Sportsfrog.com

Over the next three days, I’ll post three separate entries about USF football. Part one is about their history. Part two is about their 2007 team. Part three is about Thursday’s game at Rutgers. This is part one.
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The sportsfrog’s swamp is lucky to have a few USF supporters and alumni among its members. And as someone who was raised minutes away from USF, and who currently lives and works in Tampa, I feel compelled to write a little bit about them this week to help fill in some of the blanks that people have about the school and the team.

First, why is it named ‘South Florida’?

Back in the mid-1950s when Florida lawmakers were debating on where to put the new school they needed to create in the Tampa Bay area, some of the name options that were thrown around were: University of Southern Florida, Gulf Coast University, Citrus State University, Sunshine State University, University of Southwest Florida, and my personal favorite, The University of Florida at Temple Terrace.

This was at a time before any of the four other current, major public universities in the southern half of Florida existed - FAU (1964), UCF (1968), FIU (1972), and FGCU (1997). UM (1925) is a private institution.

The USF name was almost given away back in 1943 when a state Senator wanted to create a USF in Miami to become a medical and dental school. While the money for that school fell through because of WWII, the name seemed to stick around with the good ole boys in the state capitol.

So when it came time to create a school in Tampa, to the lawmakers in Tallahassee the Cigar City really was considered part of South Florida and the school they would create there was at the time the most southernly located public university in the state.

In 1957, USF was founded and by 1960 classes had begun.

Is USF a big school?

Definitely. In 2006, they boasted an enrollment of 45,244 total students, which is said to be the 9th most in the nation.

Medicine is probably what the school was known best for, prior to their football team’s rise to excellence. The school boasts its own cancer center and research institute which ranked #16 in the nation in 2006 of all cancer specialty hospitals.

So if they have been around for so long, and have are so big, why did it take them so long to develop a football program.

Snobs. Academic snobs, to be more exact.

Somewhere along the way, it was thought by some that an academic institution could not be taken seriously if it was allowed to mix learning with intercollegiate athletics.

The school’s first president, John Allen, and the state’s governor at the time, LeRoy Collins, were both committed to building USF as a top academic institution. Allen in particular was the one most against the idea of intercollegiate athletics and he talked openly about the advantages of starting a new university:

“We have an opportunity to start something new and great here,” he said. “There are no fences, no boundaries holding us and limiting our search for knowledge or our methods of teaching knowledge.”

In 1961, Allen indefinitely ruled out intercollegiate football and basketball at USF. He allowed intramural games, but from the start the students wanted more and the school even played a touch football game against neighboring Florida Southern. They lost.

Allen resigned in 1970, and by then he had done well in making USF a strong academic school in a short period of time. But the school still lacked sports, dorm life, a marching band, greek life, and presumably drinking, fun, and smiling.

By 1971, the school had its first basketball team, and by 1993 then athletic director Paul Griffin began to get the wheels in motion to bring intercollegiate football to USF.

Along the way, he was helped by NFL Hall of Famer Lee Roy Selmon, who was assistant athletic director from 1993 to 2001. When Griffin left USF for Georgia Tech in ‘01, Selmon then took over as AD and helped USF make the transition from Division 1-AA to 1-A that year, and then to affiliation with Conference USA in 2003, and finally the big move to the Big East in 2005.

So when you hear stories about how this is USF’s 11th season as a football program, it’s also good to note that this is just their 7th season in D-1 football. Consider that from a recruiting point of view, and what they’ve done is truly amazing.

They’ve been fast starters since day one. The first season they existed, the team played no games. They just practiced. I can’t even imagine what that experience was like for the players and coaches.

But the practice paid off. They won their first ever game 80-3, against Kentucky Weslyan. They shut out Army 28-0 in their Conference USA debut in 2003.

In their first game in the Big East, back in 2005, they upset #9 Louisville 45-14 as a 21 point underdog.

They’ve won every season opener and took exactly 10 years and 10 days from their first game to become a top 25 ranked team. They are also the fastest team ever to go from zero to the top 10 and top 5.

Back when they began, home games were usually scheduled at night. I don’t know what the official line on that reasoning was, but it was well understood that they did so to help attendance.

For one, it’s hot in Tampa. Even in November. We love night games here. Two, scheduling at night used to mean USF didn’t have to compete with the other state schools for audience time. In other words, all the graduates of FSU, UF, and UM who lived in Tampa could still watch their alma matters play on tv Saturday and catch the Bulls in person later that night.

It’s funny to think back to the days before USF ever played a down; when I helped my family pick out season ticket seats. It’s funny to hear stories from former students who traveled to road games against never-heard-of college and learn about some old guy who lived behind one of the end zones at that school’s tiny stadium. Apparently, he’d sit and watch the games from the comfort of his own chair, except for the times when field goals and extra points would sail into his back yard and he’d have to retrieve the ball for the officials.

It’s funny even to stumble upon a camera phone photo I took from this year’s home opener against Elon. The paid attendance that night was 33,639. There was maybe half that actually there.

From the West Virginia game a few weeks ago and on, USF will sell out its games this season. 65k and up for each game. There’s been an article in every regional paper almost every week since WVU about how local businesses are booming with USF merchandise.

“This is Bulls Country” signs, once relegated to just a few shops and restaurants near campus, are now popping up in stores tens of miles away.

Best of all, however, is the truth that the notoriety the school has earned over these last few weeks flies in the face of what John Allen feared would happen if football was played at USF. Consider:

Twenty thousand student applications rolled in after the Bulls won the 2006 Papa John’s Bowl, producing the strongest academic crop of freshmen ever. Average GPA: 3.7. Average SAT score: 1150.

And that was last year, after a bowl win. This is a national title contender now.