Superhippy

This news is exactly why I am not going to go anywhere near this line. Jacobs went down early and it led to CJ Brown throwing 11/24 against James Madison. For as bad as I (and I am sure the rest of us) are feeling about our passing game, if I was a Maryland fan, I wouldn't be feeling much better. Penn St -15 1/2 vs. Akron and East Carolina +16 vs. South Carolina both look pretty good. My pick of the week though is beyond easy and some people are going to make some major cash this weekend from it and that is.... Duke -19 vs. Troy. Troy just lost to UAB by 38. The same UAB team that only went 2-10 last year and only FBS win was against FIU by 3 points. Easy Money here if you can get the line now because it will be close to 30 come game day.

Brown was the only other QB in the country last week to face an FCS team and look even close to as bad as Mike White did, which is ironic because they will be facing off next week. The only reason I would not be shocked if the Bulls somehow won next week is that USF is not a great matchup for Maryland on paper. Maryland struggled to stop the rush last week against James Madison - 3.7 yards per carry / 161 total yards. USF found a stud RB in Mack week 1. Maryland did all of their damage on the ground last week - 285 yards - 5.7 yards per carry USF stuffed Western Carolina's run game - 80 yards - 2.9 per carry. This is why the spread is only 12. USF needs to use Mack often and correctly. If they do that then the game will be extremely tight. I have been watching my NY Jets for years do this. Game after Game they are supposed to get destroyed yet by running the football effectively you shorten the game and when that happens things become dicey for the favorites.

LMAO. Please keep your money flsportsfan. MU MD 1st Downs 16 30 Total Yards 302 471 Passing 141 186 Rushing 161 285 Penalties 9-102 5-35 3rd Down Conversions 4-19 9-18 4th Down Conversions 3-4 2-2 Turnovers 3 1 Possession 26:10 33:50 C.J. Brown - 11/24 (45%) - 111 yards, 1 TD as well. Maryland blew out James Madison mainly because they turnover it over alot and had over a 100 yards in penalties. If WCU had that many penalties the score would have been something like 50 - 17. I think the spread at 12 is actually just about right. What ends up happening, who knows but I get why Vegas is there right now.

This is one of those spreads I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. When I take a look at the slate of games and their spreads and I see one like this that looks blatantly obvious, I try to break down why Vegas made the line so low. Low lines like this ussually means Vegas knows something that the general public doesn't. Maryland - 7-5 record last year. 5 wins were against teams with 4 wins or less (FIU, UConn, Virginia, NC State, West Virginia). 1 of their wins against a team with a winning record was against Old Dominion who played 7 FCS teams and 5 FBS teams. - Blown out by a horrible Wake Forest Team. - In their loses to Boston College and Syracuse they gave up about 260 rushing yards per game. I used those 2 only because they are 2 of the only run focused teams they played and they struggled heavily with both. - Struggled on the road against Uconn, Wake Forest, and NC State, all of which were very bad teams last year. South Florida - Marlon Mack. Obviously his numbers were outstanding last week, but now heading into this week the Bulls can adjust the gameplan to make sure they feed him the football at the right time. This COULD (key word) open up the passing game and if White or whoever the QB is at the time can actually throw some accurate passes, the offense could find a grove. - Biggest home game (and hopefully) crowd the team will have had in a long time. For those reasons I would not touch this game for the life of me. For as rough as it looked at times last week, if Mack comes out and does half of what he did last week, and our QB can do better then 37 percent passing then it's going to be a close game. If Maryland stuffs Mack though then this will be a blowout. There's really no way to tell though. I put almost no stock in the FCS games both teams played last week, other then Mack because it changes the way the Bulls offense will play. Things shift so often in the FCS that for all we know Western Carolina will go 8-4 this year and James Madison will be 3-9.

Because 40 of the completions were simple 6 yard passes to players on near sideline. When the defense played closer what a shock wcu stalled. This is what I was trying to say yesterday when people were freaking out about the defense. They gave up 5.3 yards per pass attempt. That ussually means you are winning. Bresnahan though failed to make the adjustment right away and made his defense look awful. That can be fixed though. I don't know what to tell you about Mike White throwing the football at wide open receivers feet. That's just f**ked.

Defenders bouncing off guys is just what happens when your defense is very young. That (hopefully) will get better over time. I wouldn't worry about the defense too much though, atleast not yet. There are alot of new players all over the place and they just had to play for 37 minutes / 97 plays. If you look at the total yards, it was pretty rough, but when it comes to yards per rush (2.8) and yards per pass attempt (5.3), they actually did pretty well. I'm not sure if Bresnahan was holding back some of his plays because it was game one, or if he was just off his game today but he did a terrible job setting our defense up for success tonight.

A week is plenty of time to fix some things. Step One - Sit Mike White and start either Bench or Flowers. Step Two - Adjust the gameplan so that the defense gets more aggressive. The Secondary allowed 5.3 yards per attempt. That's actually pretty good. The problem is if they get 5.3 yards every single play then that's not good. Bresnahan is a good coach though and I think he will figure it out. Step Three - Run some drills designed to practice what to do when a play breaks down. Not every passing play call is going to initially work. Only about 40 - 50 percent of them are, especially with our receivers. The team needs to work on what to do when a play is dead, in order to try to create something out of nothing. Maryland will most likely crush us next week but if the Bulls want to give themselves a chance then Step 1 is an absolute must.

Nope if anything I actually have a little more faith in him after tonight. The overall team tonight played like the exact same trash that we have been witnessing for years. Weak defense. Garbage QB play. Receivers that can't create separation if their lives counted on it. A team that was outplayed and honestly out-emotioned (if that's a term) by an FCS team. A team that deserved to lose. But ONE player (Obviously Mack) completely carried us to a win instead of another embarrassing loss. A 4-Star, locally recruited, true freshmen Running Back that absolutely would not have been in a Bulls uniform tonight if it was not for Taggart. It's going to take Taggart time to not only recruit the guys he needs, but also develop them, but tonight we just got a sneak peak at what happens when you replace lame duck players with some real f**king talent. And to that I will also say.....Just start Quinton Flowers. Screw it. Mike White sucks. If you can't handle playing under the "bright" lights against the almighty Western Carolina, then just get the hell off of our field. If it was his 1st game ever, I would cut him some slack but he got some experience last year, that should be enough to atleast set him up to succeed against an FCS opponent. After what I saw from Mack tonight, I would rather just see what the true freshman can do, because quite frankly I really doubt he could do any worse then 35% passing against an FCS team.

The offense actually looks pretty solid. The Bama secondary is once again showing that they are the weakest unit on the team by far.

Yeah, but first week may be working out the bugs. The key is: beat the teams you should/can beat...then shock a few favorites. That's how you pile up the wins & get to good bowls. NC State was a trainwreck last year too. 3-9 and their only wins were against Louisiana Tech, Richmond, and Central Michigan. all of which were horrible too. Maryland will be a tough game that we will most likely lose. NC State is a game that we should win. Temple was a train wreck last year. Week 1 is a little early to proclaim what a team will be like. Vandy had 7 turnovers. I'm not sure FSU would beat USF if it turned the ball over 7 times. Temple did a good job keeping their composure all game so I will give them that. I know they are not in our conference anymore but West Virginia is giving Alabama a legitimate game right now. That Bama D can't stop the pass attack at all right now. Maybe the Big 12 just has Bamas number.

Yeah, but first week may be working out the bugs. The key is: beat the teams you should/can beat...then shock a few favorites. That's how you pile up the wins & get to good bowls. NC State was a trainwreck last year too. 3-9 and their only wins were against Louisiana Tech, Richmond, and Central Michigan. all of which were horrible too. Maryland will be a tough game that we will most likely lose. NC State is a game that we should win.

This is exactly why if the Bulls "improve" to 4 or 5 wins this season it will mean absolutely nothing in my book. Uconn, NC State, Western Carolina, and Tulsa are all horrible. Everyone acting like losing to McNeese last year was the worst loss in the history of college football but that team would beat every single one of those 4. All 4 of these should be wins if this team has actually improved.

I have a good feeling as well, but alot of that comes from the fact that we could not be any worse then we were last season. Sometimes bottoming out is the best thing that can happen to a team. No where to go but up.

GREEN Today's game against Western Carolina is one of the most important football games in the University of South Florida's short history for one reason and one reason alone. This is the Bulls one chance to show it's own fans that they are ready to move on from the dark years. We just had to watch UCF, our most hated rivals have a once in a lifetime season where they won the Fiesta Bowl. That hurt us all, and it hurt us all deeply. Worse then losing to McNeese State. Worse then losing to FAU. Worse then every loss in the last three seasons combined. For years now we all, including myself, took our superiority to our rivals for granted, to the point where we stopped playing them in favor of "real" teams like Miami. UCF was our punchline and the one thing we could fall back on even when we were going 4-8 and losing to every team from UConn to Temple. If there was one thing we could all still be proud of, it was knowing that we were the kings of I-4. With that long gone, we no longer have anything (when it comes to football) to hang out hats on and be proud of. That can change though. This rebuilding process has been extremely painful because quite honestly with how young our program is we have never had a rebuilding process. It's always been up and up and up and up, and finally the train crashed. This game tonight is the 1st step in getting that train on the right tracks again and for that reason it's a pivotal moment in this programs history. Hopefully the last regular season stop on the line this year includes beating UCF at home. Winning, and convincingly winning the game today though needs to be the 1st step.

I think the most telling thing to me was how the officials completely disregarded the rules in favor of Vandy during the game. They were supposed to have 1 timeout taken from them every quarter the jerseys were worn. That's what the NCAA threatened USF with. Apparently though since some e-mail was shown to the Refs that the SEC approved the jerseys the refs decided they wouldn't take the timeouts away. I am so glad Temple put the beatdown on them like they did. When we tried to do it, Taggart just had to say "Rules are Rules". An SEC team does it though and they just let it go like nothing happened.

I give that writer alot of credit because he is one of the few I have seen that have looked at College Football in the last 10 years and the things that have happened and applied it to this season. - Marshall could very well go 13-0. but the point he was trying to make is that if (and most likely when) a non-P5 team goes undefeated, it's going to be extremely hard to make a case for them to not get into the playoff over 2 loss P5 teams. You can make the case for a 1 loss team over them because of the schedules, but 2 losses is a tough sell and will be a big debate this year. I'm not sure if it will be Marshall, but someone in the non-P5 will go undefeated. - Charlie Strong at Texas. It's not like Texas went 4-8 last year. They went 8-5 and lost to 3 Top 10 teams. I wouldn't be shocked at all if in year 1 Strong has Texas to 9 or 10 wins and then we see a legit title contender next year. - Year 2 coaches. I'm glad to see atleast one writer understand the trend. Since you can't have a huge player turnover with the draft and free agency like in the NFL when you get a new coach, year 1 for most is just a reflection on the prior coach. Think Holtz's 1st year here. We start undefeated, tank in conference play, and then rally to win a bowl game. Sound familiar. It was a Leavitt Season. Now look at Taggart last year. 2-10 and the team just looks completely lost and uncompetitive. Sounds pretty familiar too. Like a Holtz season. Muschamp with the Gators is another good example. 11-2 year one with Meyer's team. 4-8 in year two. It tends to happen on the winning side as well. The bottom line is that in year 2 a coach shows how good or bad they really are. Somebody is going to be good and make a huge turnaround. Lets just hope it's us.

Yup. The best thing for the Bulls is for other AAC teams to win their OOC games and make the conference look better. On that note.... CONGRATS TEMPLE OWLS. It's only the end of the 3rd quarter but they have put a beat down on Vanderbilt, which means AAC - 1 SEC - Zero, Nil, Nada.

All of the things Harlan is doing are nice, but if the football and basketball teams still suck, then it won't make any difference. 18 - 24 year olds have better things to do then go watch the USF football team lose by 20 points to Memphis on a Saturday night. It's not fun. It's not even close to fun. I was at that one and by the end I just felt pissed off that I wasted my money and time on tickets, even for as much as I love the Bulls. If they were atleast competitive and played a close one til the end I wouldn't feel the same way, because I have been to games like that, and they are still alot of fun, it just sucks at the end. Same deal with Basketball. When they had their one really good season, I remember when they played West Virginia at the Forum and the place was packed. I also remember Joe Madden and countless other people in the area throwing their support out there for the Bulls. This area has a ton of Bulls fans and supporters. It may not seem that way right now but you have to give them something to root for and be proud of.

Lmao. Wisconsin may do that regardless. The only chance we have against them is if we can force their QB into a bunch of turnovers. He threw 3 each in games against Penn State and South Carolina and they lost both. I just have a hard time seeing us doing anything against their defense. They had 7 games last year where they held teams to 10 points or less. They only gave up 30+ points 5 times, and most of those were just due to turnovers. Just getting to play in a big game like this though will be beneficial for the team so it's all good.

Ranking be best home field advantage is completely pointless, just look at the NFL. The Seahawks right now have one of the best 3 home field advantages without a doubt, now that they are an elite team. When they sucked the consensus was they had one of the worst home field advantages in the league. The Bucs right now have one of the worst home field advantages in the league. When they were a great team though Ray Jay was a place that most teams feared having to go to and had a crazy atmosphere. Same deal in college football. The Gators when Tebow was there had a stadium with 95+ thousand people going nuts every week. Right now it sounds like a retirement home. When the Bulls were ranked and playing teams like Kansas, West Virginia, and Cincy when they were ranked, Ray Jay would get extremely loud and with everyone banging on the seats the whole freaking stadium would feel like it was shaking. Last year the only noise you could hear in the entire stadium was the band. Another good example is USC. The collesieum was practically empty at the start of alot of their games last year. When they are good though it's one of the craziest places in college football. If a team wins the fans will show up and they will be loud. When they suck they will stop showing up and be quiet. It's really not that complicated.

I have to go with WR / TE here. QB is the easy pick, but if everyone around the QB gets better, then the QB tends to also get better. Our offensive line should be much better and that will help, and the freshman RB's sound like they are doing really well. The WR position still very much concerns me though. Davis is obviously good, but can the other guys step their game up. If they can then the bulls will be in business this year.

The ACC took Louisville because they were the best complete package out there by far. They were already more profitable then FSU was even while still in the AAC. Now in the ACC that will only grow and Louisville will become their conference leader along with FSU. They are one of the few schools that actually made money during basketball season when they are selling out their 20,000 seat arena every game. Their football games now are always packed, and their TV ratings have been good. Either way everyone including USF should just drop the idea of joining the ACC and put all their eggs in the Big XII basket. FSU and Miami will never allow it. NEVER.

That's a pretty fair writeup on USF. Pretty much saying what us Bulls fans know, which is that the team is hauling in the most talent in the AAC, the question is whether or not that talent makes an immediate impact, and if it does, how big. It's also good to see everyone in the conference playing some good OOC teams as well. All it takes is an upset or two like Cincy beating Ohio State, to change the perception of the league. Even if we can beat a middle tier team like Maryland, that would be great.

I'm so glad we have a coach that is has a true open competition during camp, and if that means a freshman steps up and plays better then everyone else, then he will get the job. Same thing with Dunkley earning the starting corner job. Skippy pretty much just gave the Juniors and Seniors priority and I think that is one of the main reasons why the entire program bombed out. There was no sense of urgency during practice because everyone knew that every spot was locked up so the guys were lazy. Then they tried to turn it on, on gameday and it failed miserably. I'm also really hoping Adams can make a big impact in our receiving game. He was a top 50 receiver coming out of High School and with Davis on the other side, he will get alot of one on one opportunities. Let's hope he can make the most of them.

UCF lost their 2 best players on offense, one of which was their QB taken number 3 overall in the NFL draft. I have no problem with them falling that far because it makes sense. What I find funny though is how teams like Texas A&M don't have the same thing happen to them when they lose their 2 best players that carried their team. Or Georgia. Or Clemson. Or how bout how The Gators lose to an FCS team in the 2nd to last week of the season and get to be ranked 23rd. What the rankings also tell me is that the AAC is WIDE open. The number one team in the conference is Cincy at 38 with a 77 rating and we are at 81 with a 66.5 rating. Once you get to about #35 it just becomes a guessing game. The Bulls could finish anywhere from 45 to 120. Cincy could be anywhere from 20 to 70. FSU is going to be 1 to 6. It's much easier to figure out just how good the good teams will be.