sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Writing this as I fly from Miami to Boston, where I will catch a flight to Syracuse. I have flown a lot over the years but I don’t think I have ever stopped in Boston on my way to Syracuse. But I looked at a ton of flights to try and find a way to fly out yesterday and get back today before noon.
Flew down through Philly, where I got a couple of comments on Syracuse football from people who live in the Philly area. They wanted to know if I was excited about SU football and if I knew McCord was coming. I told him yes, I was excited and had heard. LOL. People are noticing what is happening..
Not a big fan of the Miami airport. Like a lot of airports, they have a shuttle that takes you from the terminal I flew into to the rental car area (I think there is an Amtrak station there too). It is poorly marked and I have never had such a hard time just finding where I could pick up my rental car. As an aside, there was more Spanish spoken than English there; the most I have ever hear in an American city.
Boca Raton is around 45 miles north of Miami. Straight run on I95. I95 can get very congested. I got my car around noon, checked into my nearby hotel and drove up to the FAU campus to try and avoid rush hour traffic. It was still congested at times but not bad. Took about an hour.
The FAU campus is pretty open. Smallish buildings. Modern. Not vey distinguished looking but not East German looking. Their stadium is relatively new (about 10 years old?) , holds about 30K and is a nice place to watch a game. Excellent site lines. The game day experience wasn't great. More on that later.
The tailgate was maybe 250 yards from the stadium. TexanMark picked a great spot (Lot 7 I think). There was a big group of USF fans next door but they were friendly and we got along fine. Mark cooked up some iumbalaya, a local brought a grill and many Hofman products were grilled. Hot dogs and coneys. Some Sahlens too I think. Lots of choices to drink and lots of great company. Saw many old friends and met some people in person from the board for the first time. Very cool.
Pete brought a laptop and a projector and used it to show the SU basketball game on a screen on the back of his van. It was a little dicey before the sun set but worked beautifully. Great to see the team play well and see continued emergence from some of our young players. We just might be pretty good.
Headed up to the stadium shortly after the hoops game ended. Got nachos and a burrito from a place allied Taco Al Carbon (I think that was the name). A local told me they were a chain that has a restaurant near the campus. It was good. Yes, I broke my keto rules a bit here but it was in the interest of culinary exploration.
Not sure how many were there. Maybe 15K? Was originally thinking 13K but later it seemed like it filled out some. Could have even been 17K. It was close regarding which fan base brought more fans. I thought we had more at first but it is hard to tell sitting in the corner of an end zone. And it seemed like USF added people as the game went on. They certainly had more to cheer about.
Thought our play calling on offense was very uninspired. No new plays that I noticed. Very vanilla calls, especially in the first half when it was a still a game. The only interesting play was a reverse and LeQuint (I think) made an awful toss that should have been a turnover.
When we finally did throw the ball downfield with Davis, and had success, it seemed we immediately went back into a shell and just called Wildcat plays they were clearly ready for.
The lack of discipline that was a defining characteristic of all Dino teams reared its ugly head when Barron destroyed a USF player on the fumble returned for a TD. It didn’t matter; he just wanted to destroy someone.. Disappointing to see a captain use such poor judgement and this isn’t the first time he has done something like this.
In the final analysis, it probably didn’’t matter but that took 7 off the board and the offense found a way to get out of FG range and we got nothing from that turnover.
Thought our defensive effort also looked mailed in. Almost no blitzes or changes to coverages. We kept playing man coverage with suspect CBs and they kept throwing long. We couldn’t get pressure. We didn’t blitz much. When we did get good coverage, the QB could always run for a long gain and make a first down with no problem. Don’t think we even tried to spy him.
If there was any doubt we made a mistake with the coaching changes, those concerns were displaced last night.
Sorry the kids had to go out with such an awful performance. Guessing a few players Fran might have been on the fence about keeping lot theor chance to stay last night.
In the final analysis, the game doesn’t mean much but man, I wished we played better.
Prep for 2024 starts today. Let’s go!
War Damn Otto!
Flew down through Philly, where I got a couple of comments on Syracuse football from people who live in the Philly area. They wanted to know if I was excited about SU football and if I knew McCord was coming. I told him yes, I was excited and had heard. LOL. People are noticing what is happening..
Not a big fan of the Miami airport. Like a lot of airports, they have a shuttle that takes you from the terminal I flew into to the rental car area (I think there is an Amtrak station there too). It is poorly marked and I have never had such a hard time just finding where I could pick up my rental car. As an aside, there was more Spanish spoken than English there; the most I have ever hear in an American city.
Boca Raton is around 45 miles north of Miami. Straight run on I95. I95 can get very congested. I got my car around noon, checked into my nearby hotel and drove up to the FAU campus to try and avoid rush hour traffic. It was still congested at times but not bad. Took about an hour.
The FAU campus is pretty open. Smallish buildings. Modern. Not vey distinguished looking but not East German looking. Their stadium is relatively new (about 10 years old?) , holds about 30K and is a nice place to watch a game. Excellent site lines. The game day experience wasn't great. More on that later.
The tailgate was maybe 250 yards from the stadium. TexanMark picked a great spot (Lot 7 I think). There was a big group of USF fans next door but they were friendly and we got along fine. Mark cooked up some iumbalaya, a local brought a grill and many Hofman products were grilled. Hot dogs and coneys. Some Sahlens too I think. Lots of choices to drink and lots of great company. Saw many old friends and met some people in person from the board for the first time. Very cool.
Pete brought a laptop and a projector and used it to show the SU basketball game on a screen on the back of his van. It was a little dicey before the sun set but worked beautifully. Great to see the team play well and see continued emergence from some of our young players. We just might be pretty good.
Headed up to the stadium shortly after the hoops game ended. Got nachos and a burrito from a place allied Taco Al Carbon (I think that was the name). A local told me they were a chain that has a restaurant near the campus. It was good. Yes, I broke my keto rules a bit here but it was in the interest of culinary exploration.
Not sure how many were there. Maybe 15K? Was originally thinking 13K but later it seemed like it filled out some. Could have even been 17K. It was close regarding which fan base brought more fans. I thought we had more at first but it is hard to tell sitting in the corner of an end zone. And it seemed like USF added people as the game went on. They certainly had more to cheer about.
Thought our play calling on offense was very uninspired. No new plays that I noticed. Very vanilla calls, especially in the first half when it was a still a game. The only interesting play was a reverse and LeQuint (I think) made an awful toss that should have been a turnover.
When we finally did throw the ball downfield with Davis, and had success, it seemed we immediately went back into a shell and just called Wildcat plays they were clearly ready for.
The lack of discipline that was a defining characteristic of all Dino teams reared its ugly head when Barron destroyed a USF player on the fumble returned for a TD. It didn’t matter; he just wanted to destroy someone.. Disappointing to see a captain use such poor judgement and this isn’t the first time he has done something like this.
In the final analysis, it probably didn’’t matter but that took 7 off the board and the offense found a way to get out of FG range and we got nothing from that turnover.
Thought our defensive effort also looked mailed in. Almost no blitzes or changes to coverages. We kept playing man coverage with suspect CBs and they kept throwing long. We couldn’t get pressure. We didn’t blitz much. When we did get good coverage, the QB could always run for a long gain and make a first down with no problem. Don’t think we even tried to spy him.
If there was any doubt we made a mistake with the coaching changes, those concerns were displaced last night.
Sorry the kids had to go out with such an awful performance. Guessing a few players Fran might have been on the fence about keeping lot theor chance to stay last night.
In the final analysis, the game doesn’t mean much but man, I wished we played better.
Prep for 2024 starts today. Let’s go!
War Damn Otto!
