Note: rankings for this series are set by TERSE, a D1 college football metric designed to imitate human rankings. These will shift as the offseason goes on, with more transfer data becoming available over time.
It feels like a million years ago that USF was ranked, contending for AAC titles and ten-win seasons, and jockeying with rival UCF for position in realignment. Even in the often-unpredictable world of the Group of 5, it’s hard to think of a program that has experienced a more dramatic collapse in the same span. The Bulls felt rudderless with Jeff Scott at the helm, switching out quarterbacks seemingly at random and doing nothing with the brief moments of momentum in his miserable 4-26 tenure.
Given all this, it may seem surprising that Alex Golesh—the coordinator of Tennessee’s dazzling, football-breaking offense in 2022 and USF’s new head coach—says he took the job because he sees “a commitment to winning”. Only one FBS team has won fewer games since Scott’s hiring, and that team (UMass) skipped the 2020 season entirely. The Bulls’ peers on that list, from FIU to UNLV, don’t exactly strike you as the sort of program that really wants to focus on football.
But there’s more in consideration here than on-field results. While Scott’s teams were hitting rock bottom over and over again, USF AD Michael Kelly was pouring money into athletic programs, football included. A $22 million indoor practice facility was recently opened, and plans for the Bulls’ first-ever on-campus football stadium were approved by the board of trustees just this week. The new staff was given the largest salary pool of any team in the AAC—and, of course, hiring Golesh himself was a coup, considering how coveted top P5 coordinators are for jobs more attractive than USF.
This all naturally raises the question: why is the team still so bad? Golesh believes it’s all about culture, the same problem Tennessee had before Josh Heupel led a turnaround starting in 2021. Golesh was a key factor in repairing the Vols’ image and building trust with student-athletes, which he notes as a key focus at other stops in his career as well. Rebuilding USF is a thankless job, but the resources are there to get things on the right track and create sustainable success quickly.
Looking at it from 10,000 feet, it all feels really exciting. The university and its athletic department have been investing in success for years; now, finally, they have a coach who seems to really get what they want to do. That kind of alignment is at the start of so many success stories in this sport, and it feels only natural that the Bulls are on the way back up. It’s easy to forget how far they have to go, that we still haven’t seen Golesh coach a single game, let alone show that he can win at the helm. It’s all exciting, but ultimately, USF is still venturing into uncharted waters. They’ve never bet so much on football, and they’re betting on a coach who—as talented as he is in many respects—has never served as a head coach at any level. Every risk is calculated, but they are still risks.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to deny the Bulls are in a good position. Results may not be immediate (though in the age of the transfer portal, anything is possible), but it’s more than reasonable to expect them soon. For a team with one FBS win in the last three seasons, that’s pretty good going.
The Last Five Years
Perhaps the main reason for skepticism, as superstitious as it may be, is the fact that Scott was also a talented coordinator at a top Power 5 team (Clemson) before arriving in Tampa. The Bulls weren’t in an ideal situation before his arrival, with Charlie Strong finishing on a 4-14 skid and attempting to circumvent NCAA rules in a doomed three-year stint. Scott couldn’t right the ship, partially hindered by COVID-19 and minor penalties for Strong’s actions, but he did arguably address some of the off-field problems. At the very least, Golesh doesn’t inherent a program with impending NCAA sanctions.
2022 and 2023
When it was all over, USF’s SBNation site described 2022 as “the season from hell”, which is hard to argue with. The Bulls set the tone by letting BYU go ahead 28-0 in the season opener—in the first quarter—and ultimately losing 50-21, their first of four 20-point losses. To their credit, they were punchy at times, challenging Florida, Cincinnati, and UCF in 31-28, 28-24, and 46-39 losses. At other times…well, this is a team that welcomed Temple (otherwise 0-7 in the AAC) to Tampa and gave up 54 points. The offense was actually decent, but the defense was historically awful, surrendering over 40 points in eight of the Bulls’ last nine games.
In immediate terms, as bright as the future is, on-field results in 2023 are going to be an uphill battle. USF is losing some pretty significant pieces—most notably, 2021 all-American Brian Battie and top receivers Xavier Weaver and Jimmy Horn Jr., all of whom transferred to play for first-year coaches at P5 programs instead of at USF. There’s a lot of latent talent to play around with; you’ll see plenty of players get snaps this season as Golesh tries to identify the key pieces of the Bulls’ future. Too much hinges on potential to expect much this season, but it’ll still be worth watching. Keep an eye on two winnable home games in November against Temple and Charlotte; they’ll mark good opportunities to see a late-season proof of concept for what USF could look like going forward.
The Next Five Years
Make no mistake: this rebuild is of the long-term variety. USF is the sort of G5 program that gets college football writers excited—it has winning history, investment from the university, a recruiting hotbed, and a well-regarded coach taking over. But potential and reality in college football are worlds apart, and when a team struggles to bring them into alignment for as long as the Bulls have, there are usually good reasons. This program has support now, but it took dire circumstances for the athletic department to wake up and make it a priority.
What USF is should, by all logic, finally start coming in line with what it could be. They’ve done everything right, short of hiring a coach to tidy things up on a more granular level, and they’ve now done that. There’s no logical reason they shouldn’t establish themselves as a leader in the AAC, a conference undergoing transition and losing three of its current frontrunners.
But again, there is the small matter of Golesh still not having coached a game and USF currently being one of the worst on-field teams in D1. Established titans often fall into disrepair for good; facilities and recruiting classes are a long way from results; coordinator hires fail all the time. Many teams have been in this team’s position and simply never gotten off the ground.
It would be naïve to suggest that the rest of this journey will be easy. But compared to what went before, the road no longer leads uphill. It’s a long way from here to the days of more conference titles and realignment rumors, but for the first time in years, the way forward for USF football is finally clear.