The rise and fall of the Buffalo Bulls
For sports, the year 2008 was a year of surprises. The Tampa Bay Rays went from the worst team in Major League Baseball in 2007 to American League champions in all of one season, the NFC Wild Card New York Giants stunned the New England Patriots at the beginning of the year to win the Super Bowl and the Boston Celtics made the biggest single-season turnaround in NBA history en route to the league title.
But the surprises weren’t only confined to professional sports. In college football, theUniversity at Buffalo Bulls, a team whose 2007 record was 5-7, a team that hadn’t had a single winning season since returning to Division I-A in 1999, went 8-6 and won its first-ever Mid-American Conference title with a huge upset of 12-0 Ball State in the MAC championship game.
The success didn’t last for Buffalo, though. A year later, they fell back to 5-7, and head coachTurner Gill left to take the head job at Kansas. By 2010, the Bulls were shadows of their former selves, finishing 2-10.
How did one of the youngest programs in D-I football, situated in a conference well outside the BCS, rise and fall so suddenly? The answer may have just as much to do with the people who built the team from the sidelines as the actual players themselves.
The roots of UB’s title team actually begin well before 2008 or even the arrival of Gill in December 2005. Tim Riordan, who covers UB athletics at Bull Run, said despite guiding the Bulls to one-win seasons in three of his five years as head coach, Jim Hofher did attract future winners like quarterback Drew Willy.
“While Buffalo fans might wince at the mention of Hofher, who was a questionable game day coach for Buffalo, his recruiting speaks for itself.” Riordan said.
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If Hofher began the process of recruiting talented players to UB, though, it was Gill who completed that process. Gill’s first season wasn’t that successful, as the Bulls went 2-10 overall and 1-7 in the MAC in 2006, but he turned things around relatively quickly.
“Turner Gill took a solid set of players in 2005 and made them competitive by 2007, when they went 5-3 in conference,” said Riordan.
In fact, it’s the caliber of those players that leads Riordan to argue that UB’s 2008 success was not a fluke. No less than five of the players on that team are currently on NFL rosters: Willy (New York Jets), wide receiver Naaman Roosevelt (Buffalo Bills), running back James Starks, who went on to help the Green Bay Packers win the 2010 Super Bowl in his rookie year, cornerback Josh Thomas (Dallas Cowboys) and safety Mike Newton (Indianapolis Colts). That’s not even counting Montreal Alouettes linebacker Ramon Guzman or pre-2008 Gill-era players such as Colts offensive lineman Jamey Richard and Oakland Raiders defensive end Trevor Scott.
However, there were also some external factors at work. Matt Sussman, who covers the MAC for Hustle Belt, notes that the Bulls partly benefited from a weak MAC East in 2008.That may have allowed their influx of talent under Gill to carry them further than was widely expected.
“There was a down year in the MAC East,” said Sussman. “Nobody could really go on a run, and UB won the tiebreaks. Gill kept quietly building the program for three years, and suddenly they were on top.”
That meant that even with close losses to MAC West powerhouses Western and Central Michigan, the Bulls were still able to eke out enough wins to make it to the MAC Title Game and upset previously undefeated Ball State.
And there should have been even more success to follow, according to Riordan.
“2009 should have been at the very least a bowl year for UB,” he said.
It probably would have been too, if Willy hadn’t graduated months before Starks was sidelined for the 2009 season with a shoulder injury.
“Losing James Starks for the season was a back break for a team breaking in a new QB,” Riordan said.
The Bulls managed to stay in contention for most of the season but came up just short of bowl eligibility. It was at this point that the inevitable happened and Gill left Buffalo for financially greener pastures, signing a five-year deal with the University of Kansas. In came former University of Cincinnati assistant Jeff Quinn and, like Gill, he struggled in his first year as the Bulls’ coach.
“Quinn came in with ‘his offense’ and tried to jam the players into it” said Riordan. “Problem is, the one QB that maybe could have run that offense, Zach Maynard, left, and the offensive line was not the right build for his spread.”
Despite falling from eight wins in 2008 to two wins in 2010, there is hope for the Bulls in their quest to climb back on top of the MAC. Few expect an complete turnaround immediately, but Buffalo should be stronger this year in skill positions, especially with QB Chazz Andersontransferring from Cincinnati.
“What the Bulls need to do right now is stop the bleeding,” Riordan said. “A five-win season would be a big step in that direction, and anyone with a good QB has a puncher’s chance in four or five of their MAC games.”
That proved to be the case for last year’s MAC champs, Miami (Ohio), who used a similar combination of skill players to win the conference one year after going 1-11. In the meantime, UB’s 2008 success stands as a reminder of just how hard it is for a mid-major football program to dominate year after year.
“Every 20 years or so you’re going to have a mid-major strike a jackpot with the right coach, the right players, and the right competition,” Sussman said. “That’s what Buffalo had. I can’t explain Boise State’s rise to prominence but you can tell they’re committed to moving up to the next level of being a perennial Top 20 team. They’re the exception, and I’m not really sure many others can follow their model with equal success. Instead you’re mostly going to have teams with one, two, maybe three years of dominance.”
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