State of the Union

"We will no longer tolerate using 'potential' as an excuse or a crutch. The days of defining ourselves based off some immeasurable metric of potential are now over." - Rob Higgins at his introductory press conference as CEO of USF Athletics.

I first want to acknowledge that Rob Higgins took over USF Athletics and was almost immediately faced with hiring coaches for the three most important sports at USF - Football, Men's Basketball, and Women's Basketball. On top of the revenue sports, Rob also faced openings for Men's Soccer and Beach Volleyball.

In addition to national coaching searches, Rob and the department were tasked with rolling out ticketing options for the OCS and a multitude of sponsorship opportunities that are crucial to maintaining/increasing revenue including OCS naming rights, FB uniforms patches, and on-field FB sponsorship opportunities. Additionally, credit to Higgins and the Board of Trustees for getting full rev share from the University along with what seems to be, lobbying US Senator Ashley Moody for provisions to the Protect College Sports Act, positioning USF for possible conference realignment.

Today though, I just want to talk a little about Football, a little about conference realignment, and a little about where I see things are at within the gray confines of the Lee Roy Selmon Athletics Center.

Football

Let's start with football and the how the hiring process played out. Rob Higgins executed a coaching search that landed on Ohio State Offensive Coordinator and long time Wide Receiver Coach Brian Hartline.

I was somewhat skeptical of the hire when it was announced for a few reasons.

It was fairly obvious upon Hartline's hiring that he was going to be a "CEO" style Head Coach. He has an offensive background but by no means was considered a "schemer" or the proprietor of some unique offensive system. This brings up two issues for me. First, I'm not super fond of the idea of hiring a first time CEO coach, specifically at the G6 level. It's just decreasing your odds of both initial and sustained success. Initially, not only do you have to hit on the Head Coach hire, but now you also have to hit on both the Offensive and Defensive Coordinator hires. And in this day in age, you probably also have to hit on a bright General Manager.

Getting a hit off Cam Schlittler is hard enough once, much less four times in a row.

As it relates to long term success, USF is not keeping successful coordinators around for an extended period of time, and coordinators typically have a faster rate of turnover at both the P4 and G6 level than head coaches do. So not only do you have to hit on the coordinators initially, but you're going to have to hit each subsequent time a successful one gets hired away.

Compare this to hiring an Alex Golesh type or a a Will Stein, a Kade Bell, or a Buster Faulkner. With those types, you more or less know what you're bringing in offensively (same is true of schemer defensive minds). You're probably already batting 1.000. With Hartline, points were not guaranteed upon his hiring.

The other issue with the hire is the program identity on-field. Admittedly, these issues became more prevalent after the opening game vs FIU, though I'd image they had to have come up in the interview process - something I or we were obviously not involved in. Here's a couple quotes I specifically have issue with:

After the win vs FIU, Hartline said: “We've identified the penalties, controlling the football, getting two first downs, playing the field position game, kicking the ball down there in pooch and using pooch as a weapon. That's just good football.”

Using pooch as a weapon? With a full rev-share roster? This identity is like trying to money-ball an inferior opponent as the New York Yankees. What are we doing here? We want to use the punt game as a weapon? The $20M is the weapon. I agree it is good football and I like that we're trying to win on the margins. But this can't be the identity of a program that is supposed to be the bully.

After the loss vs UTSA, Hartline said: "We gotta make sure that we know we win with fundamentals and technique, not play calls."

Then why did you go get raw P4 transfer downs with little playing time and high physical traits instead of fundamentally sound G6/FCS transfer ups? We took stars over starts.

Then there's the Tim Beck hire and the identity that brings with it. It's an identity that says we're going to rely on our defense, move the ball down the field with a standard, vanilla offense, and rely on special teams and field positioning. This is our identity with a $20M roster? That is the definition of doing less with more.

So not only are we taking a huge risk by hiring a first time CEO Head Coach at the G6 level, but the upside here is marginal at best. Some lauded this hire as high risk, high reward. But this is clearly a high risk, low reward identity.

Hartline still may be able to turn this around. But every game is precious in the national narrative. The narrative that the Department tried so hard to cultivate is being stifled one third and long at a time:

Where Things Stand

By all accounts, Rob seems great at the business side of things. But he's really struggled with on-field results so far with in his two hires in Hartline (4-2) and Men's Soccer Coach George Kiefer (1-9-1).

The money matters. But wins matter more.

As for conference realignment, what are we showing the ACC right now? It's not on-field success. What we're showing them is money and a commitment to try to win. We're showing them we have the potential to win.

Potential.

The one thing this administration swore off when it hired Higgins.

Potential is the only thing we can fall back on at the moment.