Most UCF fans have a strong dislike for Mike Bianchi, myself included. After you read this column, I think you will too. :D
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Believe it or not, UCF must get win at Fluffalo</span>
Mike Bianchi
October 1, 2004
Beat Buffalo.
Whatever it takes, UCF must beat Fluffalo.
This is George O'Leary's first year as the coach at UCF, and everybody realizes it's going to take a couple of years for him to get the team turned around.
Fair enough. Program-building takes time. Recruiting the right athletes, raising enough money, replenishing a depleted roster and repairing a fractured spirit -- these things just don't happen overnight.
But beating Fluffalo does -- and should. This game should be a gimme for UCF. O'Leary should be able to send one of those life-sized cardboard cutouts of himself to stand on the sideline and still be able to beat Fluffalo.
There are some things in sports that are a given: Florida State missing a kick and losing to Miami, Grant Hill in street clothes at the end of the Magic bench, Jon Gruden saying to Bruce Allen, "Go sign Fred Biletnikoff, and when you're done with that, can you pick up my shirts at the dry cleaner?"
And beating Fluffalo.
The Golden Knights play Fluffalo on Saturday, and this is as close to a huge game as there has ever been between two teams with a combined 0-7 record. And the reason is this: If you can't beat Fluffalo, you can't beat anybody. If the Golden Knights lose to the blighted Bulls, they could well go Oh-and-11 in O'Leary's first year. And that truly would be O'Dreary.
UCF fans are an understanding sort. They seem to realize that O'Leary took over a terrible team that was 3-9 last year. They have been accepting of an 0-3 start with losses to three big-time programs -- Wisconsin, West Virginia and Penn State. But I don't believe they would be so forgiving of an 0-4 start and a loss to Fluffalo.
Fluffalo is commonly considered the worst program in all of Division I-A. The Bulls are a bad movie that never ends -- the Hudson Hawk of college football. They are the bad song you can't get out of your head -- the Rhinestone Cowboy of intercollegiate athletics.
Fluffalo has compiled a 4-38 record in six years in the Mid-American Conference. And do you know what it's like to be the doormat of the MAC? It's like being the third-team quarterback of the Miami Dolphins. Only Sage Rosenfels didn't get beat 59-0 by Rutgers a couple of years ago.
The last coach to have a winning record at Fluffalo left the program nearly 40 years ago, and none of the past six coaches has a winning percentage above .400.
The fact is Fluffalo is a program that doesn't even belong in Division I-A. It doesn't have the fan support, the recruiting base or the financial wherewithal. Mainly, though, it never even had a plan.
Fluffalo was a Division III program as recently as 1993 and hired former coach Craig Cirbus in 1995 with the edict of building a decent Division I-AA program. A few months later, Cirbus was called one morning and told of a news conference at the football field later that day.
"I walked into the work and was told to report to the 50-yard line," Cirbus recalls now. "That's where the president and athletic director were making the announcement that we were moving to Division I-A. I was the football coach, and I wasn't consulted."
You absolutely must win against a muddled, mucked-up program like this. It may not seem like it, but this is the biggest game the Golden Knights have played since the Auburn game late in 1998 -- Daunte Culpepper's senior season -- when a win likely would have put them in a bowl game.
UCF lost that game.
They cannot lose this one.
Lose this game, and the season is lost.
Beat Fluffalo.
Mike Bianchi can be reached at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com.
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