walty12 said

owlcountry said

SeminOWL2006 said

Personally, I don't agree with playing bottom of the barrel OOC teams that would get us no respect.  I respect FAU and Troy playing big boys alot more than I respect Hawaii playing nobody.  It creates hype, like with Hawaii, and then they go into a game and have to play Georgia and get romped because they don't know how to play with these kinds of teams.  It makes all non-BCS conferences look bad when they so obviously do not belong. 

The number one thing said about Hawaii and Ohio State this year

"They won a lot of games
BUT
they have an incredibly weak schedule."

It doesn't glaze past people. If you get a 12-0 record by playing all D1AA schools, for instance, you don't get as much respect as toppling Michigan or Georgia at their place. (Not that Hawaii and OSU played all D1AA schools, that's not what I'm saying)

We beat Minnesota this year and it was supposed to be the feather in our cap… unfortunately because they played like garbage the rest of the season, it almost got to the point where our victory meant nothing to the public/media. Wins against Texas and Michigan State should go a long way because both of those teams, outside of being "name" teams, should be at least 0.500 next year if not better.

A weird situation for us would be to win all four OOC games and then come back and have an off day to lose to, say, ULM. But at the same time, if one of the SBC teams is ranked it boosts attendance and media exposure to SBC teams who are playing them.

The key is that you heard of Hawaii this season.  At this point in our program we need wins, no matter who they are against.  I would rather be 11-1 in a soft schedule than be 7-5 against good teams, but everybody point at two games where we got drummed and write us off as a bad team (Oklahoma State 42-6, Kentucky 45-17).  We have a long way to go before we are beating teams like Texas and Georgia on the road…our only BCS win is vs. a VERY bad Minnesota team at home, and that is key…at HOME.  We seem to forget how much of an advantage that is, going into Texas and Michigan State in September and winning the game is a tough task…they are VERY good teams with a lot more talent (please dont argue that, not saying we aren't becoming more and more talented every year but there is still a large talent gap between us and Texas).  In other words, it would be tough for UF to go to Texas and Michigan State in back to back wins…for us it would be a miracle (a miracle I would love to witness).  Point is, we need to tone down some of our OOC games and start challanging teams we want to compete with in the very near future like the Rutgers, Cincinatti's, and USF's, we dont need to schedule games that are LIKELY (not certain, dont call me a pessimest or any other stupid comment) to end up being 30-40 point losses and a scenario where that team that beat the hell out of us wont come to South Florida and play us…makes no sense (I understand there is a financial factor, but we need to get our program past that).

Anyway, lets get UCF and USF and Miami on the schedule (all beneficial games for different reasons) and get the Texas's and Nebraska's off.

SigEp77 said

Exit39 said

i would like to play more big east teams, UConn, Syracuse, Rutgers.

All very winnable games for us.  If they were on our schedule next year I would be confident in us going 3-0 or 2-1 against these Big (L)East teams.

walty12 said

Anyway, lets get UCF and USF and Miami on the schedule (all beneficial games for different reasons) and get the Texas's and Nebraska's off.

Essency said

walty12 said

Anyway, lets get UCF and USF and Miami on the schedule (all beneficial games for different reasons) and get the Texas's and Nebraska's off.

I think you'll see UCF on the schedule soon enough.  Our schedules aren't full, O'Leary wants to play two Florida schools a season, and the papers have said our ADs are in talks.  A 1-1 in '09 '10 is my guess.