Papa_Bull

It's OK to lower expectations AFTER we sell all our season tickets, not before. Let the buyer beware. ;D

I'm working on it right now.

You must have a brother on the WVU board:

"maybe that (closed) scrimmage Saturday really turned some heads?" Yep, that must be the reason for the smart money now moving on USF. Our QB's are really something else.

Uh Oh! I know NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTHING! ;D Hack attack has Bulls first in Big East I've got to give credit where it's due: some Bulls fan has written a pretty good little poll-hacking program in the last day or two. That ESPN.com "SportsNation" Big East poll referenced here just yesterday is now insanely high on USF -- the Bulls, thanks to some shall-we-say ardent voting in the past day, have passed Louisville as the preseason champ, with more than 35 percent of the vote; running back Andre Hall has double the votes of any other offensive player, as does linebacker Stephen Nicholas in the defensive voting. There's some kind of Florida-voting joke here, but just to check the math: of the first 5,000 or so votes cast, about 100 had USF first. Of the next 6,000 or so, more than 4,000 had the Bulls winning the Big East. Now I'd never underestimate the ability for fans like the ones at thebullspen.com to mobilize themselves, even for a little online balloting ... maybe that (closed) scrimmage Saturday really turned some heads? http://www.sptimes.com/blogs/usf/

In case anybody missed it in the Hill thread today: Now that USF has received the LSU release for Hill, we can talk to him:  LSU NOTES Amp Hill, who quit the LSU team last week, is expected to visit the South Florida campus in Tampa on Monday and talk to coaches about a transfer. "»  http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/SPORTS/508210303/1006

Sounds about right. ;D

That should be one BIG... IF

I guess Amarri won't be our secret weapon too much longer.

Injuries are part of the game. Blaming a loss on one injured player is not giving the winning team its due. We were 22 point underdogs and dominated that game for the most part with mainly Division 1-AA recruits.

I understand completely why Matt has to redshirt, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable with him starting at PSU than any of the other QB's we have.

Like Pitt fans back in 2001. They had one player out, I think also a WR, and blamed their loss on that. :

Posted on Sun, Aug. 21, 2005  I wonder if PSU had a scrimmage yesterday as well? Question marks linger for Penn State http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/12436182.htm Their QB doesn't seem to be a Heisman candidate either with a 44% completion record, yet he thinks he'll play on Sundays. JoePa had this to say about that: Joe Paterno winced, though, when told that Robinson said he was playing for his NFL future. "Gee, I hope not,'' said the 78-year-old Penn State legend, who's entering his 40th year as the Nittany Lions' coach. "When they start thinking NFL, that worries me. You better pay attention to South Florida, the first game. Never mind the NFL. He hasn't proved he's a great quarterback in college yet. If he said that, he and I are going to have a talk.'' http://www.suntimes.com/output/campus/cst-spt-psu21.html

Misery loves Company: 08/20/2005 Rodriguez Unhappy With Saturday's Scrimmage http://www.wvmetronews.com/index_forsub.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=12658

No that doesn't count. Btw, It wouldn't matter if you had your periscope up or not, you can run but you can't hide from USF. http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2005/03/fieldwork5.html

USF's QB Battle More Clouded By BRETT McMURPHY bmcmurphy@tampatrib.com Published: Aug 21, 2005 TAMPA - Instead of the University of South Florida's quarterback competition clearing up Saturday, it became even more murky after what offensive coordinator Rod Smith called a "below average" performance. During the 119-play scrimmage, sophomore Courtney Denson worked mostly on the first team, while junior incumbent Pat Julmiste split time with the first and second teams. Freshman Carlton Hill was mostly with the second team. "There was no separation," Smith said. "I thought the overall performance, the combined effort of all three, was below average." The scrimmage was closed and statistics were not made available. "The quarterbacks did some good things and some not so good things," USF coach Jim Leavitt said. "It's still up in the air. Three guys are competing. Nobody's the clear-cut guy." Denson and Julmiste each threw a touchdown pass to sophomore wide receiver Amarri Jackson. "I did OK, but I made a lot of mental mistakes," Denson said. "As a quarterback, you have to be more mental than physical. I'm still learning too. "I think I helped and hurt my chances. I did good at times, but made mistakes. You can't make mistakes, you'll hurt the team." Julmiste summed up his day as "below average." "I had a couple of mental mistakes and a couple of misreads," he said. "I shouldn't have that. That's why I would grade myself below average." Hill said he has room for improvement. "I'm still going through the process of getting better," Hill said. "I can't say I helped myself today, but I can say I'll only get better." Smith said he's "waiting for someone to step to the plate." "Carlton did some good things, but he's young," Smith said. "He didn't have much help. The other two guys had some mental mistakes. We have to be more productive and we weren't. "They've both had good camps and they've done very well so far this fall, but this is the first live full-game scrimmage we've had. It wasn't just the quarterbacks, I don't think we played very well as a whole unit. Everyone looks to the quarterback obviously and that's where it starts." Leavitt said the first-team defense "stood out" and Jackson and running back Chad Simpson "did some good things." ODDS AND ENDS: Larry Antonucci, USF's director of football operations, had a good reason for missing his first day of work in seven years with USF. His wife, Danielle, gave birth to their son, Johnny, Saturday morning. ... Jackson, who played basketball at HCC the past two seasons and hadn't played football since high school, is listed as the starter over incumbent WR Johnny Peyton. ... The placekicking job remains undecided between freshmen Kyle Bronson, Mike Benzer and William Criswell. … USF will hold its fan appreciation day Saturday at 11 a.m. when fans can attend the final 30 minutes of practice. http://bulls.tbo.com/bulls/MGBTNKSQMCE.html

Now that USF has received the LSU release for Hill, we can talk to him: LSU NOTES Amp Hill, who quit the LSU team last week, is expected to visit the South Florida campus in Tampa on Monday and talk to coaches about a transfer. "» http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/SPORTS/508210303/1006

"This doesnt mean anything. The coaching staff never tells the media anything. Their comments are always noncommital." That's what I thought too LAST year when I read them.  :-/

Great story Greg: College football All the right moves Andre Hall, USF's star running back, approaches life like he does a game of chess, which he grew to love. By GREG AUMAN, Times Staff Writer Published August 21, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TAMPA - He could choose the king, and you'd understand completely. He could answer with the queen, the most powerful piece on the board, and you'd have no reason to argue. But ask Andre Hall what his favorite chess piece is, and it's that rare question to which USF's record-setting running back answers without hesitation. "The knight," Hall says, smiling. "You never know if I'm going to go left or right, front or back. You never know. As a knight, you can do many things. You can cover eight spaces. At my position, I have to wear a lot of hats, so it represents me the most." Take a step back, think of a knight's unique L-shaped moves across a chessboard, and you can picture the shifty running back making cuts, leaving a defense in, well, pieces. And if it seems unbelievable that an all-conference star would be as at ease talking chess as he is football, you don't know unbelievable. Just ask Hall about the time he beat Jim Brown - yes, that Jim Brown - in a chess match ... the night before a game. For Hall, chess and football are much the same game. Some athletes visualize themselves in sports video games - and Hall does that, too. But more often, he sees himself on a chessboard. He sees chess in football. He sees football in chess. He sees chess in life. "I use chess for everything," Hall said. "For living. Make sure your next move is your best move." * * * Ask Hall if he could play chess with any four people, alive or dead, and his response is, initially, predictable. "Bobby Fischer has to be one. He's the greatest," Hall says. "And I played once with Jim Brown. ... I actually beat Jim Brown in chess." Wait a sec. Brown, like NFL legend Jim Brown? Hall of Famer Jim Brown? Maybe-best-football-player-ever Jim Brown? "He's my idol," said Hall, a senior who turned 23 Saturday. "Him and Barry Sanders. They're both quiet. They get up. They don't celebrate. That's why I like them." True story: Hall was a sophomore at Garden City (Kan.) Community College the night before a game at Butler County in El Dorado, Kan. The hotel the Broncbusters were staying at happened to be hosting a chess tournament with the winner earning a game against Hall's idol. "You might not get an opportunity like this ever again, so I'll let you enter the competition," Hall recalled his coach telling him. The coach helped get Hall into the tournament at the last minute, and not only did he play, he won, setting up the match with Brown. Hall promptly beat him. "Time of my life," Hall said. "The whole time we're playing, I'm looking at his hands. His hands are so large. He's got the biggest hands ever. He shook my hand, and I felt like a woman. Like, "Please, try not to break my hand.' " In November, Hall and USF will play at Syracuse, which will retire Brown's No. 44 jersey that day. Memo to coach Jim Leavitt: Keep close track of Hall - and Brown, for that matter - the night before the game. * * * Before Andre Hall, before Jim Brown, before even football, Ben Franklin wrote that the merit of chess is in three "very valuable qualities of the mind" strengthened by the game: foresight, "which ... considers the consequences that may attend an action;" circumspection, "which surveys the whole chessboard, or scene of action;" and caution, "not to make our moves too hastily." Hall, like Franklin, finds the greatest value in caution, learned from the simple rules of chess. If you touch a piece, you must move it; if you put it down, you must leave it there. Ask Hall a question, and he'll pause a split second, surveying a mental chessboard, making sure the words he has in mind are in fact the best ones he can offer. He learned chess in St. Petersburg's Mel-Tan Heights neighborhood from an old man who played with friends in a nearby alley. Hall knows him only as Pops, but he has him to thank, in some small way, for the path that has led him to the cover of USF's media guide. "I'd walk by him every day, and one day, he stopped me, said, "Young man, what do you want to do with yourself?' " Hall recalls. "I'm about 16, so I'm thinking, "What's this old man talking about?' He's got a long beard, dreadlocks. But he made me think. He said, "You're getting to the age you need to think about the future.' " He taught the game to Hall, who soon was bringing friends to learn from Pops. They drew a makeshift chess grid on a table ("So you couldn't lose the board," he said) and kept a bag of pieces on the front porch of one house, playing marathon games. "When I say all day, I mean starting at 3 o'clock, going to 11 at night," Hall said. In watching Pops and his friends play, Hall was struck by the sheer silence of the game. This was the opposite of football; the only word spoken was "check." "There was no talking, no back and forth," he said. "The focus I got from that, it helped you know what you had to do. I took that into my perspective on life." Chess purists will tell you saying "check" is something of an insult, suggesting an opponent doesn't realize his king has been threatened or defeated. That said, Hall enjoys the game too much to yield to a sometimes stodgy code of conduct. "He loves to tell you "checkmate,' " said Hall's brother, Johnny Barthel, who can remember when chess replaced Monopoly as the embodiment of a friendly sibling rivalry. Give Hall a short break during a locker room photo shoot, and he takes the prop chessboard to the locker of safety Danny Verpaele for a quick game. The two were next-door neighbors last year, and when Verpaele left a chessboard out on a counter one day, Hall insisted on a game. "He beat me in like 10 minutes," said Verpaele, who loses again this time as teammates gather around. "We played maybe three times. He killed me." Barthel said chess has made his brother a better person, a more patient young man. Hall says he found chess about the same time he got himself together academically, getting his grades up enough to be eligible to play football his senior year at Dixie Hollins. That ultimately allowed him to come to USF two years later, and the same patience kept him with the Bulls this year. After last season, Hall considered leaving early for the NFL draft. Instead of making any rash moves, he did what chess players call "sitting on your hands," getting advice from Leavitt and running backs coach Carl Franks. He wrote to the NFL's advisory panel, which told him he'd likely be taken in the fourth round. The fourth round is the draft's second day. Second-day picks aren't knights in the NFL as much as pawns, and staying at USF not only would improve his draft position, but put him that much closer to a degree. "It wasn't a big deal, wasn't the first day or anything. I'm sure I can do better," Hall said. "And they told me my weaknesses. Lack of home run speed, taking on bigger defenders, blocking. That motivated me a little more to work even harder." * * * On a chessboard, the knight is a stealth weapon, easier to hide than the linear attacks of a bishop or rook. It's the only piece that can attack a queen without first being vulnerable to being taken itself. Hall will not be able to surprise many opponents this fall. A year ago, he was a largely unknown name, a coveted recruit lost by many programs through stints at two junior colleges. He started slowly, rushing for just a combined 98 yards in his first two games. He emerged with three touchdowns and 119 yards in USF's double-overtime win at Texas Christian then fully arrived three weeks later, rushing for 200 yards against Army. If anyone hadn't noticed Hall, that ended Nov.3 on national television, when he rushed for a school-record 275 yards and two scores in a 45-20 road upset of Alabama-Birmingham. It opened a four-game stretch in which he rushed for 725 yards, ultimately finishing with a USF-record 1,357. "He was the new kid on the block last year, not a name many people knew. He was still a novelty," Franks said. "This year, he's more of a target. He's the guy people know about. Defenses will be more geared to stopping him." To counter that, Hall's dedication in the past year has been unprecedented. He had never played spring football before this year, never worked out in the offseason before this one, never volunteered for summer workouts before this summer. "He realizes he'll have to be better than last year," Franks said. "He has to be stronger. But he's had a year's worth of hard training. He's stronger, more durable with a little more speed in him this year." If Leavitt has concerns about Hall, they might be in how he's able to handle the spotlight now fixed on him and maintain his focus. Here again, chess is football's ally for the Bulls. Along with foresight, circumspection and caution, chess has reminded Hall of humility, of the relative unimportance of any single piece. Queens are sacrificed in chess. Knights are traded for positioning on the board, and a pawn that sticks around long enough to reach the other end of the board can become a queen itself. It's a game best played with pieces moving in concert, with the threat of one piece clearing the success of another in one coordinated attack. "The most important thing for me is bringing everybody together, being a leader, making sure everybody's okay," Hall said. "I want to make sure everybody's on the same page. It's my job to be a good leader. I know I'm going to get it done, but it's about the team."

NOT a good sign! I guess we shouldn't expect too much improvement at QB for some time.

Link is alive now: College football Quarterbacks fail to impress USF coaches By Times Staff Writers Times Wires Published August 21, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TAMPA - After a three-hour, 119-play scrimmage in the 91 degree Saturday morning heat, this much is certain: There is no apparent starting quarterback for the Sept. 3 opener at Penn State. Junior Pat Julmiste, sophomore Courtney Denson and freshman Carlton Hill got numerous reps, including goal-line work from 6 and 3 yards. "All the different guys did good things," coach Jim Leavitt said. "But it's still the same three guys." Offensive coordinator Rod Smith said, "This is what you want to see in live situations, and they just didn't perform very well. I'm not happy with all three of them. Carlton wasn't bad, though it was his first time. He did what he was supposed to do, but we didn't have much help for him." Senior running back Andre Hall and junior linebacker Stephen Nicholas sat out to avoid injuries. With freshman running back Ricky Ponton out with a sore shoulder, freshmen Chad Simpson, Moise Plancher and Benjamin Williams shared rushing duties. "Chad Simpson ran the ball hard, has been for two days, and Amarri Jackson did some good things at receiver," Leavitt said of the sophomore from Sarasota. "But until you see every play on film, it's hard to single guys out." - MIKE CAMUNAS, Times correspondent

I saw that yesterday, but I don't think Mike [or Velcro] has a program for that one. Of course, I could be wrong.  ;D

Maybe we don't need a QB. The Center can snap the ball to Andre Hall and he can just run with it. LOL

Maybe Matt should take off his redshirt.

This is one story I'm dying to read.