* Last week Rays’ All Star pitcher Chris Archer tossed a one-hit masterpiece against the Houston Astros. And it was a COMPLETE GAME. It was the first such–for the team–this season. They’ve become nearly as rare as no-hitters.
And it got me to recalling an interview with Robin Roberts, the Hall of Fame, former Phillies pitcher–and USF baseball coach (1977-85). His heyday was the 1950s. In his career, Roberts started 609 games–and finished 305 of them. No, that’s not a typo. He once had 28 CGs in a row. One time he threw all 17 innings of an extra-inning game against the St. Louis Cardinals.
That was then–and this is not. Not even close.
* Time was when USF, a member of the Big East Conference, was in the catbird seat when it came to its relationship with UCF. It was USF’s call whether to continue the relationship. Unfortunately, it chose to discontinue it. The rationale: Why bother keeping UCF, then a member of the relatively nondescript Conference USA, on the schedule? Nothing to gain by winning and it always hurts to lose to a lesser opponent. That USF-UCF would be a real geographic rivalry game and gin up campus interest and crowd turnout wasn’t, alas, incentive enough.
Now, in the ever-morphing era of conference-hopping, both USF and UCF are in the American Athletic Conference. As a result, they HAVE to play each other. And UCF, which has ratcheted in national reputation, has now won two in a row over USF. The Knights are now the big kid on the I-4 corridor block, while USF hasn’t had a winning season since 2010.
But this season the two will meet–at UCF’s on-campus, Bright House Networks Stadium in Orlando–on Thanksgiving night in a nationally telecast ESPN game. To ESPN, UCF was the bigger “get.” And UCF, especially head coach George O’Leary, is on board to keep it on Thanksgiving night against USF and build it into a major rivalry game getting national exposure.
However it happened, it’s a win-win rivalry game that USF ironically now needs even more than UCF.
* Speaking of USF–and natural rivals–the Bulls’ soccer team beat the University of Tampa, 2-1, last week to reclaim the Rowdies Cup. Too bad–and we know the dropping-down-to-Division II arguments–that USF and UT don’t also square off regularly in baseball and basketball.
* We all know how formidable the Southeastern Conference is in football. Top-to-bottom, nobody’s better. But this just in: No conference is more notorious than the SEC when it comes to football player arrests. According to arrestnation.com, more than half of the Top Ten are from the SEC; Florida (2), Georgia (3), Texas A&M (4), Missouri (6), Mississippi (6) and Tennessee (10). For the record, FSU tied Tennessee for 10th. No. 1 was Washington State.