SpeedBull

2 minutes ago, Mission9 said:

I would like to think the above was not true but the reality is USF has had only 4 winning seasons in the last 10 going on 11 years and one of those ended with a six game losing streak. 

I appreciate your points.  I hope one day we get the building (without going bankrupt) and have success and I can say I was wrong. 

I am not saying that I disagree with you. At this point we are perennial losers in the AAC. I just think we need to start over.

We squandered all the momentum that we once had. The University needs to acknowledge it…change it and move forward.

I strongly believe that without an OCS we should just fold the program up. We can’t keep taking about WVU in 2007. It’s pathetic.

I’m not saying that you said it…but that game seems to be the lifeline that anti-OCS people like to cling to.

6 minutes ago, Mission9 said:

I am not here to say you are wrong.  I really do not know.  It is just that I find it hard to believe that people will come to a building while USF is playing in the AAC against most of the teams which show up on our schedule and stinking up the joint in the process.  I never go to a game because of the building. I would gladly go to Pepin Rood if that was where the team was. I doubt those with no interest are going to suddenly clamor to go (well with the exception of the first couple of games so they can say they were there) to the new stadium. Now, I can see if USF were to get the call up again, the homefield advantage part would increase for most games.  Still, I have been to many NFL games in different places as well as college.  The 2007 West Virginia game was pretty loud.  I think the opponent as well as fielding a winning team has more to do with what you rightly crave. The Big 12 has an issue so I think they leaned towards picking teams which have been winning recently (I will qualify that BYU has a massive following and should have been invited earlier) so that they could hope to keep that blessed seat at the table. This is different than the previous choices which tended to lean on name brands.  While Houston and Cincinnati certainly have been in the big time before, BYU is the biggest name brand of the bunch by far. They always have fan interest and the other three do at this time.  If USF had an OCS but was crapping the bed 45-0 each week, there still would be no invite because fan interest would not exist. 

If you guys want it, someone needs to step up and pony up some cash because otherwise, I do not see it happening.  I think I have been saying this for at least 16 years. Over the years I have seen a lot of complaining and a lot of people who seem to want to spend money which I am not sure our program even has. 

Over the years the school has improved the Sun Dome, built a fine baseball facility, and now is working towards a need, an Indoor Practice facility. It is hard to argue against those improvements when you look at the department as a whole. 

I believe people will show up regardless of what conference we are in. Kids want to tailgate…go to games and hang out and enjoy college life. I will again use App State as just one example. They are winners. Winners breed excitement.

If you think that USF will be perennial losers in the AAC then that is another conversation altogether.

I will grant you this…it may be too little too late. This should have been done YEARS ago.

It literally disgusts me when I think about what’s been allowed to happen to our football program.

2 hours ago, Triple B said:

Considering we were supposedly in the final 8 in consideration for expansion that rings kind of hollow ..... and the fact that the ones who were chosen were teams that had 7 conference championship trophies during the 8 year existence of the AAC indicates that, at least for this round, on the field weighed heavily in the selection process.
 

If we were picked LAST it wasn't because of where we play, it was because we didn't beat an FBS team last year ...

We were “supposedly” in the final 8.

We were picked last because we suck.

We suck because the University has dropped the ball.

We allowed UCF to pass us by. UCF passed us by because they created excitement around their program.

The excitement brought them better recruits. Better recruits created better teams. Better teams win. Winning creates better opportunities.

This is so obvious. At least it should be.

4 hours ago, Mission9 said:

ECU fans are upset enough at the fact they lost to Happy Appy.  Can you imagine the disgust if the AAC were to invite them?  

Upset or scared? App State would kick our ass if they played us. 

21 hours ago, Triple B said:

It was good enough to get us the original invite to a power conference and good enough to host our 'golden years". We don't NEED an OCS to get where we want to eventually go ........ but it would be nice to have one.

I’m not even talking about an invite to a bigger/better conference.

I am talking about relevance and survival of the program.

The lack of an OCS has been a catastrophic failure in generating student interest and alumni interest. We are nowhere near being worthy of an invite to a bigger conference.

We are picked LAST in the American Athletic Conference. Let me repeat that….we are picked LAST in the conference that we are trying to get promoted from. 

This program is on life support….this stadium should have been built years ago.
 

22 hours ago, puc86 said:

At some point USF athletics needs to stop asking what more everyone else can do for it and start asking what it can do for everyone else. USF athletics despite what some may believe is a business and is in the entertainment business which is only confusing to people because I can’t remember the last time it was entertaining. We went the religious model of trying to make people feel dutiful guilt with the promise of a future reward that never comes. USF has a half a billion dollars it can borrow against, fleeces $18 million dollars a year in fees from the students and has squandered every dollar it’s ever been given sometimes paying three head coaches at a time. If USF wants to fix things at some point they need to demonstrate it and not always ask people to come up of their pocket books because this will be the first time they demonstrate a vision that’s not been communicated or realized since the most powerful man in the building left and was replaced by a void.

This is absolutely, 100% correct. All of it. 

This university and this program has gone to the well of relying on blind faith and loyalty for WAY TOO LONG.

10 minutes ago, Triple B said:

I guess it's all about how you want to look at it. To me, USF getting into a BCS conference was huge and serious fans/donors should have saw it for it was and wanted to get on board. There weren't enough of them that got that. From the USF perspective, why would/should they have been seriously looking at an ocs when our football father called it a great recruiting tool and <enter the iconic overhead photo of the 2007 game>. RayJay was just fine at that point. Where I can go along with is that there maybe should have been a bigger push for an IPF back then. It was more of a necessity then just as it is now ...

The NFL stadium may have been a great recruiting tool for the original players. Kids that were not on the radar of bigger programs and were getting a shot a playing for a brand new team and being part of something new.

People that bought into the BS that Ray Jay has been a recruiting tool since about 2000 are really naive, gullible or just not very perceptive.

It has been clear to me since the beginning that we needed an OCS. 

I am honestly pleasantly surprised that it FINALLY seems unanimous on TBP at this point. I’ve argued with many on this board about this for years.

Better late than never I suppose…
 

I have been beating the OCS drum for years. Since the beginning really. The squandered opportunity to capitalize on the incredible momentum that this program had in the beginning is a failure of monumental proportions. 
 

Where we were compared to where we are is sickening.

We took a summer trip to Boone, NC over the summer. Home of App State. Beautiful campus, great little college town and a beautiful little stadium. You can’t tell me that USF can’t build something similar.

I adamantly disagree with the notion that a 35,000 seater is a mistake. The mistake is not building it.

I also reject the notion that winning comes before building it. Build the MFing stadium. 
 

Jeff Vinik has enough money under his car seat to build this thing. USF needs to get off their asses and make this happen. Hustle. Let’s go.

If not, just fold the program. Then I can turn my full attention to USF Soccer once and for all.

Here are a couple shots that I took…the entire time I was thinking “How the eff haven’t we built one of these yet?”

2 minutes ago, CousinRicky said:

I'm just not following. We'll I'm following. Just don't agree. Teams would never change position in the standings if you could only recruit to your current level. Some coaches recruit better than others. 

Supply and demand. There is a finite supply of players that are good enough to start at mid-level programs. There is competition locally for those players. I believe UCF is a much more attractive option for those players. 

No different than any other business trying to recruit talent. There has to be a reason for the better talent to choose USF. I just don’t see it.

I hope CJS can figure out a way to do it, but he will have to be the best recruiter that this program has ever had. I really hope he can build it.

3 minutes ago, CousinRicky said:

I don't agree with that logic. If a team can't recruit because another team is better, how did UCF catch us?

I don’t think they caught us....there was nothing for them to catch. I think we disintegrated. But for arguments sake, let’s say they caught us. I’d say they did it by making better hires. By creating excitement around their program (building an OCS for example). By recruiting better players. By coaching those players better. 
 

As for my point, I’ll ask it again. Why would a kid that’s not getting recruited by the big boys choose USF over UCF? We were never getting the UF and FSU recruits. We were getting the next tier below. I believe that we are no longer getting them, and I believe UCF is. 

6 minutes ago, MikeG said:

I'd say that USF Football never really lived. It merely existed and for a VERY short time was almost slightly relevant.

Other than that-- I have no idea why we think we deserve more than that after not having a team until 1997. We are so small time that we should just give up and put the money into basketball-- a sport we have the best chance of ever doing something worth noting.

Completely disagree. USF Football program absolutely lived. It was exciting, we were winning big games on the road. It was exciting and it felt like anything was possible...and we freaking owned UCF. The program was very alive and now it’s not. 
 

There is a direct correlation with the rise of UCF and the death of USF. Why would any kid being recruited by both schools choose USF anymore? This program failed to capitalize on the early momentum. 

6 minutes ago, brybull1970 said:

That’s some funny ****!!

4 minutes ago, brybull1970 said:

USF Football is dead. RIP.

1997 - 2020

I’m afraid it’s been dead for a while. We let UCF blow by us. USF once had all the momentum in the world. The state of this program is incredibly disappointing. It’s been a complete failure.

4 minutes ago, USFBULL_08 said:

It's quite amazing rooting for a team that had the chance to beat anyone anywhere to knowing you have zero chance. 

By amazing I mean depressing.

Agreed....**** that seems like a lifetime ago.

This would be a cool throwback T-Shirt

1 hour ago, smazza said:

sorry taggart had no personality.he wasnt a salesman

scott has it all.it is so obvious too me

Agreed....to me the biggest difference is Scott came from arguably the best program in the country and he was there as a part of the rebuild from the beginning of it. He was Swinney’s right hand man. There is absolutely no comparison to Taggart in my mind. This was an unbelievable hire for USF. 

28 minutes ago, lotsofbull99 said:

Feels like the beginning of the CSH, CWT, and CSS error here on TBP. Two out of three ended in disaster. I’ll withhold judgement for now.

This one feels different to me. There was some enthusiasm for those other guys, but to me this one feels different. Maybe it’s because we’ve fallen so far. I also think a top assistant from arguably the top program in the country feels different than Taggart coming from WKU for example.

1 hour ago, Vivadiscordia said:

What about this?

I just threw up in my mouth. The Golden Knights....what a horrible mascot and even worse logo.

This was a great interview indeed! Really excited about this new era for Bulls Football. It feels so much different than anything we’ve had in the past.

Everyone should listen to this interview. 

5 hours ago, TRUTH D. Antagonist said:

he looked pretty solid to me.

not sure why there are shades of negativity in this thread.

the guy is living his life, who cares how many times a year he fights or how good (or not) his opponents have been.

he's a guy in his mid-30s doing something he enjoys a decade after he gave our alma mater a couple solid seasons at running back during the football program's golden era.

he's a nice guy who could be doing a lot of less positive things with his life given where he's come up from.

let's support our brother

#LetTheFordOutTheGarage

The dude has some heavy hands. He was throwing bombs every time. I am not too confident his boxing career will go very far, but wish him the best. He was fun to watch when he did play for the Bulls. I wish him luck.

20 minutes ago, JTrue said:

Sounds like the next 30 for 30.

”USF, once above average, but mostly below average for the past decade...hires a hot young coordinator from Clemson and people are excited. I mean, not bringing more than 30,000 to the stadium excited, and still unable to get enough cash together to build an IPF, and don’t even get us started on an OCS, but you get the point. This is...UnBULLievable: The rise and fall of a 3-4 hit wonder.”

Nice, they should hire you as a consultant. 

2 minutes ago, JTrue said:

That’s our story? That we’re currently irrelevant? You think ESPN is rushing to produce a segment on irrelevance?

I said it’s part of the story. I already explained what I think the story is. Long story short...program was on record pace from the jump. We jumped up through conferences, fastest team to 150 wins, huge road wins. Lots of excitement. The excitement went away through a series of bad hires etc. Now we have a new coach, new AD, new excitement.

A “story” is what you make of it. We were relevant at one time. We became irrelevant. We are making a commitment towards relevance again.

Just now, CousinRicky said:

Probably because we they talk about USF they call us UCF????

Exactly...part of the story. 

47 minutes ago, Dave_Glaser said:

It doesn’t work that way, and if they did, the media folks would chuckle. We’re not newsworthy at this point.

Oh yeah...how do you know how “it works”? What makes you the authority on what’s newsworthy? Just curious.

2 hours ago, Bull Daly said:

Think they may be saving all the talk for the title game. After all, it will be his last game coaching for Clemson so it will be a better story line 

I think this is right. I also think that talking about coaches and their next moves etc. is “filler” for the announcers. They keep that stuff in their back pockets to talk about in the event that it’s a crappy game or a blow out.

They didn’t have much time in that game to talk about anything but the game. It was non-stop action and very fast moving. A great freaking game.

Granted, Herbstreit is always going to seem to favor OSU...I think this may be the reason for talk of their DC and not CJS. Perhaps they were going to mention it when they had a chance in down time later in the game.

I don’t think that ESPN has an inherent bias against USF in particular. They will uncover every story line imaginable leading up to the National Championship game. I’m sure CJS to USF will be mentioned at some point between now and the conclusion of that game.

As I’m typing this I just had a thought.....why can’t Michael Kelly and USF’s marketing team approach/pitch ESPN on making a little piece about the move? If they can present it in a way that ESPN deems interesting and news worthy it would be make sense for them to talk about it.

Something along the lines of “USF was once an exciting start up program...mention all of the “firsts” that we accomplished....mention how we’ve struggled to maintain/capitalize/improve upon that early momentum. Talk about the Leavitt, Holtz, Taggart, Strong tenures...and the new found excitement of the CJS hire. 

If you take a step back and think of the USF football story, it’s actually pretty interesting. ESPN loves this kind of stuff. Kelly is a highly regarded guy in college football. I think that USF should make some calls and pitch the idea of hyping up the move.