BuckeyeBull9257

I'll give you that. And the 500 yards given up in 2 games. And all the points surrendered. But still. He did some solid work with these kids on our only successful unit. And his unit makes up a good portion of this highlight reel. I wish him well.

Why did we fire the DC again?

Eh. USF ought to be the first to extend the hand of friendship to CJL sooner rather than later. We don't want a Bobby Knight-like feud going on between us where former players are torn between CJL and the school. We also should be willing to honor him later. Give him something at an OCS or what have you. The sooner that history is cleaned up the better. Bring him back as coach? I don't know. Seems too soon to consider and it would be totally up to him. If he returns half the fanbase will be upset that he's here and half the fanbase will treat I as the second coming. I don't see it working out. We put ourselves where we are now. History isn't coming to save us. We have to do that ourselves. One way or another.

I don't know. The defense improved all year. Yeah they had weak points but they lost a lot of talent last year and they took time to build up again. The defense was alright. Not sure the DC deserved the can. As for offense, well we all know who is calling the offensive plays. I don't suppose keeping our OC would have done much good anyway. He probably wanted out to go somewhere else in the first place XD Don't know how we convince people to sign a 2 year contract with us unless we show some big signs of growing up this offseason. If we don't grow up, we'll blow up again next year and another 4-win season with your only wins against some of the worst teams in the country will send Willie down the path of his predecessor.

Bama has a big flaw but its also their greatest strength: Amari Cooper. When he gets covered and can't break off for huge gains, Bama struggles and becomes surprisingly mortal. When he is able to outrun his cover and make those plays, Bama dominates. As for the Big XII. We should to our best to lobby for a spot maybe with Cinci and UCF. I don't think football-wise we can make a huge "we deserve this argument." But we have a solid athletic program overall. That's assuming the Big XII makes a move to increase membership and don't just settle on the petition to have a championship game.

They will be looking at either appealing to have a championship game or expanding after today's decision. The BIG XII will be chaotic.

Lets be honest here. Chili's is always a big night out.

Some people can coach in different places against different competition. Look at Rich Rod. Great Builder and winner at West Virginia, total loser at Michigan even with all that talent. Goes off to Arizona after being canned and brings them a 10 win season and a championship game. Assistants are important, but they shouldn't be the difference between 8-5 and 3-9. Its on the head coach to lead everyone including his coordinators. Skip and Willie seem to suffer from poor leadership skills. Nice guys, not an imposing figure demanding of respect.

I'd be just fine with one of Willie's offenses playing for THAT team. They might not gain more than 200 yards a game. What a lovely end of November treat.

I think most of it is winning. You could draw 35-45K a game if we were a 2 loss team. We've done it before (albeit, I've never actually SEEN if happen in 3 years with the exception of the FSU game but....that was FSU fan dominated). Now if we were winning and we had better opponents, you could be looking at filling the stadium again. Winning must always come first.

Skip got comfortable after one winning season and forgot how to recruit offensively. He couldn't win the games that matter after the Notre Dame game. Willie turned a bad program around against bad competition. But the man can recruit like nobody's business. You would think that would translate considering our current opponents, but so far it has been a struggle on offense. We are still suffering from Skip's recruiting. Next year has to be a positive year for Taggart. 7 wins minimum in the regular season. If not I don't see how we keep him

So I guess there were a lot of recruits at this game. I wonder which school they were impressed with.....

Defense forced turnovers like mad most of the year. The offense never capitalized on it. Its was pathetic all year long and I feel for those guys on defense. They weren't exactly studs all year, but they a least showed some heart.

Is this true? For all Harlan has done we can't have one bus available for hard core students to get to the game? I know school is out but this seems counter productive to all the talk. It was in the Oracle this morning. Student Government cancelled the busses because they claimed there would not be enough students to be worth it. Strange that SG suddenly cares about how much money they spend. They have never had that concern before. This isn't on Harlan. But he may not even know about it. It sucks because that was my whole cost-free plan. If it was in the Oracle this morning, I would assume Harlan knows about it now ..... and does something about it. What I don't understand is the reasoning behind canceling ALL of the busses. Simple. SG wants to blow money on something that's not students. Maybe they have another great halfass Tshirt idea to fund. These will be black shirts with gold lettering.

Is this true? For all Harlan has done we can't have one bus available for hard core students to get to the game? I know school is out but this seems counter productive to all the talk. It was in the Oracle this morning. Student Government cancelled the busses because they claimed there would not be enough students to be worth it. Strange that SG suddenly cares about how much money they spend. They have never had that concern before. This isn't on Harlan. But he may not even know about it. It sucks because that was my whole cost-free plan.

Well my plans are sinking. Not quite sunk, but sinking. They cancelled the Bulls Blitz buses for the game Friday to save money (like that ever mattered to SG lol) So I have to figure something out. All my usual game day buddies are out of town visiting family on Friday. And I could drive there but the question is: will the cost of parking be worth the outcome of the game? Hard to tell. We'll see what happens.

I was impressed with the win. Last year with 3:00 on the clock being down by 11 this team would have fallen apart. This year we had the mental fortitude to dig deep and pull out a win. It wasn't pretty, no one would claim that not even Coach. We have to cut down on the fouls for sure. But this team has promise and for once I feel good about a major USF sports team.

At least we win next year's opener

Not sure how much of it would be attributed to him, but the number of drops this year by our wideouts could cause Dugans some concern.

I predicted 4 wins at the beginning of the year, but I had hoped some of our losses would be more competitive and that we could handle teams like SMU. As much as it doesn't feel like it, we do have 4 wins. And we will probably end up 4-8. 6-6 next year or bust.

We made some stupid fouls in the first half, but we certainly cleaned up in the second half. Our shooting was good considering how hard they were defending us. I think we look a little lackluster on defense, but if the offense scores it may not matter as much going forward. Overall I think we can go .500 this year. In conference and overall. I won't put my hopes up very high with such an inexperienced group. Student section was looking pretty good for an exhibition game, if we can keep that number through the year we will certainly stand some chance at home. We'll see what the building looks like on Friday. If we can win some games early, we could have a 8 - 10,000 strong crowd against good opponents. We will see how it pans out, but good start without Perry.

I'll say this about this season: Its not the offensive style. Its the execution. We could be running a high octane pass game and we would still drop or miss 50% of the passes. O-line needs work, Wideouts need to stop dropping balls, QB's need to be more accurate, and while Mack has done a good job he is not suited to carry the run game like this yet. I think the "Three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust" offense can work, but only if you have the tools and the mental discipline to make it work. We don't have that yet. Strong run game is good. You can control the clock and wear down an opponent. Keeps that defense fresh. But you have to be able to air it out a bit too. And you have to eliminate penalties that push you back on 3rd downs. Clearly we lack that mental factor this year. Clearly we lack a QB that can keep us going. Fan support is a problem but we have to face the fact that most people come to be entertained. Watching a team that predictably falls apart after halftime in a close game isn't fun. Watching a quarterback who fumbles or throws picks every few plays isn't fun. Watching the penalties rack up isn't fun. Watching our defense drop into a zone and get picked apart by screen passes isn't fun. Watching us give up over 200 yards on the ground isn't fun. Losing isn't fun. If the fun goes away from the game in a city with plenty of alternatives, we lose the people willing to go. You lose the fair-weather fans, you lose any chance of getting them hooked on the team and you lose potential future die-hards.