Head Coach: Alex Golesh is entering his 3rd season as the head coach of the Bulls with a 14-12 record. He’s won bowl games in both of his seasons. His first season was particularly impressive considering the struggles the Bulls had before he got here but he enters year 3 looking for more.
Program Outlook: South Florida is still a young program but it’s been a wild ride already. The Bulls began playing football in 1997 and by 2005 they were already in a power conference. In 2007 they reached number 2 in the polls before a late season slide. This is truly a program of missed opportunities and that’s how they find themselves as one of only 2 programs that was in a power conference previously but isn’t in one any longer. They are working on fixing that, most notably with a new on-campus stadium set to open in 2027 and of course a young exciting rising head coach in Golesh. So was 2024 another missed opportunity? It could have been with so much excitement heading into the season. USF hung with Alabama for almost all of 4 quarters staying with 1 score of the Tide most of the game before an utter collapse with 5 minutes left, they followed it up two weeks later leading Miami FL late in the first half, but a long TD just before halftime and QB Byrum Brown not only ended that game but sent the Bulls season in the wrong direction.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: South Florida for the 2nd year in a row returns a lot of production, they rank 15th in the country returning 66% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. Key players starts with QB Byrum Brown, he’s a true difference maker and we didn’t get enough of him last year. He might be the best QB in the AAC. Keshaun Singleton is an explosive receiver and Jaden Alexis is another good receiver. RB Cartevious Norton comes in from Charlotte, he showed some potential in great efforts against Memphis and ECU last year. On the defensive side the Bulls have a terrific LB duo in Jhalyn Shuler and Mac Harris. They have a strong rotation of pass rushers and a couple good players on the backend in Corner De’Shawn Rucker and Safety Tavin Ward. The biggest question marks for the Bulls starts with the secondary outside of Rucker and Ward, they were torched far too often last year. Likewise on the offense the line was far too leaky in pass protection.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: South Florida plays a really challenging schedule. It starts with the non-conference where they could end up playing 3 Top 15 teams in Boise State, Miami FL and Florida. I really love that trio of games though. Even SC State is good at the FCS level, they ran through the MEAC last year and might be a top 25 FCS team. The AAC did a good job trying to balance schedules, USF is another team with a perfect split between teams at the top and bottom of the conference. The challenge is that USF has to play 3 of the contenders on the road. If Brown stays healthy, I’m optimistic that USF can improve on their record from the last 2 years. The schedule may prevent a playoff run in the end.
Final Thoughts: Brown holds the keys. He means so much to this offense both throwing and running. If he stays healthy USF can be a massive pain to their early opponents and find themselves in the thick of the AAC title race. This feels like the year we see the Golesh era start to take off, but they must survive the first 3 games.
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