> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.bayareaexaminer.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Fairytale Beginning: How USF Is Transforming Its Athletic Identity - URL: https://www.bayareaexaminer.com/a-fairytale-beginning-how-usf-is/ - Published: 2026-04-27T12:32:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-21T15:45:14.000Z - Description: Investment, leadership and momentum are fueling the Bulls’ push to compete at the highest level. - Author: Collin Sherwin - Tags: #Migrated-1792597384348, #Import 2026-10-21 15:44 On Sept. 23, when Rob Higgins was introduced as the first CEO of athletics at the University of South Florida, his intentions for the future of Bulls athletics were clear. “There is no more patience for the word potential,” he said in front of a crowd of coaches, athletes, fans, alumni and media members. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/77/a9/77a9bb8f-d0f1-45b5-8fed-5feacd465ef5/content/images/2026/10/1145198a-6f89-40cc-9184-ed5100a6472a_1272x848.webp) Vanessa Wenzl | Bay Area Examiner Higgins was pried away from his position as executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, where he worked for 21 years. It was a homecoming for Higgins, who — along with his parents and sister — is a USF alumnus. He even was the ball boy for USF’s 1990 men’s basketball team when he was 12 years old. Higgins was chosen to spearhead a shift that was already in motion before he took over the school’s athletic programs. His goal for USF is not only to have successful athletic programs — he wants to dominate. “This isn’t a fairytale ending for our family, it’s a fairytale beginning,” he said. USF’s main campus is in North Tampa, in the city of Temple Terrace. It is firmly in the Tampa Bay region — about a 20-minute drive to downtown Tampa and a 35-minute drive to downtown St. Petersburg. However, for years, USF’s major athletic programs have struggled on the field and to fully engrain themselves in the Tampa Bay community. USF football first ran out of the tunnel at Raymond James Stadium in 1997, 41 years after the university was founded. The 2026 season will be the program’s 30th (the team existed in 1996 but did not play official games). In 29 seasons across three conferences — Conference USA (2003-04), Big East (2005-12) and the American Athletic Conference (2013-present) — USF has not made a conference championship appearance. The Bulls have reached double-digit wins just twice, in back-to-back seasons in 2016 and 2017. The men’s basketball program has played 55 seasons. USF has made the NCAA Tournament four times, with two regular-season conference titles and two conference tournament titles. The Bulls have never made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Baseball has been around even longer, dating back to March 1966\. USF’s baseball program has six regular-season conference championships and five conference tournament titles in 59 seasons. The only time the Bulls advanced to the Super Regionals was in 2021. The most successful major USF athletic program has been women’s basketball. Former coach Jose Fernandez helped lead one of the country’s most successful mid-major programs. The Bulls had 10 NCAA Tournament appearances and two regular-season and two conference tournament titles during Fernandez’s 25 years. In 2022, USF athletics seemed to hit rock bottom. The school fired head football coach Jeff Scott amid a 1-11 season. The season concluded with the Bulls’ sixth straight loss to in-state rival UCF. The loss on the field hurt, but the bigger sting came afterward when the Knights left the American Athletic Conference for the Big 12, beating USF to a Power Five conference. The men’s basketball team also finished the 2022-23 season with an 8-23 record — disastrous seasons in the department’s two biggest revenue-generating sports. That’s when it started to change for USF athletics. First, the school agreed to a six-year, $15.3 million contract with Alex Golesh in November 2022, the largest in school history. Golesh took over a program that won four games in its previous three seasons combined and overhauled its culture. The Bulls went 23-16 in his three seasons at the helm. Golesh became the first coach in USF history to lead the Bulls to bowl eligibility in each of his first three seasons. While back-to-back 7-6 seasons in 2023 and 2024 were solid steps, the breakthrough came in 2025. The Bulls roared out to a 2-0 start, beating Boise State and Florida in back-to-back weeks — the first time in program history they defeated AP-ranked opponents in consecutive games. The wins vaulted USF into the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2018, and Golesh’s postgame sentiment echoed the rise of USF athletics. “This ain’t the same old South Florida Bulls my brotha,” Golesh said in the postgame press conference as media members crammed into a small conference room deep in the tunnels of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium to see what Golesh would say after the programs first win over the University of Florda. His quote was an homage to the late Amir Abdur-Rahim the Bulls basketball coach in the 2023-24 season. Abdur-Rahim played a major role in USF’s athletic renaissance. He led the Bulls to a 25-8 record, the most wins in program history, and their first regular-season conference championship — in the program’s 53rd season. USF set a home attendance record of 10,659 in a win over No. 24 FAU on Feb. 18, 2024. Even after Abdur-Rahim tragically passed away in October 2024, his short time in Tampa set the standard for USF basketball. This past season, the Bulls went 25-9 under coach Bryan Hodgson, winning the American Conference regular-season and tournament titles in the same season for the first time. The Bulls returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012. Hodgson left the Bulls to become the next head coach at Providence, but the blueprint for success remains for new head coach Chris Mack, who has nine NCAA Tournament appearances in 15 years as a head coach at Xavier, Louisville and Charleston. “I think the most important thing is the foundation that starts with your administration. It was very evident early on with my talks with Rob that USF is committed and more,” Mack said when he was introduced as USF’s men’s basketball head coach. “We would not as a staff have taken on coming here if I didn’t feel like everything we needed to be highly successful wasn’t in place.” The 2025-26 academic year marked the first time in school history that the football team earned bowl eligibility and the men’s basketball team made the NCAA Tournament in the same year. USF baseball is also trending upward under second-year coach Mitch Hannahs, who has a 59-37 record and is in the midst of a 28-12 season. The Bulls also hired Kristy Curry away from Alabama as the new women’s basketball head coach. She brings 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, five conference regular-season and tournament titles, and a Final Four appearance. “Rob Higgins is the best recruiter that I have ever been associated with,” Curry said in her introductory press conference. The landscape of college athletics is changing rapidly, and USF is trying to embrace that change to stay ahead of its competitors. Hiring Higgins as the school’s first CEO of athletics instead of an athletic director reflects that approach. “While everyone else laments the good old days, we truly believe these are the golden days of college athletics,” Higgins said. Higgins and USF have backed up their vision with financial investment. In November, the USF Board of Trustees approved a $16 million increase in student-athlete revenue sharing, allowing the university to reach the $20.5 million limit for direct athlete compensation. USF is the only school in the American Athletic Conference expected to use the full NIL revenue-sharing limit, giving it an advantage over many non-Power Five programs. The university is also investing in its coaches. New head football coach Brian Hartline, who was hired in December, is now the highest-paid coach in school history at $3.5 million annually over six years. Curry will make $750,000 next season, and her contract requires a minimum of $700,000 to be allocated to player compensation each year. However, the biggest financial investment came in June 2023, when the first on-campus football stadium was approved. The project will cost $407 million and is expected to dramatically change the game-day atmosphere. The Bulls are one of five Division I programs that play in NFL stadiums. Over the past five seasons, USF has averaged 32,862 fans at home — less than half of Raymond James Stadium’s 65,000-seat capacity. The stadium is also a 15- to 20-minute drive from campus, requiring students to drive, carpool or take shuttle buses. Eli Montgomery, a USF student set to graduate in 2028, is excited about the future of football Saturdays on campus. “Ray Jay is a beautiful venue and having the games there is awesome, but the drive mixed with Tampa traffic is exhausting. I think having an on-campus stadium will help us boost our attendace and also make more exciting tailgates and pregame events for students,” he told me. USF’s on-campus stadium is expected to hold around 35,000 people when it opens for the 2027 season. Last season, the average attendance was 33,194, meaning the Bulls could see near-capacity crowds in a more intimate setting. The design also allows for the addition of 10,000 to 15,000 seats if the program continues to grow. Beyond atmosphere, the stadium will also create new revenue opportunities. As of the 2023 season, USF pays about $2.66 million annually to Raymond James Stadium and does not retain revenue from parking or concessions. Successful athletic programs can be a game changer for a university. [A 2013 study by Doug J. Chung](https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037c-d810-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/content?ref=bayareaexaminer.com) found that applications can increase by 17.7% when a football program rises to prominence. “I think athletics plays a major role in the college experience. It just seems that when our teams are doing better there’s more buzz around campus and it gives students more reason to rep the green and gold and have something they can say they represent,” USF class of 2026 student Peyton Strawn told me. USF received a school-record 71,737 applications for its summer and fall classes in 2025. “It’s one of the best ways to engage our students and give them the best possible experience,” new USF president Moez Limayem told the USF Oracle last week speaking on football’s impact on a university. He also mentioned that football is a key driving factor in bringing alumni back on campus. USF’s increased support and success in football is also reflected on social media. The USF football Instagram account has gained more than 27,000 followers since the start of last season. The Tampa Bay media market presents a major opportunity for USF. Nielsen ranked Tampa Bay as the 11th-largest TV market in the country in 2025 and the largest in Florida. The biggest challenge for USF is the competition within the market. Tampa Bay is home to three major professional teams — the Rays, Buccaneers and Lightning — and other Florida universities have strong alumni bases in the region. “I think we really have to focus on winning our building, then winning campus then winning the community and country,” Higgins told me about struggle for support amongst the Tampa Bay community. “When you think about having 400,000 living alumni the network is really strong. We’ve got to give them a reason to dust off those shirts and jerseys out of their closet and make sure they’re impressing upon the next generation in their own house how important it is to be a Bulls fan and Bulls alumni as well.” USF’s journey to becoming a priority for sports fans in the Tampa Bay community is still far from over, but there are signs of progress. “I think we have seen in the last couple of years that the Tampa Bay area has really begun too embrace the Bulls with the continued investment into athletic and academic spending,” Strawn said. “I think it is pretty obvious that USF will become a big part of Tampa Bay both as a leading university and as a staple in the sports scene.” USF is still in the early stages of becoming a consistently successful athletic program. The Bulls remain in a non-Power conference and are still chasing milestones — a football conference championship, a deep NCAA Tournament run, or a trip to Omaha in baseball. But there is no denying it: USF is all in on competing at the highest level. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)