Recently, a barrage of slurs has been thrown our way via the fans and writers of the University of Central Florida. The UCF Future has sent a variety of lashes at us, from calling our fan base “pinto-driving rednecks” to mocking our campus as a “four-building charter school.” All this was generated from the UCF baseball team beating USF twice earlier this season.

In a column titled, “There’s no rivalry? Probably because you’re losing to us,” it’s even been claimed that UCF has a better-looking campus. Well, let’s go ahead and dispel these odd and childish rumors.

First, the all-time baseball series between USF and UCF is officially tied at 47 games. This is not a rivalry. The definition of a rival is, and I quote, “The state or condition of competition or antagonism.” In order to be a rival, we have to care about the opposition. When USF players wake up on game day and see UCF on the schedule, it’s not exactly a reason to cheer. It’s just UCF.

I guess what The Future forgot to address in their bi-weekly penny press was the fact that their football team hasn’t won a game since October 2003.

“Fine, I’ll accept their football argument since we haven’t played yet and the fact that George O’Leary recruits quality student-athletes while Bulls’ coach Jim Leavitt recruits criminals,” the column reads.

UCF doesn’t need to recruit criminals when they already have one for a coach. Nobody needs a refresher course about O’Leary’s past. It’s easily one of the most embarrassing stories in the history of college football. Not to mention, O’Leary led the defense of the Minnesota Vikings in 2003 that managed to rank a whopping 23rd in the NFL. Sounds like UCF material to me.

I guess good ole UCF fell for O’Leary’s forgery-on-the-resume’ trick again, because he said he’d turn the UCF football program around. Instead, it looks like a deer in headlights, having lost 15 straight games.

The UCF Athletics homepage has a countdown until the football season begins. Can’t wait to keep the nation’s longest losing streak going? When was the last time you heard a school posting a 0-11 record and getting rewarded with a new stadium? Sorry you lost to Kent State and Buffalo, here’s a new stadium. I’m not saying USF’s football program is stellar — I mean come on, it lost to Army. But at least USF’s football program got in the win column. The UCF football program should apologize to the seniors on the football team last season for posting a giant donut in the win column.

So UCF basketball made the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year, having to leapfrog “powerhouse” Gardner-Webb for the Pathetic Sun title. If teams like Oakland can get an automatic berth, I wouldn’t brag too much. Yeah, so you “almost beat UCONN.” Sorry, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

The Knights would have needed a steady supply of Depends to make it through the Conference USA last season and probably would have lost to lowly Southern Miss.

Now, back to baseball. The USF Bulls rebounded from two close losses against the Knights dominating them in all facets of the game Tuesday night. Freshman pitcher Blake Tillett pitched a strong 5 1/3 innings. USF blew the game wide open with a six-run third inning, slamming UCF pitcher Ray Rodriguez in the process. Perhaps the icing on the cake was UCF’s seventh inning error-fest. First and foremost, make it a point not to mock the intrastate university when your own baseball team can’t field a routine fly ball that could have easily been caught on the little-league fields of West Tampa.

The two errors by the UCF Squires led to two Bull runs. USF lost two games to briefly — and I stress briefly — nationally ranked Knights by a total of four runs. Tuesday night, the Bulls pasted the Knights for nine runs on eight hits, including a grand slam by Joey Angelberger. You haven’t swept the Bulls since 1995, and I’m not banking on it happening any time soon.

As for the future, have fun recruiting almost stellar athletes from Bithlo.