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Here's the quick history for those who where not aware of USF's progress. I for one feel extremely cheated in that they were still a 1-AA when I was a part of our ONLY winning season. See the below.

There has been unprecedented growth in the school's football program. USF began football play as a 1-AA independent in 1997, moved to 1-A in 2001, then to Conference USA in 2003, and now competes in the Big East conference (as of 2005) with its Bowl Championship Series (BCS) tie-ins.

THEY ARE BRAND NEW and can smoke us at will. Amazing how the right people matter.

Why is it, that everyone we used to beat, WHEN I PLAYED, has improved since, and we have not. For example: Arkansas, beat them 3 of 5, TCU. Fresno St., ect....

How did they build their program? Of course, they have what 30,000 students? But I can tell you their program was built on a solid foundation which would allow it to compete. They aren't pretending to be an Ivy League like SMU. People talk about Money as if that's the problem. ITS NOT. Its talent procurement-the other team has better players than SMU because they aren't attempting to play Division 1A football on their own terms-they are trying to win in every way possible. SMU still hasn't laid the foundation-I said the same thing 10-12 years ago tonite I'm sure.

USF has the 9th largest enrollment in the nation at 43k. They could fill our stadium with just the students.

However most importantly they have two things we don't.
a) A coach that is really special
b) Take anyone no matter criminal or academic past. It is well known that if a player can't get into the Big 3 than USF and UCF will still take them and work it out somehow.

We can't mirror their rise, but that doesn't mean we should demand more