Such a strange though timely thread for me to read for my first time back since the end of last football season. Before that I hadn't visited in years. The incompetence of the offensive side of the ball motivated my drunken return one night after watching what should have been an easy win be anything but (not sure which game it was).
Anyway, I can agree with Jim for so many reasons, he's not a whiner, its just hard for those of us who were there the night WV came to town and Ray Jay was sold out and we were witnessing, unknowingly, the immediate Zenith of a very young football program. What do USF fans have to really look forward to? Even if they go undefeated it will be a footnote as the powers that be celebrate themselves in the club they structured to keep 'up and comers' out since college football, as Chris Fowler once put it "is about tradition" (my political history is a little rusty but isn't the reinforcement of the ruling class the whole idea of fascism? but I digress).
I moved away in 2009 fully intending on coming to one or two games a year. I have only been back in FL once. I do go out of my way to watch on Saturdays but I have also started a family. I have two young kids and live several states away. While I was changing USF was changing too, they changed their trajectory, they went from being on the rise to taking a step back, into a place they really can't get out of. their level of competition has gone down and the college football community once again sees them as part of the JV league. That in and of itself would pose its own problems but to have to bear those in a finicky sports town where you once had moved past those problems into the top tier, well, whether any of us like it or not, that just takes a lot of the shine off program and makes it hard to get excited about the upcoming season.
I'll still watch as I always do but that's about it. Everything else is simply taking time away from the other, more important things I have to do.
$0.02