TherapyBull

We have the same situation as when Skip arrived......... One could argue its worse, poor conference TV contract (we thought 10 mil a year was all but a given), exclusion from power 5, we were in the all important BCS. Yes we now have nice practice fields on campus, but no more of a plan or vision for an OCS even though all the public D1 programs in Florida are now on Campus. Willie T can recruit and I want to be optimistic but some of these barriers are hard (not impossible) to overcome.

Football has to be worse. Last year at this time, a bowl game was highly likely, we all thought we would be competitive, and we had a senior quarterback returning who could make plays with his athleticism. Hence why Skip was fired after the debacle last season. This year we might not even have a true Division I quarterback on the roster. Expectations are low.....

"The facility is fairly new, good enough for an NFL team and the Bulls are third in the league in attendance. However, this means the building is not on campus and that roughly 20,000 seats go empty each Saturday. The building is adorned with Buccaneers logos and a tacky pirate ship caps the North end zone. At least, those in charge repaint the end zones with “Bulls†for home games unlike other NFL-turned-NCAA stadiums in the nation." I do not disagree with the assessment at all.

Where does all this top stadium in the U.S. come from, I constantly hear this. Yes, its a nice stadium, yes it consistently gets rated as having the nicest turf, and yes players like it here, but a lot of this has nothing to do with the fans in the seats. There are now 15 stadiums in the NFL that are newer than RJS, this is certainly Tampa Bias. We know we need an updated jumbotron. High School stadiums even have HD now. The club section is average at best and expected of a facility that is 15 years old. Again it's a nice stadium but the WOW factor went away years ago.

I've always been a huge proponent of an OCS, but this talk is cheap and nothing more than what any good politician would say. Until a picture is drawn, a location identified, and a request for donations, it's all USF BS, they can say whatever they want and nobody can hold them to it. I guess it makes good offseason banter on this board...............

While it is nice to know that USF had better attendance than these schools, a few things stick out. About half of these schools are private with small enrollments, they just dont have the alumni base to fill a stadium. Duke is the top academic school in the ACC, Vandy is the top academic school in the SEC, Stanford is the top academic school in the PAC 12, and Northwestern is the top academic school in the Big 10. Academics do matter with regards to the power 5, every conference always has a token member for this reason. The SEC is proud of Vandy for bringing up standards. Also I'm pretty sure Wake forest has the smallest enrollment of any BCS program. I was surprised with Georgia tech and Maryland however.

Lump sum payment as of now stands around $282 Million. I'd keep $30 million, and put the rest in play. I've been a huge proponent of an OCS over the years, but what would be the better invenstment for the future of USF football or the university in general. $250 Million to go towards an OCS or $250 million to attempt to buy our way into a power conference? SEC or Big 10 might not even consider that but would it be worth $250 million to buy our way into the ACC or Big 12?

It is my understanding that Skips buyout was a fixed amount, which makes no sense then to pay it off early. That would be a waste of capital which any finance major could point out. Now if it could be negotiated down then we have something to look at. Paying off our other debts depends on what the rates are. If we could get a better return on the capital then paying off the debts early does not make sense. We are a large public university, I would think that we could negotiate some pretty good rates, but who knows.

When do football renewals come, I thought they would be out by now?

I'd like to see more of a concrete plan towards infrastructure improvements. Indoor practice facility Recruiting Budget OCS fund

This sucks, we all know it. You can try to find excuses but it still sucks. If it walks talks and acts like a duck, its a duck. Terrible

Not only did the Holtz new era lead to this mess, but its not like he layed the foundation for a stellar recruiting class come signing day. Who even knows if AW would have still honored his verbal if Skippy was here. This class is not on CWT. Its gonna be very hard to turn things around if our quaterback play does not improve significantly. Lack of quarterback recruiting under the Holtz new era may be the greatest crime..............

I understand the TV markets and translating into dollars for the conference. I just worry that we are sacrificing to much in terms of strength of schedule for just a few extra bucks. I hope I'm wrong. But we can certainly be in a situations where we are 10-2 and unranked if they percieve our competition to be that weak. This is a gamble. Is Colorado State that bad? people love Fort Collins. Colorado is not killing it, so Colorado State could potentially overtake them. Just wondering why they are never discussed.

I do not know the answer to this but it is probably worth discussing, if the Big East is imploding and Uconn and Cincy are looking to form a new league what if less = more? Do we need 16 teams in a league, would 10 or even 8 suffice. Are these watered down teams we are adding not really bringing anything to the table. How much revenue are they really adding at the expense of having poor quality. They Big 12 certainly feels that 10 is a fine number for them unless a marquee program joings that makes sense. They have sacrficed a championship game. I just do not know. What if a league formed of just the old Big East remaining teams and the new teams that were offered first? 1. Uconn 2. Cincy 3. USF 4. Temple 5. UCF 6. Houston 7. SMU 8. Boise State 9. San Diego State Only add a 10th team if it made sense, try to get BYU to join. I really do not know if less would work for us, but I thought I would throw it out there.

Totally agree on all points. Let me ask you this, why can't USF make an announcement that we are committed to building an OCS and have started a fund raising effort. After a predetermined amount of private funds have accumulated, USF will seek incremental traditional types of funding,,. Something vague like that, it shows we support the idea which could be an advantage to the Big5 when they think about the future expansion... I agree with this completely. Nobody can really answer this question. Does anybody have Judy or Doug on record saying why they do not want to start a fund? Are there legal hurdles/tax issues with starting a fund and no plan? Do they feel people will give to the stadium fund instead of other projects? Do they just not want to be committed to the issue? I just do not know. If you call the foundation and say you would like to give them money for the sole purpose of going to a stadium fund, they will not let you. Granted if Morsani or Patel dropped a couple Million into the pot they would more than likely take it. Having at least a possibility of building an OCS, could also help with future RJS negotiations. When you have options you gain leverage, right now there is really no alternative for us.

Yeah, I lived in Gainesville for a few loooong miserable years. I can tell you that most student there don't live on campus either. It's stupid to even bring it up. Almost as stupid as the off campus football stadium. The only reason schools have on campus stadiums is because there are no other places to play. They had no choice but to build. And if you build, you tend to do it on your own property, hence the OCS was born. "The only reason schools have on campus stadiums is because there are no other places to play. They had no choice but to build. And if you build, you tend to do it on your own property, hence the OCS was born." Yes, but they also discovered the amazing benefit of having 50K plus on the campus during gameday. Alumni returning and bringing their families is a great thing. I'm to tired to search for articles from schools who just got on campus stadiums noticing this benefit. They are out their. If you do not beleive me, ask Judy or Doug, they say it all the time.

"What exactly is the point of this article?" Based on USF's objective resume, it is in its current situation with regards to conference realignment. "Blow up USF and start over?" No continue to support USF academics and athletics via donations and attendance at sporting events. "USF is what it is. Deal with it or find someone else to root for because the majority of those things aren't going to change" Thats a terrible attitude and not supported by the people who passionately responded to this thread, we want USF to be better, and feel it has the capacity to improve "like no OCS (ask Pitt how much that's hurt them)," Pitt was established in 1787, has an endowment of over 2.5 billion dollars. Is an AAU member ranked number 58 nationally by US News. Has national Championships in football and a Heisman winner. They need an OCS about as much as Harvard and Penn need a marketing department for their business schools. This was exactly the point of this thread. Pitt has a tremendous objective resume, and was desirable to another conference. "don't mean squat and are one person's perceptions, not fact." If you are referencing me, I'll take it as a compliment, I'll also give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not read the thread. The whole thread is on USF's position based on objective data. I think all my posts do a pretty good job referencing stats, ranking, and articles.

Yes USF has made great strides; Yes Judy has done a great job on the academic side of things. Yes the campus is improving. Yes USF is a better university each and every year. But it does not matter when you were on the campus. Everyone on this board loves this university with a passion, and wants to see it succeed. Our current resume is our current resume. The conferences do not care where we came from; they care where we are now. Where we are now does not match up well with the schools in the “Big conferencesâ€. Improvement is always great, but it is no guarantee that we will make the jump onto the next level. Potential is just that, Potential. We may or may not materialize. Academic snobbery still persists, and rating systems are heavily skewed towards undergraduate. USF pulls in a lot of research, but that is on the graduate side of things. The commuter school moniker is not a death sentence in and of itself, it does however become a factor when we do not graduate our students, and nobody is arguing that this is not a problem. Here is an article from the Tampa Bay Times http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/venturebiz/content/florida-university-systems-still-way-behind-usfs-graduation-rate-sore-need-improvement “One of USF's Achilles heels is this ranking is its abysmally low rate 6-year graduation rate.†“USF realizes it's not remotely competitive on its 6-year graduation rate. What's alarming is that low graduation rate has not changed much in the past five years. (USF's 4-year graduation rate for first-time-in-college students is a troubling 34 percent.)†It is scary, we all feel the university has been making changes, but it is not translating into this very important statistic. 6 year graduation rates UF = 84 percent FSU = 74 percent UCF = 63 percent USF = 52 percent We can make excuses all day, but it still does not replace these objective measures on our current resume, and that is what my whole point was about. If you look objectively, we are in the conference we should be in. We need to improve on these measures and I will continue to support the school in its efforts both in the classroom and on the feild of sports.

Exactly my point, take an active role and support the university, not blame others or expect we deserve a seat in a better conference.

Agreed, lots of quality programs do not have the AAU honor. In fact the SEC only had 2 schools that were AAU (Florida and Vandy) before accepting Texas AM and Missouri which are both AAU schools. If you look at all the schools that have been moving around however, a clear pattern emerges. Pitt, Syracuse, Nebraska (Both Just Lost AAU status), Colorado, Rutgers, Maryland, Texas AM, Missouri, all AAU schools. West Virginia and Louisville are not but they have huge fan bases, and Louisville went last when the Big East had no more AAU members left. TCU is not but the Big12 needed a 10th team and they chose one from Texas. Utah is not but the PAC 12 choose a good regional fit.

Going to disagree with you on just about everything. The University of South Florida is one of the Premier research Universities in this state. AAU status will come with time. The money is there now but that is not enough. AAU membership requires results. Just look around you, USF just had a professor win educator of the year in the entire nation. The results are there as well and just need a few more years of proof. USF is no longer the fall back school kids are getting denied here and getting into FSU and other schools on a consistent basis now. I'm sure that works both ways, but not something you could say a few years ago. USF is also considered the one of the leaders of the up and coming institutions ranking top 5 yearly. Our academics are fine as I am sure University Presidents would be well aware of this information. I really hashed out at DW in the past but I know see the light. Our Administration knows that USF's way into a major conference is to bring to the table upgrades in ALL SPORTS. Football needs to catch up, basketball needs to stay hot, and baseball needs new leadership which will come after this season. Commuter school. You can keep thinking that way, but that is not true anymore. Housing is full to the point where the school just put pressure to speed up the Fontana Hall property remodel project. It will be ready for the fall... You disagree with everything yet you do not refute any of these claims that USF just does not stack up that well with the schools in the power conferences. Yes, we are certainly improving, Judy is doing a great job. But we are simply where we should be in terms of the conference situation. Please lay to bed the OCS statement. Has it help UCF get into a better conference then the Big East? UCF a school whose recent athletic results are far superior to ours. Athletics and the university made a commitment to improve basketball and non-revenue sports facilities. They saw this mess on the horizon and reacted and did the smart thing. USF is not willing to build a metal disaster of a stadium just to say we have one. They choose to spread out our dozen eggs instead of laying them all in one basket. How anyone can say that was the wrong decision is shocking to me. Look at the state of the football program. So we put the 100 million down on a new stadium and build something like Minnesota has. Now we have a start of the art stadium for a currently failing program and awful facilities for every other sport. The correct decision was made and playing in Ray Jay is right for this university at this time. I think we can all agree that nobody can win a stadium debate until after the fact. Then we can look back and see it the investment worked or not. With regards to UCF. USF was clearly ahead of them, we had beaten them every time, albeit the last one at their OCS was real close. UCF built a stadium and put together some nice seasons in Conference USA. UCF got a call up to the Big East when West Virginia, Louiseville, and Rutgers were still in the league. Looking back the Big East was still a very viable conference at the time. UCF is essentially on par with USF at this time, it's a coin flip. So yes, I'm going to say that their stadium has been successful. Is it the stadium? is it Leary? is it something else? I dont know. Also, very different circumstances, Citrus Bowl was crap. If you don't beleive me here is what the president of UCF thinks about the stadium. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-01-15/sports/os-bianchi-john-hitt-ucf-20110115_1_ucf-president-john-hitt-ucf-football-bright-house-networks-stadium Looking at conference realignment we know it is all about football, basketball is 20%, all other sports are essentially meaningless. Now I'm getting conflicting reports on this pen about whether administration knew conference realignment was coming, or that they made these facility upgrades expecting a 10 million dollar a year Big East TV deal. Which one is right? Looking back, and knowing football is the driver, and knowing football is the only entity that can make the fan base baramoter move in a meaningful manner, then yes I think it is an absolutely fair and almost expected question of administration. We can spread our eggs into many baskets, but there are only a couple of baskets that matter. I agree those fields were terrible and we have RJS, not saying it is a wrong decision, but the question is fair.

Not sure how to respond to this. So saying that I will "continue to support USF athletics via donations and attendance at football games. I will make it a point to have all 6 of my season tickets used. I will also continue to press administration to improve academics" somehow represents a piss poor losers mentality? Wouldn't the exact opposite represent this mentality? I hope this is not the sentiments of our alumni and fan base, because then we are truly in trouble.

Agreed. The stats don't back it up (I remember seeing our on-campus rate was higher than many schools nobody would ever DREAM of calling a commuter school) but people still say it ... so what can we do? Develop a complex about it or just focus on other far more important things. People who say things like "oh that's a commuter school" are usually the most tiresome bores on the planet anyway. For all the cliched stuff about Ivy League grads its often grads of other non-ivy league schools who are the most eager to demean another schools for various arbitrary reasons that don't really matter to anyone in the real world. Agreed as well, I do not know how the commuter school label took over this thread, that it probably the least relevant in terms of our current conference situation. I still stand by the statement that USF is perceived as a commuter school however.

Going to disagree with you on just about everything. The University of South Florida is one of the Premier research Universities in this state. AAU status will come with time. The money is there now but that is not enough. AAU membership requires results. Just look around you, USF just had a professor win educator of the year in the entire nation. The results are there as well and just need a few more years of proof. USF is no longer the fall back school kids are getting denied here and getting into FSU and other schools on a consistent basis now. I'm sure that works both ways, but not something you could say a few years ago. USF is also considered the one of the leaders of the up and coming institutions ranking top 5 yearly. Our academics are fine as I am sure University Presidents would be well aware of this information. I really hashed out at DW in the past but I know see the light. Our Administration knows that USF's way into a major conference is to bring to the table upgrades in ALL SPORTS. Football needs to catch up, basketball needs to stay hot, and baseball needs new leadership which will come after this season. Commuter school. You can keep thinking that way, but that is not true anymore. Housing is full to the point where the school just put pressure to speed up the Fontana Hall property remodel project. It will be ready for the fall... You disagree with everything yet you do not refute any of these claims that USF just does not stack up that well with the schools in the power conferences. Yes, we are certainly improving, Judy is doing a great job. But we are simply where we should be in terms of the conference situation. You’re not very smart if you think a university that is 50 and in some cases 100 years younger than most of these schools it is in competition with, would have the resources to automatically compete with these schools on a yearly basis. The reality of the situation is on the wall. Many on here accuse Judy of not doing her job and I laugh at them. Look at the schools academics before and now after her arrival. You say let's clean it up all happily like no one is doing anything. The administration is working their ass off get us out of this mess. It will take time and the university is right where it should be. On the cusp of becoming a great institution and after a little more than 50 years. I would say that is far ahead of the schedule anyone could have predicted. Please lay to bed the OCS statement. Has it help UCF get into a better conference then the Big East? UCF a school whose recent athletic results are far superior to ours. Athletics and the university made a commitment to improve basketball and non-revenue sports facilities. They saw this mess on the horizon and reacted and did the smart thing. USF is not willing to build a metal disaster of a stadium just to say we have one. They choose to spread out our dozen eggs instead of laying them all in one basket. How anyone can say that was the wrong decision is shocking to me. Look at the state of the football program. So we put the 100 million down on a new stadium and build something like Minnesota has. Now we have a start of the art stadium for a currently failing program and awful facilities for every other sport. The correct decision was made and playing in Ray Jay is right for this university at this time. Is the university where it should be? Yes it is, it is exactly where should be given the circumstances. Is it where it wants be? No, it shows this by the improvements it is making to itself. The University of South Florida is gaining ground fast in the central Florida area. Every time I go out I am shocked by how much bull’s apparel is now walking around instead of hanging on a rack. When I first came to love this University, a member of my family was and still is one of greatest women's basketball players this school has ever seen. I have been around it ever since that time. While it is only 10 or so years the improvements in that time frame are ridiculous. I am refuting every claim you make as you are acting like nothing is being done. I used be like your kind on this board, coming on here stirring the pot for the helluva it and seeing everyone’s reactions. Sit back and look around you, the University of South Florida is and has done everything it can to improve and makes itself more attractive. The rest is out of its hands. The thread was about us being exactly where we should be in the conference shakeup, based on those factors. And based on your response It appears you are agreeing with me. Now sitting back and saying everything that comes down the pipe "is out of our hands", well I just don't have that mentality.

football program has underachieved and has been a disappointment no other objective way to look at it I would challenge you to find another program who has accomplished more than we have in their first 16 years. What would we need to do for you to be pleased Steven? Win an NC? Win the Big East? We are 16 years old, the fact that we are even IN the Big East is amazing in itself. You think being in the Big East was an accomplishment?? If I would have asked you that in 2005, what would you have answered? Yes, it was an accomplishment. You love to play semantics, don't you Trip. TherapyBull, when did you gradute? Just curious. 1996 - 2000 BA 2001 - 2003 Physical Therapy