(09-24-2020 11:39 AM)stpnum4 Wrote: I would argue that UCF's rise has directly affected USF and its struggles in the last few years. USF had the advantage of a BCS conference and top 10 rankings in the last 15 years, but you would never know it by their recent extended struggles.
I don't really think so. Surprisingly, we actually don't compete a ton for the same players. We'll see if that changes some with Scott's offense, but of late the targets have not overlapped much.
Florida has as much (if not more) talent than Texas, and Texas supports 5 P5 programs (plus OU, OSU, and Arkansas with Texas heavy rosters) and 7 G5 programs including a couple playing at a high level. Florida has plenty of talent to go around.
USF's problem has been coaching. With the exception of two years of Quincy Flowers, they haven't had a decent QB in a decade since BJ Daniels and arguably since Grothe. They've never had a QB on the level of Bortles, Milton, or Gabriel. Taggart could have probably kept it up the way he was recruiting, but they blew it with Charlie Strong, who was completely checked-out and didn't give a **** about winning there, only cashing checks. Beware P5 re-treads who think they can walk into a G5 and recruit and win with no effort because they're convinced G5 leagues all suck.
Also, and I'm sure USF fans will disagree with this, but they made a mistake in firing Skip Holtz. When he took over from Leavitt, the team was weak. He needed several years to rebuild, and if they had let him, they'd have a much stronger foundation all around. They pulled that trigger way too quickly because they couldn't deal with struggling for the first time in program history.