It's the last week of the regular season in most conferences, and it's Thanksgiving weekend. In a lot of places, that means one thing: Hate week. The week your fanbase waits 51 weeks for, to get a crack at an archrival to vie for the only acceptable outcome: Victory, and the year of bragging rights that come with it.
Thing is, I'm a USF alumnus. We don't have a longtime anything in football, much less a permanent rival. We are matched up, appropriately, with UCF this week and probably analogous weeks in the future. The degree to which I believe it's a rivalry changes by the day, but I'm certain that even if it's not now, it will be.
If I may take a page from 8 Mile's B. Rabbit, yes, UCF will beat us this year. They're a better team, likely BCS bound, and at present, we're garbage. They've got every right to take numbers like 4-0 and 64-12 out of our collective hind end on the field come Friday. Call this a defense mechanism, an attempt at a reverse jinx, or simply an objective assessment - it's all three, really - but that's how I see it. And yet, as much as I'd love to give in to the dark arts of hate, I can muster little more than what I consider UCF more often than not: A mild to moderate annoyance.
Having said all that, the folks over at SB Nation's USF site, Voodoo Five, have all of your MMAW needs. Check 'em out.
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