Sometimes, calling your own shot works as a motivating tactic; sometimes, it ends up biting the shot-caller in the end. The latter appears to be true in this case, as just hours before the Buffalo Bulls were set to take on the #23 Baylor Bears in Waco, Buffalo AD Danny White came out with this appeal for fans to buy season tickets:
You could wait until we beat the #23 team in the country or you could just get your season tickets now at buffalo http://t.co/4IEF8n6CjW
— Danny White (@AD_DannyWhite) September 7, 2013
Needless to say, at first glance, it seemed brash and confident. But you can’t fault White for using what could be a motivating tactic; besides the fact that head coach Jeff Quinn was 9-28 at Buffalo going into this one, the team had a decent showing against #2 Ohio State.
Fast forward to after the game. Buffalo wasn’t even close in this one, getting smoked 70-13 in a game that was 56-13 at the half. The Bears put on a track meet, torching the Bulls secondary for over 450 yards through the air and recording 329 yards on the ground. All told, the Bears outgained the Bulls by an over 2-1 margin (781-363), with the 781 yards and 70 points setting a school record (Previous high in points for Baylor? 69, set against FCS team Wofford…last week).
So, the tweet in question may have seemed like a good idea in the first place, but now White, in his second season as Buffalo AD and the son of Duke athletics boss Kevin White, is left with egg dripping down his face. Not good PR after an unpopular decision to no longer allow The Spectrum, the school’s student newspaper, to travel with the football team, which it’s done since 2006–probably stemming, the paper’s staff believes, from a column they ran last year after a 45-3 rout to BCS darling Northern Illinois calling for head coach Jeff Quinn’s job.
After the beat down at Baylor, it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to subject them to today’s events anyway.
(Disclosure: I am a former Western New York resident and graduated from a small private college in the area before a year of grad courses at Buffalo, commonly known as UB, so it pained me a little to write this story.)