Handicapping C-USA Football
Conference USA is going to be the hardest one to completely get used to this football season. They lost a whack of their “brand name” schools to the American Athletic Conference to the point that nearly half the conference are new programs, with additions from the Sun Belt and the Western Athletic Conferences.
Tulsa Golden Hurricane
Win Total Over/Under: 8.5
BCS Champion Odds: +2000 (Field)
Conference Winning Odds: +215
Conference USA Overview
With the teams that are lost the league really took a hit in terms of talent and tradition (even though both of those were really just modest).
This year they will be trying to not get pushed around too badly in the non-conference while probably knocking each other off repeatedly once conference play begins. Tulsa is looking like the big winner in the reshuffling of this deck.
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They have been cranking out high powered offenses and often winning 10 games or more in the process. I expect to see the same in 2013.
Why Tulsa will have the most wins in the Conference USA
Talent: C-USA is known for its offenses but it is the rare C-USA squad that can also stop opponents from time to time – that was Tulsa last year. The offense should be even better this year as Senior QB Cody Green, a Nebraska transfer, has all his weapons back as well as a 1000+ yard rusher in senior RB Trey Watts in the backfield. The one area of concern is the offensive line where only two starters return.
Funnily, that is the same number of returning starters on the defense which is concerning but not as much so given that prolific teams like Houston and SMU have left the conference. Last year they were super aggressive on D and sometimes that style works better with the kind of inexperienced group the Golden Hurricanes will put out there.
No team is perfect in C-USA!
Schedule
The Tulsa schedule should give them at least 2 wins before they get down to business in conference. A home game against Colorado State and trip to Norman to play the Sooners could be a split bringing them to three victories.
Within C-USA the key is that they get to host Marshall, the second best team in the league. All the home games are winnable and they could easily run the table if they can win at East Carolina – the Pirates are always a handful though. This is a schedule made for another 10+ victory season. [soliloquy id=”82219″]
One note: They host Iowa State at the end of September. They beat them in the Liberty Bowl last year so there should be some juice to that one, which I counted among the 2 guaranteed non- conference victories.
Coaching:
Bill Blankenship was the C-USA Coach of the Year last season. He took them from 8 wins and a bowl loss to 11 wins including a bowl win in just his second season. He is a former Tulsa QB and had been on the staff since 2005 before getting the nod as head coach.
Being the third team in a state like Oklahoma is not an enviable spot but he has been able to recruit within and beyond the state and Tulsa has become a nice spot for transfers to land too – example Green.
Also of note is that he has an experienced staff. Defensive Coordinator Brent Guy is the former head coach at Utah State and provides some fire on defense for this generally finesse team.
Prediction: 10-2
I love bold upsets so I am very tempted to say Tulsa will beat Oklahoma but that is probably a bit too much for this team. After that there is nobody on the schedule they can’t beat so the record could be even better than projected. If they do beat the Sooners and OU shows well could they be a BCS Buster.
However a lot of things would have to fall into place for that to happen because Tulsa has been off the radar for so long. I think they will have to just settle for being the champs in the newly formulated Conference USA.
