Doc

Sheriff, hope you had a great time at the games. . . I eagerly await your account of the experience. As for 2007, I got my work schedule for next year and of course, just my luck, travel will be tough come late May-early June. At least March should be wide open for the womens-BBall tour deep into the NCAAs. And to the softball team, THANK YOU for the thrilling ride this season and look for bigger and better things in the year to come! The performance against UCLA shows how narrow the gap is between USF and the Pac10 elites.

Phil & Bulliever, good to see you guys! I remember that pom-pom incident, and with coach Eriksen approaching, our catcher stood up as if she had done something wrong and was about to be scolded. . . funny how the USM coach didn't complain until her team fell behind. Still, not as bad as that "third out in third inning" quote, right Phil? Some of the Death Row stories I remember hearing involved shoes being thrown into stands by coaches, burning effigies of Crum, pounding on the hotel window of the visiting head coach's window on the night before the game. I remember the tombstones my first season (1995-1996) but they slowly disbanded from there. Still, coach Deane of Marquette would cry in the papers every time he played us in the Dome and had one of his players get bonked in the head by a foam basketball during one of the time-out promotions where fans aimed at a guy wearing a Bball hoop. That was the last game where that promotion was used. . .

Thanks for the warm welcome!!! I still travel whenever I can to see my Bulls (any and all sports) in action, and yes, driving distance to me includes East Hartford, CT! At Ozzie's Sports Bar here in St. Louis, no employee would dare call us "Southern Florida" again, as I continue to educate and spread the word of the Bulls. I'm already public enemy #1 when the Gators fans gather there on Saturdays and they've already hatched plans to get me banned from their Big Screen section. And of course, at the hospital, the dry-erase board in the conference room is not filled with medical teaching but rather shows the Sweet-Sixteen softball brackets (last round, it had the inning-by-inning box scores of all our games). During BBall season, the Big East conference standings occupy a sizable portion of the board (with tie-breakers thanks to my nifty cards -- JewBull knows what I mean). Yeah, Collin, don't forget my creepy T-shirt with the "I (heart) (horny-hat-guy photo)" I tried selling to the DePaul, Louisville, and Southern Miss softball players after heckling them and getting them to flick me off. Reaper, it's been awhile!!! How have you been and how's that knee holding up? Yes, I'm still in St. Louis and will be so for at least another three years. As for Death Row, their history is undoubtedly entwined with that of USF fan-dom. I even had a former UAB player once approach me in the stands during a C-USA tourney game in Cincy to tell me about his recollection of their antics! Legendary stuff!

JewBull, how are you man??? Yes, I finally gave in and updated my 1994 desktop PC. . . Sheriff, the brewery is a nice place to visit, especially with the two free beers at the end of the tour. And yes, there are people who just keep getting back on line all day long (one scruffy visitor I saw even came dressed with a Budweiser cap and Busch T-shirt). I'll certainly let you know if I'll be at the Kansas game once my work schedule is out. Bullzfan4life, be careful at WVU! I actually went to the game between Pitt and WVU last year on Thanksgiving (on my way to Hartford for our game two days later) and man was it COLD! And windy as hell up in those mountains. Their fans love their team although they are a bit hard to understand when they speak -- seriously. I found myself having to just smile and nod when the locals approached me to ask about USF.

No doubt UCLA is a tough draw, but we have the pitching and defense to maybe keep the score low. I was there on the road in Louisville when our girls swept the then #18 Cardinals, who went 19-1 against the rest of the Big East (if you don't count their loss to Notre Dame in that hoax of a "tournament" where all seven road teams were grumbling about the conditions). But that was the Big East. The Pac-10 is brutal as all seven who made the 64 are through to the 16 (a combined 22-1 so far, I think). Even when they get shipped out east for a regional, they tear everyone a new one, like a six-seeded Oregon State did to us a little while back. Perhaps the biggest thing in our favor is the fact that I'll be absent. Aside from those two wins against Louisville, USF is a combined 1-12 (all sports, some pretty good like football, womens BBall, softball) when I make the drive this season! Sheriff, love that Cat in the Hat hat. Will be looking for it on TV this weekend.

It's good to be here! You're too kind. . . although about the SunDolls, I'm surprised there hasn't been a restraining order yet filed against me, especially after that altered photo with the girl wearing my horns ended up in The Oracle a few years back. Sheriff, I hope to see you at the Kansas game. . . I posted a response about that in that other thread. I still make it out to a handful of games in most sports and of course wear the same costume and revolting vest with grease stains from your tire we tried changing a half-decade ago. Not much has changed, except that now the DePaul Demon Dancers are frightened of me instead of the SunDolls. . .

How are you doing, Sheriff?  I finally broke down and got a computer from this century enabling me to log onto the message boards.  I hopefully will also be making the trek over to Kansas this season, only about 4 hours from St. Louis. . . Much shorter than my drive to UConn last year. Is that right that you live in Arizona now?  Hope things are going well for you.  What do you think of my Arizona Cardinals' new stadium?  Pretty nice, yeah?

Hey Collin, and the rest of you guys from back in the day! I finally figured out how to log onto this thing. I'll be holding my own Softball "Watch Party" here at Ozzie's Sports Bar in St. Louis, where each and every employee is now familiar with The University of South Florida. At first, when I requested our games, they looked at me like I had a third eye. But since, I got them to put a good number of our basketball games (mens & womens) on the Big Screen, as well as the Football Bowl Game. Last month, they had to let me in before they opened to catch the televised softball game versus Notre Dame. Of course, if the Bulls beat UCLA, I'll be making the relatively short drive to OKC. Although, as the sports-world's biggest jinx, I should probably stay home. At least the weather should be better than in those two days I spent in South Bend, sitting in 38-degree-rain to watch the girls lose to Pitt a few weeks back!