AFTER MARSHALL made its point against the Mid-American Conference champion in the Boca Raton Bowl last December, it was time to go toe-to-toe with a team from the American Athletic Conference.
You know, the league that once fancied itself as a coast-to-coast Big East? The one with nine former Conference USA members? The one that ignored Marshall in the last round of realignment?
Yes, it was time for Marshall to make them pay, and two Florida-based bowls this month set up the opportunity.
It almost went as planned. The Herd is off to the St. Petersburg Bowl, facing an AAC team. But the desired opportunity is not there.
Instead, the Herd will see Connecticut.
Flippin' UConn. 6-6 overall, 4-4 in the AAC. The league's seventh-best record. On Dec. 26 at 11 a.m., no less.
Yuck.
Shoot, UConn is one of the three AAC teams who isn't a C-USA defector. The Huskies are a Big East holdover, lifting their program from Division I-AA in 2000 to augment its highly successful basketball membership.
When thinking about this game or the Miami Beach Bowl, Marshall followers were thinking more along the lines of Temple (or Houston, if it didn't win the league), South Florida or Memphis. They would have lived with Cincinnati, certainly.
But it was none of the above, and the early social-media returns reflect a dissatisfaction. I know MU partisans are not happy with a game the morning after Christmas.
Brace for it: The Herd won't bring nearly as many followers as it did for the 2011 St. Pete Bowl, when the game was on the 20th and fans thirsted for any bowl game. But five years later, did the Herd really get the short end?
You can argue MU is where it deserves to be, even with its 9-3 overall record.
The Herd had a 6-2 league mark, but was tied for second in C-USA's East Division with Middle Tennessee. Yes, the same Blue Raiders who took advantage of five missed field goals to beat the Herd in triple overtime.
So really, that means the Herd was third in the East. It owns exactly one win over a bowl team, though it was a nice one - a 31-10 decision over Southern Mississippi.
UConn has the same number of wins over bowl teams, one, but that was enormous. I happened to watch the Huskies' 20-17 victory over Houston and it wasn't a blind-squirrel win. The Huskies physically took it to the top Group of 5 team on Nov. 21 in East Hartford.
Here's a deliciously morbid tidbit about the Huskies: They helped get three coaches get fired. Look it up - they dumped George O'Leary's Central Florida team 40-13, beat East Carolina and Ruffin McNeil 31-13 and snuffed Tulane and Curtis Johnson 7-3.
The ECU and Tulane wins came before the Houston win. The Huskies lost 27-3 to Temple to end the season, but they will come to St. Pete on a 3-1 run. Bear in mind that the Huskies went 2-10 in 2014, coach Bob Diaco's first year.
St. Pete was MU's near-certain destination after the Herd lost to Western Kentucky in the winner-take-division bout on Nov. 27. But as last week wore on, news about the other top AAC teams leaked out, and they were going elsewhere.
South Florida, which would have been a good home team, is going to Miami Beach and has drawn an intriguing matchup with Western Kentucky. USF coach Willie Taggart fished WKU out of a winless morass before coming to Tampa and lifting the Bulls out of their doldrums.
Memphis going to Birmingham to play Auburn was logical. Cincinnati went off to Hawaii in a mild surprise. The one that should gall Herd fans is Temple going to Boca Raton to play Toledo. But consider this: The Rockets went 9-2, downing two Power 5 teams and Mid-American Conference champion Bowling Green.
That leaves the Herd to play UConn on the 26th - a good day for TV, an awful day for potential patrons.
But the game is in St. Petersburg, with a dandy stretch of beach west of Tropicana Field and a nice downtown to the east. You could come down the 24th or 25th and stay a day or three after the game. The weather in 2011 was awesome.
But did the Herd really deserve to be paired with AAC No. 7?
I don't think so, but it's up to Herd players to make that statement, much like they did last year in Boca.