Drewski

12 minutes ago, Brad said:

It would be chasing a proven coach that will win at this level, immediately.  And you would transition to a coach in waiting within three years.  You build a foundation and a program that people are PROUD to be a part of and want to be a part of again.  This is what we are missing.  We shouldn't be trying to convince coaches to come here.  No one does their best work in that environment.

If it plays out as you say, I would absolutely love nothing more and it would be a hell of a story. The assumption that him being proven and successful 12 year ago would translate into success today is what has me a bit cautious. A lot of time has passed. 

That said, if CJL is announced tomorrow or monday, it would be awesome - and I'd be all in. 

2 hours ago, USFguy1977 said:

After this fustercluck, Jim Leavitt is the ONLY option IMO.  And I was one of the ones saying he'd never coach at USF again.

Kelly has screwed this up from every single angle and left the program in shambles.  According to media accounts, Deion's camp hasn't been particularly good at hiding things from anyone except Kelly.  If he had read the tea leaves 4 days ago and turned the page, the narrative would have been quite different.  Our fanbase had already been whittled away to all but the most diehard - and the way this was played just took out a whole new swath of those.  We can sit here and talk about good Xs-and-Os coaches or good recruiters all we want, but what we need more than anything right now is a tourniquet to stop the bleeding with the goodwill of the fanbase - and the ONLY person who can do that is Leavitt.  Yes, the optics are bad.  It will be obvious to the whole world that Leavitt was not choice #1 (because why wait to hire him?).  Kelly just needs to be up front and admit that he was chasing a unicorn because that is what the fans wanted.  Acknowledge that Leavitt was not the first choice but frame it as if he were a close second and may actually be the better fit for the program in the long-run.  Imagine the legend of the Jim after he builds the program, gets fired, and then comes riding back in on his white horse to save us from certain death...

Point being that none of it matters without fan support.  And sure, fans will come with the wins...but can the wins come without fans?

CJL would indeed be the only hire that would tame the fanbase after this debacle ... but like was articulated earlier, I fear this would be us chasing nostalgia and might be a mistake long-term. I would love nothing more than to be be wrong about this. 

1 minute ago, flsportsfan83 said:

We cant be that dumb. There is no way.

Agreed, but no amount of gut-wrenching disappointment is out of the question with this program anymore. 

Is anybody else growing more and more fearful that they are going to name Da Prato head coach tomorrow? If this truly was botched and we missed out on all our targets, I can see them spinning it by making it seem like Da Prato was the guy all along. 

24 minutes ago, Moreon said:

But look at their uniforms 

Almost more horrendous than our play. And that’s saying something. 

27 minutes ago, TheAccountant said:

The terms surrounding the Strong contract seem sketchy to me at best. These articles lead one to believe that Harlan signed CCS with one contract through the University, which would be subject to the Sunshine Law (and therefore public record) and then turned around and had him agree to a second contract through the University's private foundation that is not subject to the Sunshine Law (and therefore not public record). Is this common practice at other Universities? Typically if someone does something to try to get around public disclosure, it is something they shouldn't be doing. It would be interesting to see if the Board of Trustees (BOT) were wise to this agreement.

**Warning** about to bore you with financial information...

As of 6/30/2017 the Foundation has a total of $595,126,655 in net assets, however $224,788,997 of that is temporarily restricted (must be held for a certain amount of time or spent on a donor-specified purpose) and $356,817,473 is permanently restricted (aka endowments, which are typically invested and cannot be spent). That only leaves around $13,520,185 in unrestricted net assets (funds can be spent on whatever the Board of Trustees approves).  Of the $13.5m unrestricted net assets, $9,732,783 is tied up in land, building, and equipment. This means that at best, the Foundation only has around $3,787,402 of truly unrestricted net assets that could be spent on a CCS buyout. So if his buyout truly is $7.5m as has been floated around this forum, we are most likely going to be stuck with him unless another school takes him off of our hands (not likely). 

 

USF Foundation 6/30/2017 Fiscal Year Form 990

User name checks out 

One thing I wonder going forward is how the upcoming consolidation of campuses will impact our rankings / progress. In other words, are these rankings inclusive of the entire system already such that it will have no impact? Or when consolidation happens, are we going to drop because now additional campuses are being baked in that have less favorable metrics?

I am not knowledgeable about this whatsoever, but am genuinely curious what impact, if any, this will have on this trajectory. 

Maybe someone here with better knowledge can enlighten us?

It could be more to do with the last part of my post regarding the competitive pool shifting, rather than anything they are doing wrong per se. As noted in the above, while the number ranking didn't change significantly, their overall position still increased given the larger number of universities in the pool from last year. 

Regardless, still awesome to see our continued jump despite those same factors. 

New rankings are out. USF continues to show very well! Nice to see the academics side continue to shine and make us proud. FSU also had a great showing this year with a large jump in the rankings. I haven't seen much published yet by way of press releases other than FSU, but I can't wait to see how we publish / market the large strides we continue to make. 

LINK

2020 rankings:

National

#34 UF 
#57 FSU
#104 USF
#166 UCF
#218 FIU
#281 FAU

Public

#7 UF
#18 FSU
#44 USF
#79 UCF
#105 FIU
#140 FAU

2019 rankings for comparison:

National

#35 UF
#70 FSU
#124 USF
#165 UCF
#187 FIU
#230-301 FAU

Public

#8 UF
#26 FSU
#58 USF
#87 UCF
#100 FIU
NR FAU

One thing that I did see published is the following from the Miami Herald which might explain some large changes positive or negative:

"Words of caution: Be careful comparing this year’s rankings to those of last year.

If your school’s rankings changed significantly, it may be because the competitive pool got a little bigger this year. About 13% of ranked schools moved into different categories this year, so a university ranked previously as a regional university may now be a national university.

U.S. News and World Report explained in a press release that that’s because of the “2018 update” from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which U.S. News has used since the first Best Colleges rankings in 1983 to compare schools with similar missions.

Nova Southeastern University contacted the Miami Herald to point out that while it ranked 191st last year among 300 ranked universities, it was ranked 246th this year out of 400 universities. Though the ranking dropped, its position improved overall."

Regardless - pretty awesome!

Hilarious that this thread was revived.

Is cooper hall still cooper hall?

I'll check back in 2021.

"All I do is win"

Great story, but a little bit of a bummer in all this is that he has a Masters from UCF and also serves on their board of trustees. He seems to be more of a Knight than a Bull, I'm afraid.

Lol, bullrush. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it.

For the love of god, please get rid of the "All I do is win" playing after every score.

Agree with Nobull. Save the money and just win. Every marketing thing we do backfires. The ridiculous big 4 billboard still makes me cringe when I think about it.

Drew ski I agree on the last episode, especially with Carrie continuously defying the CIA and Nazir in the store.. Also with Brody being watched so close how is he able to sneak into the VPs office to get his pace maker code, would the CIA working with him or not really let him Rome around there and a few episodes ago he snuck into Estes office for the Islamic reporter lady to get something too (I forget what)

But to me it's a tv show and I assume, like in shows like "lost", a lot of it gets written on the fly and holes appear. As long as it keeps me interested and excited to see the next episode they are doing something right, not many shows do that for me.

Kinda excited to see what's up with the Flynn kid

Yup, couldn't agree more. Like I said, I still think it's a good show, and I still recommend it to others, but my main point was that in my mind, it went from an elite show last season, to just a good show this season. It's my way of pretending like I'm a TV critic to get my mind off of my day job . That said, still much better than 90% of the TV out there right now.

You will love Breaking bad. My favorite show going right now. Amazing mix of originality, great acting, suspense, and writing.

I've heard that Boardwalk became great this season. I tried watching when it first premiered, but I got too busy at the time to see it through. I will give it another shot.

Regarding Homeland, I still enjoy it, and I think it's a good show. However, I just think it got bumped down from the tier I type shows that consistently have excellent writing. I feel like they are requiring us to overlook some plot holes that are growing bigger and bigger with each episode. In my mind, it's turned into a 24 type show, rather than a high quality drama that a best drama emmy type show commands. Some examples of what has driven me crazy this season:

**Spoiler alert**

-How many times can Carrie continuously defy CIA direct orders and still be allowed to be a part of the operation and the CIA (e.g. her going after nazir in the warehouse right after Saul told her not to; her kidnapping brody and taking him off the grid to that motel, etc.)

-Carrie's obsession with Brody is getting a little tiring

-Brody is watched like a hawk while being a part of this investigation, yet Nazir is skyping him on his blackberry

-Nazir kidnapping Carrie himself and walking into a convenience store (this is the equivalent of bin laden running around in the US)

-The VP pacemaker scheme just seemed 24ish to me

As you can tell, most of my examples were from the last episode. Before that, I was willing to overlook some of the holes because the acting and thrill was there, but last week just took it a little too far for me. I think the tough spot for this show is that they have two star actors (Carrie, and Brody) that you obviously want to keep as part of the show for as long as you can. Unfortunately, because of their characters, there's only so much story you can get out of them before it becomes stale, or before you're forced to do wacky things to the story line to force it to work. Unless they kill off one of these two, I don't know where they can possibly take this in the third season and still make it plausible.

Admittedly, I'm a little nitpicky when it comes to TV shows

Fantastic show last season, severely downgraded this season. Still a good show, but not the caliber that everyone was hoping it was. Not enough plausible storyline to fill the second season, and I have no clue what they will do next season.

Breaking Bad, and Mad Men are still the cream of the crop. Everyone is high on Game of Thrones as well, but I haven't had the chance to watch that one yet.

This is hysterical. I seem to recall a thread on this board earlier in the season asking if Holtz was our Ron Zook. Now, we're talking about replacing him, with the REAL Ron Zook! Too funny.

James Coley seems like an interesting option.

I thought the same. It's early, and I don't know a ton about him, but my initial reaction was this same thought when I first heard his name.

We have 23,000 season tickets holders aprox. Skips buy out is 500,000 a year. I bet most season ticket holders would be willing to pony up 5.00 per game if Skip is fired and a REAL head coach is brought in. (6 games x 23,000 season tickets holders = 660,000) The school would cover the cost of the firing and profit 160,000 JUST OFF Season ticket holders, not counting the individual ticket buyers. It would bascially cost the School NOTHING. In fact if you got a REAL HEAD COACH you may actually increase your season ticket holder base and make more money. WAKE THE HELL UP DOUG AND JUDY.

simple Math.

Raising ticket prices?

First off, you assume that all 23k season ticket holders return even with no change in price which will not be the case, even from some of the die hards on this board. Refer to other threads from people who discuss not renewing and buying cheaper tickets off of stub hub if you don't believe me.

Secondly, if they tried to raise prices after these past two years, it would be ludicrous. It's like pleading for a company to raise its prices on a terrible product they manufactured so that they will have more money to fire their CEO. I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not sure it's a realistic possibility.

Zero brain.

I like this game..

All we do is lose

Lose, lose, no matter what. Lose,

lose, lose, no matter...

What has Skippy done?

He took the October swoon

Added September

So the construction site says that the new MC is set to open tomorrow. Anybody else get a chance to see this thing? I can't wait until I can make it to campus to walk around. Seems like only yesterday we were gawking over the renderings, now it's here!