by Patrick Zier | Oct 29, 2026 |
TAMPA – Brian Hartline didn’t mince words. It was August, and he was just preparing to start his first season as South Florida’s new coach, replacing Alex Golesh, who had fled to Auburn. “They’ve had some success here the last couple of years, but nowhere near what it should be,” he told On3’s Pete Nakos.
Now Golesh, although he never won an American Conference championship (nobody has ever won a conference championship outright at USF, at least not in football, although the team has tied for a division title) was coming off a 9-3 season that included wins over nationally ranked Boise State, probably the best team in the Group of Six, and Florida in Gainesville. All of a sudden, the Bulls were relevant in the world of college football.
And when Golesh departed for Auburn, he had the second-best winning percentage of any coach in USF history with the exception of Jim Leavitt, who got the program started and had some supercharged seasons along the way, once getting the Bulls as high as No. 2 in the AP poll.
So taking a shot at Golesh, which, for all intents and purposes, is what Hartline did, puts him out on a limb. “The expectation should be to win,” he told Nakos. “The floor here should be a constant chase for the American Conference championship.”
Fast forward to now, this week, when Hartline’s Bulls return to action here against UAB, the first of five straight conference games that will, essentially, determine whether Hartline goes boom or bust. All the games are winable, but none of them are easy with a road game at FAU and a home game against perennial power Memphis looming large.
Hartline still has a path to a conference championship, but it has a lot of twists and turns along the way and USF’s first seven games, which produced a 5-2 record and were, for the most part, uninspiring have done little to instill confidence.
Furthermore, USF has two teams, UTSA and North Texas, above it with no conference losses and four with only one, and UTSA has already beaten the Bulls. So at this point, contending for a title with two conference losses seems to be a ‘What are you smoking?’ kind of thing.
Taking the next step, starting to muscle his way to prominence in the American, Group of Six and beyond, may be more than this team can handle right now. By the end of the season, Golesh’s 9-3 might look pretty good. None of this really bothers Hartline, who continues going about his business and doing his thing, confident the results will come.
“I think to take the next step requires more than, you know, having a successful first year,” Hartline commented. “Like if we go 12-0 in this year I wouldn’t say we took the next step,” Hartline said. “I think taking the next step is, you know, the results matching the expectation. I think the next step is developing something you can sustain over time.
“It’s not a, you know, flash or bust kind of thing,” Hartline remarked. “So I don’t think you can really identify that (when you’ve taken the next step) without consistency over time. But, I mean, obviously, if we want to get where we want to go, we’d love to maximize that first year. And I’m not minimizing that in any way. But I don’t think either way it’s going to be like you check that box.”
Getting to 10 wins, which has only happened twice before in USF history, would be a significant achievement for Hartline given what he has left in front of him. For that to happen, the offense, ranked 84th nationally and eighth in the conference in scoring and 124th in the nation and 13th in the conference in total offense, will have to take a giant leap forward.
And while the defense has been very good, ranking 10th nationally and first in the conference against scoring, it has had a tendency to break down at some inopportune times. “If we take care of business we can still achieve our goals,” Hartline said. “The reality is we’ve got to do a better job.
“In our opinion, we own our own destiny,” Hartline continued. “So, you know, a lot of teams that we’re going to see are above us in the conference, and we have an opportunity to change that. It comes down to getting better each week, like we’ve been saying for the last seven weeks. If we haven’t gotten better, we’re never going to be ready for week seven, week eight, week nine,” Hartline declared.
It definitely won’t be easy. UAB. East Carolina. Memphis. FAU. Tulane. Ready or not, here they come.
by Patrick Zier | Oct 25, 2026 |
While attention centers on the championship chase in Sunday’s Yellawood 500 at Talledega, and which members of NASCAR’s “Big Three,” Hendrick, Gibbs and Penske, will survive and remain viable title contenders in the remaining two races, there is another “Big Three” that are working their way up and should have a major impact on the sport in future years.
They are Carson Hocevar, 23; Connor Zilsch, 21; and Corey Heim, 24. Capsulizing their performances this season, Hocevar gets the headlines, Zilsch gets the ride, and Heim gets it done.
After limited success in trucks, Hocevar was signed by Spire Motorsports, a second tier Chevy team, in 2024. And he did nothing to distinguish himself until this year, when he won the Talladega spring race and gained national attention for his burnout.
He continued to gain fan support with his aggressive tactics on the track, frequently knocking competitors out of the way to improve his position at times when it really didn’t matter in terms of the outcome of the race, then belligerently defending his moves when other drivers called him out afterwards.
His fan base loved it, making a false comparison to Dale Earnhardt, and he rapidly became one of the most popular drivers in the sport despite his inability to run up front after Talladega. Unlike Hocevar, Earnhardt competed consistently for wins and when he knocked somebody out of the way, there was usually a reason for it.,
Zilsch’s situation is more complicated. He had an impressive season with JR Motorsports in 2025, wining 10 races in the Xfinity Series including 18 top fives in a row, a series record, which earned him a promotion to Trackhouse Racing, another tier two Chevy team.
But probably in part because Trackhouse’s cars are absolutely awful, Zilsch has done absolutely nothing this year, scoring just five points on the Old Guy Sport competition index. Only Shane van Gisbergen, perhaps the best road racer in NASCAR history, has been able to win at Trackhouse. Yet despite that, Rick Hendrick recently signed Zilsch to replace Alex Bowman in 2028.
Then there’s Heim. He was the 2025 truck champion, winning 12 races, and is driving parttime for Toyota’s 23XI team, where he will be fulltime next year, replacing Riley Herbst. Driving just 13 races, Heim won twice in his first 12 starts, taking the road race at San Diego and then the Indy Brickyard 400, one of NASCAR’s most prestigious events. The last time that happened in NASCAR was 1965, when some guy named A.J. Foyt pulled it off.
And if you compare the records of the three, Heim stands out although it should he noted he is the only one of the three in a winning car and in NASCAR now, if you don’t have a car that can win you won’t win. The car has become more important than the driver. In 12 races so far, Heim has two wins, three top fives and four top 10s. In 33 races, Hocevar has done well with one win, six top fives and 11 top 10s while Zilsch has no wins, no top fives and one top 10, also in 33 races.
After his Brickyard win, Heim was quoted on NASCAR’s website as saying success in trucks doesn’t guarantee success in Cup. “The competition in this series is kind of like no other,” Heim said. “But the fact that we’ve kind of had everything line up really well as far as the speed in these Toyotas and 23XI specifically has been surreal.
“To be part of this program when they’ve hit their peak, and hopefully we can keep it there for as long as I’m with them, they’ve definitely been riding high this year. I feel fortunate to be able to be a part of that.”
Steve Lauletta, president of 23XI, said that the team and Heim’s success are proof that “the processes we put in place are working. It shows that the people at 23XI are really special. They continue to surprise me and amaze me with what we’ve been able to accomplish in a short period of time.”
Heim feels one of the reasons he’s had so much success so early in his career is because unlike a lot of young drivers, he didn’t jump right from a feeder series to a fulltime Cup ride. “I think a little bit of it is just running the part-time schedule, being able to sort of have gaps between each race,” Heim said.
“I feel it’s pretty rare that someone gets to run a bridge year and then go full time to Cup. A lot of guys go straight from O’Reilly or trucks to Cup without a lot of experience,” Heim said.
Of course Heim’s rapid rise is leading to high expectations for next year. “I think the outside expectations will probably be higher than they would be if I didn’t win,” Heim said. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m pretty good at just focusing on myself and the task at hand, not getting caught up in what other people say or think, just making sure I do my job and execute as I should.
“I try my best to not let the outside noise or expectations affect what I do on the racetrack,” Heim commented. “I’m going to try and keep doing that as I progress through my rookie season.”
NASCAR NOTES
No race this week. Old Guy Sport does not count superspeedway races in its standings because too much luck is involved in running well. You have to avoid the “big wreck,” which can happen anytime and which you can’t prepare for in advance because you don’t know when it will happen, and you have to be in the right lane at the right time coming out of the fourth turn on the last lap and that is totally dependent on what the cars around you decide to do.
OGS competition index after 28 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 621 points, 2-Christopher Bell 558, 3-Kyle Larson 541, 4-Chase Briscoe 477, 5-Tyler Reddick 466, 6-Ryan Blaney 419, 7-Ty Gibbs 354, 8-Joey Logano 319, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 1-Chase Elliott 222.
by Patrick Zier | Oct 18, 2026 |
Ryan Blaney is the guy. A lot of people think Joey Logano is Ford’s ace, but Ryan Blaney is the guy. If anybody’s going to steal this Cup championship from red-hot Kyle Larson or one of Toyota’s big three, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, then Blaney has the best chance. And if Blaney is going to make a move, now is the time.
While Larson has taken charge since the chase races began with Darlington’s Southern 500, even he remains cautious because he knows while he has a solid lead, it is not insurmountable although neither Blaney nor Logano is regarded as one of his major threats.
But the final four races of the season, which will determine the outcome, play to Ford’s – and Blaney’s strengths. Two of them, today’s race at Phoenix and another at Martinsville, are on short tracks. And while we haven’t had a short track race since Iowa on Aug. 9th, Blaney and Logano have dominated on the smaller tracks.
Using the Old Guy Sport competition index to measure performance. Blaney has scored 254 points and Logano 235 on the short tracks. Next best among the chase drivers is Christopher Bell with 159. Throw is Talladega, which is totally unpredictable, and if Blaney in particular continues his short track run and gets a break at Talladega, Ford could be ready to rumble at Homestead, the series finale.
Right now, Blaney is fifth in the chase standings, 85 points behind Larson, with Logano sixth, 92 points back. But as Larson himself has pointed out, one or two good runs can change things in a hurry. One problem that hangs over the Fords is the fact that they have the fast Toyotas, Hamlin, Bell and Briscoe, ahead of them as well as Larson.
Still, if past performance is any kind of indicator, Blaney might be the guy to watch. Looking at results in the last four short track races and using the OGS competition index as a guide, Blaney is the only driver to score points in all four of them.
At Iowa, Blaney finished third and led the most laps under green. At Richmond, he led the third most laps under green in a race won by Logano. At New Hampshire, Blaney won the race and again led the most laps under green. And at Bristol he also led the most laps under green. So, Blaney has dominated three out of the last four short track races and scored two top five finishes.
And he got a boost from his third place finish at Charlotte. Blaney and Ford have struggled on the intermediate tracks, and the final chase race will be at Homestead. In the first 12 intermediate races of the season, Blaney scored 69 points on the OGS competition index. He has 42 in the last three.
“Overall, really proud of our day after my mistake, like I said, and really proud of the last three weeks. The places we’ve really needed to get better at, the mile-and-a-halves, we’ve been able to do that,” Blaney told NASCAR’s website. “Three solid finishes. Sticking in there. Just got to keep going to work.
“Myself and this whole group, we go into every weekend thinking we can win,” Blaney said. “And this group has been awesome to work with. I love my guys. Phoenix (a short track) has been good to us in the past. I don’t know what’s going to happen at Talladega, no one does. But then we’ve got Martinsville (another short track) and then Miami (Homestead, another intermediate.)
“The best thing we can do is one race at a time, just try to go do our job the best that we can, and hopefully if we do that we can find victory lane a couple more times,” Blaney commented. Although he has gotten more credit recently, he won the NASCAR championship in 2023, Blaney is still NASCAR’s most unappreciated driver. He does more with less than any driver on an elite team.
Maybe, if he wins another championship, people will finally figure that out.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Phoenix: 1-Ryan Blaney, 2-Joey Logano, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner at Phoenix: Blaney. Top five at Phoenix last year: 1-Blaney, 2-Brad Keselowski, 3-Kyle Larson, 4-Logano, 5-Kyle Busch.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Charlotte picks: 1-Larson, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Bell. Charlotte winner: Chase Briscoe. OGS season record: 13-14.
OGS competition index after 27 races: 1-Hamlin 621 points, 2-Larson 541, 3-Bell 524, 4-Briscoe 476, 5-Tyler Reddick 413, 6-Blaney 372, 7-Ty Gibbs 354, 8-Logano 308, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 10-Chase Elliott 192.
OGS competition index on short tracks (tracks most like Phoenix): 1-Blaney 254 points, 2-Logano 235, 3-Gibbs 188, 4-Bell 159, 5-Hamlin 146, 6-Larson 140, 7-Briscoe 101, 8-Elliott 72, 9-Josh Berry 61, 9-Bubba Wallace 49, 10-Carson Hocevar 33.
