Texas State football (1-1) defeated the Florida International University Panthers (1-1) 41-12 in its home opener of the 2022 season in front of a crowd of 18,757 on Saturday at Bobcat Stadium.
Defensively, the Bobcats held the Panthers to 313 total yards, marking the second consecutive game that the defense has held its opponent to under 315 offensive yards. The defense cumulated three sacks, ten tackles-for-loss and two interceptions. 
Senior cornerback Kordell Rodgers forced those two interceptions and returned one for a touchdown in the fourth quarter. The Bobcat team only had three interceptions in total during its 2021 campaign.
Offensively, the football team turned around its abysmal rushing performance last week against Nevada.
Sophomore running back Calvin Hill rushed for a career-high 195 yards in the Bobcat’s win over the Panthers. Hill averaged seven yards on 28 carries with a touchdown in Saturday’s game. As a team, the Bobcats rushed for the most yards (226) since November 28, 2015, when they rushed for 191 yards against the Idaho Vandals. Hill was given the game ball but declined it; he wanted to give it to the team.
“None of this would have been possible without the O-line. None of this would have been possible without the team,” Hill said. “The defense getting stops whenever the offense couldn’t score … this is about the team … none of this would have been possible without the whole entire team.”
Although the Bobcats came away with the win over FIU, head coach Jake Spavital was dissatisfied with some parts of his squad’s performance, including penalties that plagued the Bobcats last week in their match against Nevada. Some of the things he knows his team can control and fix are what the coaching staff will be working on over the next week to prepare for Baylor and the rest of the season.
“Offensively we were very inconsistent at times,” Spavital said. “We showed some play-making ability that I know we’re capable of doing … offensively speaking they know that’s not even close to our best performance. Still disappointed in the penalties, the unnecessary penalties — we’re going to keep addressing that and make sure that we get that fixed … we still got a lot more ball left to play and we [still] are not even close to playing our best ball.”
Hill agrees with his coach — there’s more work that needs to be done on offense and with cleaning up penalties, but the win does bring a sense of confidence into the locker room.
“After last week, people were [kinda] doubting us,” Hill said. “You see the tweets, you see everything. I felt like everybody was doubting us. I feel like now, with the home runs and the win, we’re just getting our confidence and that swagger back that we need to go into next week’s game.”
The win for the Bobcats marks the first time that Spavital has won a home opener as a head coach and the first time since 2018 that the Bobcat faithful have seen the maroon and gold win at home to start their season. Spavital hopes the fans continue to come out and support their Bobcats after seeing the performance they put out onto the field Saturday.
“These kids work extremely hard,” Spavital said. “And they’re very proud of this university. They’re proud of their team … they have a lot of pride in trying to do something here that’s never been done here and be a part of something special and something that they can come back years from now and say, ‘we helped build this program and where it went to.’ They appreciate anybody that comes out and helps support, they’ll take anything … I encourage them to keep it coming. Our kids are going to leave everything they’ve got out there on the field.”
With the win, the Bobcats will hit the road with a 1-1 record to take on the No. 9 Baylor Bears (1-1) next week in a nationally televised game at McClain Stadium in Waco.
Kick-off between the Bobcats and the Bears is set for 11 a.m. on Saturday at McClain Stadium in Waco and will be broadcasted on FS1.