DENTON, Texas—-Three takeaways from South Florida’s 63–39 win over North Texas on Friday night:

It was not a stretch to call Friday the biggest home game for the Mean Green in decades, with black-clad students packing DATCU Stadium for the school’s first sellout (a record 31,386 in attendance) of the place since it opened back in 2011. UNT had started 5–0 on the season for the first time since 1959 and South Florida was one of the rare ranked teams to venture to the northern Dallas suburbs.

Safe to say, all involved got their money’s worth even if the home side wound up taking its first loss of the year. It’s not even Saturday in Week 7 and there’s a good case to be made that the matchup between the Bulls and the Mean Green was the wackiest college football game of the weekend and it will be hard to top despite the plethora of additional options on the sport’s traditional kickoff date tomorrow.

There were wide receivers who played quarterback to run draws, a running back who threw a touchdown pass and a quarterback who hadn’t thrown an interception this season who wound up with a trio of them on Friday. Both teams averaged more than five yards per play and there were more turnovers in the first half of any game this season, according to ESPN. Two more came in the second half. 

Heck, half of all plays in the first and second quarters went for either a touchdown, turnover or first down (31 first downs, six turnovers and six touchdowns on 86 plays). Then there were 35 points in the third quarter on its own. That’s not even getting to some of the impressive defensive plays and every one of the 14 total touchdowns in the contest. 

2. South Florida got away with sloppy play but showed its ceiling

There were a few moments early in the first quarter where we were on the verge of thinking USF was on full upset alert. The Bulls committed three turnovers on their first four drives of the evening and allowed a pair of long scoring drives going the other way on defense. The crowd was loud and had a big impact on the state of the game. Throw in the fact that it was late on a weekday and all the ingredients were there for one of those surprising results that sent one team into College Football Playoff contention and put a dent in the hopes of the other.

South Florida Bulls cornerback Jonas Duclona (3) reacts after an interception against the North Texas Mean Green.
After a shaky start, the veteran South Florida defense stepped up in the second half. | Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

Despite not playing all that well initially, the Bulls did show why they were ranked coming into the night and why they were capable of beating teams like Florida too. Dynamic QB Byrum Brown ended up getting into an impressive groove as things wore on and threw for 245 yards, was the team’s leading rusher with 82 yards and accounted for five touchdowns with just one pick. The speed of the veteran defense was also apparent when linebacker Jhalyn Shuler ran a fumble back for a score in the third quarter and had so much time that he could hop sideways in the red zone for a few yards before a North Texas defender could even come close enough to force him to pass the goal line. It may have drawn an unsportsmanlike foul but also underscored the difference in quality between the two teams.

At one point in the fabled “middle eight” of the game, USF scored four touchdowns in just four minutes and six seconds of action that turned this close contest into one where the outcome seemed inevitable. When you can do that on a night where you don’t have your A Game, you typically are good enough to have a great season.

3. USF remains on track for the Group of Five bid alongside Memphis, Navy and Tulane

It’s Red River weekend with Texas and Oklahoma meeting in the Cotton Bowl on Saturday but the bigger game in terms of College Football Playoff implications was certainly much further north in the Dallas metroplex Friday night. 

This was the first of three massive road games in the next six weeks for South Florida against fellow American Conference competition and it might already be enough to label them the favorite in the league if they keep performing like they did for much of the night against North Texas. The Bulls already have wins over Boise State and Florida on their résumé and beating another bowl-bound team like the Mean Green naturally ticks off another box. 

Keep in mind that head coach Alex Golesh’s team doesn’t face fellow contender Tulane in the regular season, gets several winnable games at home in the back half of the year and faces just two more tricky road tests at Memphis in late October and at Navy early next month. Both the Midshipmen and Tigers are undefeated going into Saturday and won’t be easy games by any stretch, but the quick-strike ability the Bulls showed to turn a close game into a runaway bodes well moving forward.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI Expert Takeaways from South Florida–North Texas: Bulls Show Ceiling After Sloppy Start .