USF Hits Big Time: Pigskins Over Polymers?

For a 40-something institution, the University of South Florida has come very far, very fast.

One key barometer is that USF — with an enrollment of more than 39,000 students — is among the 20 largest universities in the country — and second in the Southeast. Another is that this prototypical metropolitan university of the 21st century is now exceeding $200 million annually in sponsored research. Its endowment is $218 million. In 1982 it was $4 million.

Then there are the world class reputations earned from (Alzheimer’s research at) the Roskamp Institute and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute as well as recognized areas of expertise in oceanography and aging. It’s well documented that USF is becoming a high-tech linchpin, a biotech bellwether and a key component in the fight against terrorism with its Center for Biological Defense.

Then six years ago, it fielded its first football team. This year it was bowl eligible.

We all know that renown in alternative fuel polymers is more important, but as a rite of higher educational passage to the Big Time, can you beat bowl eligibility?

Unfortunately, eligibility didn’t translate into an invitation, but that’s understandable, even if infuriating. This was USF’s last year of unaffiliated football independence, and that made all the difference. Bowl selections are typically not a matter of pure merit, but rather a function of conference tie-ins and economic impact-driven, chamber of commerce priorities. USF joins Conference USA in football next year and will no longer incur these sorts of scenarios.

Frankly, if USF were playing either Florida or Florida State this Saturday at the RayJay, it would be a “pick ’em” game. Last Sunday’s New York Times’ “Top 25” is illustrative. There was the requisite one-two of Miami and Ohio State and other household names in descending order after them. But at 19 — between Texas and Virginia and ahead of West Virginia, Auburn and, uh, FSU — was USF. Its BCS ranking is 24. Heady stuff for Tampa’s erstwhile “Drive-Thru U” and the days of Homecoming soccer games.

But for all the attention and acclaim generated by its football team, USF eventually will see — in retrospect — that 2002 was more than a season of nine or 10 games won, national respect garnered and a bowl bid earned — even if not proffered. It will also be the year of innocence lost.

It comes with success — and a bar raised very high very quickly. Will anything less than a blitzkrieg through Conference USA and a representative bowl game next year be considered disappointing? Will a RayJay crowd of less than 30,000 for, say, East Carolina be acceptable?

And then there’s the reality of having a head coach, Jim Leavitt, who is becoming a hot commodity in the marketplace. Peers with half his success are making more than twice as much. Leavitt, locally rooted and the only head coach the program has known, is salaried at $140,000 this season; it escalates to $220,000 in 2005. Once Athletic Director Lee Roy Selmon gets off schmooze control with the bowls, he will take up the renegotiation of Leavitt’s contract. Local media have already mounted a soapbox to lecture USF on how important it is to do “whatever it takes” to keep Leavitt here.

Coincidentally, USF President Judy Genshaft is also up for a raise. She has been at USF for two years and makes a base of $237,000 a year. All indications are that she too is below market — and that USF trustees are preparing a big boost.

That means USF is now poised to meet the final criterion of university heavyweight. It will be paying its football coach more — possibly a lot more — than its president. Pigskins over polymers?

Prepare for a professorial chorus of “skewed priorities” and rhetorical questions about what a university is for. It’s part of the growth process.

Alternative To Public Abscess

Can we all at least agree on this? Public access television works well in the abstract. Local voices and all that. Maybe even Pinellas County would nod assent.

But in practice, the programming is often awful. Almost always boring. Fringe preachers and assorted oddballs predominate. A tasteless minority of shows has been just shy of obscenity. Much of what airs is mostly a waste of time and money — $355,000 worth. Occasionally — and inevitably — there’s political grandstanding and censorship.

But even more wasteful is throwing good money after bad, which has been happening as Hillsborough County tenuously fights a lawsuit filed by Speak Up Tampa Bay to restore public funding of the county’s public access channel. For the county, it’s now an eminently loseable, First Amendment test case. Mediation and a leverage-lite appeal in federal district court merely delay a settlement.

During the recent county commission campaign, I broached the public abscess issue with then-candidate Kathy Castor. Her answer made sense. Would that it would also help make policy.

“I don’t want to spend money (now exceeding $140,000) on attorney fees,” said Castor. “Money is better spent recruiting better programs.” She went on to cite various not-for-profits, which could, well, profit from heightened visibility in the community. So could the community.

It should come down to this: Neither heavy-handed censorship nor appallingly vulgar and dimwitted programming should be Hobson’s choice alternatives. If reasonable, intelligent, mature, proactive, community-caring individuals would step up, then Speak Up wouldn’t have to accommodate morons. Imagine requests from the Museum of Science and Industry, Lowry Park Zoo, the Florida Aquarium, The Spring, Metropolitan Ministries, Tampa General Hospital and White Chocolate. Who doesn’t make the cut?

Noteworthy Allegiance: “A Muslim, An Arab, An American”

Ever since 9/11, we’ve heard the hue and cry from various voices in this country that there needs to be much more of a public condemnation of that atrocity from Muslims. Especially the opinion-shaping influentials, whether they are religious or political leaders. Both American Muslims as well as those overseas, especially our “friends,” a number of whom pay fundamentalist protection money to stay in power.

We are yet to see such a massive outpouring of unequivocal condemnation. What we do get tends to come with qualifiers. Often with an undertone of moral equivalence. As in our innocent civilians had it coming because American foreign policy is too complicit with Israel.

It was, thus, with considerable interest did I note a letter in today’s St. Petersburg Times — from an Isam Sweilem — which was a response to a previous writer who had lamented that not enough Muslims were condemning terrorism.

Mr. Sweilem took umbrage at the allegation and “as a Muslim, as an Arab and as an American” then obliged. He condemned those who “benefited from the attacks on the World Trade Center,” as well as the anti-Chechen Russian government, Saddam Hussein and the “daily terror perpetrated against Palestinians.”

He then condemns those “who would use him (Saddam Hussein) as an excuse to attack and kill thousands of innocent people for their own gain.” F-16’s and Apache helicopters are also found condemnable, as are the “detention and imprisonment of the innocent.”

What is missing, however, is a condemnable omission. Nowhere does it condemn those who specifically, intentionally and horrifically target civilians, including children. Especially homicidal, suicide bombers. How did such evil, egregious acts not make Sweilem’s short list?

Also noteworthy was the context of his condemnations: “as a Muslim, as an Arab and as an American.”

In that order.

The “Good Old Days”: Before Amendment 9

When it became official earlier this year that the class size-cutting Amendment 9 would be on the fall ballot, Hillsborough County reacted immediately. It stopped getting rid of its portable classrooms.

“We worked hard to get out of the portable business,” ruefully recalls Hillsborough County Superintendent Earl Lennard. “But we ceased liquidating our portables when that Amendment got on the ballot.”

That action, however, was it for proactive moves undertaken by Hillsborough County. All else awaited the Amendment’s outcome. Its Nov. 5 passage — although voted down in Hillsborough County — meant Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature would have to hash out the details, which included settling on some key definitions and finding requisite resources in a brutal budget year.

“The Amendment itself left a lot unanswered,” says Lennard. “But the people have spoken. It was done in good faith. It’s over with. We will do it.”

What they will have to do is hire more teachers and provide more classrooms and pay for it with money they don’t have. And the 8-year, phased-in, mandated class sizes (18 for K-3; 22 for grades 4-8; and 25 for 9-12) commence next August. Hillsborough, which adds, on average, about 1,000 teachers a year, will need about 1,600 next year. Amendment 9 hits at the same time attrition rates among teachers are spiking with retiring boomers, including the first group of DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Plan) retirees.

“We’re under ever greater pressure to provide teachers in a diminishing market,” says Lennard. “We will do it, but we will have to put on a full court press to get teachers. But I remain concerned that we NOT lower our standards to meet the intent of Amendment 9. That would create a worse teaching situation than higher numbers with qualified teachers.”

What Lennard wants above all, he says, is flexibility. Especially in the first year. Especially when it comes to figuring out class sizes. He hopes countywide averages prevail.

“Not every district is the same,” he points out. “Not every school within a district is the same. For example, some schools have no room for portables; schools such as Gorrie (Elementary) and Wilson (Middle). So it’s absolutely necessary to have maximum flexibility.”

Currently the county is “looking at everything,” says Lennard, which ranges from “co-teachers” presiding over large classes to teachers losing their planning periods.

If nothing else, Lennard notes ironically, the Amendment 9 crucible is putting educational nostalgia into a new context.

“It used to be that the ‘good old days’ were when you were in school, the ’50s and ’60s,’ Lennard notes. “Now it may be four weeks ago — just prior to Nov. 5.”

Cardenas: Tampa’s Unconventional Supporter

Granted, Florida GOP Chairman Al Cardenas has to be tactful when commenting on Tampa’s chances of landing the 2004 Republican Convention. He is, after all, a member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee. It would be provincially poor form — and counterproductive — to cheerlead for Tampa.

Having said that, what was Cardenas thinking — or smoking — when he told the St. Petersburg Times that a downside in Tampa’s bid was the priority use of some 5,000 volunteers. “You just have to weigh and balance the positives and the concerns,” he said. “Five thousand volunteers at the convention — when they could be manning the phones and knocking on doors — is a legitimate concern.”

Huh? Campaign grunt work really doesn’t kick in fully until after the convention. And what better way to energize the troops than having them play an important role in hosting the GOP convention?

And wouldn’t New York have the same ostensible “problem” as well?

At any rate, wouldn’t you love to be privy to the initial small talk on Monday when Cardenas accompanies Dick Greco, Al Austin and Dick Beard to Washington? That’s when “Loose Lips” Al and the three amigos spin Tampa for the final time for the GOP Site Selection Committee.

“Hey, Al, looks like we could come up short on our volunteer commitment. Any way you could, say, distribute maps at TIA? And would you mind donning a pith helmet and helping reactionary old ladies board the Mons Venus trolley for the Poynter Palace?”

‘Tis The Season: To Be Increasingly Irked

I am, I’ll acknowledge, a rabid football fan.

Especially college, most notably alma maters Penn State and South Florida, as well as regional favorites Florida State and Florida. I like marching bands, pep rallies, famous fight songs, “Knute Rockne, All American,” “Rudy,” Hail Mary touchdowns and homecomings.

I was lucky enough to see Freddie Solomon play for the University of Tampa. I want Joe Paterno to go out a winner — not a whiner. I like it that Army and Navy still recruit solid student-athletes who aren’t prepping for the pros. They have linemen who don’t belong in stockyards — or on Sumo mats. I just wish they’d win some games.

Saturday rituals include all the scoreboard shows; Sundays kick off with sports pages chronicling games I’ve already seen or saw the highlights of. I’ve got strong opinions on the Heisman Trophy (Penn State’s Larry Johnson) and the BCS (Iowa getting hosed.)

A couple of years ago, I flew out to Northwest Missouri to watch my nephew play in a Division II national semi-final for Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Loved the color, enthusiasm and hospitality, if not the weather and outcome.

I cared that Chamberlain nearly won a state championship last year. Hassan Jones of Clearwater High (and then FSU and the Minnesota Vikings) remains the most dominant high school player I’ve seen. I fondly remember those few years Plant High did a fun, funky-white-boy imitation of FAMU’s renowned marching band.

I also root for the Bucs, as only someone with first-hand recollection of the franchise’s infamous 0-26 beginning can. From Johnny Carson monologue staple to serious Super Bowl contender. Who would have thought? Especially when the franchise was in a race with Cleveland to relocate to Baltimore.

But each season, I’ll also concede, I’m a little less rabid, a little more irked.

I can’t pinpoint it precisely, but it was some time between the awesomely talented, yet refreshingly unassuming Gayle Sayers of Kansas and the awesomely talented, yet annoyingly arrogant Dion Sanders of Florida State. In the pros, that would be about when Billy “White Shoes” Johnson did his first celebration dance for the Houston Oilers — and not nearly enough fans found fault with it.

After that, as the cameras zoomed in for the juvenile gyrations and home fans seemingly reveled in the antics, there was no bottling the genie of look-at-me, boorish behavior. In fact, the NFL would eventually market these sorry excuses for “showmanship,” “exuberance” and “personality.” And the aptly named “trash talking,” mind you, wasn’t just an extension of a hip-hop culture. It was, according to the usual apologists and hucksters, pure psychological gamesmanship. Just another gambit among “warriors,” those Pattons in pads. And, of course, all the jock jabberwocky is worth mike-ing for one of those interminable NFL promotional sideshows. Argot ergo sum .

As we’ve all too frequently seen, players now strut and preen as frequently as they run, block and tackle. Great plays, good plays, average plays and accidental plays all can warrant Second Coming rejoicing and gesturing — as well as an immediate trophy. Players just run off the field — after pounding their chest and pointing toward the heavens — without giving the football back. And what happens when they get to the bench? Cameras are in their faces to induce more mugging. Thanks for sharing.

It said it all when erstwhile no-nonsense, task-master Dick Vermeil overlooked bush- league behavior with his Super Bowl champion Rams three years ago. And remember how the Bucs’ Tony Dungy, a paragon’s paragon of discipline, used to tolerate the bump-and-grind antics that would accompany Reidel Anthony’s annual catch? You knew the ghost of Vince Lombardi wasn’t just buried. It had been exhumed for desecration.

But it’s not just the NFL. Would that it were. The league is merely the catalyst. Thanks to the NFL, the ranks of colleges and high schools have been infested for years. The challenge now is to limit the choreography in Pop Warner Leagues and hope to discourage the next Terrell Owens.

There are, of course, rules prohibiting “taunting” and “excessive celebration,” but that’s just appeasement. Within the context of a mainstream, Eminemed culture, you can only crack down so much.

Some things just can’t be mandated. Class is one. Sayers had it; Sanders didn’t. The latter, alas, is much more the norm now — under the euphemistic cover of being “entertainers.” Wasn’t the XFL enough?

But there is something we can do. Let’s, at least, not be enablers.

If you exultantly high-five somebody while Warren Sapp is waddling around flapping everything that will flap, you are part of the problem. And you know you didn’t like it one bit when the Philadelphia Eagles’ Duce Staley crawled around on all fours simulating a dog in search of a fire hydrant against the Bucs last month. If nothing else, let’s at least not condone such “exuberant” demonstrations in our own. We should at least be able to control that.

But I doubt it.

Port Security Priority

The Tampa Port Authority’s recent ranking of bidders for a contract to provide private security services certainly rankled one member of the port’s governing board. That’s Gladstone Cooper, the board’s only black member. He objected to the minority-owned Sykes Security being ranked 10th out of 11 companies that submitted bids.

I don’t claim to know how valid his complaint is. I do know this. There is no more viable terrorism target in this whole Tampa Bay region than the Port of Tampa, one of the biggest in the country. One that is awash in tanker traffic.

If there is one sector that must never be compromised by either cronyism or tokenism, it’s security — in all its forms — at the Port of Tampa. Cooper may be an irritant in the bid process, but security may be better served by a resident gadfly.

Bad Neighbor Policy

It’s the story that won’t go away. Yet another landowner decides that a big, old oak tree is incompatible with house-building plans in a leafy, South Tampa neighborhood. Latest was the flap about a couple wanting to remove a 50-year old live oak over an allergy issue. Predictably enough, immediate neighbors were outraged, took their case to the Variance Review Board — and won.

But here’s the part that makes even less sense than cutting down a half-century old tree in Ballast Point, where the neighborhood association motto is “Where Grand Oaks Meet The Bay.”

Suppose the tree-cutting couple had won? Now they have to live there — amid all the other oaks and a bunch of neighbors resentful of their insensitive, oak-chopping presence among them. Welcome to the neighborhood.

Shaun King Theory Of Presidential Politics

It’s axiomatic that one of the most popular people in any NFL-franchise city is that team’s back-up quarterback.

The reason: it’s easy to look good when your mistake-free, non-playing status is juxtaposed to that of the starter — the high-profile guy who periodically screws up and is the fall guy for the team’s underachievement. Selective recall predisposes fans to edit out the back-up’s shortcomings — and the reason he was relegated to back-up status in the first place.

Take the case of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer’s Shaun King, a former starter who actually backs up a back-up. King’s relegation, lest we forget, was a function, in part, of “small-hands” fumbles; inability — at less-than-optimum QB height — to see over interior lineman; and reluctance to work hard enough in the off-season. Notably, the expectation bar for King was set so low that in the win-at-all-cost world of professional football, King was merely asked “not to lose.”

In the case of presidential politics, the economy, foreign affairs, scandals and even philosophical underpinnings may prove decisive and carry the day in a given race. Pundits and party activists can then deconstruct the results until the next cycle. In 2002, it was, arguably, about presidential coattails and Karl Rove. As well as a Democratic message that was inaudible and a party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, who wasn’t.

But ultimately it comes down to this. The “ins” never looked so good as when they became the “outs.”

Those who haven’t been in power start to look increasingly viable as memories of past failings fade. Incumbency inevitably yields screw-ups, a desire for new faces with fresh, new centrist ideas and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately attitudes. It’s the political counterpart of fickle fans calling for the head — or at least the job — of the incumbent signal caller who takes sacks, throws interceptions and fails to convert on third down.

The party carrying the sideline clipboard has one main responsibility. Be ready when the opportunity presents itself. In the mean time, continue to look good by default.

And never throw away those “It’s time for a change” bumper stickers.

A Governor on Jeb’s plans?

A recent Sunday New York Times piece made the case that “Jeb Bush’s easy victory made him an obvious presidential candidate for 2008, and President Bush’s announcement that he would keep Dick Cheney as vice president avoided anointing a rival to his brother.”

Taking the second part first, the president was supportive of Vice President Cheney in answer to a press conference question. How else could he be expected to respond under those circumstances? Should he have gone with: “Actually, Rudy is waiting in the wings and there are numerous cover story scenarios that will allow for a Bush-Giuliani ticket”?

Frankly, three Bushes, regardless of what else happens on George W’s watch, would be one too many for America. Granted, we do like our political legacies — as in Adams, Harrison, Taft or Kennedy — almost as much as we like our athletic ones — as in Manning, Bonds or DiMaggio.

But while John and Quincy Adams are father-and-son precedents, going to the family well a third time, one suspects, would smack less of legacy and accomplishment than aristocracy and entitlement. Jeb Bush, to whom arrogance is not unfamiliar, is not the best candidate for noblesse oblige poster pol.

America may love its faux Camelots, but don’t expect to see it abiding monarchial trappings.