This is from the Tampa Tribune; what are your thoughts on this article, Knights fans? I know, Tampa is USF territory, so it's just them putting down the Orlando people. What other responses do you have? What parts are true, what parts are false?
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Published: Nov 12, 2003

UCF Showing How Not To Build Program

JOE HENDERSON
Tampa Tribune

Given UCF's football, cough, history, you'd probably laugh at the suggestion these are desperate times in Orlando. Like that's news?

What should you expect from a program whose best player ever, quarterback Daunte Culpepper, became a Knight only because his SAT score initially was too suspect for Florida State. If it can be done wrong, UCF probably has written the instruction manual and gone on the lecture circuit.

UCF backers won't like that suggestion, of course. They'll say they're going into Conference USA. Release the balloons!

Cel-e-brate good times!

Yeah, like having five players, including the star quarterback, suspended and/or dismissed for both academic and legal reasons. Or losing seven of 10 games. Or the inevitable fallout that came Monday when Coach Mike Kruczek was fired, not long after he received a contract extension.

His going-away present: $849,000.

They used to dream of being the football equals of Florida's Big 3, but now the Knights only can dream of being USF. What made it worse was how Kruczek groveled for a game against the Bulls, only to see USF hem and haw before tepidly accepting games for 2005-06.

USF didn't want any part of the Knights because there was no advantage to playing them. The Bulls' image already was superior throughout the state, and playing a game they could lose would only help UCF's recruiting.

That's not a problem now.

How Not To Do It

UCF has been a haphazard mess since it started football in 1979. Then-school President Trevor Colbourn announced Jan. 15 of that year that UCF was ``going to explore the possibility of developing a football program.''

By that fall, the Golden Knights were on the field.

If Columbus explored this rapidly, he'd have made it to the Azores and knocked off for happy hour.

The Knights raised just $40,000 before starting play, and they've been vision-rich and cash-poor since. They've fallen into the trap over the years of playing big-time opponents on the road in exchange for big-time paydays.

Just two years ago they began the season with games at Clemson, Syracuse, Tulane and Virginia Tech. They've traveled to Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Penn State, Georgia Tech, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Nebraska, South Carolina and Syracuse without return visits.

The guarantees from those trips paid the bills, but you can't build a program that's anything more than homecoming fodder.

Bad Image

The Knights were asleep when the conferences went realignment crazy a decade ago and had to settle for the Mid-American Conference after spending years as an independent.

When Round II of the shuffling came last spring, they were beaten to the Big East by USF and had to take a watered-down C-USA.

New Athletic Director Steve Orsini, a Notre Dame grad, says he's going to straighten out this mess. He likely will go for someone from the outside to take over for Kruczek, but whomever he hires will need time - lots and lots of it.

Names such as Jay Gruden and Terry Bowden have been tossed around. Bowden won't go, although the family is floating the name of brother Jeff, FSU's offensive coordinator.

Not exactly exciting, but that's where UCF is right now.

There are good jobs out there that will attract top coaches, but right now this isn't one of them.

<a href='http://www.tampatrib.com/Sports/MGAC085JWMD.html' target='_blank'>TAMPA TRIBUNE: UCF showing how not to build a program</a>

Tacky article.....especially when you consider which school it is slanted TOWARD. :rolleyes:

Tampa is USF territory so did you expect anything else from Bull****** country? The USF ******* have been afraid to schedule UCF for years. They load their pathetic schedule with 1AA patsies. I guess you build a program by scheduling 1AA patsies instead of scheduling the best. UCF always scheduled the best possible teams we could. I will admit UCF is having a down year.

The reason USF got into the Big East over UCF has nothing to do with football. The USF basketball program is better then UCF's. USF sunk all their money into the basketball program years ago. The Big Least is nothing more then a basketball conference. I am happy to be in C-USA for all sports. The UCF program will be just fine with the leadership we have running the program today. Our AD Steve Orsini is a CPA, and a business man. Steve Orsini was the captain of the 1977 Notre Dame national champions. He played with Joe Montana and Rudy. Steve knows what it takes to build a winning program. Our AD has a lot bigger nads then I thought because I seriously thought he would give Kruzeck 1 more year to get his act together but he pulled the plug after we lost to one of the worst 1A teams in the country. Losing to EMU was the straw that broke the camels back for Kruzeck.

FUC USF and that writer :chair:

Go C-USA
Go Knights!

USF, the New Rutgers of the Big East

USF basketball will be the doormat of the Big East. They might get a little bit better but I don't think they will ever be a great team that is consistently in the top 25 in basketball. Florida is a football state not a basketball state. They take high school football very serious down here. My frickin high school gets more fans then some of those MAC teams we play. The MAC has good football but their fan support for some of their teams sucks. Buffalo, EMU and Kent St have horrible attendence figures. I think they had 1K fans at the EMU vs UCF game.

This attitude is completely representative of the USF mentality. However, the fact remains that they have not built up a loyal following or anything else for that matter. Just two die hard fans. And they're both blow hards who like to tell lies about themselves. As soon as they get stomped every weekend in the Big East you can expect the tix sales to dry up, even though they are more like tix giveaways. If you check out their net forums, you will see maybe 10 users. They're trying to puff themselves up. But guess what... they are the Enron of college football. ECU has real fan support. 1-9 and still average 30K attendance is what makes a program. USF goes 1-9 and they would average 2K. But then they'd report to the NCAA that they had 70K fans show up. LOL. FUC the Bulls of West Central Florida. Their propaganda machine can kiss my arse. That guy Henderson is a joke. You guys are better off without the Bulls and once they get bounced from the Big East, they will be without a conference.

What about the USF stadium. I loved seeing that Tampa Bay Bucs logo at mid-field for their last home game on TV. The stadium is all Bucs colors. The Bucs colors are a far cry from Green and Gold. The Bulls fans are instructed to stay away from the Pirate ship. A lot of season ticket holders for the Bucs are pissed off that USF gets to use their stadium. Actually the city owns the stadium but it does not make you feel to warm when the entire stadium resembles the Tampa Bay Bucs.

On the other hand UCF uses the Citrus Bowl but it is our stadium for the entire football season. We don't share it with anyone else until bowl season comes around.

Purely classless reporting. My feelings are that when you waste time and energy trashing another program, like those folks in Tampa all of the sudden decided to start doing there is a little envy problem. This envy certainly isn't from this season, but rather from the fact that nobody has known who USF is for years. They are finally getting a little play on television and people are starting to notice. The fact remains while UCF isn't part of the big 3 in Florida we do have a better presence on the national spotlight.

Oh yeah, by the way it took the Mayor of Orlando to challenge the Mayor of Tampa until the bulls would finally pony up and agree to schedule some football games with us. We've tried for years to create this rivalry and USF just wouldn't commit to it until they felt they had a chance. Nice balls bulls!

Can't wait till UCF beats USF. :chair:

Sounds like you guys get alot of the same grief from the Florida media that USM gets from the media here in Mississippi. We have to deal with Ole Miss, Miss St. & the SEC.

I feel your pain.

Stay AWAY from Jff Bowden. He is a horrible coach. He left USM cause he could never be promoted up from WR Coach. Ever since he became OC @ FSU, FSU has hit the skids....

Hire Jay Gruden & kick some ******

Marshall gets alot of it too, from Morgantown JR College

We are far enuff away from Morgantown JR College that it isn't so much

Actually it's worse than that. USF doesn't even have a perch to look down from. They just make it up as they go. Why do you think we have never played? They won't come out and play against us. USF never even made a 1aa playoff. Nothing. Please don't read into this and think that they actually get respect in Florida. A couple of Tampa reporters like to help out the local community college. So what.

Wonder what the writer thinks now?

Picturing you waking up and first thing on the agenda is searching for every thread about UCF is pretty priceless.

Im waking up and searching to see if we are in the Big East yet.

That's the difference in our days so far.

Shows the ignorance of most sports writers especially when it comes to Academics. Florida St. UF and Miami have all used every exception rule in the book to field a competitive team. The Academic Fraud scandal at FSU showed the world how the AQ's use Learning Disability as a loop hole to get kids on campus even with a 2nd 3rd grade reading and writing level. They also use the Special Gift exception which can bring a talented kid with Academic struggles to the music department but amazingly enough those slots get used up by the Athletic Dept for mostly Football and Basketball players whose special gift is helping the University win games.

Last I checked UCF has built a pretty damn impressive on campus Athletic Complex unlike USF who plays in a half empty NFL Stadium. UCF is on thier way to the Big East and if they hire a coach worth a damn could be playing in a BCS Bowl within a few years

(11-17-2011 10:03 AM)st932253 Wrote:  Picturing you waking up and first thing on the agenda is searching for every thread about UCF is pretty priceless.

Im waking up and searching to see if we are in the Big East yet.

That's the difference in our days so far.

And, are you in the Big East this morning? I was about to defend UCF about this classless post, but your even more classles response will keep me from doing so.

2003 article?

SMACK THREAD

That was a hatchet job of an article. The whole premise of the article was to put UCF down. It had "0" integrity whatsoever. In my mind it seemed to be written in the same spirit of that Daily Tarheel article about ECU.

Why did you search for an article written in 2003?

Wow, I can't believe that was written by an actual jouralist who worked for a newspaper. It reads like a rant taken from the NCAAbbs Smack Board.

To our CUSA brothers, this is a huge part of why we want in the Big East. It's not that we think it's an awesome conference and it's not that we think CUSA sucks; it's that we have to deal with a USF fanbase that completely agrees with this article. It has been so painful to watch that program be given everything while earning nothing. I know some people here will think that's ironic coming from a UCF fan since we don't have the history of many of your teams, but you have to admit we've done far more to earn a place at the table than USF has.