SpeedBull

9 hours ago, Wildrover said:

I say you are wrong.  I think he is too rooted in his way and incapable of adapting to the players and game around him.  I would use the fact that he was favored in every game at the beginning of the season and started and was expected to finish ranked. but didn't as evidence to support my claim.  What evidence do you put forth to support your belief that he is actually a good coach for this program? 

I stand by my earlier statement,  Florida athletes are just that,  athletes, they are fast and nimble,  not big bruisers but this offense insists on a 3 yards and a cloud of dust philosophy.  Flowers should have been invited to New York but wasn't because this coaching staff held him back. 

We'll have to wait until next year, at this time, to see who is right.  I guess the one thing going in my favor is that I would be more than happy to be wrong..............................I win either way.......................you can't say that. 

Congrats Wildrover, your last two sentences are the most juvenile and whiny anti-Bull garbage that I’ve read in a while. A great double shot of crap. Nice work!

My “evidence” is stated in my initial statement. He’s a highly respected coach and by every account a GREAT recruiter. College sports are driven by recruiting. Do you remember the Skip Holtz era? He couldn’t recruit this state and he nearly single handedly destroyed the program.

Oh yeah, We were 10-2 and won a Bowl game in Coach Strong’s first year. Not bad.

The offense was pretty vanilla compared to last year, no question. But we still put up crazy offensive numbers. I would like to see some more innovative offensive game planning, I’m hopeful that he will adapt (as Taggart did) as the years progress.

Every one on this board agree on 1 thing. Right now, and probably forever, USF will a stepping stone program for most coaches that come through.

Coach Strong is a guy that has strong ties in this state. He’s a respected man that’s no spring  chicken and has been around the block. Maybe, just maybe, we could keep this man around a while? Maybe he would like to plant some roots and build a legacy here? Maybe people like you will wake up and realize this?? Probably not. 

The fact that you would “win” either way next year if he has a good year or bad year tells me everyone one TBP all we need to know about you.

Troll somewhere else dude, your argument was weak.

Go Bulls!!

3 hours ago, Rex Havoc said:

You think most people think he’s a good head coach?  

He’s a GREAT head coach for THIS PROGRAM. We need consistency. We need a guy that can recruit the state of Florida. Coach Strong is highly regarded by the High School coaching community in this state. 

People that are rooting for his exit are delusional. 

49 minutes ago, NewEnglandBull said:

The players were warming up and going through the motions during warm ups. CCS saw this and told the whole team to get off the field and gave them a chewing out before the game. So much for no emotion...

Great info! Maybe this bowl victory will help get him “more attached” to the program. 

On an unrelated note, as much as I hate the played out Gatorade bath, it seemed that Coach Strong and the players really enjoyed the celebration together after the game. It was the first time I saw some joy and real emotion from CCS and it was pretty cool.

I, for one, am looking forward to a good season next year. We are losing a lot of great Seniors, but I have confidence in CCS recruiting abilities.

GO BULLS!! 🤘🏼🐂

7 hours ago, JTrue said:

It could always be worse... Russell Athletic? Do they even give you apparel or do they make you buy your own from Wal-Mart?

LMAO...Russell Athletic is terrible. If USF ever goes with Russell, just shut the program down.

Hell, my 7 year old son has Adidas gear for his soccer team. 

We need to get the white numbers back on the green jerseys. The beige on green looked pretty crappy to me. 

I doubt that we will see the ever changing, multiple unis of the pre-Strong Years. 

It will be interesting.

4 hours ago, Apis Bull said:

Do we have to have this on every Charlie Strong thread?  I could start one that says, "I saw CCS in Publix" and someone will post, "He's out of here as soon as he can"  Can we just give it a rest already?  If he goes, he goes.

Amen. Enough already. I’d like to see Coach Strong here for a long time. Stop trying to drive this guy out of town.

1 hour ago, smazza said:

speedball

willie taggart will not be the first black coach to win a national championship

Are you saying it’s been done before?

4 minutes ago, Gismo said:

If Jim is going to be there with Taggart I can actually root for the Noles now. I came to really dislike them with Winston. 

I have been trying to sort out how I feel about all of this. I keep coming back to the same thing. I can’t help but to be happy for Taggart and Leavitt. I always liked FSU. I loved Bobby Bowden. 

I never liked Jimbo and still can’t stand Winston. He’s a scumbag. As a result I stopped liking FSU.

Willie Taggart set his goals high. He wants to be the first black head coach to win a National Championship. It would/will be a tremendous accomplishment. I am rooting for him to get it. 

4 hours ago, NewEnglandBull said:

Honest mistake....four legs...lives on a prairie 

Buffs Are We

1 hour ago, Mike Stuben said:

We actually weren't Nike or Adidas  before UA. We never had a department deal for UA. Each team worked their own deal. When Sports Belle made the original football uniforms, we wore Nike shoes for football and sideline gear, it was just that Nike offered us so little money back then we went with the best deal for the uniforms. Plus Jim Leavitt liked the darkest green possible, Nike made us wear Michigan State green. If you compare old photos, Sports Belle was a much darker green jersey than Nike. 

Seth Greenberg was a Reebok guy. McCullum might have been Addidas. 

When USF signed the UA deal is was for all sports. 

Now the bad news, our UA deal was when we were in the Big East, don't be shocked if the Adidas deal is for less money per year, like our TV deal, the value may have gone down. 

That’s funny, the lighter green Nike jerseys are one my all time favorites. I like the white numbers on the green as opposed to the gold numbers we’ve had the last couple years. 

13 minutes ago, Apis Bull said:

Speed, I appreciate your enthusiasm, "we'd break ground tomorrow" because we'd be getting 10's of millions of more dollars a year.  that changes our entire athletic budget.

The original question wasn't whether any wants an OCS or not, is which is more important.  In my opinion, and apparently in the AD's opinion, the IPF is more important at this time.

We will get an OCS and it will be nice.  Just be patient.

Fair enough, good conversation/debate 👍🏽. 

I’m sure the OCS will come in time. Patience has never been a strength of mine.

One of positives that I take from the IPF is that is shows another level of commitment to the program. It seems logical that an OCS will follow. I’d just like to hear a more definitive statement about one. I keep waiting for an announcement with Judy Genshaft and Jeff Vinick telling us about plans for the new stadium. I don’t have any insight or information about that, but it just seems like something he’d get involved with and I really hope he does.

I guess at the end of the day I just feel that this program has earned it. Earned the right to their own home. To further build on the traditions that have begun to be established. When the OCS happens I know it’s going to pump a lot of life into the program. 

37 minutes ago, Apis Bull said:

And if a P5 conference tells us that we need an OCS as a condition of entry, we'd break ground tomorrow.  Not having an OCS didn't hurt Rutgers (3 miles away) or Pitt (4 miles) in the last round of expansion.  Other P5 schools without an OCS include Miami (22 miles) and UCLA (27 miles),.

If we’d “break ground tomorrow” then why wait?

Also, I see P5 entry and an OCS as separate issues. 

I don’t see getting into the P5 as the be all and end all for this program. The mindset of some on this board is hard for me to understand.

In one sentence, we are this meager, broke little school that would crumble financially if we built an OCS...then the next sentence we are a viable, deserving candidate for P5 expansion. It’s very inconsistent.

8 minutes ago, Apis Bull said:

No, but the IPF and the associated football facility will attract better players.  Better players = better team.  Better team = better record (usually).  Better record = more interest in the team.  More interest in the team = increased attendance .

We had great records the past 2 years and piss poor attendance. Nobody cares about USF outside of USF....therefore we should focus more on the students of USF. They have always been and always will be the target customer. 

As long as we are in Ray Jay it’s not going to change. The mid 2000s aren’t going to happen again (even then it still wasn’t great).

On 11/24/2017 at 9:24 PM, ArmyBull said:

Lots of "ifs" flying around.  Be careful, ucf lurkers abound.  

“If my aunt had a package, she’d be my uncle”

- Jim Rome

#6 actually made me chuckle. I love Quinton but his calm demeanor doesn’t exhibit his competitive spirit . He can look “bored” or out of it but he just keeps on fighting. A special player indeed.

9 hours ago, JTrue said:

An IPF is like watching the NFL draft when your team is picking in the top 5 and takes a offensive lineman. You know you need one, but it doesn't get you excited about it. No one rushes out to buy tickets for the next guard to suit up.

Great analogy. The IPF is definitely not going to increase attendance or interest in the team for students or alumni. 

4 minutes ago, 206BULL said:

Then we are the JV team in Tampa. But even professional teams whom other teams once compared themselves to have seen a steady decline in attendance new stadium or not. The Yankees can’t sell out to save their lives and are typically 40-60% full less than a decade removed from a new stadium(unless the Red Sox are playing, see UCiF’s big attendance yesterday), same goes for house hold names in all other sports. The fans aren’t coming out like they once did and an OCS isn’t changing that. 

 

And I’m not sure how a soft roll out leading to a larger overhaul if successful at fast food or sit down chains compares to sinking $200 million into a stadium. One costs a few million at most to test at market(keep in mind at billion dollar corporations who have a budget for R&D for this exact reason) while the other is a blind investment by a publicly held University. An investment in which the numbers and trends prove to be a ****** pretty ****** one.

 

At at this point in time an OCS at USF is the same as buying a speed boat. Except with the speed boat you can enjoy it more than 7-8 times a year. And once you’ve had your fun you can resell the boat to recoup some of your losses. Sorry my minor was accounting and this stadium makes zero sense from a numbers stand point right now. Take a step back and look at it fiscally and not with your heart. 

I am not denying the fact that attendance is down in all sports all across the country. I’m also not denying the fact that the shine can wear off of a new stadium pretty quickly and it doesn’t solve all the problems.

I’ll even go as far as to say that the Tampa Bay sports market may be one of the most fickle in the country. We have so much to do here outside of sports. It is by and large a band wagon town. It always will be.

USF Football is fighting an uphill battle as it is competing against the Bucs and Lightning for general interest and dollars in this town.

I keep going back to the same point though, the focus needs to be on developing excitement and loyalty from within. The customer base needs to built from within. On campus with students and alumni. The average non-USF person will likely never care as much about the program as we do. I don’t expect them to. We need to create more rabid USF Alumni. Each class that comes through and graduates without a real connection to the team is a missed opportunity. 

As for the financial aspects of the stadium. I don’t know all of the ins and outs. All I know is that many other schools have figured out ways to make it happen. 

1 minute ago, 206BULL said:

I haven’t but I don’t eat that ****. You don’t have to preach marketing 101 to me as that is what I got my BS from at USF. This is something completely different and I’ve seen first hand at many stadiums old and new in many sports that the shine of a new stadium wears off faster than a 12 year olds first nut. When that happens we’ll be stuck with the same core 18,000 fans and 200 million in bad debt. 

Marketing was my major as well, with an economics minor. I guess I just understand it better. And no, it’s not completely different. 

Every year that we don’t have our own stadium is another year we look like Tampa’s JV team. Perception is reality. 

2 minutes ago, Triple B said:

 

Could be mistaken but that's not what he said. Looks to me like he's saying every other USF home game besides 2007 WVU doesn't compare to Friday's UCF/USF game .... and I believe him ... but I also think one of the reasons for that is that there's never been another USF home game with anything close to what was on the line last night, which I imagine added mightily to the atmosphere .... and then you add to that the way the game on the field played out and you have a fantastic experience that had little to do with where it was played.

Perhaps you are correct. Regardless, if we are still clinging to a game that happened 10 years ago as an example of what RAY JAY can be like then I rest my case.

6 minutes ago, 206BULL said:

But their OCS is not the reason they have surpassed us. Again it’s hardly ever packed if you cared to watch any of their normal games it looks just like Ray Jay. If you read their boards they typically ***** that the students show up to tailgate then head home. An OCS is not the reason for our apathetic fan base. And after the first couple years we’ll be back to normal. Look no further than the UCF fan in this thread stating the exact same thing. 

An OCS isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s just a neccessity in my opinion. It just has to happen if we are to be taken seriously. So many say “there’s no evidence that attendance will improve”. Well you know what? There IS evidence that it WON’T improve staying at Ray Jay. 

Ever notice how Wendy’s and Chili’s have all done facelifts on their restaurants? Why do you suppose they do that? The menu is the same. Do they think loads more people are going to discover their restaurants? No, they do it to freshen up the brand. To enhance the customer experience. Business is business.

The game day experience is the product. The team and the University is the brand. It all has to get better. Change is necessary. 

15 minutes ago, 206BULL said:

The lack of support for this team in the community. We packed Ray Jay on a weekly basis in the mid 2000s and never dreamed of using it as an excuse to attend games. If anything my friends and classmates saw playing at Ray Jay as a positive. Attendance is down everywhere and in every sport in this country. Just because we sink a couple hundred mil into a shiny new stadium we are not fixing that, we will see an increase for a couple of seasons because people like shiny new toys but it is not a long term solution(see band aid analogy). 

 

Hopefully some one day it makes sense but it does not in this current climate. If you or anyone else say “I’ll attend more games because it me on campus” I call bull ****. I agree you will for a few years but will treat it the same as Ray Jay soon enough. Want proof of why I believe that? Look at attendance trends for every single team after a new stadium was built in every sport. As soon as that lipstick starts to fade the pig rears it’s ugly head once again. 

 

 

You can call BS all you want. I really dislike Ray Jay for Bulls games. I think it effing blows. You can’t hear the band. It’s a sea of red and pewter. It’s about as sterile as The Trop for Rays games. It sucks.

In the early and mid-2000s the program was young, fresh and new. It didn’t matter as much. And yes, back then there was a certain novelty to being in an NFL stadium.

Now it’s 2017. We are a 20 year old program that has many signature wins and a good (albeit small) core of hard core fans. The program has outgrown the “upstart” reputation.

What I am witnessing is that UCF, that program that Leavitt dismissed and many of us (myself included) thought was inferior to USF.....they have surpassed us. If they have not surpassed us, they are right in the verge of doing it. They have an identity....They have excitement on campus. 

USF better wake up and realize what’s going on. The days of us being thought of as superior to UCF are long gone.

6 minutes ago, JTrue said:

I was there for WVU. Yes, it was a great atmosphere. But, you're lying if you think yesterday didn't smoke every other game you've ever seen as a USF fan. 

Also, an OCS would be very nice to have.

This sums it up perfectly. The WVU is the pinnacle of USF home games in the home of the Pewter Pirates and it doesn’t compare to the 45,000 seat “rust bucket erector set” for a game day atmosphere.

4 minutes ago, 206BULL said:

I too would like to know. An OCS is putting a band aid on a bullet wound. It will slow the bleeding down for a while but at the end of the day it fixes nothing. 

What is the “bullet wound” in your opinion?

5 minutes ago, Triple B said:

 

How would it solve our attendance issue, other than possibly student attendance?

I would go to more games, I have a family of 4. I believe that a lot more people would go to more games, particularly those folks that live by the campus. I would say definitely more students as opposed to “possibly” more students.

31 minutes ago, Gismo said:

I would love an on campus stadium. However, it won't solve our attendance or 'game atmospshere' issues.

Disagree to both.