South Florida-Northern Illinois: Bulls Get Another Bowl Win as Expected

Call it a setup if you will.

The University of South Florida was set up for success Saturday in something called the International Bowl, so far to the north it was out of the country, in Toronto, Canada.

Teams from the MAC had lost 13 straight postseason bowl games going into this Canadian tussle between USF and a directional school called Northern Illinois.

Make that 14 straight losses.

The Bulls did Saturday what they do best; they beat up on a less talented football team. Mike Ford, who had a pretty lousy season in 2009, finally found a team he could run against.

Add it up and USF won that bowl game, 27-3, over a team that did nothing for 60 minutes.

Ford was the game's MVP with 207 yards on 20 carries—by far the best day of his career, ever.

But it didn't start out looking that way for Ford. He had one carry in the first half that was perhaps the worst 30 minutes of the college bowl season. The game was tied 3-3 with both teams stinking up the field.

At the half, USF came up with the extraordinary idea that they would run the ball in the second half with Ford as their guy. The big guy from Sarasota racked up more than 100 yards in the third quarter and looked unstoppable in that final 30 minutes.

The end result was another bowl win for the Bulls, albeit in this International thing.

There weren't that many people in the stands unless you want to count the bands from both schools, but in a year in which it was starved for quality wins, the Bulls will take this eighth victory.

They can go ahead and brag about this bowl win, but finding someone to listen is another story.