the original Panthers team. Some 80 members of that team are expected to attend and will be introduced at halftime.

“A bunch of them will be coming over Friday to hang out with us and watch our walk-through,” coach Mario Cristobal said. “This is a way to thank them. They are the ones who had a ton of courage to step out and start the program from scratch.”

The first year the original players were on campus, they had no games. They simply practiced against each other.

“They are the ones who moved forward and started building a program,” said Cristobal, who arrived as coach after most of the original players had left. “I don’t know many of them, so I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

Cyprien closing in

Safety Jonathan Cyprien had nine tackles in the opener against Duke. Cyprien has a four-year total of 281 tackles and appears certain to break the school record of 302 held by Scott Bryant.