As a senior here at USF, I have sat through four years of disappointment at Raymond James Stadium. After Week 1’s colossal loss to McNeese State, my final glimpse of hope was shot down. When I opened The Oracle to read the commentary regarding this historically horrific loss, I was shocked to see how easy you guys let the team off the hook. We are a Division I-A school that paid $400,000 for a confidence boosting money game, which according to footballgeography.com was the worst margin of defeat of a major I-A by a I-AA.

While there’s plenty of blame to go around, the main culprit would be Matt Floyd, who completed 9-of-20 for 72 yards and two interceptions. While that is already a bad statistic, the eyewitnesses and game film would attest to the multiple over throws that missed open receivers by about five yards and landed out of bounds. Quite frankly, you would be hard-pressed to find a worse half of quarterbacking by a Division I-A quarterback. 

This brings me to this week’s Oracle commentary where I could not believe that (the article) actually made an argument for Floyd or Eveld to start. The writer touts “experience” and then acknowledges the numbers for Floyd and Eveld, which are atrocious and thus proves my point. The continued tone is that we cannot judge these QBs in so few quarters of play and that the benching is creating too much pressure. 

Give me a break! If you really look at Floyd during the first half of McNeese State and compare it to Bench’s performance against FAU and still make an argument for Floyd, you either had your eyes closed or know nothing about football. While it wasn’t perfect, Bench on multiple occasions stepped into the pocket and made solid throws to his receivers and took big hits. He also delivers the ball with a certain zip that Eveld and Floyd lack. I don’t care about the team politics, “experience,” or “system knowledge” that (the article) cites as support for Floyd and Eveld; eventually, pure talent wins out in position battles.

 I understand this is USF’s paper and that you need to try to seem positive about our football team, but the fans and students that head out to games week after week deserve a more objective and critical analysis. This paper does not accurately reflect the disappointment and overall sentiments of the USF fans. The press is one of the most influential means of change in sports, and when publications such as The Oracle let underachieving teams off the hook nice and easy, it does the fans, the players and the school a disservice. 

Jake Hoffman is a senior majoring in communication and political science.