45 - 20 
As we realized last week, this is just the kind of game you’re going to have to deal with this season.
Just looking at the final score, no one should have been all that surprised with a 45-20 victory for the South Florida Bulls over the Syracuse Orange on Saturday. If you took away the stat-padding that Louisville did last week, that’s about what the score was then as well.
That score is a little tougher to take when you take into account the 17-0 lead the USF spotted the Orange, but it’s a perfect example of why SU is in trouble for the long haul in 2016. They’ve got the offensive ability to put points on the board quickly but not enough ability to keep it up, while the defense just doesn’t have the horses to deal with the increased speed of the game.
Not every opponent left on the schedule is like Louisville and USF, but there are enough who can handle what we throw at them (literally), especially when they know our defense is going to fade down the stretch. It is what it is.
The knee-jerk reaction is to get mad, I know. You want to throw your hands in the air and wonder what in the hell Dino Babers is thinking.
As I said earlier this week, because Dino is thinking longterm. He’s putting the pieces into place that will improve the program immensely by Year 2 and he’s got the resume to back that up.
While he has no choice, Dino can deal with Syracuse giving up 40/50/60-points in the interim because he believes it will pay off down the road. He has that luxury, in a sense, because he hasn’t had to deal with years of losing like Syracuse fans have. For him, this is the beginning of something big. For us, it’s like that old familiar feeling.
As I’ve said before, Syracuse fans really only have two choices. One, Grin and bear it under the assumption that Dino Babers knows what he’s doing. Two, jump off the train right now. If you take the former, you have to fight that urge to throw things and send derogatory tweets to Dino (which...c’mon). If you take the latter, you get to absolve yourself altogether. You’ll probably come back in a year when we’re looking much better and headed towards a bowl, as is your wont.
Sometimes you don’t a lot of options when it comes to your football team. They are what they are. This is one of those situations. The hope is that they’ll become something better. That’s what Dino’s selling and we’ve got decent reasons to buy in. For now, we’re just gonna have to find a way to live with a few 25/30-point losses along the way.
