bullsbucsfan426

Someone here thought we were around 5-6k season ticket accounts. That's not actually true. I asked my ticket rep before the season, and I asked this same question several years ago-we've been hovering around 10k season ticket holders for a while now. I think an OCS will boost that.

Given current situation, I would be okay if the seats were free to people donating for chairs for five years assuming we raised $300 million or so. The concessions and parking would make up for the free seats.

Imagine if we had hired CJS in 2016 after Taggart left. There would have been no drop-off in performance. We might even have still managed to land BJM (who was a good DC). We are starting to see some offensive weapons develop. Mangham is this team's version of Darius Tice, except he scores a lot more option. The receivers are starting to see some production as well and look like they are dropping the ball less. The biggest problem we have is that there is ZERO depth or production on the defense. The coaching staff needs to go out there and actually land recruits, it's okay if they don't have skills, if they're athletic and can run at their given position that's good enough. I'm also looking forward to seeing some passing TDs in the red zone. My one beef with the comeback last week was that we took so long on that last drive because we ran it up the middle four times. When you are behind by 2 TDs, we have to throw the football. If it's an incomplete pass at least you stopped the clock, if it's complete then it's a TD.

To be frank if it was going to happen it would have happened in 2016 vs FSU.

The thread asked how I'm feeling? Well, firstly, I'm happy the team continued to fight it out. I personally don't agree that UF let off the dogs until the Richardson TD, the back to back INTs in the second half were proof that UF was not in fact finished trying to run up the score, particularly the second one as it happened deep into the secondary. Richardson was giving me 2018 D'Eriq King flash backs, he will not be fun to face next year, but I'm rather hopeful that neither will McClain. Next week will be an easy win if we play the way we did in the second half. BYU is facing two ranked teams in a row, so until we see how they perform it is hard to say how good we will be. Someone suggested we could be 3-2 at the start of October and I'm questioning how. SMU is not a bad team. If we beat them we will have earned it. I'll add that if we beat BYU and SMU, it's likely we could run the table until we meet Houston on November 6. That is a long ways away.

If VInik writes the check, it will be because he will finally get his long awaited move of MOSI to downtown Tampa...which would be a win regardless. The place is still stuck back in the 90s and is in DIRE need of a demolishing and repurposing.

Posted this in another thread, but all but about $15 million of that endowment is restricted for specific funds. It was not clear how much of that restriction was allocated for athletics. There are around 1300 different funds set up through the USF foundation. I suspect getting a full list of those funds would be rather enlightening.

Faza, having known you since middle school, that is encouraging. But you worked hard to get where you are. I want USF to succeed. I badly want it. But I've been taken body blow after body blow for supporting this program, and the situation isn't the same as it was 18 years ago when we got the Big East invite. I really want to hope that the Big 12 is the new tallest Midget conference, and we will be back...but until we earn it on and off the field, it's all fools gold. Jeff Scott is looking more Chad Morris than Dabo Swinney at this point. As for FAU, their admin decided to support athletics and it has helped them, especially with a win at all costs mentality. They have a pretty decent stadium too-one that was more than buildable had we taken on debt for it even 7 years ago. They are doing a lot of the same things we were doing years ago to get to Preeminent status. But based on what some have said here over the past couple of days, we are facing a potential chicken-egg paradox, and it goes back and forth. Here's what I've essentially heard the past few days:: There are parts of the BOT that do not want to make athletics a priority and are trying to hold back any kind of athletics expansion. We cannot build anything without fully funding it-a statewide policy, which coincidentally, harms USF. UCF's borrow and build strategy is not available to us and has not been since at least July of 2018 (start of Genshaft's last year). If not for this an IPF could have gotten built then. I can understand that it would have been very challenging to keep the lights on during a pandemic had we gone the debt route-it would have been around 2.4 million a year in debt service assuming a 30 year note. On a more financially related note-while the 2020 990 for the USF Foundation is not available as of yet, the 2019 one is (keeping in mind that the 2019 990 is used for a year ending in 06/30/20). Of that $636 million in endowment assets reported on the 990s, approximately $15 million is unrestricted. I suspect most of that is working capital for the foundation and would not be available to fund something else, or even to be borrowed against. IF we want the USF foundation getting involved in athletic fundraising, we will need to see them take a much more hands on role. The foundation raised around $70 million last year and had around 45 million in investment income. They are more than capable of making this happen.

Dude all of what I've just mentioned is what I had to use to start getting my own CPA firm going and I'm still 5 years away of making it a good enough business to be worth selling.

Weatherford is indeed an FSU graduate, but he's lived his whole life in Tampa. I was not aware of the push to make athletics important being a factor in Currall's firing, but closing one of your most important colleges and then backtracking (Education) was not a move I would expect from a University President. I would hope that Weatherford would consider athletics important as a factor for USF, rather than using this as an opportunity to push our athletics programs down further. It's not as if USF is a threat to FSU on the field these days, although in academics we're clearly even or better with them. It does seem convenient that Currall got fired right on the brink of the next round of realignment.

I may as well add on- The new USF president will have a lot of help on the academic side, and he or she needs to leave that to Ralph Wilcox, who best I can tell has been doing an excellent job. The next president needs to be a networker, a schmoozer, a community-driven entrepreneur who is going to make athletics part of his strategy to lead USF into a brave new world. Someone suggested Brian Lamb. If we landed him I think that would be a coupe. He's obviously seen the issues that USF has faced while serving on the BOT and I suspect he was a major reason USF advanced as much as it did on D&I initiatives. Can he make it work as well with the marketing and athletics? He's obviously got huge connections in corporate America and globally, but he will need to work the Tampa Bay angle too. I also wonder how much he did previously to ensure that sports were supported at USF-or if Genshaft and Currall after her made the point to ignore it. There also needs to be some kind of effort to reach out to the billionaires who actually make Tampa their home for some kind of large donation for athletics. We have at least six that live here-Tom James who owns Raymond James, Ed Debartolo (who may be the first guy we try to work with), Ronald Wanek (owns Ashley Furniture), Robert Duggan (owns Summit Theurapeutics), and Todd Christopher (who sold Vogue). Plus Jeff Vinik of course, but we already have a relationship with him. 10 years ago it would have been easy to pull this off. Heck, DeBartolo may have backed USF just to spite the Bucs. But now? It must be tried regardless of result. I also heard on TOS that Currall basically hamstrung the IPF building until it was 100% funded. **** fool move if true. We needed that a year ago.

Jim Leavitt was the ultimate coach-entrepreneur. He took a program operating out of trailers and turned them into a power-conference contender in 10 years. Heck, even if we hadn't gone to the Big East, I feel assured that the players he recruited in 2003-2005 would have led to multiple CUSA championships and firmly would have sunk UCF-early. He just knew how to get players to well-outperform their level. By the time the 2011 conference realignment rolled around USF would likely have been banging on the door of the P5 anyway. I told ADMK this 2 years ago at a basketball game-you need a coach who is not going to just coach, but will go to every Rotary, Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce, and BNI to build the relationships with the middle class donors who can probably give 5k to 10k a year. I STILL think that applies if CJS would be willing to do it too. That said, I don't think we're done, and a lot of it depends on us. MIami is slowly slipping into BYU status. They haven't won anything nationally relevant in 16 years and are surviving off their ACC affiliation, the memories of the past, and the FSU-Miami rivalry. Every time they come across a true national contender they've gotten destroyed (aside from the absolute destruction they visited on ND in 2017). Thursday night was hard to take. I couldn't bear it at all. At least with CWT's turnaround I felt some hope, and it eventually was rewarded. The 2014 season wasn't fun in a lot of ways, but we were competitive in most games, and Marlon Mack certainly gave us some promise. Thursday night...I know there were at least four or five opportunities that would have given us a chance to stay in the game until the very end. We missed all of them. That's most games, to be honest. The game stays close because the better team misses an opportunity, and the lesser team rallies to make some opportunities of their own. NC State made the most of almost all of their chances while we missed at least two shots for TDs and had a miracle play go NC State's way that could have at least made it a 3 or 7 point game at the half. I don't feel rewarded, and I sat through the worst of it in 2013 and 2014. I stayed to the very end of that 2013 Miami game. I bore the "UCF" chants in 2014 at Ray Jay. IF there's nothing else, by golly we need to find a way to beat UCF at the end of the year so if they leave next year we will always have the overall series lead over them. Otherwise they'll view it as one more checkbox to tick before they can say "USF is finally for good in our rear mirror).

Believe it or not, they actually had some decently drawn up plays. It's just hard to get going when Cade Fortin is incapable of completing a pass to a wide open receiver for a TD.

I will sit through it. I guess the 25th year of USF football will be our funeral. I may as well keep going until we die.

I didn't get to talk to Marsh as it was too loud but Uriah Greene is awesome and really humble. I'm rooting big time for him. It was a pleasure to see all of you, I'm sorry I had to run off after the event. I had an appointment in Orlando to keep.

I would definitely support this idea, especially if it's someone who came from a tough background. Our players can finally get paid for the work they put in. It will be a boon to them and to us too. Who would you want to support for the BullsPen Player?

big donor to the school? Key player in Tampa?

Sounds good - I can wait. Man I got buried with meetings today. I'll take 1.

Count me in. Benefits of running your own CPA firm.

If we would actually go out and win the conference we will go to the playoffs. The American is not getting any weaker. USF was about 15% better than its record last year, not closing out wins against temple, Memphis, and ucf hurt. Our strong schedule the next few years will help a lot. A 1-2 loss team could still win the conference and get ranked in the top 4 potentially. I think this will finalize conference expansion for sure. BYU's major sticking point other than the religion issue was equality with Utah. With a clear path to the playoffs they can join the American with an expectation that they will go to the playoffs with a conference championship. Notre dame will probably join the ACC or Big ten for similar reasons. The big losers in this are the wake forests, West Virginias, and Vanderbilt type of schools that were basically academic boosters to their conferences. They can no longer use the p5 tag to take recruits from Memphis or ECU. Even Florida, Miami, and FSU will get hit in recruiting eventually once we start going to the playoffs ahead of those schools. Beating Miami or Florida at least once over the next few years would topple the apple cart. Big USF GOAL-MUST WIN a conference title before UCF wins another one. This will help reset the Oregon-Oregon state perception our rivalry currently has and boost our recruiting

Texas is about to beat Arizona State to go to the region final undefeated. Fairfield will have to win three in a row to go to the next round. Assuming we win tomorrow, the next round will likely be in Austin.

It's too late for chicken dinner, but I'll enjoy WSU Cougin it.

Huge stop and free throws there.

Huge possession here. Get the score, force them to foul the rest of the way.

Need to close this game out. Fouls and turnovers are not helping. This is where you have to force them to foul you, not get fouled yourself. Aaaaaaaand that's the lead gone because we couldn't push the lead on the offensive end. ELENA! Now get a stop!!!