Pretty much have all the top teams from the coastal division. I do not know much about UCF other than that it is in orlando. It will be interesting to see how good Cincy turns out to be next year.

I look down the schedule and i do not see any games that I can circle as a sure win (WCU doesn’t count). I do expect ECU to be down next year, but the game is in greenville.

I hate playing maryland the last game of the season, when was the last time that ended up in a win for State?

And a season full of teeth-gnashing and endless “fire him or not?” debates. That’s how we roll 24-7-365 around heyah.

missing games if next season is like the last one.

UCF was TOB’s first home game / embarrassing loss. With waning goodwill and an opportunity to lose to ECU and UNC in the same year he might want to start kissing Murphy’s rear extra sweetly.

At a cost of one short week, we get extra time to prepare for Georgia Tech (though that probably won’t matter)

To the contrary, extra time is very beneficial to preparing for Tech’s triple-option offense. Iowa disposed of them pretty easily, and they had a few weeks to prepare for that game. I think other teams that had extra time were more successful against Tech.

It may not matter, you’re right. But of all teams to have extra time for which to prepare, GT would be my first choice.

After the 2009 season, I am officially out of the predicting business. I had us down for a minimum of nine wins last year. Little did I know our defense would be about as tough as a wet paper bag.

But we should be good on defense this year. We took all of last year off, so we’ll be nice and rested for this year. ;)

The keys for us, as I see them, are:

1) Will Russell still be here?
2) Our running game — losing Toney Baker hurts BAD!
3) Our defense — Can Archer get it done.
4) The lines — we lost a lot of experience on both sides of the line. But we have Nate back. So (4-b) is “Is Nate Irving back to 100%?”

This year could be alright, or it could be downright miserable. I can’t imagine it being a great year. My question is, why does TOB support Mike Archer so strongly? What is it about Archer and his defensive schemes that make TOB think we’ll ever succeed on defense? I hear his defenses at Kentucky gave up 31 points per game. Last year may not have been a down year for him. We gave up about that many points, too. I’d really like to know what it is about Mike Archer that gives TOB so much faith in him.