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TheBullsPen.com

Brad Meyers, founder of the popular USF message board TheBullspen.com talks about the excitement surrounding the program as it climbs in national ranking and prepares for the first sellout in school history.

This season, two players have won the Big East Defensive Player of the Week and a real chance of competing for a BCS bowl with a win Friday night.

The website has grown dramatically since its inception in 1999 and Meyers talks with the Oracle before the highest attended football game in USF history.

Oracle: How crazy has the last week been for you?

Brad Meyers: I haven’t seen anything like this, there hasn’t been a sense of euphoria like this before. Not Auburn, not Pittsburgh in ’01, not Louisville in ’05. That was all excitement after a win, this is probably the biggest surge in excitement that I’ve ever seen, except for the inaugural game in 1997.

Oracle: Did you ever think Raymond James would sell out this quickly?

Brad Meyers: If you would have asked me that three months ago, I would have bet against it. I’m very surprised that we sold out Raymond James Stadium. Pleasantly surprised, but I would have never guessed it.

Oracle: Do you have any sense that this excitement will carry over into the other sports on campus?

Brad Meyers: That’s a good question, I think this is the perfect opportunity for it to carry over into some of the major sports, like basketball, if we can be competitive in the Big East there will be some excitement there. Other sports like softball and so forth, I don’t know if it would. Football is just a huge draw in Florida and in other schools it always translates into the other sports further on down the totem poll. I’m hoping the extra 30,000 fans we have on Friday night that win or lose we retain a high percentage of them for the next game (at home against Central Florida on Oct. 13). I was never a football fan, I was a longtime basketball season ticket holder and when football started kicking around in 1995, they called me and asked if I wanted to support the program and I did. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Oracle: Can you talk about how the website has grown since you started in 1999?

Brad Meyers: The reason why I started it because there were what I call “first generation” message boards but they weren’t fan friendly. They were really more discussion groups. We celebrated when we had 600 members, that was a big deal. I had an interview with the (St. Petersburg) Times when we were playing Kentucky in 2000 and I remember looking at their board and seeing they had 1,000 members. I remember thinking if we can get that then we’ve arrived. We had 300 members sign up in September and have 3,200 members now. The page views were 10 times as much as they were two months ago. We’ve been trying to grow as fast as the program. With everyone wanting a piece of the Bulls, we have unprecedented traffic and unprecedented issues and we have to deal with that. It’s pretty crazy.

Oracle: How quickly is the turn around of information for fans on your website?

Brad Meyers: We provide an atmosphere where you can come in and be a go, go, go cheerleader type or be a hardcore football fan. We have guys who can talk about getting traditions started at the games or talk strategy. It’s become a great sounding board and they’ve come up with some good ones for West Virginia. The more we can get on the message board than the more we can have become USF fans.

-Brendan Galella