Athletic article on what has gone wrong at USF and can it be fixed.

[bulloni]

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“People don’t realize, we were No. 2 the one year, but the next two years, we were 10th and 21st. We went three years in a row getting ranked pretty high,” Leavitt, now 65, said. “I went through the first 10 years and never took a vacation. It was all I thought about, trying to build a great program, and we were the fastest winningest program in history. … The last year I was there, we averaged 53,000 (fans) a game.”

During his final three years on the job, from 2007 to 2009 — when Florida competed for national titles under Urban Meyer with Tim Tebow at quarterback — Leavitt’s Bulls made more appearances in the AP poll (22) than Miami (16) and Florida State (11). 

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“I really saw building South Florida to the level of Miami,” Leavitt said. “That’s who I had targeted to be our rival. We’d already beaten Central Florida four times. I’d gone down and met with (Miami athletic director) Paul Dee, had lunch with them in Miami to get a rivalry started. He did it, which I couldn’t believe.

“But then they fired me.”

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“It doesn’t surprise me,” Leavitt said of the current UCF-USF dynamic. “The administration blew it. We had everything going. Everything. To let UCF pass you and get into the Big 12 shouldn’t have happened.”

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Four years ago, after Kelly first returned to USF, the Wall Street Journal valued USF’s football program at $58.2 million, 69th among 115 FBS schools with available data at the time. The Bulls were fifth in the Sunshine State behind Florida ($635M value, 11th overall), Florida State ($290M, 27th), Miami ($193M, 41st) and UCF ($68M, 65th). Alabama, which once pursued Leavitt in December 2002 to replace Dennis Franchione as coach, was one of three FBS programs valued at over $1 billion.

“In 2007, the difference between us and Alabama might have been $10 million. Now it’s $50 million dollars every year,” Kelly said. “That’s why I think it’s so critical (for us to invest in football) these next couple of years.”

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But the lack of facilities now at USF made it harder for him to recruit than he thought it would.

“In my mind, what I felt like our roster and team would look like after one year, it’s actually taken us two years to get there,” Scott said. “Now, this spring, I’m looking at it like, OK, this looks like a Division I roster from an overall depth standpoint.

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“When I came down here, in my mind, I said, ‘Well, the top kids are gonna go to Clemson, Georgia, Alabama. But that next group of guys going to some of the other schools in the Power 5, those are the kids that we’re going to keep in Tampa.’ I firmly believed that and that we would do a great job of recruiting. I went through the process and after one year got close to some kids. Then they decided to go far away to some of those other lower Power 5 schools. And I asked them, I said, ‘What happened? I don’t understand.’ They pulled out their phones and they started showing me the locker room and the indoor facility and the stadium and the weight room at the school that they’re looking at.

“Even though the school they’re going to is not a championship team that’s won a lot of games, they’ve been getting $40 million and $50 million a year for the last 10 years and so they have just poured in a lot of money into their facilities and setup. And so I realized pretty quickly, we don’t have to have the same thing, because we’re actually located in Tampa, an incredible place. But we have to have something.”

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Corey Long, a Tampa area native who has covered college football recruiting for ESPN and now works for Walter Football, said poor recruiting since Taggart’s departure is what has hurt USF most — not UCF’s success.

“I don’t think it was because UCF was better,” Long said. “As close as they are and as similar as the players they get, they don’t often step on each other’s toes for a lot of recruits. I never really figured out (Strong’s) recruiting angle. I didn’t understand that staff and what they were looking at. I was surprised. I thought they would come in here and Charlie would have great connections and the local coaches would be more receptive, which they were. But it didn’t really pan out.

“I knew Willie’s deal. He didn’t have a good relationship with Hillsborough County coaches for a litany of reasons. But he would recruit Polk County, Pinellas County, and really did a very good job in Sarasota, Manatee County and down in South Florida. He was great down I-75. Anything from the Skyway Bridge down to Miami, he was really good. He had a smart staff and they were able to slip in and get really good players. What’s ironic is Willie Taggart and Jim Leavitt weren’t really loved by local coaches and they were by far the two most successful coaches in the program.”

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“Their issue right now is talent,” Long said. “And they’re living a little bit too much with the transfer portal. Given the struggles of some of the other in-state programs, there’s probably places they can start working in the state and keeping players that want to stay in state. One thing Leavitt and Willie did was they were able to get a lot of Power 5 kids that weren’t going to Miami, Florida or Florida State that weren’t excited about going to Louisville, West Virginia, Maryland and some other Power 5 schools. Hiring Travis Trickett was a good start. He’s a good recruiter in a lot of areas. He knows the type of kids that they need to be successful.”

In an ideal world, Scott said, he’d sign five to seven transfers a year — not twice that many.

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“What encourages me is the talented young players on our team,” said sophomore receiver Jimmy Horn, who caught 30 passes for 408 yards and a touchdown for a team that lost three games it led at halftime last season.

“I know we’re still in a rebuilding phase, but we had games last year where we lost in the third quarter, fourth-quarter-type deal. We didn’t get beat badly. If you look at it from the outside, I’m sure you’re saying ‘Oh, they’re not good.’ But as players, we know we have a good shot for sure. We have a lot of returners coming back on offense, too.”

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“When I got the job my first year, I was actually talking to Coach Bowden a little bit,” Scott said. “We were emailing back and forth. He would get up every morning at like 5 a.m. and answer his emails. He told me that when you take over a new program or a program that has some rebuilding to do, he said the first year you lose big; the second year you lose close; the third year you win close; the fourth you win big.

“Quite honestly, I know that’s kind of just coach talk, but I really feel that’s probably in line with where we are at this point. We had many games last year that we had an opportunity to win and couldn’t close it out.

 

[bulloni]

Interesting they got Leavitt to open up so much about it.

I can understand it taking 2 years for Scott to get his roster up to snuff with the lagging facilities. But it sounds like he knows he's out of excuses and NEEDS to win this year. Also finally having an IPF and hopefully having renderings of an OCS that would open within their 4 years here should take away a lot of the excuses for recruiting.

[puc86]

You pay for the athletic?

Edited April 20, 2022 by puc86

[MaltLiquorBull]

So, according to Bobby Bowden, we should "win close" this year.  It's the 3rd year.

[bulloni]

23 minutes ago, puc86 said:

You pay for the athletic?

Look up 12 foot ladder, its a site that removes paywalls. Doesn't work on every site but works on the athletic

[John Lewis]

25 minutes ago, puc86 said:

You pay for the athletic?

It's much better than other sports related news sites. 

[Outlaw]

48 minutes ago, bulloni said:

 

We lost big last year more than once... I see no mention of his bad decisions need to improve that cost us Tulsa last year and temple the year before...he needs to address his weaknesses playcalling and game management and improve his so called Strength and developing elite offense and finding an offensive identify. . 

[puc86]

3 minutes ago, bulloni said:

Look up 12 foot ladder, its a site that removes paywalls. Doesn't work on every site but works on the athletic

Thanks that’s what I hoped was your answer, your snippets peaked my interest but I don’t want to forget about another subscription for the rest of my life simply because I want to read a single article 

[puc86]

1 minute ago, John Lewis said:

It's much better than other sports related news sites. 

I have no doubt I just can’t imagine that I will be reading enough of their content to merit paying for it for the rest of my life.

[John Lewis]

Just now, puc86 said:

I have no doubt I just can’t imagine that I will be reading enough of their content to merit paying for it for the rest of my life.

It really depends on what you content you'd like and the fact that it let's you tailor what your sporting interests are was a big reason why I subscribed a couple of years ago.