As Turner Gill enters his second season as Bulls head coach, the struggle to get fans excited about a program that has had very little past success continues. In the past five seasons, the Bulls have a combined record of 7-51. Of the 119 Division I college football teams, Sports Illustrated ranked Buffalo 118th this season. The Bulls are consistently in ESPN.com's "Bottom 10" and the most recent rankings featured this gem of a comment: "The Bulls don't need to call ahead. They always have a table ready for them in the Bottom 10."
The schedule is also anything but easy, with seven of the Bulls 12 games to be played on the road. The team travels to Happy Valley to take on perennial Big Ten powerhouse Penn State on Sept. 15 and also travels to Syracuse at the end of October. The team opens the season at home on Sept. 22 against Baylor of the Big 12. While the MAC is always up for grabs and six wins can essentially get a team into a Bowl Game in the winter, getting those wins will be tough for a young team that hasn't even been close to that type of success in the past.
"(The Bulls) seem to be improving. Maybe they'll win three games this year," said sophomore business major Courtney McPhail. "They've got a new up-and-coming team. I'll be there for every home game and I'm going to the (Carrier) Dome because I'm from Syracuse."
The optimistic attitude and the "can only get better" mentality is still hardly the norm. A tradition of losing is not easy to break.
Photo: Courtesy of SUNY
