Holtz building a troublesome football resume at USF

The second year of the Skip Holtz era ended with one of the worst seasons in the history of the program following the Bulls gut-wrenching 30-27 loss to West Virginia Thursday night.

Perhaps more disturbing is how the defense collapsed on the late stages of four heartbreaking losses.

Cincinnati, Miami and West Virginia scored on their final possessions to come from behind to beat the Bulls. Rutgers scored on its next to last possession of regulation to tie the game and then defeated USF in overtime.

The combined stats from those four drives are most troubling. USF opponents completed 20 of 26 passes for 244 yards without an interception on those drives.

The final game typified this season with USF unable to stop West Virginia on its game winning drive. The killer came when the Mountaineers had a fourth and 10 from the USF 42 yard line with 13 seconds left and quarterback Geno Smith completed a 26 yard pass to set up the game wining 28 yard field goal as time expired.

Miami’s Jacory Harris completed seven straight passes without an incompletion on the Hurricanes final drive. Rutgers had five straight completions and then after two misfires quarterback Chas Dodd threw a 34-yard TD strike with 1:08 left that eventually sent the game into overtime.

Cincinnati’s Zach Collaros completed four of his first five passes in the Bearcats winning drive, including a 21 yarder that gave his team a first down at the USF six that led to his two-yard TD run.

Holtz now owns an indistinguishable list of non-accomplishments and failures.
The loss ends the Bulls string of going to six straight bowl games, gives the program (5-7) its first losing season since 2004 and only third since the program first started playing in 1997.

The 1-6 Big East Conference record is the program’s worst since joining the league in 2004 surpassing the previous worst in ’08 when the Bulls had a 2-5 league record. Its worst record in Conference USA was 3-5 in ’04.

As pointed out earlier this week, this is all from a man who is the reported third highest paid coach in the Big East Conference at $1.7 million per season.

Boise State and Big East is a marriage made in heaven

Boise State and the Big East Conference!

It's a match made in heaven. What are you waiting for. This is the perfect marriage!

Boise State's record over recent years and BCS ranking will save the Big East and allow it to hold onto its Automatic Qualifying status.

In return Boise State won't have to beat teams by 50 points and go undefeated to get into a BCS bowl and have virtually no chance for the BCS title game.

Why would either side turn this down. The Big East only needs Boise State as a football school. This is perfect unless there is something we don't know.

Are the Broncos afraid of playing West Virginia, Cincinnati, South Florida, Rutgers, Louisville and Connecticut every year. No offense to the Mountain West, but overall these are better teams than what the league has now.

Get this done. It's a no brainer. The only thing that would ruin this deal is if the BCS changed its qualification rules to be an AQ and that is unlikely. Lawsuits would be flying all over the country and those guys don't want that. They make too much money.

Even if Louisville bolts for another conference as reported there are enough BCS points among Boise State, West Virginia and Cincinnati for the Big East to remain ahead of the current non AQ conferences.

So get it done. Boise State-Big East. It's the perfect marriage!

Big East blanked again in pre-season football poll

The USA Today Football Coaches Poll is out and to no one's surprise no Big East Conference team is in the top 25

It didn't have any in the final BCS standings when the season ended last year, so we should not be shocked.

But then again this is one of six BCS conferences that is hauling in all that money from BCS Bowls. Is it asking too much that they have one team in the top 25?

USF received nine points to place the Bulls way down the totem poll, but at least were mentioned. More importantly it gets a chance to rectify things in its season opener at Notre Dame, which is ranked 18th.

West Virginia is the highest ranked Big East team at 27 (149 points). In the state of Florida, USF ranks behind FSU, Florida and Miami, which is no disgrace. But also behind UCF (ranked 33)!

Now that's got to stick in the Bulls craw. But hold on UCF finished 21st in last season's final BCS rankings.

Bulls head coach Skip Holtz is one of 59 coaches who vote in the poll. But they've got to help him.

USF scheduling cautiously as Big East considers more expansion

Football expansion will be a hot topic when the Big East Conference hold’s its annual spring meetings this month in Ponte Vedra.

Big East teams are being encouraged to leave room open on future schedules if the league adds a 10^th team. TCU joins the conference in 2012 to become its ninth football team and the league wants to expand to 10.

Villanova, an FCS (I-AA) power has been talked about as the natural addition, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot of passion to add the Wildcats, particularly with the Big East already under fire for being part of the BCS.

To keep its options open, USF is scheduling future football games with the understanding that it may have to back out with buyout penalty.

One of the big motivators to add a so called “name” team is television money. The new Pac 10, which now has 12 teams, announced its launching its own television network and will make $3 billion over the next 12 years in a joint agreement with ESPN and Fox.

According to a Forbes Magazine report, West Virginia topped the Big East in football revenue in 2009 with $29.5 million. USF was fifth ($16.5 million) behind Pittsburgh ($22.5), Rutgers ($19.5), Syracuse ($19.1).