BullyPulpit

So long as Notre Dame maintains their BCS position, we should be ok. Oh, and also, so long as TCU finishes in the top 3 in the MWC (Remember my nightmare bowl scenario, in which TCU fills our spot in the Texas Bowl).

Where the hell do you put Rutgers in the poll? Louisville knocks off WVU and WVU only falls to #10. Rutgers has to move ahead of  Louisville, WVU, Boise State, Arkansas, UT, LSU. I say rank 'em 8 or 9. Even if they can win out, I just don't see how they can make up that much ground without the pollsters bumping them up to #3. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of pre-season rankings screwing everything up. Solution: No rankings AT ALL are allowed to be released until after the 4th week of the season. This is the only fair way to run the system. A team like Rutgers would not have had to wait so long to get ranked.

Is 49-13 the all time home record (including the Old Sombrero), or specifically the home record at the Ray Jay?

That is actually a picture of their headcoach's anatomy! ;D

Bulliever, I was not wishing that, come on, that was hyperbole at its finest. Maybe I shouldn't have said "die", but that was not the point at all. They were talking about taking a player out, intentionally, that is sick. My use of exaggerated language does not compare.

What an idiotic move scheduling Texas as your first home game in a brand new stadium. I can not wait to go play at LONGHORN FIELD in 2008...... ;D My only regret is that they didn't wait an extra year and schedule USF as their first home game, so that it would be BULLS STADIUM.

Although your attemps at standing up for GrothE were there I believe this zinger was why you got banned.  It's not really hard to point out why you got banned, man, but I like your spirit! Go Bulls!!! I realize the language might have been slighlty colorful, but not that bad. While it is true that we could probably beat SU with half of our starters, this remark was in response to their hopes of taking out Grothe with a premeditated injury. That is BS. It is one thing to hope your team plays physical and wins, but they were calling for an intentional act to ruin a young man's ability to play the game. And my other comments were totally in line. I was responding to their argument over our "lack of tradition" which is the biggest pile of crap argument LOSERS from LOSER schools can make. "Huh, Huh you only been around 10 years, huh, huh, we been around 100." Who gives a crap. Only LOSERS rely on past accolades. They obviously can't say anything about the product on the field, as we are obviously a superior program. PITT fans pulled the same crap, calling us South Florida Junior College. Even when we beat them there is no respect. We are the Rodney Dangerfield of college football. Finally, the question about them winning was legitimate. They have not won ONE BE game since we arrived. We were by far their most embarrassing loss last year, shutting them out AT HOME, 27-0. In the past 5 years their team's record is 20-36....PATHETIC. Both SU and UCONN are clearly the bottom dwellers of the conference and I do not see that changing any time soon. Their Pathetic Fans deserve that Pathetic Team!!!! GO BULLS

You guys won't believe what they banned from the site over....It is laughable. Thank God Bulliever & Co. are so cool. They can trash USF all they want too and talk about injuring Grothe, but they can't take someone coming on there and giving it back to them. Yes, they seriously hoped that their players were practicing "ankle twisting" so that Grothe would have to leave the game. The SU fans have become as pathetic as the team. http://mb33.scout.com/fsyracuseinsidersfrm7.showMessage?topicID=12712.topic

The flaw in your reasoning is that the alumni of UF, UW, UM, OSU, UT, PSU, etc. attended the schools while they HAD a football team. USF has relatively few area alums who attended while we had a team, and even fewer that were there while we have been playing D-I, and even fewer while we have been BCS. Look at our student section now. It is rabid and growing by the season. Those students will be the foundation of our fan base in the years to come, but they still have to graduate and become financially stable enough to afford the commitment of season tickets/donations. I predict a bump of between 500 and 1000 of alumni season ticket holders every year over the next decade, and that is with our current performance. If we were to win a BE Championship and get to a BCS Bowl, that numbr would spike (not only with alumni, but also with "casual fans". If my conservative numbers are right, in the next 10 years we will have between 22,000 and 27,000 season ticket holders, not too shabby.

WINNING solves the problem in big cities. All of those programs you cited to have years and years of tradition to lean on, but it does not change the fact that there is nothing else to do in those towns. How many 5-6 seasons could a school like UT take in a row and still keep their fan base....a lot. Move that same team to LA and they would start losing the CASUAL fan. Yes the diehards are out there, but those with no strong tie other than being a fan would not continue to support a loser in a town where there are a plethora of other options.

Look around, guys like us are the minority at most sporting events!  Most of the people in the stand don't know how many yards rushing a RB averages per carry or that a LB like Nicholas covering a TE down the field is a great play.  We are the minority.  Go to some of the games where their are 80k + in the stands. They are mostly girls, women, children, and older people.  Sure the student section is packed, but they are there for the party.  I would bet that there were just as many hard core FB fans in RayJay as Camp Randall this weekend.  Fans that really know what they are watching, the balance was made up those there for the event.  Why is this relevant? Because our end zone tickets cost $42 PER TICKET, face value.  Do the math.  There was 81k at that game the cheapest ticket was $42.  Buys an awful lot of stuff. That is why creating an event is so important.  Not for the people like us that would go watch USF at Pepin Root Stadium, but for the fringe fans that spent a lot of money.  It is a business and USF needs to approach it as such. While I do not agree fully with everything you say, I do agree that we could do a little more to attract the casual fan. The problem lies in the fact that unlike most major college towns, we are not the only show in town. A Saturday afternoon in Happy Valley or Rocky Top....what the hell else are you going to do. It is cold, dreary and there isn't anotehr thing to do. In Tamp however we have great shopping, dining, theme parks, beaches, parks, great weather....there is more competition for that entertainment dollar. It will all come in time. Success breeds success, ask the Bucs, ask the Lightning. After our first BE championship (within the next 3 years) our season ticket sales will increase astronomically and the school will be able to pump more money into the gameday experience.

With USF reaching bowl eligibility, my wife and I started to do some research as to the cost of trips to our potential bowl locations (Birmingham, Houston, Toronto). As I was going through the possibilities, I found a scenario that would be as bad for the Big East as it can get....here it goes. 1. Louisville wins the conference, goes to BCS (Rutgers could be substituted here) 2. ND loses another game and goes to the Gator Bowl. 3. The Sun Bowl opts for a Big 12 team. 4. The Mountain West Conference ends up with 4 or 5 bowl eligible teams, with TCU not finishing in the top 3. This would give the Houston Bowl (a fledgling bowl game) the option of picking the nearly home town TCU team over EITHER the team from the Big 12 or the BE rep. If they chose TCU to replace the BE rep. 5. The Meineke Car Care Bowl has already taken Navy 6. That would place the second place team from the BE in the BIRMINGHAM BOWL (WV/Rutgers) 7. The third place team from the BE would land in Toronto at the International Bowl. (WV/Rutgers) This would potentially lead to 3 Bowl Eligible BE teams being without a bowl game. (USF/PITT/Cincy) I project 1 bowl vacancy from the Big Ten and the Poinsetta Bowl will have a vacancy as Army is not eligible. Then there are the 4 at-large BCS spots. 1 is likely to go to Boise State. If a BE team does not get one, then the PAC 10, Big Ten, and SEC would get the other 3. This would create another 1 to 3 bowl openings. In this scenario, there are likely to be between 3 and 6 bowl openings, but there is no guarantee that any of the bowls would take a chance on USF with the youth of the program. Of course we could make the whole argument moot by getting to 8 wins and being the team with the best record without an automatic bid, but at 6 or 7 wins, this scenario gets scary for us. While I realize it is one scenario and there is a lot of football to be played, the bottom line is this: 1. Go Notre Dame 2. TCU- finish in top 3 of MWC 3. Indiana, Mich St. and Minn - we want all of them to lose 4. Why am I wasting my time, Bulls will win out and this whole post will be moot!

'>http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2648764 It was ESPN's 2nd most watched college football game....EVER. And it was by far the most watched Thursday night game ever. Congrats to our conference breathern and I can't wait for the hype behind USF next season!!!!

Speaking of commercials....did you see the one for West Virginia. The announcer states "West Virginians are (long 2-3 second pause) different...." It was hilarious. My wife and I started cracking up.

"Charitable" Bump

14-10 Bulls

http://www.strideforstrays.org/about.html This is a fundraiser (starts at 9 am) being held at Al Lopez Park (about two minutes from the stadium) to benefit stray cats and dogs. It is a great event. Drop by on your way into the game tomorrow and donate 1 stadium's beer-worth of money....you know your gut can do without that last beer anyways!!!! I know that my wife will be in "dog heaven". Thank God we will be going to the Bulls game after and couldn't possibly adopt another. (Already have saved 3 dogs and 3 cats)

As far as tickets available go by price range: $29.00 Section 107 (5 yard line-Goaline) Row T $24.00 Section 231 (Goal line) ROW C (Row 3) ! $20.00 Section 123 (South Endzone- Center) ROW R (I believe they fill by section and then move over, which does not bode well for us right now.) This is not looking so good. I hope we have a very large walk-up tomorrow and/or all the season ticket holders show up.

I know it is being broadcasted on ABC 28 locally by ESPN Plus. I do not know for certain that Gameplan is not including the game, but I do not think that they are.

I don't know about a bump, but Homecoming would be a great game to give away loads of tickets to organizations/groups. I cannot speak for what the marketing department has done for this one, but second level corner seats and south endzone seats should have been generously donated for this game.

Just went on ticketmaster to see what type of seats were left for the PITT game and there are still some really good home side sideline seats left. I hope we have a good crowd out for this one, it would be ashame if our fans did not get to see the Bulls whip the Panthers live and in person.

How many UNDEFEATED teams are left out in college basketball? That is just a bad comparison. If there are 2 undefeated BCS conference schools, there is little to no doubt they should be playing in the NC game. If U of L gets there, they would have beaten Miami, WVU, Rutgers, Kansas State and PITT (and USF too!) Those would be 5 impressive/nice wins, with 3 coming on the road. Im sick and tired of the SEC bullshizit. They chose their conference affiliation, the conference chose to have a championship game, they make loads of money as a result, and their bottom feeders are some of the worst in all of college football (Ole Miss, MSU, Vandy, Kentucky)......waaaahhhhhaaaaaaa!

I said it before in other posts, and I am probably chugging the Kool-Aid here, but if USF can somehow win that Auburn game next year, watch out. We have seen what can happen when everything clicks for this team. We will have UofL and WVU at home, and the rest of our OOC schedule is at least somewhat respectable (UNC, KU, UCF). If we win the Auburn game, we are top 25 for sure (likely 3-0). If we keep winning after that who knows??? BCS or Bust in '07

Why dont we all just let the games play out? I can sit here and make an argument that any team in the top 20-30 could beat any other on any given Saturday. Teams have off games and some get into ruts and play poorly, but a lucky bounce here and there is what decides most of these games anyways. Yes, OSU looks like the most complete team in the nation right now, and Michigan's D looks scary good, but all of that can change on any given gameday. If I recall, last year's Georgia defense was supposed to shut down WVU's offense. They had home field advantage and were the champs of the "best conference in football" . Could someone refresh my memory, I seem to have forgotten what happened in that game.

WVU did not get destroyed.They fell behind early in the second half because of turnovers and a sore arm on Slayton. Louisville had not shown that they could stop WVU's offense until they started putting the ball on the ground. If Slayton doesn't come out injured, those two teams might still be playing as I type this, as neither defense could stop the other. As an aside, how awesome would a WVU versus Michigan game be? The nation's best running attack versus the best run D.