GMG_Dallas

I'll say what I told one of my coworkers who went to Auburn: If you're a Florida fan, your concern shouldn't be that Del Rio got hurt or if the hit was dirty or not, your concern should be that your O-Line got burned by our defensive end (and it wasn't the only time our defense got to the QB). When they face off against better SEC defenses, I'm worried their O-Line will get manhandled similar to how ours did against them. Never mind the fact that their starting offense was struggling against our defense. Consider this, SMU scored more points on us. I'm excited to see what this defense will do moving forward though. They have gotten better every week so far. Let's hope they continue to progress.

Attendance was relatively good in 2013 with the exception of the Ball State game (per ESPN's records). You can't just take one winning season and say, oh, attendance should be great now. You need several winning seasons. We need to expect winning to be the norm, not the exception, before we see a continuous spike in attendance. Also, per ESPN, our attendance steadily got better during 2013, minus the Ball State game, and hit just over 26,000 against UTEP. The following game was a chilly one against UTSA and attendance was poor, although good by today's standards. Winning did increase our attendance as the year went on.

15,000 attendance and a win. If we can string together a few consecutive winning seasons, it won't matter who we play - people will come to watch. Every major P5 is the perfect example of this. They sell out (or nearly sell out) their stadiums to come watch their teams play even against weaker opponents. Plus, like I mentioned on an other thread, getting to 6+ wins regardless of opponent is what's most important right now. We need to be bowl eligible. That's the most important thing right now. An easy win helps us get there.

I'm sorry, just want to make sure I'm following correctly. Is this in response to him considering UNT or him having his mind set on a P5?

I'm excited about this OL. Barring (no pun intended) injuries, transfers, etc... this group should have time to mesh and in a year or two, we could have a top O-Line in C-USA. Young guys + lots of experience early bodes well long term.

I wonder if they weren't responding to a win the way coach would have liked. This is a young team and for many on the team, the win against Bethune-Cookman was only the second win they played in of their college careers. I remember reading something about coach Litrell telling a player (I believe on defense) the way he was behaving was 1-11 sh*t and that he (Litrell) wasn't going 1-11. The coaching staff has a lot to work on with this team and part of what they need to work on is teaching the team how to be winners. That means how to respond to a win, preparing for a game regardless of the outcome of the previous game, preparing for a game regardless of opponent, and more. The players have shown by how much they celebrate on the field that they love to bask in the glory of making a play. Similar to the aftermath of winning a game, you have to forget and move on. There's always work to be done. This staff knows what it takes to win at the college level both as players and coaches (some more than others). I believe they will help this team grow leaps and bounds but in the meantime, all growing pains.

If our conference teams become more valuable/marketable, do you think it would be easier to have more home games with P5/marketable teams OR do you think it's best to do whatever it takes to schedule games at home against P5/marketable teams in the hopes that we (as a conference) eventually become good enough to win several of those game. I feel like if we focus on become more valuable/marketable as a whole, we have a greater chance of sustaining success and eventually winning several "body bag" games as opposed to tasting success once every 4-5 years.

Thanks Arizona State. Corrected. I'm sorry!

Going to side with you here about people never being happy. I looked at every 2016 schedule for C-USA schools this year and every school but 3 (THREE) is playing 2 P5s this year. Yes, a few of them are playing a P5 at home, but at the end of the day (ha! I said it), I would rather us get 6+ wins and be bowl eligible than play a P5 at home and a P5 away for possibly 2 losses on the year. This year's C-USA teams playing 2 P5s: Rice: home vs Baylor, road vs Stanford Western Kentucky: road vs Alabama, home vs Vanderbilt Middle Tennessee: road vs Vanderbilt, road vs Missouri Marshall: home vs Louisville, road vs Pitt (consecutive weeks) FAU: away vs Miami, away vs Kansas State (consecutive weeks and already lost both) FIU: home vs Indiana, home vs Maryland (consecutive weeks to start off the year, lost both) Southern Mississippi: road vs Kentucky, road vs LSU (best team in our conference pulled off a wild come from behind win against Kentucky) Louisiana Tech: road vs Arkansas, road vs Texas Tech UTSA: home vs Arizona State, road vs Texas A&M Out of all of those teams, probably only one team will come out .500 in those games and it's Southern Mississippi who beat Kentucky. The other three C-USA teams are us (played Florida), Charlotte who played Louisville, and UTEP who played Texas. Every other team in our conference just chalked up 2 losses before the season started and only Southern Miss will be able to switch that to 1-1 which means every other team just made it that much more difficult to make a bowl game. \We want to play in a conference that has a better perception. Here's an idea: limit yourself to one body bag game regardless of where it's played and counter that with one winnable (doesn't have to be against FCS schools) game. If more of our teams became bowl eligible every year, we would be viewed as a better conference even if we weren't which means: - better and/or more bowl invites moving forward (the NCAA struggled to find 6-6 teams for bowl games last year) - better TV contracts because you don't have 50% of your conference barely scratching the .500 surface every year - better exposure and the appearance of better programs Let's not worry so much about getting a P5 school at home once in a blue moon because we will probably pay more over the entirety of the deal. Kind of like, we won the battle but they won the war. Let's schedule respectable or locally known G5s at home like SMU and Army and try to schedule road games against lower tier P5s on the road. Thanks.

I believe the complaint is that Florida wanted to run up a score in a game where we would not be able to come back from 19 points down. I do agree with you that calling timeouts in that situation is nothing to be angry about. With an entire half left to go, you want to make sure the opposing team is buried before you take your foot off the pedal. Crazy comeback wins happen all the time and you always want to play to win.

Agree. The announcers, although pro Florida, thought so too. They kept commenting about Fine's toughness specifically because he would just bounce back up after every hit. If our defense can perform like this every game and our offense can pick it up a bit, we'll have a surprisingly decent year. This game (like most games between p5 and g5, or g5 vs fcs, etc...) came down to winning the battle in the trenches. If our oline performed better, you might have seen some better throws and better decision making by Fine. Hopefully this game doesn't do what happens to g5 teams and fans much to often: give false hope. We played a good defense game against Tennessee last year too but that obviously meant nothing to how our year went. This team has more fight and our coaches are eager. I think this year will different but the rice game will tell us more than this game will.

I agree 100% regarding Houston's status although a 5 star defensive tackle would dominate at UNT just the same, if not more, considering the overall talent level he would be facing. It might be more difficult for a 4 star offensive skill player to make an impact if the rest of the team is not up to par.

This guy is great to watch. Many 5 star and 4 star players don't make it at P5 schools and their careers end up derailing a few years into their college careers. Hopefully he can set the example that you don't need to only go to the select few P5s that land these guys to be successful. You can go to a G5, be an immediate starter, and make an immediate impact while garnering national attention.

I mean, it does seem like they have several players on offense out.... So who knows at this point. Like coach said, upsets happen every week.

This while also keeping Florida in check on special teams and keeping them under 40 points would give me plenty of hope for the rest of the season although I'm probably asking for too much...

Might be. I'm afraid of what that means for me though. I don't even have Facebook.

I'm 23 and I have no idea either.

With the way out receivers have been playing so far, I just don't see how it would hurt. Plus, to add to your point of chemistry, mason and Jason are incredibly close (from everything I've read and watched) so let's make sure Jason stays interested and doesn't transfer. Who knows if that would affect Mason at all but let's not chance it...

I know this isn't the same Florida team as in 2013, but Georgia Southern used the ground game to defeat Florida in the swamp as a Sun Belt school. http://www.espn.com/college-football/boxscore?gameId=333270057

I'm not expecting Fine to do the same or better against better (I'll say it) competition. Like I said, he hasn't been the best on pass plays. I just don't think you can say for certain he would have been worst. I mean, throwing 3 interceptions against SMU is pretty poor already. I think where Fine would have changed the game is the excitement he brings to the team and the running element. As I said, you don't what would have happened. What we do know is we went heavy on the run against BC and it worked. We went pass heavy against SMU and it didn't work. In hindsight, if we would have started Fine against SMU, we probably would have gone run heavy and that's where our strength is. The outcome might not have been different, but it probably would have been a closer game. Who knows. Time will tell how much better, if at all, Fine is than Morris. As of right now, there is nothing that indicates starting Fine would have been worst.

SMU did dominate that game for the most part but if you put Fine in there, do we throw 3 interceptions? Does he check out of a running play to throw an interception on 4th and 1 keeping in mind that SMU scored a TD on that drive. While I agree that SMU dominated for the most part, SMU scored 10 points off 2 interceptions of the 3 interceptions. I don't think you can say for certain that game wouldn't have had a different outcome had Fine started. He hasn't been the best on pass plays, but he sure has managed the game well and added the element of a mobile QB to handle for opposing defenses. We don't know but as of right now, nothing indicates starting Fine against SMU would have resulted in a worst score. The question is, how much better would the score have been.

With the way our WRs are playing so far, I'm thinking tossing Pirtle out there might be a good idea. He and Mason obviously have chemistry and it might help Mason ease into being the starting QB a bit more. He doesn't need to be in the 2-deep but let him in on a few snaps here and there. Has anybody heard anything about him so far this season?

Here's him with his buddies.

Army CB Brandon Jackson died in a car crash hours after their win over Rice. Had 3 interceptions and 62 tackles last year as a freshman and 6 tackles with 2 pass breakups so far this year. Tough to see somebody go at such a young age. Just thought I would mention this as we will be playing them soon and hope we can find a way to pay our respect to the young man. http://247sports.com/Bolt/Report-Army-Black-Knights-DB-Brandon-Jackson-dies-in-car-crash-47412406 Edit: Thought I would add that if you have watched the Mason & Jason story on Youtube, you know that Mason and Jason lost a close friend and teammate their freshman year of high school whom the team called Big Kale in a car crash as well. They (the whole team) honored him every game throughout Mason and Jason's high school career. I'm sure this will hit home to them two as well if they catch wind of it.

4 winnable games. I picked 2 but could be any 2 out of: Rice, UTSA, UTEP, Army If we can win 3 road games this could end up a decent season.