Being No. 2 in the nation (No. 1 by the judgment of impartial computers) was fun while it lasted, but my USF Bulls obviously don’t care for northern lights. While you were busy watching The Office or the season finale of Mad Men or Game Five from Cleveland (or perhaps not watching television at all), I was watching my alma mater’s short-lived national championship dream get sacked by a hard-charging Rutgers defense and run over by the remarkable Ray Rice in Piscataway on ESPN Thursday night. We lost [1] 30-27. Maybe we can still win the Big East and grab a BCS berth. Maybe we’ll get another one of those muffler [2] or pizza [3] bowls. We won’t be topping Ohio State anytime soon.
For about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, I was extraordinarily bummed out. Then I remembered this whole thing was pretty new to me and I never expected to have the green and gold candle relit so brightly this autumn by a program that didn’t exist when I was going to school down there. It’s been exciting reconnecting to my USF roots, a thousand-plus miles and twenty-plus years removed. I’ll keep tabs on my team the rest of the way. Their season, unlike another I could mention [4], continues with honor.
If anybody cares, Flashback Friday will be up later today, and then Jason and I will be retiring our consecutive-days-posted streak at 213, having blogged daily between March 21 and October 19. We’ll be around throughout the offseason, just not every day.