Ghostbuster

Is this....expected? Like had he been missing practices and still recovering from last year? Or did he reinjure something?

I'll take the offensive moral victory over defensive. At least with a good offense you can get excited about touchdowns. Besides my expectations for defense are in the gutter, so I won't be disappointed if they are still bad. But I will be disappointed if the offense is bad with it being Golesh's forte. (And yeah I know it's first game so I have to keep expectations in check)

I actually agree with most of what you said, except this. USF and Cincinnati (who had FOUR Big East championships) missed the boat on on realignment when the BigEast imploded. The best Holtz could have gotten us was 3 conference championships. Since 3 is less than the 4 Cincy had...his tenure was not that consequential. Yes multiple other coaches and circumstances could have altered our paths. I'm solely focus on 'Holtz did not cause us to lose the BigEast realignment' and if I can prove that I can disprove that being used as the metric by others to say he was the worst.

I think it's a very fair point. I still might hesitate to sign a long term deal with a conference that has a recent history of making bad long term financial deals. Plus, they just set the market for themselves at 0 dollars. What leverage will they have in 7 years with whatever the ACC is at that point? On the other hand, what leverage does USF have by continually getting passed on realignment and living in a bad G5? Ooof.... probably smarter to take the sure invite now than a potential one later.

So my comments were more directed at showing the situation today is worse than at the end of the Holtz regime. (Which from the pod felt like the main rationale behind 'Holtz was the worst'- because he stunk at the worst time) I'm not saying that 3 good years under Scott would have definitely given us one of the Houston/UCF/Cincy/BYU spots, but it would have helped. And remember we've been losing every popularity contest since that expansion, thanks to Scott's *historically* bad run. Deon picked Colorado over us, Big12 took Colorado over us, and SMU looks to be closer to joining the ACC over us. (And despite having a coaching vacancy so early last year, we hired our coach after most had found theirs; so how many passed over us?) We can't even complain about not being picked by another conference because people will say how long we've sucked. And they can say that because Scott shattered any reputation we had left. 100% agree the ADs failed us more. 2023 being the first full year to have an IPF is malfeasance on the part of everyone prior to Kelly.

I will take the bait after listening to the pod. Did Holtz drop the ball when the Big East fell apart? Yep. But I would argue the impact of him being bad at that time is minimal because a) Cincy had more success than us in the Big East, and they still got relegated to the AAC b) USF was still respectable enough (at that point in time) because of the Leavitt years. Our brand was not an embarrassment. Jeff Scott on the other hand, left us in such a bad place that we've been passed over by multiple conference realignments (Pac12, Big12, ACC) and our brand is so toxic the AAC hardly wants to acknowledge our existence in ads. Nobody is touching USF because we've been sucking for too long; and Scott reinforced that by having a historically bad run with literally the worst defense in the country last year. Pretend you could move the Big12/Pac12/ACC realignments to one of two points in history: a) 2012/2013 at end of the Holtz Era b) 2022/2023 at end of the Scott era When would USF have the better chance of getting picked by a Power Conference? Come on it's "a". Therefore Holtz did not leave us worse than Scott did, and Holtz cannot be our worst coach. Scott takes that honor by a landslide.

If we go half the season or more with alternating QBs, I'll agree. But this is literally week 0. We'll have plenty of time to doubt them during the season lol, so save your energy.

If after bringing in an offensive guru for a coach, the offense does worse than our (previously 131st ranked) defensive unit...I may become permanently broken as a fan.

Sure he'll regurgitate that nonsense but take potshots at USF's chances moving up.... Come on, the PAC does not have a viable path for option 3. Their TV deal ends this year and no team from MWC/AAC can leave in less than a year to join them. MWC - "Per conference bylaws, the $16.5 million buyout jumps to $34 million if notice is given later than July 1". That's from a recent article about SDSU's quick 180, when they tried to leave the MWC for the PAC only to turn tail and say they wanted to stick with MWC. AAC- Just made Cincy/UCF/Houston pay 18 million to leave sooner than the required 27 month notice. Fee would be higher for a (now) quicker exit; and what idiot would pay that much to join a 4 team conference that doesn't have a media deal? Even SDSU saw the writing on the wall and noped back to the MWC. So the PAC is only pretending like they have an option to expand. That ship sailed.

I gotta go with Outlaw on this. Look I never believed it or got excited, but their tweet definitely intended to make others think they knew stadium renderings were coming. Worse yet their entire purpose is to get people's money. The last thing you want to do is appear to be a liar or a sham for clicks, views and donations. All they had to do instead was tweet "Hey we hate waiting for renderings too, so check us out in a few days for something to make it more fun". That's not nearly as deceitful but could still generate some interest.

Fowler Avenue Collective and USF Twittersphere frantically deleting tweets about renderings being revealed today

Only worth comparing two for me - The Rutgers game, while that's my gut reaction for "yes change it", is only worth it if you win out the rest of the year and compete for a natty. If we still lose a few others and end up where we are now in the AAC, who cares. - On the other hand, the "only war on i4 game where both teams were good" could likely have much more meaningful repercussions if you flip it to a win. If you win 2 more games afterwards that season, maybe you butterfly effect USF to the Big12 today; or at the very least you might hold back UCF by tempering their fandom without that colley matrix season. If they fail to demonstrate a stark raving mad fanbase (aka exploitable revenue stream), maybe they're less desirable when realignment rolls around. Next let's do a "which athletic director in our history do we change out"...

That's the beauty of wild rampant speculation, it's all of the above. You can find anyone online saying any of those. For the record I hope option 1 pans out and they join us and we just swap to the PAC name. No exit fee shenanigans and our existing media deal just gets bumped. Option 2 gives us 0 value and *clearly* failed the last time conferences made an alliance for scheduling. And as for option 3, leaving a terrible conference to join a dead conference...that leaves a lot to chance. USF would -Spend millions on exit fees -Spend more money per year to travel farther -*Hope* a non-existent PAC media deal gets signed -*Hope* that (again non-existent) media deal pays out more per year than the AAC -*Hope* the core members (who are actively trying to leave the PAC and came up only a few votes short of joining the ACC), stay long enough in the conference for you to make a return on your investment Idunno the more I think about it the more I hope nobody gets swindled into joining the PAC. The no votes (for them joining the ACC) were by disgruntled teams trying to leave the ACC themselves....so once FSU/Clemson/etc jump ship the PAC-4 will have a clear path to replace them. That's why anything conference-wise with the PAC-4 should be considered a short term marriage of convenience.

We were literally one of the last teams in FBS to get a passing touchdown last year and that was like 5 games into the season. And if Bohannon doesn't throw a late interception against Florida, we might have won that game. I'm not trying to knock him I think he can be good, but I don't think he was lighting anything on fire. Brown, to me at least, looked like he had way more flashes; and I'd be more concerned about him bailing if lost the QB battle. Big risk for a year or two of Gerry who has been injured the past two seasons.

Those can't be that hard to find I've got one...Here found one on eBay USF South Florida Bulls Hat Green Top of the World One-Fit TOW Cap Fitted WWW.EBAY.COM Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for USF South...

Because the other conferences got bigger 'separating the wheat from the chaff'.

I'll take "Things a competent AD and president should have said in 2007 for 1000"

The 1st problem is that all of those replacements do not *really* make up for what they lost; ie prior to this week that league (with Oregon, Washington, Colorado) got a conditional offer from Apple that depended on subscription numbers. How bad would the next offer be with all of the departures and "lesser name brand" replacements? Going east obviously helps get more games and more potential timeslots/ revenue, but I doubt it helps that much. This is the second problem. The league waited too long and will have no chance to get teams quickly on-boarded. No money to offer prospective teams and no chance to field a product next year = dead conference.

Lol... I've got a backup for them if that fails: spin off the football program from FSU. Sign a secret deal with a community college allowing use of FSU's name and likeness in football, the stadium, and even the players. Have the "community college" join the SEC in football only, while FSU just trots out "the replacements" for their ACC games til the GOR expires.

It doesn't hold water for you but the facts are more people attended games when we were in the big east winning meaningful games, not when we had a streak in the AAC Again, it's up to Rutgers to stop sucking. We have won just as many conference championships as they have since they left while in an easier conference. Losing can just happen regardless of what conference. Good money ONLY happens in a good conference. According to you they should move down to the G5 yet I guarantee their fan base doesn't want that. "Get good" is the answer, not give up and move away.

Hard disagree. Yes you can get into a better financial situation with a stronger conference slate AND still suck for a while; that doesn't mean the move was the wrong choice. It just means the team needs to get better. Only delusional fanbases would think it's better to go undefeated against lesser teams and have to "claim" a championship than to earn it by playing and beating the best. Look at Tennessee. How many years in a row did Bama and UF have their number in the SEC? Think the administration there ever thought "we could make our fans happy by going to an easier division"? Not once. Now look, after a period of sucking (which happens) they are a hot team whose fans are enjoying meaningful wins. Losing happens to everyone eventually; What *doesn't* eventually happen to everyone is a massive yearly media rights payout to help weather the losing times and stay on a level field compared to the best. Get in a good conference, get the money and make yourself better.

I agree the networks are behind this, but I disagree their plan is to - Stabilize the Big12 and give them a raise - Wait for Pac12 to get poached more - Come back, potentially years later, and re-raid the conference they helped stabilize Networks could have easily told the Big12 to take a hike a la Pac12, but they didn't. I think the Big12 contract was just setting the market for "mid-majors" or however you want to classify non-Power2. And now the ACC has to worry about that being the ceiling for them instead of the SEC/B1G.

While I agree the Pac12 is being killed off, I don't think the Big12's contract length says anything except that the Big12 isn't as dumb as the ACC to get locked into a forever contract that prevents them from getting a raise. Honestly the Big12 gets to come out of this looking like the 3rd most stable conference because no one is trying to leave it (not overtly like FSU/Clemson; of course every school there wants in the eventual P2 of SEC/B1G)

The only reason a team with such a massive losing record is being poached right now is that the Big12 cannot afford to let the Pac12 survive. The Big12 is destabilizing their closest rival, to ensure their own conference does not get poached. This is bad news for USF because another seat from the most plausible P5 partner just got taken. So now, either the PAC immediately goes east coast (cuz there ain't a single media partner paying big money for games starting at 4 & 10pm est) or the conference dissolves and Big12 takes even more of em.