It is something of a surprise that the Southern Mississippi football team arrives here today as the Conference USA representative to the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.

It is a bigger one that their out-the-door head coach, Larry Fedora, will be here leading them.

This will be the first time in the Hawaii Bowl’s eight-year association with C-USA that its champion appears at Aloha Stadium, a rarity matched by having a coach who is moving up the ladder stick around to see the season through to its completion.

Fedora, who was named the new head coach at North Carolina 10 days ago, could be back in Chapel Hill, N.C., digging in on his latest challenge instead of readying the Golden Eagles for Saturday’s meeting with Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl.

And maybe should be.

"It would have been a whole lot easier on me, to be honest with you," Fedora said. "But I made a commitment to this team and I felt like it was the right thing to do. That is to finish what we started. I owed it to the team. I owed it to these kids, I owed it to the administration. And I owed it to our fans to try and get our 12th win."

Getting a school record 12th win — in what has so far been an 11-2 season — has become a mantra for the Golden Eagles.

"This team has won 11 games, and that’s never been done in 100 years of football here at Southern Miss," Fedora said. "They made history, and a 12th win would make even more."

Mostly, though, Fedora said, "This will be the last time this team is together as a team with this staff, so I think this is a special moment and I wanted to be part of it."

Quarterback Austin Davis said, "He wanted it (that way). He’s been our guy and led us to this. It is nice that he wants to follow it through and I think the players agree with that."

Fedora is 33-19 in four seasons at Southern Mississippi and is taking the Golden Eagles to a sixth consecutive bowl.

His successor has yet to be named.