This is the last of a five-part series analyzing the quarterback position at the state’s five major universities, Florida, Florida State, Miami, UCF and South Florida. Today, USF.
The American has always been a stepping stone conference. Even before there was NIL, before the courts settled the antitrust case that now allows colleges to pay athletes directly, players and coaches were constantly on the move.
So, once he established himself at a Group of Six level, South Florida’s Byrum Brown was gone. Once he proved he was one of the best quarterbacks in the country, not just one of the best quarterbacks in the Group of Six, once he established that he could take a team to the top, he was going to move up.
The Group of Six has some good football teams – South Florida being one of them – and some decent conferences, but they don’t play at the level of the Power Four. The Group of Six is a proving ground for players like Brown to show they can make it at the next level.
And he will try and do that now at Auburn, where his former coach at South Florida, Alex Golesh, has taken over. Golesh not only brought Brown to Auburn, he also brought Locklan Hewlett, USF’s quarterback in waiting and Brown’s potential successor with the Bulls.
So, South Florida’s quarterback room has been wiped out. Nobody’s back. But that doesn’t mean things are all bad. USF and it’s new coach, Brian Hartline, have restocked the position with talented transfers, and they have the potential to make South Florida one of the most dominant teams in not just the American, but the Group of Six as well.
The most experienced is Michael Van Buren, who came over from LSU, where he started the Tigers’ final four games and played in seven. Van Buren, a junior, threw for 1010 yards, eight touchdowns and two interceptions and had 129 yards rushing with another TD.
The year before at Mississippi State, Van Buren made eight starts and was 140-0f-156 for 1,886 yards with 11 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He also ran for five more scores. The issue with Van Buren has been turnovers, although he cleaned that up a little bit at LSU.
If Van Buren doesn’t start, Luke Kromenhoak probably will. In fact, many observers think Kromenhoak, who transferred from Mississippi State as a redshirt soph, is the better choice.
Kromenhoak played in three games for Mississippi State, and was in six games with two starts at Florida State in 2024. When FSU recruited him, Kromenhoak was regarded as the No.4 prep quarterback in the country by 247 sports.
According to ChopChat.com, he left FSU after his father asked for more money because he felt that Kromenhoak should be FSU’s starting quarterback in 2025, while the ‘Noles staff appeared to think he needed more time to develop.
“Quarterback is definitely a point of emphasis for us,” Hartline commented according to USF’s football website. “You’d like some guys who want to compete; if you’re a guy who’s coming in with the attitude ‘Oh, I’m this, I’m that’ and they think it’s being handed to them, that’s not healthy,” Hartline said.
“Not only in the quarterback room, but all the rooms, it’s a blank slate,” Hartline commented. “It’s a great opportunity for everybody. With the quarterbacks especially, I wanted to find two, at least two, or three guys that were going to go out there and compete for the spot.
“Ideally, you’d love to have some guys who have some eligibility left after their first year here, guys with maybe multiple years available to them,” Hartline said. “But it wasn’t the only factor.
“Ultimately, if it was a guy that we wanted in the room and he was willing to compete and only had one year left, so be it. For us, it was two things,” Hartline remarked.
“One, guys who wanted to compete and two, trying to find some guys with some years left and then from there, building it out to where maybe some young guy, maybe a young guy from high school, could come in and provide depth. For the most part, I’m really excited about that (the quarterback) room,” Hartline added.
Under Golesh, USF revived its program and with a new stadium rising on campus and other improvements, South Florida is setting itself up to become the next dominant team in the Group of Six. That assumes, of course, that it can find a quarterback who can get it there.