B-CU eyes big time, to play Miami in 2011, 2012; UCF in 2013

DAYTONA BEACH, FL -- Bethune-Cookman University's Wildcats have never scheduled one of college football's top-tier teams, and now that they're starting, they're not exactly dipping their toes in the water.

Athletics Director Lynn Thompson confirmed Monday the Wildcats will play the University of Miami -- one of the nation's most storied football programs -- in 2011 and 2012 and renew an old rivalry against another Division I Football Bowl Subdivision team, the University of Central Florida, in 2013.

"If you're going to swim with fish in the open ocean, you might as well swim with whales," Thompson said. "When we started looking at guarantee games, our intent was to get the best opponent we could play." They'll also haul in a whale of a payout.

Thompson said the three games will generate "well over a million dollars" for the university. Thompson confirmed the 'Cats received the going rate from the Hurricanes. Florida Championship Subdivision schools like B-CU have been receiving about $400,000 to $500,000 from Bowl Championship Series schools in recent years. Delaware State, another MEAC school, collected $550,000 to play at Michigan last season.

READ MORE, CLICK TITLE.

Prairie View Panthers to play Southern Mississippi in 2010 Football

Prairie View A&M University Panthers are scheduled to face University of Southern Mississippi on Sept. 11, 2010, is the first meeting between the 2009 SWAC champions and the C-USA Golden Eagles.

Southern Miss’ 2010 football schedule includes both 2009 Conference USA championship game participants from a year ago, the Southwestern Athletic Conference champion and a BCS automatic-qualifying conference school for the second consecutive year. Although C-USA does not release its game dates for another month for league contests, the Golden Eagles will play both East Carolina and Houston, the C-USA East and West Division champions from last season, as well as fellow league foes Marshall and UAB at Roberts Stadium.

Non-conference home dates include Prairie View A&M on Sept. 11 and Big 12 foe Kansas on Sept. 18. USM will play road games at South Carolina, Louisiana Tech, UCF, Memphis, Tulane and Tulsa. “This is another extremely challenging schedule for Coach Fedora, his staff and players,” said Southern Miss Director of Athletics Richard Giannini. “We are excited about having both teams that played in the C-USA championship game in 2009 here during the upcoming season, as well as bringing in both Prairie View A&M and Kansas for the first time. This is the second straight year we have been able to bring in a team from a BCS automatic-qualifying conference to Hattiesburg.”

READ MORE, CLICK BLOG TITLE.

Commentary: Knights don't wow in opener against South Carolina State

You don't want to show too much in the first game. If that was UCF's goal, you can call Saturday night a Category 5 success. The Knights didn't show a lot. In fact, they did such a good job of hiding their offense that you have to wonder if they have one. Either that or the MEAC is the sleeper power conference this year.

All hail South Carolina State.

"We had an opportunity to possibly take a football game here," Coach Buddy Pough said. Not Really. UCF was never in danger of losing, mainly because South Carolina State was never in danger of scoring. But the Knights led only 7-0 entering the fourth quarter, which was about 21 points short of where they should have been.

CONTINUE READING, CLICK BLOG TITLE.

UH opens Sumlin era with 55-3 win over Southern

Game statistics

Quarterback Case Keenum torched the Jags for 359 passing yards and five touchdowns — both career-highs — while completing 33 of 43 passes in only three quarters of play.

With all the buildup heading into Kevin Sumlin’s first game as coach of the Houston Cougars, you almost expected a letdown when they finally took the field Saturday to play the Southern Jaguars. Too much was expected of the Cougars, who were installing new schemes on both sides of the ball and were trying to find new playmakers at key skill positions. But despite the pregame hype, the Cougars still managed to impress, rolling to a 55-3 victory before a rowdy crowd of 26,555 at Robertson Stadium.

Everything seemed to click for the Cougars, who enjoyed the highest-scoring coaching debut in school history, eclipsing the 54 points Bill Meek put up against Montana in 1955, despite emptying the bench late in the third quarter.

CONTINUE READING, CLICK BLOG TITLE.

Attendance: 26,555 at Robertson Stadium, Houston, TX (Capacity 32,000).