South Florida began football trek at very bottom
Part 5 in an occasional series on the new Big East: South Florida
NEILL OSTROUT nostrout@ctpost.com
NEWPORT, R.I. — A lot of football coaches tell horror stories about the conditions under which they were once forced to work.
There's the one about the locker rooms with only enough hot water for a handful of showers. The one about having to wait for a lacrosse, field hockey or soccer game to end in order to start practice is a classic. And the tale of a marathon bus trip on vintage wheels with a driver who can't find his way onto — or off of — major interstates still draws big laughs.
But South Florida head coach Jim Leavitt's yarn about trying to recruit players to a start-up program in the late 1990s is a doozy.
In the big-time world of college football, facilities are sometimes everything. USF, which began playing football in 1997, had to start from scratch.
"We had a trailer," said Leavitt, the only coach the Tampa school has ever known. "And nothing else."
Coaches like UConn's Randy Edsall — whose team continues to use temporary trailers for meetings while it awaits completion of the multimillion-dollar facility being constructed next door — have been in similar spots. Leavitt, only half-kidding, says his plight was much worse.
"I was told when we started the program 10 years ago that we'd never win — ever," Leavitt said. "I knew we were running into a jam because we were still recruiting out of those trailers and we were in a conference where it was hard (to recruit)."
Because his team's fortunes have changed in the decade since, Leavitt can look back and laugh a bit at the Bulls' start. Since its start, his program has moved from the Division I-AA ranks to Conference USA and now to the Big East Conference.
The Bulls play in 65,000-seat Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, have a $15 million on-campus home that opened in May 2004 and now have a link to college football's national championship in the form of the BCS.
As proud as he is of his humble beginnings when it comes to the location of his desk and chair, Leavitt is equally as giddy about his program's new digs on campus.
"The facility is as nice as I've seen around, and I've been around a lot of them," Leavitt said of his team's home. "It's all there now."
Getting players to join USF and not any of the other powerhouse programs in the Sunshine State would seem to be an improbable task. Leavitt certainly doesn't think so, however, and remembers a time when the Gators, Hurricanes and Seminoles weren't so strong.
"When I was in high school in Florida," Leavitt, a 1974 graduate of Dixie Hollins High in St. Petersburg, Fla., recalled, "Florida was 5-6, Miami couldn't beat anybody, and Florida State was a teacher's college that couldn't win at all. And look at those programs now. They're three of the strongest in the country."
The Bulls, who won eight games in 2001, nine games in 2002 and seven games in 2003, may not be in the upper-echelon of Big East teams this season. But the future of the program is bright, according to its leader.
"What's going to happen when you take a program and put them in the Big East?" said Leavitt,
who is 55-33 at USF. "A program that just built facilities and is located in Tampa, Fla.?"
South Florida's first-ever win at the Division I-A level was a 21-13 win over UConn on Oct. 28, 2000. Like the Huskies, the Bulls have grown significantly since then. Looking to build on a rather disappointing 4-7 season last year, USF opens this season Sept. 3 at Penn State.
At least one of the new players who will be on the sidelines for the Bulls in Happy Valley might represent a change in South Florida's recruiting fortunes. Leavitt has already seen his staff play some catch-up with the Miamis of this world.
"I sensed it last year when we were recruiting Carlton Hill," Leavitt said of the 6-foot-3 star from Monticello, Fla. "Carlton was rated among the top 10 quarterbacks in America and was offered by everybody in the country. Miami locked in on him. I mean really locked in on him. We went all the way to the end, and we signed him."
The now-freshman signal-caller may not play a down for the Bulls this season, but his recruitment was akin to the landmark addition of Shelton's Dan Orlovsky to the UConn ranks in 2000.
"Carlton kept telling me, 'I'm coming to South Florida. I'm not going to Miami,'" Leavitt said. "But we had lost Adrian McPherson to Florida State, we had lost a good quarterback to Florida the year before."
Leavitt credits the Bulls' impending move to the Big East — and its link to the BCS — for Hill's decision to come to Tampa.
"The Big East was huge in getting Carlton Hill," Leavitt said. "Every young person wants a chance. They just want to know there's a chance that if we do it on the field, we're going to get recognized. And when you're in Conference USA, it's not there. It's not real. That's just the reality of the world."
SOUTH FLORIDA THUMBNAIL in header
LOCATION — Tampa, Fla.
FOUNDED — 1956
ENROLLMENT — 41,392
NICKNAME — USF, Bulls
FOOTBALL CONFERENCE HISTORY — Sun Belt 1976-1991; Metro 1992-1994; Conference USA 1995-2005; Big East 2005-present
BIG MEN ON CAMPUS — RB Andre Hall (school-record 1,357 yards rushing last season as a junior; had games of 275 and 200 yards); F/C Solomon Jones (averaged 2.13 blocks per game last season as a junior)
PROMINENT FOOTBALL ALUMNI — PK Bill Gramatica (1998-2000); OT Kenyatta Jones (1997-2000)
PROMINENT BASKETBALL ALUMNUS — PG Chucky Atkins (1992-96)
DID YOU KNOW? — The USF men's basketball team played in the 1982 Connecticut Mutual Classic at the Hartford Civic Center. The Bulls lost to host UConn 57-50 in the final. One year earlier, UConn beat South Florida 65-55 in the first round of the NIT.
— NEILL OSTROUT
<a href='http://www.connpost.com/sports/ci_2903117' target='_blank'>USF benefit from BE</a>
