FIU Panthers Prowl

Radio in your hands

Here are the details to FIU football games will be broadcast via the Internet:

With your iPhone, iPad, Android, laptop, Uniblab, whatever, go to http://www.fiusports.com and click the Stretch Internet audio link. Jerry Del Castillo, who did the Spanish-language broadcast of games the first eight years of the program and University of Miami 1994-2002, will do the play-by-play and FIU's Pete Pelegrin will provide color commentary. They'll do a 30-minute pregame show and 15-minute postgame show.

It's not traditional radio, but traditional radio might as well be called Interstate Radio. Unless you've got an institution doing play-by-play or color and fans have a habit of listening to the guy whereever they are, your audience is mostly comprised of people wearing seat belts.

This gets FIU, whose fandom skews younger than most programs, on devices most of their fans hold as dear as a previous generation held transistor radios. Depending how this works, it's possible other FIU events could be broadcast this way.

Radio, radio; Black & Blue Devils

Sometime later today, FIU should be announcing that their football radio broadcasts for this season won't be traditional over-the-air, but via internet, allowing folks to get the broadcast on mobile devices. Jerry Del Castillo on the play-by-play.

And in the Possible Irony department: while FIU's got a happy feeling generally about its health, Duke's been giving the med school graduates work. Since June, they've lost five starters, according to Raleigh News & Observer Duke beat writer Laura Keeley. The latest -- and the reason for the irony -- was safety Jordan Byas who went down with a torn meniscus, Keeley reports. And, she notes, Byas' backup, Plantation High graduate Jeremy Cash, had his transfer waiver denied by the NCAA last week. Taylor Sowell, who would've backed up Byas, suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon.

Two listed starting safeties, redshirt junior August Campbell and junior Walt Canty, are returning starters. The third, junior Brandon Braxton, just converted from wide receiver during the offseason.