C. Florida, Don’t Screw This Up

Hi UCF. Yes, another crappy season for USF, and you guys are playing in a bowl tomorrow. I know we hate each other. We stink, and your deal with the devil hasn’t run out yet.

You guys make fun of us for not having our own stadium, and we make fun of your stadium because it’s a lemon.

But for one game, we need to set the hatred aside and root for the common good. What common good is that? Well, your opponents on Tuesday in the Boca Raton Bowl is BYU. And never, ever, in 99 years of BYU football, have the Cougars won a football game in the state of Florida.

In eight attempts over the past 44 years, BYU has lost every time it’s visited the Sunshine State. Yes, they’ve played perennial powers like Florida State and Miami, and lost. You guys played them in 2014 and beat them.

The Boca Raton Bowl will be the fourth bowl game BYU has played in Florida, and they’ve lost the previous three. This includes losing not only the 2014 Miami Beach Bowl to Memphis but also arguably losing a brawl against the Tigers after the final whistle.

But the most recent game of this streak was USF beating BYU in 2019. This win is one of the most inexplicable wins in recent USF memory. The 2019 USF football team was not good, but they somehow came back in the fourth quarter to uphold the honor of our fair, much-maligned state, and maintained BYU’s dismal returns from Florida.

If even one of the worst teams in USF history could defeat the odds and beat a bowl-bound BYU team, then this streak is something special. It’s up to the Golden Knights to show up and keep the streak going. So for the first time since Daunte Culpepper was slinging it, I will, for one day, set aside jokes about UCF misappropriating fund and, gah, root for UCF. This is bigger than all of us.

Rest assured, if you lose, we will roast.