College Football: South Florida Bulls Running a Couple Quarts Low

While the sun beat down on what seemed like a pretty sparse homecoming crowd, so many things became evident on a bright Saturday afternoon about this 2010 University of South Florida football team.

First and foremost, this team has a long way to go. Skip Holtz has a lot of work to do, probably too much to produce anything that will impress us this year.

Second, that 13-9 loss on Saturday was pretty painful to watch.

If you pulled the dipstick on the South Florida offense, no doubt you'd find it is at least a couple of quarts low.

Same on defense.

Sure, things started out OK. The Bulls went uptempo and took the opening kickoff and marched right down into Syracuse territory. The student section was rocking, and everyone felt great.

Then B.J. Daniels did his thing. He had two receivers to his left, one covered down the sideline, one wide open towards the middle, and of course Daniels chose the covered receiver and threw a pass that was going to be intercepted the moment it left his hand.

It took the energy out of the stadium like a giant vacuum.

You don't have to be an astute observer of the college game to now realize that Holtz simply cannot trust Daniels. He threw four picks at Florida and two more on Saturday.

Holtz tells us they're trying to tailor the offense to fit Daniels instead of vice versa. If they tailor the offense to fit Daniels, then they might as well run the ball on every play because it is painfully obvious that Daniels has regressed this season.

This one was painful to watch because the offense produced only three points all afternoon.

Just when things were looking very woeful for anyone wearing green and gold, Lindsey Lamar got everyone on their feet with a 94-yard touchdown return in the third quarter that gave USF a 9-6 lead—the extra point failed to materialize and no doubt would come back to haunt USF.

It wouldn't be that close.

"The Drive" proved the killer in this Big East opener for the Bulls.

Syracuse, starting right in front of the fired-up student section, proceeded to drive 98 yards for the winning touchdown. Pushed it right down the throat of the defense.

Most of it came on the ground. USF looked powerless to stop the Orange.

Syracuse scored, went up 13-9, and that's exactly how it would end.

It was sad, ugly, and left countless USF folks shaking their collective heads. They watched as USF got a lot of decent breaks and had every opportunity to win the game.

USF had never lost to Syracuse.

Now they have and things only get worse from here.

Got to head up to Morgantown for a Thursday night battle with West Virginia.

Tough isn't the word to describe what's waiting for USF up there.

Long way to go, short week to get there, and this team is at least two quarts low.