No one would deny that more than a decade ago USF made the perfect choice for head football coach. The animated, high-energy Jim Leavitt, a co-defensive coordinator at Kans State, was brought in to start the program from scratch — no mean feat.
Leavitt also had local roots – he played for St. Petersburg’s Dixie Hollins High School – and a solid recruiting pipeline into the area.
What he did – and he did it with bare-bones facilities for most of the time – was to fast forward the Bulls from nowhere to national player.
But after more disappointing losses preceded by another fast start, an updated reality needs acknowledging. Leavitt, for all he has done at USF, is arguably not the guy to take the Bulls to the next level. And they are frustratingly close.
Recall that the Bulls have had their share of big, eye-opening wins — West Virginia and Auburn come readily to mind. Notably, USF had been the underdogs and played with abandon. The pressure was on the opponent.
Conversely, the Bulls have played with a worrisome lack of composure against lesser opponents in big, national-implication games, when the pressure was squarely on them. Teams such as Rutgers, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Louisville. The Bulls squander leads and lose late, and they lose with a glaring lack of discipline – from blatantly dumb penalties to bad clock management and odd play-calling.
In big games against lesser opponents, the Bulls look like a team trying not to lose. They look like an extension of their head coach, who often loses his composure on the sidelines. And Leavitt’s not about to change.
Three years ago, the Bulls went to the first bowl game in their history, the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte. Last year, after rocketing off to a start that earned them a number 2 national ranking, they settled for the Sun Bowl in El Paso.
This year – after recent upset losses to Pittsburgh and Louisville — the talk is not of a Big East championship or a BCS bowl anymore. No, the muted buzz is over their possible selection to the first-year St. Petersburg Bowl. This is not progress, despite outstanding personnel. This is a program that has peaked – as a promising Big East also ran. That shouldn’t be good enough.