Football on the Fringe Season Previews were ranked, then delivered in random order.
We made it. The 54th season preview. Football is mere days away. We’ll do some conference previewing in the next couple days, the first non-BCS Top 25, and real actual game previews by Thursday. Joy. Now, about Buffalo.
Despite a quality road win to open the season out at UTEP, Buffalo had a hard time getting things on track after that, dropping their next four games to get behind the eight ball early. They won their next two, then lost three MAC games by 3, 1, and 3 again. The grabbed two more wins at the end of the year to finish out a respectable 5-7, not the numbers they were looking for after a conference championship in 2008.
2010 looks to be tumultuous for the Bulls. Head coach Turner Gill is gone, now in charge at Kansas, and with a new coach will also come a new quarterback and lead rusher. The good news is that 8 players are back from the #3 total defense in the MAC, so if the new offense can score points, the team will be competitive.
Schedule
9/2/2010 Rhode Island
9/11/2010 at Baylor
9/18/2010 UCF
9/25/2010 at Connecticut
10/2/2010 at Bowling Green
10/16/2010 at Northern Illinois
10/23/2010 Temple
10/30/2010 Miami
11/4/2010 at Ohio
11/12/2010 Ball State
11/20/2010 Eastern Michigan
11/26/2010 at Akron
Buffalo has a tough non-conference list, but with some upset potential at Baylor or when UCF comes to town (although your editor hopes not). This team will have to come together in a hurry, as they face Northern Illinois, Temple, and Ohio in one four game stretch (with potentially upstart Miami in there too). If they survive that gauntlet, the back half of the league schedule is much easier, with the three worst teams in the preseason poll in the last three games.
Coaching
Jeff Quinn has been in the running for a handful of head coaching jobs in the last few years, but finally gets his own program for 2010. Most recently the offensive coordinator at Cincinnati under Brian Kelley, where he ran one of the top offenses in America. Purely speculation at this point, but I suspect Buffalo has found a steal at head coach and other programs will wish they’d nabbed him sooner.
Rankings
The MAC media has picked Buffalo to finish sixth of the seven MAC East teams this year. Harsh.
Outlook
I think that Buffalo may suffer another year of being better than their record- the schedule is too much for a re-worked team to overcome in their first year, but look to those games at the end to be a big springboard into a strong 2011 campaign. I think it’s another five win season for the Bulls.
Buffalo Connections
UBFan.com – independent message board
BuffaloNews.com – Local coverage of the Bulls
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