Orlando Bull

:26 left in the quarter on my TV.

I can live with most of this, except, CWT was able to recruit. He sent guys to the NFL with those same facilities and infrastructure issues. Yes, he left, but if we hired Heupel instead of Strong, where would we be? Assume he would have stayed here until the same time he left for Tenn, so we would have had to hire another coach then... the point is, if you continue to hire good coaches, you can sustain success. We have consistently hired poorly. College football is about the coach and qb. A great coach can find and or develop a QB (or a system that works with the QB they can find). I would personally fire Scott tomorrow. My wish list would be Leavitt or CWT. If you're just holding the fire hose, those guys can do it and actually win some games I think. Let one of the guys that built the building hold the hose that is trying to put out the fire. After that, if I had to hire someone that has never been the coach here, my call would be to Ken Dorsey.

This is my opinion on the Charlie Strong story. I was happy when we hired him, thought he would do better here based on his roots in Florida and being a pretty good coach at UF and UL. He was a great recruiter for UF and a good DC for them. He also had a chip on his shoulder because he wanted and should have gotten many chances at HC before Louisville. At UL, he had Clint Hurrt recruiting for him, maybe blurring the lines of what was legal at the time, but they brought in good players and Strong was a good enough coach that when his players had significantly more talent than the opponents, his teams would win. He is relatively conservative (as most defensive coaches are) and it worked out. He was still recruiting Florida heavily. Texas shows up with a bunch of money, Strong moved up by his recruiting more than anything, but it was a new ball game, no connections there, and he failed. Probably would have been better with more time, but Texas isn't in the business of more time. Here, I honestly think 2 things happened. I think he lost some of his fire, or had an ego and didn't think he needed to put in the work after proving himself already in life. I think he thought this job was beneath him and wanted to get out as quick as possible. Second, I think he probably recruited against himself. Already thinking the job was beneath him, he looked at recruits and though that they could do better, like UF or Louisville, why should he waste his resources pursuing a recruit that was "too good" to come to USF? Overall, I think his ego was too big for this job. Not having really followed him closely before he was here, I wonder if he was always so emotionless and if that has worked against him to an extent throughout his career.

You know... you can both be right. The quality QB allowed Strongs defenses to play with the lead and also maintain time of possession to keep defense fresh. Saw it here with Q, he wanted to slow everything down and really improved defensive metrics in year 1.

I get frustrated by stupid things, like taking a knee before the half. At the least, hand it off to Battie and maybe he breaks one, or throw a deep ball, you haven't won a meaningful game in...ever... show a little fight. I think with GB we may have had a shot at this game, but history tells me that isn't accurate with this coach.

This thread is great entertainment. To bring it back on point though, I would agree with you except the part in bold. I think that is what troubles me the most. The Team has played their best games against UF and Cincy. UF is going to be the easiest game to get any USF team up for. Every single person on our team would have loved to get an offer from UF and they're all out there playing to show that they are just as good as those other guys. Cincy is on a million game win streak and ranked. Again, easy as a player to play up to that competition. With the UF game, I really hoped that we turned a corner, that Scott had found something and we could start to build on it. But, you come out for UL and ECU flat and get blown out, it tells me that the players have the ability to play with emotion and focus, but the coaching staff doesn't have the ability to bring that out of them on a regular basis. I would also say that we can't lay this all on Scott, aside from the obvious fact that he is the head coach and responsible for the whole thing, so, we can... But... It's a tough position he is in, if you don't nail your first staff as a college coach, you're sunk. The coordinators and position coaches should be getting their guys prepared, Scott isn't directly responsible for all 11 guys on the field at any given time. But, now that he has been so bad, if I am a good assistant, there is no way I am jumping on this sinking ship. It's the number one mistake our bad hires have made. Holtz brought all of his C-USA buddies over and gave them big raises and they weren't ready for BCS football. While Leavitt's staff right before was already coaching at that level for 70% of the money. Once the blood is in the water, it's nearly impossible for a head coach to fix it. If I were a head coach motivational speaker, that would be my first order of business... choose your staff wisely, because they can break you in no time flat. Of course, the flip side of that is that a new head coach that has never done it before has very little street cred with good assistants. It's not like he can go hire a Steve Sarkisian/Lane Kiffin type as an assistant the way Saban can. A good assistant is taking a gamble to coach with someone who has never been a head coach before, so, you get position coaches and make them coordinators, or very junior assistant position coaches and make them position coaches. They can't recruit, they haven't developed enough to spot strengths and weaknesses of their players, etc. If you're lucky as hell, you get a winner, but more often than not, you get what we have. Is anyone on earth concerned that some other school is going to hire a coordinator away from us? And here, I'll go back to a little blame on Scott... I believe that Leavitt didn't have the funds to get great assistants either. But, I think Leavitt made up for it with his own time. In my mind, I see him obsessing over every detail of every thing on his team and inserting himself into it all. I think Scott is likely more involved with offense. He has a young family, and I doubt that he puts in the hours that Leavitt did. I am not saying he is wrong, but as a manager of people, I either have to make up for their shortcomings, cycle new people in and out until I find winners, or, just prioritize myself and my family and live with poor results. I am more in the first category, but often times I wonder if that isn't detrimental to my overall health and wellbeing.

The whole system is brutal. You need to have a coach extended out for recruiting purposes, but it creates the crazy buyouts that coaches aren't worth. I would love to see USF pioneer some other way to do this. Maybe a buyout based on wins... i.e. - Coach Scott gets $100k per year left on his contract, plus $100k per win he has brought to the program. So, someone like Taggart would have owed USF a good amount and it is warranted for his new school and helps USF recover and find another coach, but someone like Scott who has been awful here wouldn't be owed very much on top of a minimum amount of base salary. Something has to give, I know the well is running dry, but you can't keep marching out a terrible product, or the revenue stream will continue getting smaller and smaller. I didn't like Strong, and I am glad we fired him, but his teams would have likely produced more than 4 wins in the last 2+ years. We can't keep looking for signs of life with this staff, there is very little evidence to suggest that they can turn it around.

If I am MK, here is what I am evaluating for the rest of the season. What's next. We put up a big fight against UF, and honestly should have won that game. The next week, we were back to the base line for what Scott has given us. Was the UF game a start to turning the corner, or, did the players just elevate themselves because of the emotion of that game. Same applies next game. Will the team that took Cincy and UF to the wire show up, or, will the ECU/Ville team show up? If it's the latter, I don't know how you can keep this coach. He has a team that is at least capable of being competitive with good teams, but he is unable to get them prepared and motivated for more than a couple of games. A good coach would have also won at least 1 of those 2 games (UF or Cincy), but forget about that for the moment, I am really interested in what our next game looks like. I have a hunch that our players are better than they are being coached, and when they are motivated, they can put together a decent game. But, there is nothing motivational about this coach and staff, so they show up and get their brains beat in most weeks. On another note, is it true that Scott's buyout is less than $200k? If so, if I was MK, he would be gone today. https://sports.betmgm.com/en/blog/college-football/what-is-jeff-scotts-buyout-fired-south-florida-bm01/#:~:text=What is Jeff Scott USF,17%2C 2020.

I wonder how much of it is based on how bad we are too? If we were good and competing for something, guys play through some of these things. When you are winning 1-2 games per year, it is more likely that I want my quad to fully heal before I get back out there and risk something else. I also don't think this team is in on this coaching staff, so there is probably some level of not being over zealous about getting back out there happening.

He's a defensive coach, didn't want his defenses ranked in the bottom third of college football every year, that would look bad on him. Look at it from his perspective... 2016 under CWT - 11-2, defense ranked no. 120 2017 under Strong - 10-2, defense ranked no. 37 See how great Strong did with the same players and no actual improvement to the defense. No drop off really in record (not sure why we played 1 less game in 2017). His only miscalculation was that it took more than 1 year to get that UT stink off of him. This was a huge resume boost for him and if someone came calling, Flowers would have single-handedly gotten 2 average coaches paid like they were top tier. You are thinking like someone who would do what it takes to win, not someone who is trying to protect their reputation. And there lies the problem. A good coach will evaluate the talent they have and plan around that. A bad coach has a plan, and tries to make the talent work within their system. Leavitt always had a good defense, but on offense, he had a run-first group (Andre Hall years), a balanced offense with pocket passer (Blackwell years), Spread Option offense (Grothe/Daniels). He and his staff used the tools they had.

This. In all honesty, this is why Strong drove us crazy in QFs senior year. Q could run an offense to score fast, but Strong wanted to slow things down so that his defense wasn't exposed. Defensive coach wanted to protect the defense. I don't know what CJS is doing, but our defense is weaker than the offense (which is saying a lot), and the offense needs to play ball control a little bit to at the very least keep them as fresh as possible.

That's true. It's kind of crazy the run we went on after all of us (me included) were ready to can CWT. I guess some would say it's a reason to not give up on Scott, but I think back then, some of the frustration was that we could see the flashes of talent on the field and he was mismanaging it to the point of failure. I honestly felt like Mack was an NFL RB from his first game. It was against a bad team, but more than the speed, etc, you could tell the kid had elite vision. I don't see this team being able to turn it around without a few good recruiting cycles/transfers.

4 wins in 3 years... you think Leavitt would be any worse? At this point, would I expect him to build a top-25 team in the next 3-4 years? Probably not, but I think we could have some fun watching a team play with passion. I don't think Scott is building a top-25 team in the next 30-40 years. I don't have any faith in our admin to hire the next guy that will do it either. At the end of the day, winning or not, I personally would feel proud to support a CJL team and proud of my University for righting a wrong.

WT also hired a high school coach that year and they probably were working on resetting the offense, don't think it all came together at once. I don't think WT was a good coach, but he at least recognized when he needed help, and, he could recruit.

Leavitt would die on the field at USF if brought back. That man doesn't have quit (retire) in him. Saban is 70 and under contract for 8 more years.

It's all about CJL. That man had an offer from Alabama that he kept in his desk as a reminder. He CHOSE to stay at USF and in turn, USF crapped on him the first chance they got. I hate UCF, but think about their program... when it looked like the had a glimmer of hope, OLeary and staff ignored a player's health and he unfortunately passed. UCF stood by him, dealt with a law suit over it. If ever there was a time to part ways, that would have been it, but they showed some loyalty. We did a half arsed "investigation" and couldn't wait to kick Jim to the curb. Oh, if you all recall, CJL did win or settle his wrongful termination case... which tells me the investigation was not nearly rock solid enough to make that decision. It's like a marriage, you either work through things with your spouse, or you bail over something stupid. Obviously, there are non-negotiables that would warrant bailing out, but this wasn't it. As if that wasn't enough of a slap in the face, they gave Holtz WAY more money for assistants than Leavitt had. They knew Leavitt didn't have the money to go out and hire a legit staff (most notably, OC), but they didn't care. Let him make things happen and pretend like it wasn't sorcery to begin with. Maybe Greg Gregory can dial up that skinny post that Grothe always struggled with so there can be message board chatter about benching Grothe for his own son. FFS, I think I could coach this team to 1-2 wins every season and I have never coached a down of football in my life. Leavitt I believe had 2 losing seasons, year 1 and the one where we were transitioning into the Big East and he was redshirting guys to build depth to make that move. We have had 5 seasons above .500 in the 13 years since he has been gone. One of those with his team. But sure, let's all hope the next hire has a couple of winning seasons before moving on to greener pastures and then hope that our admin can continually hire good coaches every 2-4 years because we're sustaining success and coaches are getting poached... I bet Leavitt still has that Alabama letter in his desk.

So... seems like team pumped themselves up for last week, coach was riding the wave of their emotions. Can't come out flat like this. The team has the ability to play tough, coach isn't getting their best on a consistent basis. That's on him.

How do you throw the ball away on a 4th down free play. Throw it at a receiver, maybe catch, maybe PI, maybe picked. Doesn't matter, it's a free play and he just throws the ball away? FFS

I agree, after the replay, it's shocking that he got it there, much less that it was that close to actually making it.

The bad snap was bad, but the hold was worse to an extent. Who's to say that Schrader would have been able to hit a 30 yarder with that hold, that would have been even more heartbreaking.

And the second to last possession, 2 passes, 1 run. A "go for the throat" pass, and a bad decision, that was not picked, but too hard to overturn. I don't know if UF could have driven a long field and scored, Richardson is too irratic, would have been nice to get to punt there and see what happened. I really see no way that this one can be hung on Scott.

Yep. I am guessing he thought he was on the sidelines, but that wasn't a bad throw, coach makes the call to sweep the **** leg, you gotta make the play. I seriously think he didn't know he had a yard of field left on the sideline and got more worried about his feet than catching the ball.

A bit harsh, did you not see the deep ball down the sidelines right before GBs pick? That was playing to win. Who knows what would have happened without the bad snap, I suspect 2nd and 3rd down would have been the best plays we could possibly throw at them. Would have preferred an outside run on 3rd down, but the bad snap on 2nd took the momentum. Not a CJS fan, but this was by far his best coaching job.

I hate this. So hard fought, but if there was ever a time to remember that it's a team game, the "stars" did enough to at least get us to OT. What happened was that the moment was too big for the center and the holder. Absolutely insane. Happy about the progress, but pissed about the end of that. GB played good enough to win, need to see some WRs make some plays. Probably hard when they have no idea where the ball may be though.

I'm not too scared of OT, I think we can pick their QB again if we can get them off schedule on downs. But, LFG!!!!!!!