USF football struggles against teams with winning records, but Tulsa doesn’t have one

As they say in the Hunger Games, may the odds be ever in your favor. They certainly favor USF today as the Bulls prepare to close out the home portion of their season against 3-7 Tulsa.

USF is 5-5 entering this game — five wins against teams with losing records, five losses against teams with winning records.

The Bulls have outscored the losers by 235–97. They have been outscored 186–51 by the latter teams.

Those with losing records include Bethune-Cookman, Southern Mississippi, UAB, Florida Atlantic, and Charlotte. For what it’s worth, three of those teams — Southern Miss, FAU, and Charlotte — have already fired their coaches. Rice, the Bulls’ regular-season finale opponent next week, fired its coach, too.

Those teams with winning records, that’s a different story.

Alabama and Miami probably will be in the playoffs. Tulane is in the American Athletic Conference championship game. Memphis and Navy are solid teams.

What all this tells us is that while the Bulls are unquestionably much improved over the steaming mess Alex Golesh inherited when he got here in 2023, Bulls fans will need a little more patience. Everything about the program is vastly improved, but it’s not as good as it will be.

We could point to the injury to quarterback Byrum Brown against Tulane on September 28 as a crushing blow, but the truth is it probably didn’t make that much difference in the won-loss record. Bryce Archie has done a credible job since he was thrown into the breach, but there is a reason he was the backup.

Positives this year include vastly improved offensive line play, which has led to a run game that has been dominating at times. They’ve generally had better secondary play compared to a year ago, but that’s in the eye of the beholder. They still rank 123rd in passing yards allowed with 266 yards per game.

They’re 92nd in scoring defense, which is really what it’s about. That number likely would be much better if you swapped out Alabama (42 points) and Miami (50), but you play the team on your schedule.

Add it up and the Bulls should win today and next week and finish the regular season 7-5. When they were sitting at 2-4, that might have seemed like a pipe dream, but that first half of the schedule — rated the 8th-toughest in the country — took its toll.

And look on the brighter side. Assuming they win their next two and head to a decent bowl, chances are they’ll face a team with a winning record. That’ll be their chance to beat a team with a plus-.500 record for the first time in the Golesh era.

You’ll take that, right?