Danm1983

15 minutes ago, usf97 said:

How happy Oregon fans must be that Willie spurned there 5 year $20 million contract extension back in 2017. They probably feel like they dodged a bullet on that one. 

And i do like Mario Cristobal as a coach. I'd never have thought he'd be at Oregon, but he really did well after his FIU stint by working with Saban and co for a bit. He's a coach I would've liked to see given a shot here back in the day.

Taggart was never the right hire for fsu but man what a spoiled ass fanbase. Part of me is jealous they can cobble together 20 million on some angsty boosters, but man. I dunno. I hope they wallow in mediocrity.

They're still an impressive team, I thought they'd drop off after Satterfield went to Louisville

Throw out FCS scores and it adjusts slightly (yes, i'm aware three teams totals wouldn't change because they didn't (and don't) play an FCS team):

my math is probably wrong but close.

1. UCF +145                    +83
2. Tulane +120                +68
3. Memphis +101           +70
4. SMU +95                     +95, no FCS
4. Navy +95                    +57
6. Temple +65                +21
7. Cincy +46                    +46, no FCS
8. Houston -6                  -26
9. USF -9                          -48
10. ECU -16                     -55
11. Tulsa -53                   -53, no FCS
12. UConn -143              -146 (lol, only beat Wagner by 3)

Their defense seems better than last year, we know they're going to control the ball and the clock and try to grind our defense down.

We will need some solid sustained drives to give the defense a rest and give them less time to run their playbook.

Even with them throwing more, if USF can actually come out swinging hard and put some points on the board, Navy playing from behind is their weakness, they will stick to their playbook but if we could somehow muster up a more than 7 point lead and maintain it into the 4th, they'll start running out of time to execute their 30 play, 8-10 minute offensive drives.

let's go get Paul Johnson and run the triple option. then we don't have to recruit a QB who can throw.

1 hour ago, Bull94 said:

UCF is in too much debt. they need 7 home games. even if it means playing crappy 1-aa teams.

they can't afford to play 2 for 1's and no big program will play a home and away with them.

Don't schools usually pay FCS teams to play though? Or is the ROI on those games worth shelling out a few hundred thousand to get a win (except for that Furman game a few years back) worth it to have a 7th home game?

UCF claims it's bad because something something homefield advantage, but on the other side of their mouth they love to talk about how they sold out all their season tickets and are busting at the seams and turning students away because SELLOUT when if that's the case, drive down the 408 and pack the citrus bowl for your game with UF or [big name program who doesn't want to play at bounce house]. the citrus bowl was renovated recently too so it's not a total dump anymore, their fanbase is just angry because they think they're big enough to host the biggest programs (and point to Texas in the 07 opener like it's some sort of rule and not the exception).

or ucf could expand their stadium into the 50k's and then maybe more big programs will come visiting. that's on them. imo, if they're orlando's hometown team, why not play in the middle of downtown for more to see. cincy doesn't seem to care, hell i'd bet if tulane got really good and had to play LSU they'd do it in the superdome, houston has played in the texans stadium before i think too.

15 minutes ago, NewEnglandBull said:

But the issue was it was more like 7/8 wins not 9. I do think people got tired of that and wanted to get over the next hump. At the same time a long term coach winning 7/8 in the AAC (inferior) would not last more than five years wining 7 games consistently (ECU is an example of that). Sure many will say that’s not the case but if you can’t win a championship in this conference in five years your going to get a hard look for your future. 

agreed. sooner or later no trophies will cost you your job in this business. moving to the AAC, that's where i wonder how he would've done - would his style of play and recruiting allow usf to win some AAC titles, or would it have been status quo and status quo after coming into this league? i think reasonably he'd have 2-3 years in the AAC and if no titles? time to move on.

2 hours ago, NewEnglandBull said:

CJL is pure nostalgia...nothing more. His teams caved at the end of the year and most on this board raised hell about it every time. Some now see this as the good old days because they were better than now. But if there is any coach who takes over and gets stuck on eight wind we will again get tired of it. It’s psychologically impossible not to do it. We are programmed for wanting more. That person would be fired again especially since the stakes and difficulty for success is now lower in the AAC.  

I know there was a lot of lament even on this board for "suffering" through 8 and 9 win seasons, but I don't know how long it would've taken for USF to fire him for "underachievement". CJL could have probably kept winning 8-9 games a year (and likely a 7 or 10 win season sprinkled in), and kept his job for a while. I know Judy and some powers that be didn't like his stature as biggest man on campus and probably would've loved to can him at some point, but his incident was probably viewed as the best thing to happen in their eyes because i don't think the fanbase would've ever turned on CJL for constantly going to bowls and 8/9 win seasons, though it's fun to wonder if he continued that win rate into the AAC if that would've been viewed as acceptable at THAT point. I agree though, at some point even the smallest programs that haven't made a bowl game in 30 years finally have a few winning seasons and then grow tired of not having 9 or 10 win seasons (and then end up with another slew of dud coaches and suck for another generation).

17 hours ago, NAS Gone to Paradise said:

How many Conference Trophies did win while driving his “muscle car”?

Zero. Because you can have a muscle car that runs 11's, but doesn't mean squat if everyone else is running 10's. And I do not want him back (other than someday getting some praise for his contributions).

9 hours ago, ZeroBullChip said:

Well the golden question is, does he still care.  I doubt it.  It is no longer his baby.  I'm kind of going through this right now with another scenario.  The only sane way to deal with it is to cut your loses and move on.

Leavitt built up the muscle car from scratch, got busted driving 150mph, and got it taken away.

He'd be coming back to take it away from 3 other owners of the car who have changed out parts to make it their own, and it's been crashed twice and currently sits in a scrap yard.

I don't know at this point if he wants to do it. But, his mentor Bill Snyder did it twice, but Snyder has a totally different personality than Jim does. From his vague social media presence over the years in San Fran, Boulder, and Eugene, i think he's made peace with what went down and has embraced just doing what he loves doing, coaching. That said, I don't think he comes back to coach, though I do think one day he'll step foot on campus (now that judy is gone) and at least get a standing ovation from some as a "thanks for building up what you did." i mean even people at OSU praise Woody Hayes for being a good coach and how he treated players overall, but certainly there was one incident that you couldn't ignore and know it's a permanent tarnish.

1 hour ago, chapelbull said:

So college teams are tanking now to get ready for next year?   Great

I know this stuff is done more often than not and it's just not as exposed but man this just doesn't sit right with me. I understand if you're a 1-2 year player and they RS you, but if you're at the 3-4 year mark (being a jr or sr) and you want to sit so you can maybe be good next year and have a better team around you? Seems kinda **** to those seniors who've been there for you and with you over the years. i get it, probably coach's decision/idea.

In the end, it's not going to help or hurt his draft stock much IMO, and he better **** well hope he doesn't blow an ACL or get some other injury next year, all a gamble.

13 hours ago, atsKnight said:

If you think the times haven't changed, I don't know what to tell you. Where do you think a bottom feeder AAC team ranks among the expansion candidates? If I were y'all, I would be worried about Tulane passing us by. 

Rutgers says hello.

2 hours ago, raptorcj said:

So much more than football in that alignment decision. Whether it should have JUST been about football is probably a good debate.

Yeah, i skimmed but it doesn't seem like it took into account the catholic schools of the big east that were fine with the exodus and used it to essentially leave 3 programs out in the cold (UCONN, USF, Cincinnati) and to an extent Temple and temporarily Louisville. And there's that whole "ND will never truly join a conference" thing too that could've played into some of it.

Hell, I still blame Penn State for not joining the Big East in the 90s.

19 hours ago, MikeG said:

I didn't know I did something-- and if I did it was unintentional. Can you clue me into why that comment has more than the intended meaning?

i probably read too much into it, but the whole running of the bulls and bullfighting usually ending with the death of the bull.

16 hours ago, MikeG said:

There was the whole Tamplona thing that sort of died off.

 

ah ha i see what you did there lol

Ooh after us it's the last civil conFLiCT game 

PORTAL!!!

They still have a killer run game and a system that allows their QBs to be serviceable (or in Milton's case, really good). The ND transfer is no slouch, and him leaving to go to an inferior team isn't much different than Oladakun being buried on our depth chart and going to an inferior team/level of play and then do pretty well.

Also, they got good coaching. Frost was an offensive guru, and Heupel ran good O at Oklahoma. We have Bell who is good but too early to tell.

USF 34 - 10

Ford

St. Felix

419 yards

he's been saying this cheesy fluff for years now.

our band is fantastic but the announcing needs some work. things haven't changed in years, but some of the music has gotten a little better here and there. there was a whole thread on this a while back about how it's not helping the feel of the college atmosphere (i'm pretty sure it devolved into an OCS thread LOL)

I'm not confident about sc st now. Will be a nail biter.

Byu, easy loss. They were a few plays away in the Utah game and TN is a dumpster fire but still.

If there's one team that's worse off than us its uconn but they are at least scoring points so yeah.

I say we win 1 of the 3 and id be fine if it was uconn. Stranger things have happened. 

USF

23-19

Cronk

St. Felix

281

I would feel good about a win no matter how close.

The caveat is that GT has a new coach and has ditched the triple option for the first time in forever, so there's likely some learning curve going on, but I'd also say that it's definitely easier to go from triple option to a spread or more traditional offense than the other way around, so their players should get it - and also hard to judge them doing that and facing the buzzsaw that is the defending national champs Clemson (in Clemson) in Week 1.

If we beat GT and then handle BYU (who looked meh against a decent Utah team), and then we get our patsy in SC State, I'll be feeling good. As long as we're getting better in all facets each week. Shouldn't be hard at this point.