Chances are, the firing of Jim Leavitt, 53, as USF football coach will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. An awkward, embarrassing, unfortunate disguise, to be sure, but a blessing to all those grown tired of Leavitt’s overbearing manner and USF’s Big East also-ran status.
Some context.
Leavitt was the right guy at the right time to start a football program at a school such as USF – poor in tradition but rich in recruiting potential. He was hired in December 1995. Not yet 40, he had been a well-regarded co-defensive coordinator at a big time program (Kansas State). By the way, the other co-coordinator was Bob Stoops, now the highly-successful coach of Oklahoma. Leavitt, a Dixie Hollins High grad, even had local roots. Moreover, he was hyper passionate and uber energetic, arguably traits that would well serve the person charged with creating something from scratch at the mammoth, history-challenged “commuter” university in the state’s largest media market.
To his credit, Leavitt didn’t care that the initial facilities were inferior to some of the better high school programs. His own office was in a trailer. He had a vision and a can-do, workaholic temperament. He practically willed the program to life.
Two years later USF fielded its first-ever team and won its first-ever football game – 80-3 over Kentucky Wesleyan – before nearly 50,000 fans at Tampa Stadium. Three years after that — Oct. 28, 2000 — it had its first win over a major opponent, Connecticut. In 2005, it played its first Big East game, a 45-15 win over Louisville. The following year it had its first bowl victory, 24-7 over East Carolina in the Papajohns.com Bowl. By September 2007, USF found itself ranked in the Top 10 after a big win over West Virginia in sold-out Raymond James Stadium.
Leavitt’s program had arrived – but it also had peaked.
The Bulls would finish 2007 in disappointing, defeat-dominated fashion, culminating in a blow-out loss to Oregon in the Sun Bowl. The next two years would revisit a familiar pattern: Fast (5-0) starts, which included at least one marquee win over a favored opponent, followed by more losses than wins against Big East opposition. Followed by a minor bowl game because there were so many (34) and sheer merit was no longer a criterion. Besides, the Big East had a slew of bowl tie-ins to honor. This year the Bulls got the one (International) that required passports and drew the fewest spectators.
But it was more than just the losses that disappointed. The defeats were typically characterized by a frustrating lack of on-field discipline. The Bulls had earned an unflattering reputation for losing their poise when the pressure was on. They weren’t playing with underdog abandonment; they were playing not to lose.
One look at the sideline yielded plenty of clues. Sure, there was problematic play selection and poor clock management in evidence. USF wasn’t known for outcoaching anybody. But the sideline was where Leavitt roamed and ranted. Too often his team seemed to channel his blatant lack of composure.
And there were more than whispers that USF, which was hardly averse to recruiting junior college transfers, wasn’t exactly the Notre Dame of the South academically.
Leavitt had five years (worth about $7 million) of a 7-year contract remaining, and USF seemed stuck in Big East mediocrity – not just beaten, but flat-out embarrassed annually by the likes of Rutgers. Overall, the Bulls lost more (18) Big East games than they won (17). Moreover, Leavitt was no longer the passionate, sort of goofy, football lifer who was USF personified. Sure, he could still draw blood (his own) by head-butting (helmet-wearing) players in the name of emotion and intensity, but he also had morphed into an off-putting, over-the-top sort whose teams didn’t handle pressure well. And recruiting in talent-rich Florida was still yielding more JUCO transfers than high school blue chips.
Whether USF had realized it or not, it had made a Faustian contract deal in the giddy aftermath of that 2007 win over West Virginia. Subsequently, however, more observant Bulls’ fans began growing restive. There was, of course, recognition that the ambitious and demanding Leavitt deserved credit for creating the program and fast-forwarding it so far so fast. But there was also the realization that the boorish and unapologetic Leavitt didn’t seem capable of taking USF to the next level. To a Big East championship and a BCS bowl.
And then came the November incident where USF investigators determined that Leavitt grabbed the throat of a walk-on, special teams’ player and slapped him twice during halftime of the Louisville game. His inconsistent denials and subsequent contact with witnesses further sealed his fate.
Ironic Legacy
Talk about a game-changer. Absent this sad turn of events, it’s likely that five years from now USF fans would have been reduced to still lionizing Leavitt for starting the program and leading it to the Big East Conference and pretending they were content with ever more appearances in the International, Papajohns.com and St. Petersburg Bowls. And it would have cost USF more than $7 million for five more years of frustrating, unrealized potential.
Now, after a firing “for cause,” USF only owes Leavitt a month’s base-salary severance – or some $66,000 – although that could still ratchet up in a settlement scenario. He has retained legal counsel. In hindsight, USF will now get a second chance — especially if they can salvage this recruiting class — to pick up where they left off after that big ’07 RayJay win in front of 67,000 against nationally-ranked West Virginia. A chance to bring in a high-energy, take-charge, proven recruiter who’s also capable of acting like the adult in charge.
And USF can, indeed, command just such a person. That’s in large part because USF is a BCS-conference member in a state that is the recruiting envy of its competition. It pays well and is in a major media market. No reason that USF can’t, quite candidly, outdo Cincinnati, which almost made it to the national championship game this season.
And, ironically, USF can command such a person because Jim Leavitt came in with the right gung-ho skill set back in ’95 to jumpstart USF into the big time. That will be Jim Leavitt’s most enduring legacy.