Today is our blog's second anniversary. Whether you've been here since the beginning*, or you just started reading a week or a month or six months ago, we all want to thank you for your support and feedback. Even though it was a pretty lousy year overall for USF athletics, we're not going anywhere. We hope you'll stick with us and help us continue to grow our community.

I like issuing a quixotic challenge in these anniversary posts, so here's this year's challenge, and it goes back to the reason I started Voodoo Five in the first place: Let's try and stamp out our knee-jerk tendencies.

My account on The Bulls Pen hit the 10-year mark last week (good Lord, that's scary to think about). I don't post there much anymore because if I feel like saying something, I can just write it out and put it here. But on the rare occasions when I do post over there, I still have one of my favorite quotes in the history of that forum as my signature. It was issued by someone named "no.bull bulls", and it reads:

"I dont know if some of you realize this, but Athletics is not like going to McDonald's. You can't go up to a drive thru window and order a championship and get it in 5 minutes."

You see this a lot in fan bases of any sport, but with our fan base's relative youth and the near-constant upward trend that our football program was on for such a long time, I think it's more prevalent than usual in USF fans.

You probably realize this if you're reading our site, but here's the kind of thing I mean. Recruits aren't busts if they don't get on the field or court as true freshmen. Winning championships is hard, and while there are certain sports where USF has built-in advantages, that's still not a guarantee. Losing one game is never the end of the world, or the program. You don't need to start FireStanHeath.com when freaking Dean Smith couldn't have won consistently in the situation USF basketball was in between 2005-2011. Sometimes players or coaches just don't turn into what you think they will, and it's not necessarily anyone's fault.

(NOTE: I have been guilty of many of these things as well.)

It's OK to get excited after big wins, or upset after tough losses. God knows we had lots of practice with that during football season. That's part of being a fan. It's OK to have expectations. It's OK to be critical. But everything fits into a bigger picture, one that might not be clear until long after that game is over. You all know that we're no fans of our athletics leadership, but it's all based on the big picture and the evidence that's accumulated over a long period of time. It's not like we watched the Pittsburgh football game and decided that everyone had to get fired because USF got stopped on fourth down in their own territory.

Last year's goal was accomplished in a warped way -- we were worried that USF fans were coasting, but the football team cratered so badly that the passion from the core group of USF fans actually increased. Now let's take that passion and use it wisely.

* I still like that I contemplated Skip Holtz being "a liar and a dick" within 30 words of beginning this blog, even though he clearly was not and is not either of those things. I must have been really riled up that day.

As you well know, 2011 was not USF athletics' best year. In fact, it will go down as one of the worst years that we've ever had, maybe even the worst. We all realize that this blog has not been a fun read for most of the year. (My output dropped off dramatically because I didn't want to keep writing about how much of a bummer everything is.) But what exactly is there to celebrate about how things are right now? All we can do is wait it out and try to be somewhat entertaining along the way. It's just really hard to do.

With that in mind, here are the biggest stories from the year that was.

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1. Men's soccer comes within a snowflake of their first College Cup trip. This probably isn't strong enough to be #1 in most places, but it's something good that happened and it's the only program we have that's a raging success, so it gets the nod. New stadium, rabid fans (including the Goalmouths, who we really need to do a full story about), some fantastic players like Dom Dwyer and Chris Blais, and a thrilling NCAA Tournament run that only ended on a golden goal on a freezing day in Omaha. It was the third time that the soccer team has made it to the final eight, but this is probably the best

2. Football wins at Notre Dame, then crashes and burns harder than ever. We're used to seeing the football team swoon after a big start (and usually a headline-generating non-conference win). This was much more than a swoon, though. This season USF football came completely unraveled, losing close game after close game in a variety of ways. Penalties? Defensive lapses? Horrible goal-line offense? An overly conservative coaching philosophy? A missed field goal that hit everyone like a sucker punch to the gut? Check, check, check, check, check. The Bulls went from 4-0 and ranked in the top 20, to 5-7 and missing a bowl for the first time since 2004. And that led to the next big story...

3. Fans check out in droves across all sports. The students haven't really been on board for awhile now, but the way the homecoming loss to Cincinnati went down was the final straw for the rest of the fan base. People don't have a lot of extra money to spend, and they have more sports and entertainment options than ever in Tampa Bay. USF isn't really good at anything, except for soccer. They have bad, cheap leadership. Their conference is a nationwide punch line and no apparent effort was made to try and get USF out of it. The seemingly unlimited supply of momentum and optimism that powered USF athletics for decades is gone now. For the first time in a long time, there's no promise of a brighter future to draw people in. Nothing is inspiring fans, even some of the diehard fans, to buy tickets and donate to the program. So they aren't, and won't until something changes.

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If you're a UCF fan and you've come here looking for your morning dose of schadenfreude (possibly on some crazy Mike Bianchi-fueled bender, and no we never link to any of his garbage)... well, you've come to the wrong place. We've been prepared for this for almost a year.

I'm going to do a full revision to our old position paper in a day or so, now that completely ignoring you is impractical. But here are the highlights:

• This is a USF blog. We're going to talk about things that happen at USF and that affect USF. That's not changing at all. Sometimes that involves you, but most of the time it doesn't.
• The Big East sucks for reasons that have very little to do with the fact that UCF in it now. Actually, on the whole you guys made it slightly better, or at least more interesting.
• We haven't had this problem very much, but trolls of all persuasions will be dealt with using extreme prejudice. This is not a message board. And when you get banned, you stay banned. Remember what the membership agreement said when you signed up for this blog: "Don't say anything you're not prepared to back up with proof, or at least some logic."
• Rivals win sometimes.
• Will one of you start a decent blog about yourselves? Please? (Blogs solely devoted to hating us don't count. Neither does Hellwig's happy fun times site.) When you do, we'll be glad to talk to you and meet you for games and invite you to stuff like Protect Your Unit.

Actually, you know why we're not panicking? Because we don't think UCF will ever figure out USF's secret, and we're certainly not going to tell you what it is. Unless that happens, things are not going to change very much between the two schools.

Have a nice day.

How long is that going to take? Doug Woolard's been saying it ever since he took the athletic director job seven years ago. And as alumni come back to Tampa for homecoming this Saturday, they're going to find an athletic department that is basically in crisis.

You know what they were hoping for in the corner offices. They were hoping the football team would have a big season, play in a big bowl game, sell a lot of tickets, and get USF tons of positive national attention. That way they could easily brush off the long list of things that are wrong with USF Athletics, and just point at football and say, "We got this right, so the rest of it isn't really that important."

Well, that's probably not going to happen now (and by the way, that's pretty unfair to Skip to put that burden on his shoulders). Even worse, it's not happened so many years in a row that instead of galvanizing the fan base, it's made them resentful and cynical. Here are some of the kinder and relatively more rational comments people made on Facebook when USF Athletics decided to post Saturday's final score on their wall:

"Just like clockwork, every year; 4-0 or 5-0 ranked then lose lose lose"

"Despicabull loss today. Tired of spending time & money supporting the team year after year, only to be disappointed again & again."

"Two f-ing weeks to prepare for a bad UCONN team and we can't even find the answer. What a disappointing year."

"I thought we would be out of place if the Big East collapsed and put us into the C-USA, but I guess it would be a better place for our team to compete in"

"Really no reason to have season tickets anyway.... First 3 games are garbage and u can get a $10 ticket for all 3.... Free ticket each year for the 4th game from a bank promo.... $50 for the last three...."

Now instead of ignoring the list of problems, football can be added to it. And it's quite a list.

-- There is only one top-quality program out of the entire collection, and that's men's soccer. Women's golf and softball are above average, and the latter should move up into the top-quality category again before too long. Everything else is either disappointing, mediocre, or just downright bad. Some are disappointing AND bad, like baseball.

-- As noted above, why would anyone buy season tickets to one of the revenue sports when you're just going to turn around and offer all kinds of cheap tickets to the games people want to see? Your most valuable properties have been seriously devalued, and no one even wants to see the basketball team except fans of other schools when they come to town.

We're also hearing rumors of another Groupon dump for tickets. Great idea! This deal will accomplish all of the following:

• Devalue the hell out of your product.
• Take 25 cents on the dollar out of its retail worth, because Groupon charges a 50% commission. That means If you buy a $100 gift certificate for $50, the provider only receives $25 cash in the end for $100 worth of goods or services.
• Get exactly $0 in ancillary revenue because of our lease arrangement with the TSA where we only get revenue on 3,000 parking spots (already sold to season ticket holders) and absolutely nothing on concessions unless we somehow sell more than $2 million of them during a game.
• See another post on this site mocking the whole enterprise when Groupon writes something bizarre and goofy about your games.
• Oh, and piss off everyone that paid full price before the season started.

Brilliant!! Whomever thinks this is genius, give yourself another bonus.

-- Speaking of basketball, they have no place to play this season, and how are we seven months into the Sun Dome renovation and we still haven't seen any sort of final plans yet?

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At Lee Roy Selmon's memorial service this morning, USF President Judy Genshaft announced that the USF Athletics Building will be renamed The Lee Roy Selmon Athletic Center at the University of South Florida in Mr. Selmon's honor.

We talked about possible things USF could do to honor Mr. Selmon in our Voodoo Fivecast earlier this week, and naming the Athletics Building seemed like the best way to honor Lee Roy. It was great to hear that the USF Board of Trustees unanimously approve this measure, and honestly its the least that USF could do for Mr. Selmon's years of service to the university.

USF also announced earlier this week a number of tributes to Mr. Selmon, which include keeping the #63 decal on the football team's helmets for the rest of the season and introducing a LRS patch on every USF uniform this season. USF will also have a video tribute and a moment of silence about 15 minutes before kickoff of this week's game against Ball State. You can find the entire list at SB Nation Tampa Bay.

Rest in peace, Mr. Selmon. Thanks for everything.

Like I said a few days ago, I'm not making the trip to South Bend. Toro will be there, and so will a lot of you, and I hope all of you have a fantastic time. Just do me a favor.

Make sure USF fans aren't out there acting like assholes, OK?

Playing at Notre Dame is, literally, and figuratively, like going to football church. You wouldn't go into church and start screaming at the other parishioners, climbing up on their statues, and disrespecting all their stuff. The same thing should apply here. I'm pretty sure the Notre Dame fans who can manage tickets to this game will be polite and courteous to any visiting fan, and we need to do the same thing to them.

Especially if the Bulls are fortunate enough to win the game. If that happens, I really hope USF fans are able to act like they've been there before. Because we have. Most of the program's reputation was built on big road wins. It would be a special thrill to win at Notre Dame, but it would be really weak to be in the stadium and then start taunting people and acting like a lunatic. That makes all of us look bad. And you'd like to go back again some day, right?

I don't want to preach (see what I did there?) because I know most of you don't need to hear any of this, but I wanted to at least say something. Take care of our reputation up there, please. Thanks, and have fun.

We didn't talk too much about student athletic fees on Monday. USF students are responsible for a significant portion of the athletic budget, but we view the fees as kind of a necessary evil right now.

Still, it's kind of dismaying to see students contributing fully one-third of the entire budget in fees. (This is still an improvement over five years ago, when they contributed a shocking 45%.) Even more dismaying to see Athletics going back to them for yet another fee increase this spring, and getting it. As of the 2011-12 school year, students will pay $14.15 per credit hour in athletics fees, which is more than they pay in activity and service fees for themselves.

Since Woolard took over as athletic director in 2004, the athletics fee has increased from $9.08 per credit hour to $14.15 -- an increase of 36%. In 2010-11 alone, the fees increased by $1.97 per credit hour, thanks to a one-time opportunity by the state that allowed the three student fees (Activity and Service, Athletic, and Student Health Service) to increase by a total maximum of 15% instead of the usual 5%.

Remember that table we did with the comparison of each school's athletic budget to the percentage tied up in the athletic director's salary? What would happen if we removed the student fees each Big East school receives and ran the numbers again, to see how much each AD earns based on the money the department generates for itself?

We'll have to leave out Syracuse and Pittsburgh since they are not required to report student fees as non-public universities. As for the rest... well, now USF looks a lot worse.

* - On Twitter, Matt from Down the Drive admitted this $0 is not true. But our math says that in order for Mike Thomas's percentage to have exceeded Woolard's percentage, the student fees would have to be at least $18,157,228 -- nearly half of Cincinnati's entire athletic budget.

** - Jurich's 2009-10 salary was probably a little lower than this, which would make their percentage a bit lower.

*** - Considering Woolard's salary went up by 13% between May 2010 and now, his percentage might be even higher now.

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