Move over, Joe Carter [1]. The University of South Florida Bulls’ 27-3 romp [2] over the Northern Illinois Huskies in the 2010 International Bowl has supplanted the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays’ walkoff World Series win [3] as the greatest moment in SkyDome/Rogers Centre history.
Why, it’s even better than the time Ken Huckaby took out Derek Jeter [4] at third base. (Not that we ever, ever cheer for injuries [5], mind you.)
USF is my alma mater. I graduated from there so long ago [6] they didn’t have a football team (and I was robbing various roommates [7] of sleep by clacking the night away on an electric typewriter). Then they invented one with the hopes of someday playing a bowl game in January. They were probably thinking of something a little more traditional than the International Bowl, but newbies can’t be choosers.
In the past five years, USF — handling a pigskin only since 1997 — has participated in the Meineke Car Care Bowl [8], the PapaJohns.com Bowl [9], the Brut Sun Bowl [10] (earned after an occasionally spectacular 2007 [11] campaign), the magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl [12] and now the one that mysteriously materializes in Canada on the first Saturday of the new year.
Canada? College football? It doesn’t sound prestigious on the surface, but I’ll take the win and consider it a measure of the Bulls going global. Seven American wins this season and now one North of the Border. You know what that means…
Prestige Worldwide! [13]