By TOM ZEBOLD
USF Senior Writer
TAMPA - In a way, it seems like forever ago to B.J. Daniels, but USF's senior quarterback remembers the last time the Bulls played FSU like it was yesterday.
"Every time I go back home, I'm always reminded of it, if not from family members or friends, then classmates I went to school with or people I compete against that are on the team now," the Tallahassee native said.
The date was Sept. 26, 2009 and on that day, a much younger Daniels was thrown into the pressure cooker. Longtime starter Matt Grothe went down with a season-ending knee injury the week before against Charleston Southern and suddenly Daniels was USF's main man in charge of leading the Bulls in a game many outsiders saw as mission impossible for the program.
"The first Monday night practice I was really uptight and didn't know how to handle myself going into the week starting," he said. "When I got on the field, it was really familiar for me because I had been to the stadium, I had been to the games and I had been on the field before."
Daniels' first memory of his first start was during pregame warmups when he looked over to the seats his family used to sit in while he was growing up.
"I really didn't feel like a road game to me because I was comfortable in that environment. I was actually a part of that environment," Daniels added.
What was once a kid that cheered the hometown Seminoles on was now a dangerous threat to Bobby Bowden's crew that was ranked 18th in the country at the time. Daniels showed just how comfortable he was in his surroundings by racking up 341 yards of total offense and throwing two touchdown passes in a 17-7 USF victory that shocked FSU's crowd of 83,524.
"I cried after that game, tears of joy when I got to the locker room. It was the completion of a Cinderella story," Daniels said.
The tale of this particular starting quarterback started with an FSU program that hadn't offered Daniels a scholarship when he was proving himself worthy of one at Lincoln High School. Bowden and the Seminoles found out about Daniels' potential the hard way that sunny Saturday at Doak Campbell Stadium, when the rising star announced his presence with authority in the second quarter.
Daniels' first TD toss went 8 yards to Ben Busbee for the game's initial score on a drive that featured a 77-yard toss to Theo Wilson. Daniels showed off his arm again less than 3 minutes before halftime when he connected with Sterling Griffin on a 73-yard strike to put the Bulls ahead, 14-0.
"He killed us," Bowden said in his postgame interview. "Boy, they've got a great one there."
Daniels also gave USF fans a good taste of his dual-threat capabilities by rushing for a game-high 126 yards, while FSU managed just 19 yards on the ground as a whole. Daniels' rushing total marked the first time a quarterback went over 100 yards against the Seminoles' defense since Nebraska's Steve Taylor put up 139 in 1986.
"The way we got be up on offense, I didn't know we could get beat up like that," Bowden said.
Daniels wound up accounting for all but 27 yards of USF's total on offense, but that memorable Saturday was about much more than No. 7. The victory still stands up as one of the Bulls' best in the still-young program's history and the young man that led the way couldn't hold back the tears while celebrating with the group in the locker room.
"I was really happy for the team. It was really big for us as a program to pull off a win like that," Daniels said. "Our backs were against the wall and people thought we couldn't do it, but all the guys in the locker room believed."
Only a handful of active Bulls remain from the 2009 squad, but Daniels said USF can follow the same formula for succes this Saturday at sold-out Raymond James Stadium. FSU comes into this one ranked No. 4 in the country and appears to be a much stronger team than the version that faced off against the Bulls the last time out. Rankings, big names and all the rest of the hoopla that comes with Saturday's game doesn't mean much to USF and Daniels has reminded the Bulls about that this week.
"There's 110 guys, including coaches on the team, and it's just about what we can do. Don't get caught up in what anybody says outside of us and don't even worry about our opponent because at the end of the day, it's just another team," Daniels said. "It's a good football team, but you can't get caught up in the name of the university that you're playing. You have to worry about doing what you're supposed to do on each individual play."
Sure Daniels played well the last time out against FSU and he knows another strong performance will be needed in the series' latest installment. Still that doesn't change the fact that USF must come together like it did on a special Saturday in Tallahassee that started Daniels' starting run the right way.
"It was about the fire within ourselves to go out and do something good," Daniels said.
