Ranking Every Post-Leavitt USF Football Season (Part 1)

The Bulls’ football season may be over… but friends, the discourse never ends.

As the year came to a close, I was turning over a question in my brain: how did the generally excellent 2025 USF football team compare to the Bulls’ best teams of all time? Obviously, this question had to be answered immediately, and in painstaking fashion. Today, I present to you the first part of the Bay Area Examiner’s ranking of every USF football season occurring after the end of the Jim Leavitt era in 2009. To make the most of our trip down memory lane, we’ll offer a quick summary of each season in question, plus the season’s top highlight, worst lowlight, and an offensive and defensive MVP.

I suspect you may have questions, and I’ve answered them briefly below.

Q: OK, first off. Why?

A: Because it’s been a month without USF football and I’m sad. Also, Alex Golesh’s departure marks the end of an era, so it feels like a proper time to look back on where this program has been. Mostly that I’m sad, though.

Q: Why are you instituting an arbitrary cutoff after the Leavitt years?

A: Extending this ranking all the way back to 1997 would make it way too unwieldy. Sticking to the 16 post-Leavitt seasons feels like a clean cutoff point, especially given that USF has spent this time at a relatively stable level of competition in the American (Athletic) Conference and the late-stage Big East. Think of it like this: when Leavitt was fired, many USF fans saw it as a much-needed fresh start and a chance for the Bulls to propel themselves into a higher echelon of the sport. Part of this exercise is going to be examining how successful USF was in making that happen (hint: super duper unsuccessful).

Q: What exactly is the formula for ranking seasons?

A: Mostly vibes? In seriousness, I tried to put myself back into the mindset I was in when I experienced these seasons for the first time. How much would I want to relive those feelings? To be clear, we’re focusing on ranking the seasons, rather than how good the teams were. Some pretty good USF teams have produced pretty rough seasons, and vice versa.

Q: How many parts will there be?

A: This is entirely dependent on how many times I get sidetracked talking about backup running backs of the mid-2010s, but probably two: one for entries 16 through 9, and one for the top eight.

Q: This is so depressing! Why are we talking so much about bad seasons?

A: Unfortunately, USF has not been particularly impressive at football over the past 16 years. Please do not shoot the messenger.

#16: 2020 (1-8, 0-7 in conference)

Summary: It’s not necessarily the most gutting season of the bunch - there are plenty of those coming - but the 2020 campaign more than earns its spot at the bottom. This was Jeff Scott’s first season in Tampa, and it occurred smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which lent an overarching air of “what are we doing here” to the proceedings. The product on the field didn’t help. No one held any hard feelings against Scott for struggling to put together a competitive team in such a situation - especially in the wake of the Charlie Strong wreckage - but it must be emphasized how downright incapable of playing the sport the Bulls often looked. USF played four different quarterbacks, lost five of their nine games by 20 points or more, recorded their first ever winless conference season, and didn’t have a single player with more than 368 rushing or receiving yards. Add in the looming threat of game cancellations (nearly the entire non-conference slate was cancelled before the season, and in-season games against FAU and Navy were indefinitely postponed) and players getting sidelined for weeks at a time with Covid, and the season became little more than an exercise in existential dread.

Highlight: When it ended? In seriousness, there are only two options here: the season opener against The Citadel, which was the Bulls’ only win of the year, or a shockingly spirited 58-46 loss against a much better UCF team, where Jordan McCloud stunned everyone - the Knights, Bulls fans, and presumably McCloud himself - by popping off for an entirely unprecedented 404 passing yards and five total touchdowns. A loss to UCF is never going to be much of a highlight, but it elicited some much-needed “oohs” and “ahs” and a few chuckles at the Knights’ expense at the end of a trying season.

Lowlight: Plenty to choose from, but one game rises far above the rest. In a frantic attempt to find opponents and assemble some semblance of a non-conference schedule, USF inked a one-off agreement with then seventh-ranked Notre Dame to play in South Bend. The result, unfortunately, was a performance in which the rebuilding Bulls were immediately and thoroughly overwhelmed in every phase of the game. USF got one early 42-yard scamper from Johnny Ford and otherwise ran 20 plays for eight yards and zero first downs in the first half. The Bulls’ long snapper launched two (!) snaps over their punter’s head, one of which led to a touchdown. The 52-0 final score remains the biggest margin in a loss in school history, and could have been even worse had the Fighting Irish not mercifully called off the dogs in the second half.

Offensive MVP: Pickings are slim here, but McCloud was respectable at QB for much of the season and much improved over his 2019 campaign. He went out on top with his magisterial performance against UCF, and his post-Tampa seasons suggest that he had much more to offer than he was able to display on the offensively-challenged Bulls.

Defensive MVP: Because this activity forces me to pick someone, I will select linebacker Antonio Grier, who managed to be somewhat disruptive (a team-leading 5.5 TFLs, three sacks, and two forced fumbles) on a truly putrid defense.

#15: 2013 (2-10, 2-6 in conference)

Summary: A particular brand of sicko might find Willie Taggart’s first USF season entertaining as a work of performance art in which a football team explores the concept of playing the game without an offense. That’s barely an exaggeration: through the Bulls’ first three games of the season, opposing defenses scored five touchdowns while USF’s offense scored only four. There is a compelling case to be made that even if the Bulls spent the entirety of each game on offense, they still would have lost all three games. Later in the season, the Bulls went three full games without an offensive touchdown… and miraculously managed to win two of those games. The bounds of offensive futility have rarely been stretched as far as they were here; loyal fans who stuck out the season likely still have nightmares of the dreadfully undermanned Bulls lining up in Power-I formations and attempting a number of ridiculous pre-snap shifts, many of which resulted in procedural penalties. The Taggart era would, of course, get much better for the Bulls, but Willie’s debut season was a nearly unrivaled comedy of errors.

Highlight: If the season was a dark comedy, the pièce de résistance was a hilarious 26-20 win against a genuinely solid Cincinnati team. USF was, of course, unable to reach the end zone on offense, but thanks to two early errors by the Bearcats - a 75-yard return of a blocked field goal for a touchdown, and a fumble-six by DeDe Lattimore - the Bulls were able to essentially turtle for the remainder of the game and watch delightedly as Cincinnati continued to implode around them. The end result: four Bearcats turnovers (plus the blocked kick) no offensive touchdowns for USF, and Willie Taggart’s first win in Tampa.

Lowlight: Losing to UCF for the first time in heartbreaking fashion was sickening, especially when a Bulls win could have derailed the Knights’ surprise run to a BCS bowl game. But let’s not overcomplicate this: when you lose by 32 points to an FCS team, that earns the “lowlight” title. The Taggart era opener against McNeese State is the sort of abject disaster that is still discussed in hushed tones today. After months of offseason in which Taggart injected some much-needed energy into the Bulls’ dejected, post-Holtz fanbase (get on the bus!), USF fans approached the 2013 opener with a cautious optimism… only to be treated to a sixty-minute horror show in which McNeese absolutely walloped the Bulls from start to finish, racing out to a 33-7 halftime lead that they never came close to surrendering. Relative to expectations, it’s difficult to make an argument for any other game as the worst USF performance of all time.

Offensive MVP: The excellent Andre Davis was the Bulls’ only real offensive asset; the fact that he amassed 735 yards on a team that played four quarterbacks and tossed 16 interceptions (on 46.8% passing) is a testament to just how talented he was.

Defensive MVP: Lattimore was a loyal soldier and four-year starter for the Bulls at linebacker, and he deserved better for his senior season than toiling away on one of the worst USF teams of all time. But to his credit, he performed well, and his penchant for takeaways (one interception, four forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries) was genuinely one of the Bulls’ best weapons.

#14: 2012 (3-9, 1-7 in conference)

Summary: This season was absolutely dire. To this point, the Bulls’ fanbase had been relatively spoiled - over 15 years, there hadn’t been any seasons that could be classified as disasters, and not a single coach had been fired for on-field performance - so they were dreadfully unprepared for the grisly ending of the Skip Holtz tenure. The 2012 season started with a brief whiff of hope that the Bulls’ 5-7 record in 2011 was an anomaly, but quickly descended into despair amidst a six-game losing streak that eventually cost Holtz his job. Perhaps more importantly, this season marked the final year of USF’s tenure in the Big East, when all of the Bulls’ institutional negligence came home to roost. The collapse of USF’s football program was salt in the wound for USF fans already bitter about the school’s impending plunge back into mid-majordom, and the mood around the program became overwhelmingly rotten. Attendance plummeted, fans wore paper bags over their heads and booed the coaching staff mercilessly, and the typically jolly Holtz looked increasingly drained of color each week. Matters have - unsteadily, but undoubtedly - improved since then, but the USF athletic department is still reaping the fan apathy and inconsistent performance that they sowed in 2012.

Highlight: Unlike the teams that preceded them in this countdown, the 2012 Bulls produced a few genuinely entertaining moments before the bottom fell out. The clear highlight was the second game of the season: a roadtrip at then-perennial mid-major contender Nevada that briefly provided fans with reason to believe that Holtz’s signature late-game gaffes had become a thing of the past. The Wolfpack were in control - up 31-20 with under three minutes to go - when the Bulls’ mercurial quarterback B.J. Daniels suddenly erupted, launching two deep 50+ yard touchdown passes in the final minutes to give the Bulls an unlikely victory in one of their most thrilling comebacks of all time.

Lowlight: Long after the joy from the Nevada game had waned, the Bulls were 3-6 and had devastatingly lost their senior leader Daniels to a college career-ending injury. Instead of turning to redshirt freshman Matt Floyd in the last three games of a lost season, Holtz infamously elected to burn junior Bobby Eveld’s redshirt in a desperate attempt to pull a rabbit out of the bowl eligibility hat. The result: Eveld lasted only a few series before suffering a season-ending injury of his own, losing a year of eligibility in the process, and the Bulls were drilled 40-9 by Miami. If Holtz hadn’t already lost the fanbase by this point, they were well and truly lost after this one.

Offensive MVP: Perhaps there was no bigger indictment of Holtz’s often-baffling decision-making than his idea to redshirt electric senior halfback Lindsey Lamar, who eventually emerged from the bench to become one of the team’s few offensive weapons. Unfortunately, like Daniels, Lamar’s season was cut short due to a season-ending injury, and the offense fizzled out entirely from that point onwards.

Defensive MVP: Chris Cosh was the first of many ill-advised veteran defensive coordinator hires in Tampa over the years, and his pressure-averse scheme in 2012 neutered a talented bunch. But future pro Kayvon Webster still managed to have a productive season at cornerback, leading the Bulls in tackles and forced fumbles while adding a pair of sacks.

#13: 2019 (4-8, 2-6 in conference)

Summary: If Holtz’s lame-duck season in 2012 was the most grim, Charlie Strong’s version in his third and final season in 2019 was the most obviously doomed. The collapse of the team under Strong could be seen from miles away, to the point where USF fans were genuinely debating the merits of firing him before the season even started - at which point he still had a 17-8 record in Tampa. The marriage between Strong and USF was likely never intended to be a long-term one, and when Charlie failed to obtain a higher-profile job after the 2017 season, he seemingly took his hands off the wheel and watched the engine catch fire. The 2019 season was one long, sad, slog towards the inevitable, energized only briefly by the preseason departure of much-maligned offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert and his replacement with the intriguing Kerwin Bell. The end result was Strong’s dismissal and an absolutely barren roster that took USF years to replenish.

Highlight: This team was never anything approaching good, but they had a few midseason moments of feistiness. The highlight was a relatively shocking win over a bowl-bound BYU team in which the Bulls clawed back from a 13-0 deficit thanks almost exclusively to halfback Jordan Cronkrite, who handled 26 carries for 158 yards while the Bulls completed only seven passes.

Lowlight: USF somewhat boldly decided to put a lot of marketing energy behind the season opener against 19th-ranked Wisconsin, choosing uniforms that recalled the “giant-killers” of the Leavitt days and playing recorded messages from program greats. They’d have been better suited not calling attention to this one: behind four touchdowns from superstar Jonathan Taylor, the Badgers absolutely rolled the Bulls, 49-0, the biggest loss in program history at the time. Any offseason hopes that replacing Gilbert with Bell might revitalize the Bulls’ offense and the Strong era were quickly extinguished.

Offensive MVP: The Bulls’ all-timer tight end Mitchell Wilcox fought valiantly to keep a legendarily bad USF passing game afloat. His 350 yards and five touchdowns led the team; on a functional offense, he could have put up career-best numbers.

Defensive MVP: Cornerback K.J. Sails was a UNC transfer who returned home to the Tampa area in 2019 and embraced the city and university in a way that few others have. His leadership alone would’ve made him a candidate here, but he was likely the Bulls’ best defensive player to boot.

#12: 2022 (1-11, 0-8 in conference)

Summary: I suspect this might be the first truly controversial placement on the list, as some may bristle at the concept of placing USF’s worst-ever season, record-wise, anywhere other than dead last. And to them I say: I get it, but Jeff Scott’s final, disastrous season in Tampa was… kind of fun? Scott mastered just one art in his three years in green and gold, and that art was putting together an entertaining offense. His swan song was a horrendous season that saw the Bulls - courtesy of the worst defense in school history - regularly engage in shootouts that they had no hope of winning, en route to Scott being dismissed after less than two full non-pandemic seasons. Adding to the ludicrous nature of things: a veritable laundry list of injuries that forced the Bulls to trot out walk-ons galore, Scott’s bizarre postgame conferences in which he genuinely seemed to believe that the Bulls were a few plays from victory in 30-point losses, the eventual takeover of beloved interim coach Daniel Da Prato, who conducted himself like he was cutting a never-ending wrestling promo, and of course, a fairly electric offense featuring a trio of power-conference talents at the skill positions. If you’re going to be legendarily bad, at least try not to be boring.

Highlight: When you only win one game, highlights are few and far between. But nearly every loss featured some level of entertainment, and the penultimate game of the season against Tulsa was the chart-topper. With Scott long since fired and virtually nothing to play for, Da Prato and offensive coordinator Travis Trickett refused to concede. Trickett’s play-calling performance rivaled the violinists on the Titanic: armed only with true freshman quarterback Byrum Brown in his first start and a handful of walk-ons at the skill positions, he dialed up one of the most off-the-wall game plans in USF history. Add in Brown’s immediately evident raw talent (he completed each of his first 21 passes), and the result was a deeply bizarre Friday night blockbuster.

Lowlight: Many of Scott’s failures could be hand-waved away by his short tenure and potent offense, but there was no avoiding the truth after the Bulls’ disastrous implosion against previously 2-6 Temple. By the time the dust settled, USF had been blitzed 54-28 by the woeful Owls and firmly cemented themselves as the worst team in the conference. Shortly thereafter, Scott was fired.

Offensive MVP: Halfback Brian Battie and receivers Xavier Weaver and Jimmy Horn Jr. were all obvious power-conference talents (and each of them proved it in the following seasons), but Battie was the straw that stirred the drink. The diminutive, shifty runner was electric in losing efforts all season, racking up 1,185 rushing yards (6.8 per carry) in one of the best ever single-season efforts by a USF running back. That his best efforts came after Scott was dismissed and some of his peers hit the transfer portal only added to his legend.

Defensive MVP: This is comfortably the worst unit in USF history - worse, even, than the sideshow 2013 offense - so nominating anyone here feels improper. Alas, here you go: linebacker Dwayne Boyles made 113 tackles, which is a lot of tackles.

#11: 2021 (2-10, 1-7 in conference)

Summary: Here, we complete the set of Jeff Scott’s trio of dreadful seasons. The 2021 season was the second of the three and provided the most grounds for optimism - which is admittedly very, very faint praise. The 2021 team wasn’t as entertaining as its successor, but it also wasn’t quite as ghastly on defense. If you squinted, you could make out small signs of progress: a narrow loss to 15th-ranked BYU, a trouncing of Temple that offered some offensive proof of concept, and fun shootouts against ranked Houston and Cincinnati teams. But ultimately, each step forward was followed by a much more resounding step backwards, and the final result was an incoherent mess of a season that placed Scott very squarely on the hot seat.

Highlight: It took Scott a frankly unsettling ten tries to get his first conference win, but to his credit: when it finally happened, it happened in style. The Bulls’ 34-14 win over Temple - in which they racked up a then-school record 445 rushing yards - felt like a grand pronouncement that the vaunted Jeff Scott offense had finally arrived. Perhaps it had, but there are unfortunately two aspects to the game of football.

Lowlight: Some might understandably pick the season-opener against NC State - a third straight FBS opener in which USF failed to score a point - but with the benefit of context, the Bulls getting drilled by a 1-9 Tulane team in the penultimate game of the season was harder to swallow, since it occurred right when it felt like Scott and company might be righting the ship.

Offensive MVP: Xavier Weaver is one of the more impressive receivers to wear green and gold and enjoyed a breakout season in 2021, as did famous short-yardage back and touchdown vulture Jaren Mangham. Still, the chaotic energy of unexpected true freshman starting quarterback Timmy McClain was the story of the season and injected some life into a despondent USF fanbase. He’s my pick here. Do not look up what happened next.

Defensive MVP: Of all the names I expected might surface in the “MVP” category twice, Antonio Grier was admittedly not one of them. But together with Boyles, the hard-hitting linebacker was a defensive staple during some lean years. The 2021 season was his best: 92 tackles, nine TFLs, three sacks, two interceptions, two forced fumbles, and a defensive touchdown.

#10: 2018 (7-6, 3-5 in conference)

Summary: Were we not 7-0? The season that launched a thousand memes was one for the college football record books. Before Charlie Strong’s year-two bunch, no team in FBS history had ever won its first seven games and then lost its final six. It was an anomaly that baffled the entire nation… except Bulls fans, who could very clearly see the collapse coming well in advance by virtue of having eyes. The first half of the season felt like the opening scenes of a horror movie, with fans waiting in terror for the other shoe to drop as USF kept eking out the most uninspiring of wins against a tissue paper-soft schedule. And drop it did: in the final six games of the season, the Bulls were largely uncompetitive and never got closer than ten points on the final scoreboard. To the surprise of no one, the emperor was indeed unclothed.

Highlight: The Bulls’ 49-38 shootout win over Georgia Tech in the second game of the season featured an electric performance by newly-arrived transfer Blake Barnett, a former five-star quarterback who accounted for four touchdowns, including a late game-winning run. This wasn’t a particularly good Tech team, but defeating an ACC squad in such exciting fashion offered some hope that Sterlin Gilbert’s offense might flourish with a more traditional pocket passer in charge. Unfortunately, this may have been the Bulls’ last and only impressive performance of the season - though that’s no fault of Barnett’s, who battled valiantly against the inevitable.

Lowlight: The regular season-ending 38-10 loss to UCF may have been the nadir of the entire USF football project to date. Not only were the Bulls demolished by their rivals to a then-unprecedented degree, they were also witness to a devastating injury to the Knights’ star quarterback McKenzie Milton that only escalated hostilities between the fanbases. Completing the horror show was a whopper of a postgame presser from Charlie Strong in which he essentially threatened his entire team with dismissal. Never had it been more evident that the Bulls had been lapped by their easterly neighbors.

Offensive MVP: He didn’t quite put up the same numbers he did in 2017, but senior receiver Tyre McCants successfully transformed himself from a downfield threat to a reliable, first-read option for Barnett and was the Bulls’ best offensive playmaker. The delightfully stocky McCants remains a program legend and deserved a better swan song.

Defensive MVP: The 2018 unit was the first offender in a string of subpar defenses that USF only recently snapped. Still, there were some standout players - particularly Mike Hampton, an acrobatic cover corner who put together a quietly impressive season (his 16 pass breakups - an admittedly nebulous stat - is the second-best single-season mark in program history).

#9: 2011 (5-7, 1-6 in conference)

Summary: This one capital-H hurt. After a promising debut season, Bulls fans believed they had found in Skip Holtz a capable, level-headed coach who could avoid the patented midseason swoons that had plagued Jim Leavitt’s teams. Through four games, that assessment seemed accurate: the Bulls began the season with an upset of Notre Dame and proceeded to eviscerate their next three opponents, rising to #16 in the rankings and establishing themselves as clear favorites for their first ever conference title. But the ghosts of Leavitt’s tenure had not been fully exorcised. What followed was a stunning skid in which the Bulls lost seven of their final eight games, often in baffling fashion on crucial late-game gaffes. Complicating matters is that this group remains, by any metric, one of the most talented and complete teams USF ever assembled; their failure to reach even bowl eligibility required not just an inimitable level of foot-shooting, but also simply rotten luck from a weirdly-shaped ball. To me, it tugs on the heartstrings more than it angers, but make no mistake: this season was torturous. If you told me in 2011 that there would be seven seasons worse than this one in the next 14, I would have found a different hobby.

Highlight: With multiple extended weather delays, very little in the way of adventurous offensive play-calling, and significant aid from Notre Dame’s inability to protect the football, the Bulls’ season-opening upset of the Irish was far from a work of art. But any time a program less than 15 years old beats Notre Dame on the road - especially when it makes Brian Kelly’s face turn a lovely shade of magenta - it’s a special, decade-defining moment. Extra points for serving as a triumphant homecoming of sorts for the younger Holtz.

Lowlight: The free fall began in the Bulls’ Big East opener with an entirely unexpected 44-17 trouncing at the hands of a mediocre Pitt team. This was an emotional body blow so hefty that I suspect it was the last time many Bulls fans have trusted a promising USF squad to handle business in conference play. If the reactions to the Bulls’ 2025 season are any indication, the wound has yet to heal.

Offensive MVP: He was far from perfect, but B.J. Daniels did well to bounce back from a challenging 2010 season and continue a mid-career transformation from an uber-athletic loose cannon to the field manager that Holtz desired.

Defensive MVP: DeDe Lattimore was the Bulls’ most effective pass rusher in 2011 and likely deserves this honor again, but his partner-in-crime, Sam Barrington, was an equally crucial part of the linebacker corps on a stingy defense.

To be continued in Part 2!