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.

who the heck said anything about bringing in 5 star players? getting sims will put us in better position to get some quality players from new jersey and help build inroads into that state. however even if we get simms i doubt he starts immediately next year. unlike most years, we will have the luxury of grooming him at qb even if he is a highly touted recruit. he'll be a huge get but he's not expected to come in right away and change the face of our program. same with voss or marve they'll most likely learn under grothe or hill.

i looked at some tape on matt and read a bunch of articles on him, it's pretty apparent he has a very strong arm, with good size, and throws a very catchable ball. he's more of a pro style qb similar to a tom brady which doesn't really mesh to well with our current offense which emphasizes a very atheletic qb (hopefully this may signal a change in philosophy). biggest question marks are his accuracy and decision making, which he can improve on, especially considering his work ethic. he'll most likely be a high 3 or 4 star qb depending on his senior season, schools like notre dame and usc could offer late which would make his value skyrocket.

i'd like either voss or marve, if voss is our number one prospect we sure aren't acting like it. i know somewhere it was said that if voss committed leavitt would stop recruiting qb's, but another article i read quoted voss saying usf has cooled a bit (it was around the time west va started picking up more interest). why i have no f'ing idea, reality is we're not miami and we can't afford to slow play very good local recruits like voss or marve who show an eagerness to stay home and help build usf. i'm with you in that i hope this simms ordeal doesn't become a wild goose chase like daron rose became last year, but on the other hand if simms commits it will give us some national exposure and a nice story since chris starts for the bucs. the fact that phil and chris visited again yesterday was very good news. ÂÂ

getting simms here would be great for our program that you can't disagree with, you can argue about to what degree, but landing him would be huge and could potentially sway a recruit or two our way. especially from new jersey. i agree with joe, this could distract us from getting voss or marve, i'm kind of suspicious about why we aren't putting out the full court press for those guys, it'll probably cost us in the end. however, i'm not too worried about our qb situation, grothe is going to be a good one as long as he stays healthy. btw huggins would make us at least a sweet sixteen team in five years, lee roy's unbelievable 6 year contract to mccullum really screwed us.

unlike ucf, we aren't depending on true freshman to start immediately this year. frank harry was at best good for 3rd on the depth chart, leavitt said it and the folks who cover spring practice also were unimpressed. if anything it was a poor decision to recruit that guy and further proves how much of a crap shoot jucos are.

word was he was getting outplayed by the other dt's and he wasn't having much success against our o-line. probably added to his "homesickness." it's a huge step up in competition from juco, i'm not sure if he was completely ready, he definitely wasn't going to start immediately based on his spring practice performance so far. his loss plus et retiring does leave us a bit thin on the interior line.

the selections and seedings make a whole heck of a lot more sense after looking at who was actually on the committee per espn article. "The committee that granted the mid-majors unprecedented access is stacked with representatives from mid-major conferences. Seven committee members hail from the have-nots (Southwestern Athletic Conference, Ivy League, CAA, Horizon, Mid-American, Mountain West and Western Athletic Conference), while just three hail from the haves (SEC, ACC, Pac-10)." http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2366077&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

agreed cinci has a gripe but they were a bubble team and their was some doubt about their inclusion, especially with the injury to kirkland. cinci should have been in over seton hall, but i think the committe made a conscious effort not to give the BE 9 bids, despite all the talk of picking the best 34 teams, etc. after looking at ucla's schedule, you're right they deserve the 2 seed, gonzaga got the job done, but they didn't exactly blow away the competition as you would expect. ut as a 2 seed makes no sense. the fact is, it is looking more like members lobbied for a more diverse field which meant adding undeserving teams like air force and utah st., and hurt conferences like the be, big 10, and mvc.

rpi is pretty useless, but if you want to use that cinci has a better rpi and sos than michigan. michigan deserved to get in more so than than air force or utah st., but saying they are more deserving than cinci is ridiculous michigan's been in a freefall the past 9 games culminating in a first roud loss to minnesota. cincy's worst losses were to dayton who they later beat and louisville who was ranked at the time. all of their other losses were to tourney teams. they finished strong lost to nova by 2, beat west va to close out the season, should've beaten syracuse in the tourney and had previous wins against cuse,lsu,marquette, and vandy. ncaa politics kept them out, ucla a 2 seed, the sec with 6 bids, utah st/air force? ridiculous.

this is a no brainer "don't fear the reaper" by blue oyster cult great intro, of course plenty of cowbell, would be an instant crowd favorite