bullsbucsfan426

He could go 6-7 and still get Andy Levined. Greg Ward made a huge leap under Tom Herman.

I'm going to politely disagree. Had we made a better hire at coach, we likely would have had a much better finish to last season, which would have helped build the ticket base coming into this year and with another good year I think RJS would have started averaging high 30s attendance. Right now season tickets are paid for and it will likely take a really good coach to generate excitement around the program next year, someone on the level of Scott Frost or a Broyles award winner. I'll go regardless, but I get that most of our fan base has been burned far too many times to really trust the team.

Insider information from a publisher on one of the USF recruiting sites who also covered another school that had a vacancy.

I almost wonder if this would qualify for malfeasance on the part of Harlan. Are there any fully guaranteed coaching contracts in college football? This is insane. I'm not sure USF can afford the reputation damage of having Strong beyond this season-that UCF game in 17 has broken the entire landscape of football in Florida in a bad way for USF. I know for a fact he tried to leave this off season and no one was willing to take him. MK might have to find a way to force him out. He's got high character, I know that, but I would fully expect him to hold USF to agreed upon terms. Then again, he would have to drop all the way to FCS to even have a decent shot at a head coaching job. No one in the G5 will take him as a head coach and certainly not in the P5. While this is a smaller amount, Cincy bit the bullet, paid off Tubberville's $2.4M buyout, and now they're filling the stadium with ease and they're doing very well. A new head coach would certainly spike some excitement about the program especially if the players really are in shape, whether it's Bell or someone else.

There were three hits on Hootie last weekend out of six potential. No pun intended.

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure where I read it. No, I don't. I see him blaming himself and doing nothing about it every week. I understand that mindset, I've been there before, maybe he's got personal problems going on, but if he's not fully committed he needs to walk away-it's that simple.

I don't know if anyone was paying a ton of attention prior to the game, or if your memories pre-game have been washed away, but I couldn't help but notice that there were a ton of really good corporate sponsors with their names around the stadium. ReliaQuest has a really good relation with the College of Business and they're a great local company, so props to VPMK for getting them in. What I found even bigger is that he managed to land Delta as an advertiser in the stadium. I'm not sure if it was one week only (since GT is this week and Atlanta is Delta's hub), but if that's a long term contract then that's a huge props to him. Those were the two that stick out in my mind (I had a case study about ReliaQuest and I love Delta as a carrier), but there were other businesses that were advertising and sponsoring...it's not just Hooters and Kubota anymore. I hope he can keep them as local buy in will continue to help build support around USF football.

Mangino and Leach were both decent coaches who had winning records yearly, but managed to max out the potential of relatively limited schools. Strong had a good record the first year and a half, but the further we've gotten from the Taggart era the worse the team has looked. His last truly good win was the Georgia Tech game last year and that remains the only team with a winning record he's beaten. I'm going to give Woolard some credit here-he made a good hire with Taggart even as he screwed everything else up. Harlan stuck his flag by Strong and ignored the red flags. I don't think Michael Kelly is beholden to Strong as a coach, but his hands may be tied. I read somewhere that Strong's buyout is $7.8 million, which is worse than anything Woolard could have done if true. That would absolutely kill the program.

That was Strong's first season. CWT beat: Towson, Northern Illinois, Syracuse, Cincinnati, East Carolina, UConn, Navy, Memphis, SMU, UCF, and South Carolina. His losses were to FSU and Temple. Navy, Memphis, UCF, and South Carolina were all bowl teams that year

I am simply a supporter of USF. Leavitt, no Leavitt, period. While Leavitt could have been a Bobby Bowden for USF (and I'll be frank with you, I have a feeling Bowden probably got away with stuff like what Leavitt was fired for), once his era was done, it was done. I don't think anyone realizes just what an incredible coach he was. he took a school from FCS to a power conference in under a decade. Granted, people like Lee Roy Selmon had as much or more a role in that, but the guy built the program to the point of heavy success. UF, FSU, and Miami were irrelevant for thirty years or more before they actually became relevant in football, and UCF took 30 years to get anywhere. The divide for me is "well, he only won 7-9 games a year!". Yeah, but he did it while slaying bigger teams and selling people on the promise of USF football. Strong did while losing six games in a row. All I want is for USF to be successful. I don't know if that's too much to ask for.

It has to be an up and comer looking for his next job. It's not just USF. If you look at this entire conference, the most successful programs have been defined by that young up and coming coach who is ambitious to get his ticket to a big name program. CWT, Justin Fuente, Scott Frost, Tom Herman, Geoff Collins, Matt Rhule, all these guys were looking to make it to a bigger school, and their teams won big because they cared about doing the right things to win. Guess what? They succeeded and the schools they left behind were better for it. I'm sure we'll have an IPF starting next year, which will help, but the recruiting environment is going to be tough-UCF has finally captured lightning in a bottle. Jeff Scott should definitely be on that list. Not sure who else yet.

I prefer to stay. It's everyone else pushing me out the door "let's go, game is over, etc.". In 13 and 14 when I came by myself I would stay until the end of the fight song and the team left the field.

Oh for the days of Jacquain Williams... For the record I believe he's the best LB to ever play here. Strong, athletic, fast, could play in every level of the defense and he proved it in the NFL.

His writing reminds me of a slightly improved Tom Jones. Of course I want our team to show up with the belief that they will win, and that they will pull out every stop they can to do so. I believe the culture change is real. However, the change was real in 2014 too and we went 4-8 that year. Sometimes things take time to develop. Here's the good news: We have an established QB healed of his injuries who won all but one of the games he started and completed in last year. We have a deep, fast, and dangerous WR and RB group. The O-line is a year better and has better chemistry. The team is committed and is practicing very well. The defense is in fact, bigger and faster then they were last year-that was what CCS said we needed in January. The offense is brand new and Bell will have some extra plays up his sleeve for Wisconsin. Here's the flip side. The monkey is still on our back. We are still riding a six game losing streak and while the team is hungry to get the monkey off, Wisconsin is a hard team to get the monkey off against. Even with all that practice over the off season, it still has to be converted on the field in live game action. There will be 40k in the stands-lot different with 40k in the stands vs. in your practice facility. The defense will be better, but it takes a truly elite defense to hold back Jonathan Taylor for a full game. Even Michigan only held him to 101 last year. The team has to know how to win games and close them out, rather than sliding by like they did so many times last year. Go out and take the game! It won't be given to you. Wisconsin knows how to win games, but they are a beatable team, especially with Coan starting. He's got no track record, so you load 8 in the box and make Taylor your priority. If our secondary is as good as has been advertised, then holding up in single coverage will be vitally important.

I know it's an uphill battle, but a win would help a lot to start rebuilding the narrative of USF as a good value for your entertainment dollar. That six game losing streak just when we were starting to emerge from the abyss was a killer.

Funnily enough, efficient, high scoring offense is the key to this game. Everyone is right. We won't stop Taylor-no one has in two years. The key to beating Wisconsin is keeping him off the field. Use all of our options on offense, stay on schedule, score on 50% to 60% of our drives and get a first down on at 80-90% of the drives. I remember seeing a statistic a long time ago that any team that converted a first down on at least 75% of it's drives had a much higher likelihood of winning the game. It will be a hot and humid Tampa day, something Wisconsin hasn't seen in 30 years. They beat Miami sure, but the first time was in wintertime Miami, and the second was in freezing NYC. The defense is deeper and can stay a lot fresher than last year, but not having to defend on 20 drives will help a lot. That said, I think the offense will have a tough time given they're breaking in a brand new offense against another team for the first time. They may have learned it well, but game speed is something different. Wisconsin 35, USF 28.

There are plenty. The flowers run vs Uconn in 17, the mack run against ucf in 16, the entire game vs Memphis in 16....

I'm wondering if the half a million a year would have been worth making sure we controlled the message. It's a lot of money, but it would have deprived our detractors of a major negative talking point that allows us to sell growth yearly.

Or maybe in Kansas. I bet he looks great in purple.

Come ride that big, strong Kubota tractor.

He's not, but based on googling he does provide a different form of relaxation and pain relief.

They finished 134 in NET last year. Wonder if they will be better or worse than last year. I saw elsewhere in the thread that a certain in-state school will be playing us in basketball this year. That could be our biggest game of the year.

Might be addition by subtraction here. The real loss was Andrew Goodrich last year.

That game in 2014 was also significantly shortened by the power I CWT ran then plus the game was tied at halftime. If they're playing a freshmen, load the box with 8 and force them to beat you over the top. We don't have the likes of Deadrin Senat up the middle anymore. I like our chances if we can do a Navy 2016, but beyond that the only way to get ahead of them is to keep scoring and force them to try and keep up with you. This is a Big 10 team playing in the sweltering Florida heat in August, not in the end of the season in better conditions.

We can keep RJS as an option for games like this. Cincy does it. Kelly's next big job is to sell the local billionaires on usf athletics. There are 5 or 6 locally. 25M from each of them builds the OCS.