TAMPA – It was a game the Florida Gators had to win. They didn’t. It was a game the South Florida Bulls didn’t have to win. They did. And as a result, the football futures of both these teams are now reversed as they look ahead to Saturday.
Florida, a team which essentially had to contend for an SEC championship and the College Football Playoffs to take the pressure off the program and Coach Billy Napier, is now standing in quicksand and looks about to go under.
It could happen at LSU, next up for the Gators in Baton Rouge, and if it doesn’t happen there, it could happen the next week when they play Miami, or a couple weeks after that when they play Texas, or, well, you get the picture.
The schedule is brutal, and after the unexpected loss to South Florida, it looks like a death sentence for Florida. Already, Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin is being pushed forward as Napier’s potential replacement.
The Bulls, on the other hand, had no such expectations. There were high hopes that they would be better, but there was no real pressure on the team or its coach, Alex Golesh.
Now though, with wins over then-ranked No. 25 Boise State and then-ranked No. 13 Florida, the Bulls are the talk of the town. The talk of a lot of towns, actually. Up next is No. 5 Miami, and if the Bulls get a third straight victory over a nationally ranked team, who knows what will happen?
This is big. Why? Because this team now has a legitimate chance to make the CFP as the representative of the Group of Five conferences.
So this bigger than the 6-0 start in 2007, which was triggered by an unexpected victory at 17th ranked Auburn and eventually saw the Bulls reach No. 2 in the country before they collapsed in the second half of the season.
Even though it’s a very small sample, one of the more curious aspects of this is that with the wins over Boise State and Florida, USF seems to have established some national credibility.
That never happened at Central Florida in 2017, for example, when UCF was pretty much in the same place USF is now and went 13-0 including a win over No. 7 Auburn in the Peach Bowl.
Instead, UCF was laughed at for claiming the national title and even when the Knights backed that up the next year by going 12-1, running off 12 straight victories to give them 25 in a row before losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl, it was generally regarded as an aberration.
But USF seems to have overcome that. Maybe it’s because Boise is generally regarded as the Alabama of the Group of Five and Florida is, well, Florida and that game was on national TV for all to see. Still, it seems unusual that two big wins are enough to legitimize the program when two really good seasons in a row did nothing for UCF.
The other thing these wins have done is give the team confidence in the system Golesh has put in place. Golesh has harped on installing a certain “process” since the day he arrived and these wins seem to validate that. The players can see this team getting better.
Golesh, though, says winning shouldn’t be necessary for the players to buy in to what they’re doing.
“We talk so much about being process driven,” Golesh said. “When you’re process driven and not emotionally attached to an end result that (winning) really doesn’t matter in the sense of how you go about your business.
“I’d be naive to say it doesn’t help to have proof of concept, right, so it does, but when it’s easy after a loss to say man, we’ve got to revert back to our process and clean this up, if you only do that after a loss, but after a win you say man, we’ve arrived, we’re good, that’s a problem,” Golesh commented.
“When you truly believe that how you build a sustainable culture is to be process driven, not outcome driven, you go right back to your daily habits and your daily process regardless of the result.
“So it does matter to have proof of concept, yes, but ultimately it shouldn’t matter in how you prepare,” Golesh said.
“What I told our guys in the locker room after the (Florida) game, I told then again Sunday, again Monday and I told them just now (Tuesday) – and I do have their attention in that regard – if you went into that game and you were focused and clear-minded, physically you felt good, you felt like you were in a really good place physically and mentally, repeat your process. Don’t change, repeat it,” Golesh said.
“But if you felt like man, I wasn’t clear-minded or I was anxious and distracted or physically I didn’t have my legs under me or I wasn’t at an elite level – not pretty good, elite – then we gotta fix your process,” Golesh said.
“And it’s my job, your (position) coaches job, our support staff’s job to help you, but you gotta be all the way bought in,” Golesh emphasized. “You can’t be caught up in the distractions outside of here.
“That’s why we talk about our inner circle so much,” Golesh continued. “Right now the only people telling you the truth are your teammates and coaches. “Everybody else doesn’t matter. They matter in the sense that they’re your family or your buddies or whatever, but their job is to hype you up. Our job is to be real and help you get your process to an elite level,” Golesh insisted.
“And when you go right back to being process driven, whatever happens, the end result ultimately doesn’t matter. It matters in the grand scheme of wins and losses, but individually, in terms of how you prepare, it doesn’t matter,” Golesh emphasized.
What Golesh is trying to instill is the belief that you prepare the same way whether your win or lose, whether you’re playing Florida or Alabama-Birmingham.
Everything’s the same, because the process allows you to be the best that you can be regardless of the opponent and the circumstances. And that gives you the best chance to win. And in the end, winning is what it’s all about.
PAT’S PICKS
USF OVER MIAMI: There’s no logical reason to make this pick. Miami is a better team and playing at home and should win this game comfortably – and probably will. But Florida was a better team and playing at home and should have won comfortably and they didn’t. So USF.
LSU OVER FLORIDA: Billy Napier is fighting for his job but so is Brian Kelly. And the Tigers seem to have it together; the Gators don’t.
FSU OVER EAST TEXAS A&M: There is such a school? Watching an FSU scrimmage would be more exciting.
Last week, 3-1. For the season, 5-4, .556.
