[Roy Tucker]

I think it will be very interesting to see what degree of success that Butch Jones has. I'm hopeful.

I think people forget that UC football has been on the upswing since about the second half of Rick Minter's term as coach. Before that, it really was about as pathetic as a Div. 1 program can be during Tim Murphy, Dave Currey, et al. But Minter carved some relatively decent teams out of the wilderness that was UC football and started getting them to some minor bowls around 2000 or so. When they started having a little success, Minter couldn't quite get them over the hump so Mark Dantonio was there for a couple-three years and got them to the next rung of respectablility. And then Kelley came on board and things went gonzo.

Realistically, I don't expect a 12-0 season. Too many things have to go right and I think UC used all that up last year. But I think an 11-3 or 10-4 season isn't out of the question. Butch Jones was a very good coach at Central Michigan and Kelley didn't leave the cupboard bare at UC. They have a lot of offensive firepower coming back but the defense is really the question in my mind. They won a lot of shoot-outs last year which are always entertaining. But their defense will dictate the degree of success they achieve.