100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters

Nearly a dozen FBS programs have been built from scratch since the 1990s. That is a distinction unique to the Group of 6 and the schools that populate it. No Big Ten fan watched their program’s first game. No SEC fan remembers the first touchdown. The fans at these schools do.

South Florida may be the most successful of those programs. The Bulls climbed from a Division I-AA debut to BCS conference membership and a No. 2 ranking in the AP poll. That journey started on a Saturday night in Tampa 28 years ago — and like most things involving USF football, it started with the word “never.”

USF opened in 1960. Its first president, John S. Allen, wanted no part of football. He put it in writing in August 1961, shutting the door on intercollegiate athletics with no timeline for reopening it. His concern was that spectator sports would corrupt the university. He blocked basketball until 1970. He died in 1982 without ever budging on football.

Don Gifford, USF Class of 1967, was student body president when he walked into Allen’s office to make the case.

“I said, ‘Let’s talk football,’” Gifford told the Tampa Tribune. “He said, ‘Get oooouttttttttt!’”

Dick Bowers arrived at USF in 1963 as an assistant athletic director and became AD in 1966. He recommended football in conjunction with the completion of the original Tampa Stadium in 1967. Allen said no. When the University of Tampa dropped football after the 1974 season, UT’s coach wondered if his squad could transfer to USF and start the program with that cornerstone. The new president, Cecil Mackey, saw no way to do it.

Thirty-seven years passed between the school’s opening and its first kickoff.

The conversation reopened in late 1991. President Frank Borkowski assembled a committee of about 40 — administrators, faculty, students and community leaders — to take another look. Surveys showed students and alumni overwhelmingly in favor. Faculty remained opposed. The breakthrough came when the athletic council agreed to explore whether private money alone could fund the sport without state dollars or a major bump in student fees.

Lee Roy Selmon — the former Buc and Hall of Famer — signed on as associate athletic director in the summer of 1993 to lead the fundraising push. The campaign needed $5 million to take the proposal to the Florida Board of Regents, with a broader target of $10 million over two years. By the summer of 1995, they cleared the threshold. Tampa attorney Ed Rood wrote a $1 million check by himself.

The Board of Regents made it official on Sept. 15, 1995. Jim Leavitt was hired as head coach that December. By spring 1996, USF had signed its first recruiting class.

And then the response exceeded every projection. Season ticket sales blew past 20,000 — roughly double what Griffin’s staff considered a strong number and about 8,000 more than any Division I-AA program had sold before. Forty-one donors wrote checks of $50,000 or more. ESPN Regional locked in a $500,000-a-year marketing deal for five years. Six games would be televised. USF had 36,000 students and 150,000 graduates. It had been the largest university in the country without a football team. Griffin projected football would generate about $3 million in revenue in year one.

“From the marketing and media perspective,” Griffin told the Tampa Tribune, “there is no question this is the most aggressive, most anticipated start-up ever to hit the college football scene.”

Sept. 6, 1997

Tickets were gone by 4 p.m. Luis Crisostamo, 27, planted himself at the gates at 5:30 and became the first fan inside Houlihan’s Stadium. A pregame tent built for 4,700 filled up. Banners trailed behind helicopters overhead. Smoke from tailgate grills drifted across the parking lots.

Diana Busciglio had entered USF in 1960 — the year the school opened. Her son Derek, No. 93, had turned down wrestling scholarships at Clemson, Boston University and Appalachian State to walk on at USF. She painted her fingernails green and gold with his number. The toenails she did in the car on the way from Plant City. The family arrived at 1:30 and talked a security guard into letting them in early. About 50 friends and family were with her, with platters of chicken wings, cheese trays, roast beef, potato salad and Cuban sandwiches.

“Did I ever expect to see this?” Busciglio told the Tampa Tribune. “Never in a million years.”

Tony Green of Tampa did not attend USF. He stood in line two hours to buy two $12 tickets — row 62, seats 31 and 32.

“I JUST WANTED to be here,” Green told the Tribune. “We’ve sort of adopted USF as our school. It’s close to home, and we’re just excited to be here. I was pretty much going to do whatever it took to be here.”

When asked how he thought USF would do, Gifford just smiled.

“Who cares?” he said. “We’ve got a team.”

Freddie Solomon, the former University of Tampa quarterback, handled the coin toss. Kentucky Wesleyan won it. Adam Kilgore kicked off to Charlie Jackson at the USF 2 at 7:07 p.m. Jackson returned it 32 yards. The first play from scrimmage was a 10-yard run.

It took 3 minutes and 16 seconds for USF to score its first touchdown — a 1-yard run by freshman Rafael Williams to cap a 10-play, 66-yard drive.

The rest was a beatdown. The Bulls rolled up 548 yards of total offense. Quarterback Chad Barnhardt, a transfer from South Carolina, finished 14-of-28 for 255 yards and two touchdowns. The defense allowed 74 total yards, forced five turnovers and generated seven sacks. Freshman defensive back Roy Manns returned an interception 47 yards for a touchdown to make it 49-3.

“I had chills up and down my spine when I heard that crowd tonight,” Manns told the Tampa Tribune.

Kentucky Wesleyan quarterback J.D. Meyers had no answers. His Panthers managed six first downs and punted eight times. The Division II program from Owensboro, Ky. — 800 students, playing home games in a borrowed 3,000-seat high school stadium — had ridden a bus 16 hours for a $20,000 guarantee.

The final score was 80-3. The sellout crowd was 49,212. Leavitt got the Gatorade bath.

“You look out and see all that green and it takes your breath away,” Leavitt told the Tampa Tribune. “I’m colorblind but I can see that green.”

What Followed

What followed was one of the fastest rises in college football history. USF moved to Division I-A, spent two seasons in Conference USA and then landed in the Big East — a BCS automatic qualifier conference. In 2007, the Bulls reached No. 2 in the AP poll after a 6-0 start. From first game to top-two national ranking in a decade. No start-up program has matched that climb.

But USF has learned what every program built from scratch eventually learns: the climb does not guarantee the summit. The Bulls have never won a conference championship in the American Athletic Conference. When conference realignment reshaped college football, USF was left behind — watching UCF leave for the Big 12 while the Bulls stayed in the AAC.

The growing pains are real. So is the investment. USF is building a new on-campus stadium and pouring resources into the infrastructure a program needs to compete at the level its founders envisioned. Whether that investment launches USF to its potential is the next chapter of a story that started with a president who said “Get oooouttttttttt!” and a fan base that refused to take no for an answer.

Griffin, the athletic director who built the program from $650,000 in debt to a sellout opener, understood the stakes from the beginning.

“The spotlight shines on you when you’re doing good things, and you have to be prepared that the spotlight is going to be just as intense, or more, when you screw up,” Griffin told the Tampa Tribune. “And we will screw up. We’ll be prepared to deal with that.”

He also understood the limits.

“It’s not going to bring world peace or cure AIDS,” Griffin said. “It’s going to be 22 guys on a field playing a game.”

On Sept. 6, 1997, that was enough.