bullzpen4636

there sure were some cheap shots in fenelly's column, him and johnstone are both pricks. in all fairness we need the trib's publicity leavit acting like an @ss to them isn't productive to building this program. brett is all right he takes his cheap shots, but he's been covering the bulls far longer than any other reporter in tampa and gives exposure to usf. the other guys could give two sh!ts about our program.

that is some funny sh!t

our receivers need to get better, they didn't do any of our qb's any favors last year by making the tough catches or finishing their routes. my problem is with us going to the air more this year will pj be able to do more than just be a caretaker qb. i still saw a couple of those underthrown passes to receivers in the flats, that he's been famous for, during the spring game. unfortunately with pj it appears to be mostly mental, something that is not so easy to correct. i don't think we'll be able to win against teams like kansas, unc, rutgers, pitt w/ pj throwing 8-10 passes a game and us playing as conservatively as we did last year. about grothe you have to admit he's worked his ass off and to me he is further ahead in his development than about any other qb we've had at this point in time. you have to hold your breath on those out patterns, but his pocket awareness, elusiveness, leadership, and ability to see the field is very impressive for a freshman.

i remember that uconn game didn't pj have a chance to win after the botched denson play and he threw an interception.

for the program's sake i hope so, at this rate it looks like we're going to whiff on both voss and marve, both are starting to receive some strong interest from acc and sec schools. not good, after we whiffed on thaddeus lewis last year and alwan lee not making it on campus.

facts are facts, regardless of proof? taking philosophy classes from o'leary?

it's very easy why do you think programs offer more scholarships than they can give, because they know some will be loss through attrition. if there is a chance to get stirrups on the field, and there was, you sign him, worse case scenario you can have a leg up after he graduates juco. miami has been doing this for years they place their inelgible guys like richard gordon in prep schools and sign them as soon as they are elgible. it's part of college football. obviously you prefer to not have to do this for every player, but stirrups was an exception. i believe 2 did not make it last year because of grades, which is about par for the course at most major programs.

i agree that we have to go after some big named players but you have to be smart about it. the point was about rose, he was a heavy fsu lean throughout the process and he was recruited nationally along with uf and miami. fsu wanted him badly and we were barely mentioned as a canidate although leavitt recruited the heck out of him. now leavitt did talk a bit about how close they were to get him, but i'm a bit skeptical of that considering we did not make his final 3 or 5 based on the many interviews he gave leading up to signing day(unless the newspapers have some personal vendetta against usf and they purposely left us out). i'm not as connected as you but on paper that looked like a wild goose chase, this wasn't peyton or mompremier but one of the top 10-15 recruits in the nation and we were going head to head with st. bobby and his national championships. no disrespect to the players we recruited but we really did not land a signature player last recruiting period, besides stirrups who everyone thought was going juco and he did, and the staff says so in post interviews. we also picked up only one left tackle which was a bit of a need (although i do like ide, he's a sleeper and a project) now did our desire to get rose have something to do with it, who knows. could we have diverted some of those resources we used on rose and maybe pick up a quality 3 star left tackle or would it even make a difference, who knows all you can do is speculate. much like you i trust the staff however it's legitimate to wonder if they got caught up in the race to get rose and missed out on a quality left tackle that we could've gotten if we pushed more. now to tie it all together, i'm all for going after simms, i think the pros outweighs the cons plus we have grothe if we happen to wiff at qb this year, however i don't fault people who may be a bit wary that our pursuit of sims may hurt our recruiting of voss or marve.

lol, you may have something there if you're coach wasn't a liar and cheater at georgia tech. btw sloppy seconds is when a team gets rejected by a conference in favor of another team and has to settle for admission into the conference where said team just vacated. and since peoples committed to maryland not ucf, and by all accounts never sought out ucf for a transfer you don't have much room to talk.

are you insinuating that o'liar would not listen to a player of stirrups caliber if he showed some interest? he was probably the third best prospect from the tampa area last year, he was being recruited on a national level by teams like southern cal before grades became a problem. if there is even a slight chance you could get him on the field, you make that gamble. especially for a program like usf and absolutely for a non bcs program like ucf. he'd have been the most highly rated recruit ucf ever got besides culpepper. and after seeing your d-line get demolished by our o-line last year you seriously could use the help.

let me just clarify and yes it is all a game and you do win some or lose some, however it's fun to follow and is incredibly important to any program. we are a fall back option to the big 3 and national programs, mompremier was a 4 star caliber player as was peyton, however a major reason we had a shot at those players is because the big 3 didn't show them much love, mompremier was thought of as a safety/lb tweener and peyton had some character issues (which were proven to be true). taurus johnson was a gator all the way until they stopped recruiting him. if we really want a prospect and a program like the big 3 or ut, etc also really want him with everything being equal we will lose 98 percent of the time. it doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue them, because things can happen, like you stated, they can sign someone else that is higher rated and lose interest in that prospect. unfortunately most of the time that will be how we get most 4 star prospects until we start maturing as a program, which i believe we will. rose however was a different case he had absolutely no weakness and his fall back option was uf, miami, or southern cal if florida state didn't want him. that why i thought it was a bit futile, however if he approached us like you stated than of course i don't fault the staff for recruiting him. he's from tampa so we had something on our side.

i completely agree, as i said similar things on my last post. and i also get annoyed at some of the fans who feel usf should be getting the stephen garcias of this world automatically and don't understand the process and how young this program is. james would have been a bull if not for the miami peer pressure, but as ingram proved that's a tough obstacle to overcome.

yeah that o'leary was really worth that 10 million contract, i believe that was the year his "good friend" the fridge stole his top 2 recruits at the 11th hour, peoples being one of them. from what little i saw of him i wasn't too impressed, but if he can crack the 2 deep at maryland after 1 year than he's a quality addition. hell maybe we'll switch to the 3-4 with all of these lb recruits j/k. the best part is hearing ucf fans rationalize him picking us over them, it can't be because we're a better program that pounded their team last year and are in a much better conference, it must be because he's either an academic risk and/or retarded (although that 4.0 gpa in high school makes that less likely) or o'leary said no because he broke his non-binding verbal commitment and his word is like oak because that's the type of high moral guy he is :

also sbien i don't respond to many of your posts but i read a lot of them because they are insightful and you know what you are talking about. but even you have to admit you overestimate our chances of landing some of these players, there's a whole slew of a-list prospects that you would pump up as being legitamite gets or heavy usf leans only to see us not get them, ingram, schaeffer, james, rose, bryant miller, darin baldwin, etc. the list goes on and on and i'm sure we'll be adding stephen garcia to that list as well. you're wrong more times than right, so forgive me if i treat your comments with guarded optimism. some of us, like joe, are more realistic and believe we can put some pretty darn good teams recruiting florida and getting a good mix of 3 star players and diamonds in the rough with an occasional 4 star type player. we start having some success like a va tech or k-state and regularly beat bcs teams like unc and kansas this year, than we'll be in a better position to bring in the nationally recruited players like rose or garcia. until than we'll be a fallback option for those type of players which is okay for now considering the newness of our program.

fair enough about rose and i don't fault the staff for recruiting him, recruiting is the lifeblood of the program. but we have been burned trying to get a big name player while neglecting a more plausible recruit, getting burned by cornelius ingram at the last minute hurt more because we couldn't get a capable plan b qb, even though guys like dt mcdowell showed interest in our program. do i think it will happen this year, no, but since there is no college football on tv it is fun to speculate.