USF Football Locks Up Home-and-Home Series With Wisconsin and Maryland

In a big move from the USF athletic department, the Bulls have secured home-and-home football series with two Big Ten schools, the Wisconsin Badgers and the Maryland Terrapins (who will join the B1G after this coming season). The Bulls will travel to Wisconsin in 2014 and host the Badgers in 2017, while the Terps will come to Tampa in 2014 and get a return trip in 2015.

Doug Woolard and company had recently been under fire (from us, as well as many others) for their lack of success in scheduling games with any kind of high-quality opponent, and not without reason-- the last team USF had scheduled a power conference game of any sort which 2009, which is a pretty appalling statistic. So yes, this is a really welcome bit of news, to put it lightly.

The additions round out the 2014 and 2015 nonconference schedules, both of which actually turned out pretty solid. It works out as follows:

2014:

vs. Western Carolina, Maryland, NC State

at Wisconsin

2015:

vs. Florida A&M, Indiana, Nevada

at Maryland

Add this to the fact that the Bulls are supposedly in talks of renewing their series with Florida State, and the nonconference scheduling outlook has suddenly gotten pretty sunny. As long as USF in stuck in the American, it's going to be harder and harder to schedule big-time games, so getting home-and-homes with this caliber of opponent is pretty impressive. Kudos to the athletic department for nailing this one.

Also we get to see this guy again, assuming he hasn't been fired by next season.