"Moral victories are for LOSERS" - Coach Alex Golesh

[puc86]

1 minute ago, hightechbull said:

Yeah never winning a conference championship or even getting close to sniffing the conference championship was such a great thing to experience every year.  Interesting that no other schools or NFL teams or even a high school hired him as a head coach, and other places other than USF have fired him after he left USF.

Leavitt was instrumental in starting the program, but he was no Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno or even Eddie Robinson.   He may get a plaque commemorating his part in USF football's history, but no one is erecting a statue for him.  

The constant harping back to the Leavitt era is just pathetic as the dude who keeps mentioning the hot chick he lost his virginity back in high school.   Good for you, now get over it.  All that matters is who you are banging now.

Yes doing that in a BCS conference that quickly into our history was in fact amazing, glad you can recognize it and how we have only gotten further from that point (in the wrong direction) since it passed.
 

To get people over this was the best things ever were and we shouldn’t have destroyed it because of hubris we simply have to make a time that is actually better we can use as a reference point.

If these were my options for who I could bang at this time I would definitely long for the past and just increase my organic pool by hiring professionals and not pretend to by happy slumming it just because I thought it was my only option. The biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves…

[DELdaBull]

I'm starting to like where this coach's mentality is at. 

[Gismo]

5 hours ago, hightechbull said:

Yeah never winning a conference championship or even getting close to sniffing the conference championship was such a great thing to experience every year.  Interesting that no other schools or NFL teams or even a high school hired him as a head coach, and other places other than USF have fired him after he left USF.

Leavitt was instrumental in starting the program, but he was no Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno or even Eddie Robinson.   He may get a plaque commemorating his part in USF football's history, but no one is erecting a statue for him.  

The constant harping back to the Leavitt era is just pathetic as the dude who keeps mentioning the hot chick he lost his virginity back in high school.   Good for you, now get over it.  All that matters is who you are banging now.

This is a crap take.

USF smeared his name so no one would give him a head coach job. He turned around more than one defense as defensive coordinator, but the head coaches he worked for got canned. That’s how the coaching profession goes, he was along for the ride of the head coach. 
 

Leavitt’s record as head coach speaks for itself, he had one of the longest running bowl streaks as a head coach, had gotten us to be ranked more consistently, and had shown he can win on the big stage.

What he lacked was depth because he was still punching above his weight class with the talent level he was able to recruit. 

Instead of firing Leavitt, If USF has announced indoor practice facilities and OCS instead, recruiting would have picked up enough to get the needed depth and this program would be in a completely different place. 

In 2007 a key offensive lineman was injured at Rutgers, and our pass protection suffered which was a huge contributor to the losses we suffered after starting the season 6-0. That’s depth that could have been fixed as recruiting increases. We were upsetting teams with far more talent than us. We had elite defense but just needed the offense to get over the hurdle. Leavitt started with zero, it’s incredible where he left this program in such a short time. 
 

We had the big crowds, we had the marquee wins, the timing was perfect to upgrade our facilities and go for an OCS to take the program higher. We just needed some more depth and some more talent on offense. 
 

It’s not clear that investing in academics for AAU and investing in football were mutually exclusive. 
 

Leavitt is an elite coach in my mind. Every squad he has coached has gotten measurably better by the stats and win-loss column. 

Edited September 17, 2023 by Gismo

[Brad]

Good points @Gismo and I’m glad you stated them so I didn’t have to. But it’s not pining about Leavitt and missing him. It’s that we were stupid enough to destroy the program back in 2009. The people that made the decisions then (and I know) didn’t understand college football and thought any Coach could come in and do the same thing. Weak ass Athletic Director (got himself paid well) and a scared President known for stating risks Athletics brought to her personally. They set the program back 25 years and we were only 12 years old then.  
 

puc needs to get over it.  Those people are gone but we replaced them with some equally inadequate people over the years, so I understand puc’s concern.  
 

I just hope our current administration have very well learned from past administrations, and have an idea what they’re going to do to even get us back to where we were when we sucked as a plateauing program at a BCS level of play.  I’ll take the 8-9 wins a year any day.  I understand CFB.  

[SilverBull]

In a great show of respect for our "valiant effort." a two-touchdown win against the Bulls dropped Bama 3 spots in the AP poll and 2 in the Coaches' poll.

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[puc86]

51 minutes ago, Brad said:

Good points @Gismo and I’m glad you stated them so I didn’t have to. But it’s not pining about Leavitt and missing him. It’s that we were stupid enough to destroy the program back in 2009. The people that made the decisions then (and I know) didn’t understand college football and thought any Coach could come in and do the same thing. Weak ass Athletic Director (got himself paid well) and a scared President known for stating risks Athletics brought to her personally. They set the program back 25 years and we were only 12 years old then.  
 

puc needs to get over it.  Those people are gone but we replaced them with some equally inadequate people over the years, so I understand puc’s concern.  
 

I just hope our current administration have very well learned from past administrations, and have an idea what they’re going to do to even get us back to where we were when we sucked as a plateauing program at a BCS level of play.  I’ll take the 8-9 wins a year any day.  I understand CFB.  

If I was posting unprovoked about this or stewing about it in my regular life I would definitely think I need to go over it but I don’t think that ever really happens. 
 

In going back through it I now see they got hooked by someone looking for the exact reaction that they got but I didn’t even notice it because it’s pretty simple to ignore a throw away comment. 
 

It isn’t as easy to ignore the insane responses to those throw away comments that require us to completely ignore what we were accomplishing back then and how it compares to the accomplishments since then.

My issues now are entirely current and if comparing things to our best era are too inflammatory for some we can pick any era ever in our history. I can pretend that we just can’t compare then to now and that it wasn’t measurably better in every regard but is the football program better off today than it was 12 years ago? 10? 6? 5?

If I could pretend that facilities were exciting to me and led to anything more than debt service I guess I could be better at pretending we aren’t being failed miserably but I think I would feel less embarrassed talking aau and academic accomplishments as they at least kind of feel pertinent.

When VPMK talked to Prime apparently DB came with him, can anyone imagine DB talking a VPMK with him? There are people out there with vision, there are people out there that people want to be in rooms with, there are people out there that are natural disrupters, what intangible is VPMK bringing to the table at this very moment that is getting us to get past status quo? 
 

VPMK by his own accounts seems to love stability and staying the course and if we were P5 and winning he would be a great person to keep things humming. Unfortunately for me I don’t think things as they are really works for USF football and we need radical change by any means necessary. 
 

This matters because of today and not 14 years ago (but still their takes on 14 years ago are laughable as explained way better by @Gismo)

[Triple B]

4 hours ago, Gismo said:

Leavitt is an elite coach in my mind. Every squad he has coached has gotten measurably better by the stats and win-loss column. 

If that was actually true, he may still be here. Maybe at some point we can have a thread with some honest, emotionless, factual back and forth about the Leavitt years .... and beyond.

[Brad]

Unemotional?  Unlikely.  When you choose a side, it’s all emotion. 
 

And disappointing to many, emotions are not facts.  

[puc86]

55 minutes ago, Triple B said:

If that was actually true, he may still be here. Maybe at some point we can have a thread with some honest, emotionless, factual back and forth about the Leavitt years .... and beyond.

You are entitled to your alternative facts but they fly in the face of the reality most of us have lived, bidenomics is doing great too if they could do something about the disinformation campaign that is most people’s balance sheets. We won more, we played better teams, we were more apart of the college football conversations, we had more quality wins, our recruiting was better, our strength of schedule was better, we were ranked more often, our attendance was better, we drew better 1 for 1’s and most importantly it just felt better but obviously not better than every moment since then because feelings.

Edited September 18, 2023 by puc86

[puc86]

19 minutes ago, Brad said:

Unemotional?  Unlikely.  When you choose a side, it’s all emotion. 
 

And disappointing to many, emotions are not facts.  

Facts are what you make of them, the value you decide to give them and the context you decide to surround them with. The issue with the anti leavitt contingent isn’t that they are saying anything objectively false it’s that they are purposefully ignoring all of the surrounding context that makes it one of the most amazing coaching performances in college football history which at the time was universally acknowledged and studied by people dreaming to emulate it.