by Patrick Zier | Sep 11, 2025 |
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.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 10, 2025 |
You can criticize Denny Hamlin for the way he drives. You can criticize Denny Hamlin for what he says. But you can’t criticize Denny Hamlin for his work ethic.
And more and more, the 44-year-old Hamlin has depended on that to keep him at the top of his game, which is better than most and as good as any despite his age.
Hamlin will never be NASCAR’s Most Popular Diver. He seems to find new ways to irritate fans and competitors almost every week and he’s pretty good at it because he’s been doing it for a long time, almost as long as he’s been racing.
And he did it again Sunday after winning the Enjoy Illinois 300 at St. Louis’ World Wide Technology Raceway, which punched his ticket to the second round of the NASCAR playoffs.
Getting out of his car to a mixed reception from those in attendance, Hamlin went into attack mode almost immediately. “Y’all can boo,” he said to the crowd and those watching on USA TV. “You can either get on the bandwagon or get run over by it.”
How this got so intense isn’t exactly certain, but it probably began a few years ago when he had a problem with Chase Elliott, one of NASCAR’s most popular drivers.
And since then, Hamlin has kept it alive by being involved in disputes with anybody he perceives as getting in his way, on the track or in the stands. After one race this year, he waved a flag that said “11 against the world.” After another race, one of his first comments was “I beat your favorite driver.” And so it goes.
All of this is distracting from the fact that Hamlin is one of the best ever to sit behind the wheel; his body of work proves that. And while Joe Gibbs teammate Chase Briscoe may have shot to the top during the last few months, it remains to be seen whether or not he has Hamlin’s staying power.
Going into this week’s race at Bristol, Hamlin has now won 59 races, one shy of Kevin Harvick, who has 60 and ranks 10th all-time. Right ahead of Harvick is former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch, who has 63 and, stuck in limbo at Richard Childress Racing, is finding it hard to add to that total.
Sixty-three wins is well within Hamlin’s reach considering how sharp he is despite his age, but getting to the next man up, Dale Earnhardt, is going to be tough. Earnhardt has 76 and even Hamlin can’t beat Father Time forever.
He’ll probably try though.
One of the most studious and astute drivers in the sport, Hamlin said there was a time when, if you were driving for an elite team, your equipment gave you an edge. That’s gone now, he says, so the only way to gain an advantage is to be better prepared than the competition, especially as you get older.
“With everything so similar, how else am I supposed to separate myself from everyone else?” Hamlin asked after Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 according to NASCAR’s website.
“I’ve got some talent, but I feel the working part of it is how I separate myself,” Hamlin continued. “You’ve got to know what to look for, you’ve got to identify it and then you have to go to work to fix it.
“That’s what I feel like I’m good at; identifying the problem first – all my problems essentially. My job is to find out all my flaws,” Hamlin said. “Then it’s my job to fix them on the racetrack.”
If Hamlin has a “flaw” in his resume, it’s the fact that in his 20 year Cup career he’s never won a championship, although he’s been in the playoffs every single season except one, 2013, when he was injured, and he’s made the final four four tines, 2014, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
“My results every year in the playoffs are better than they are in the regular season,” Hamlin commented. “My average finish, all of that stuff, it’s always better in the playoffs.
“It’s just that we haven’t won that stupid, freaking last race of the season that crowns the champion,” Hamlin remarked. And he can live with that if he has to. For Hamlin, winning championships isn’t the ultimate goal. To him, it’s winning races that counts.
“There’s certain races I do have countdowns for,” he said. “The only one I thought about this year was the Daytona 500, thinking I’m probably only going to do this twice more. And I haven’t won the freaking Brickyard (400), and I’m probably only going to have two more shots at that and that’s it,” Hamlin declared.
Maybe, maybe not. Hamlin has signed a contract extension with JGR that will carry him through the 2026 and 2027 seasons. After that, well…Hamlin has a lot of pride. He’ll never race just to keep racing. But he will race as long as he thinks he can win.
He knows he can win now, and can anyone say he won’t be able to win then?
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Bristol: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Kyle Larson, 3-Chase Briscoe. Winner of first race at Bristol: Larson. Top five in first race: 1-Larson, 2-Hamlin, 3-Ty Gibbs, 4-Briscoe, 5-Ryan Blaney.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport St. Louis picks: 1-Hamlin, 2-Briscoe, 3-Larson. St. Louis winner: Hamlin. OGS record after 23 races: 11-11; no pick in Pocono race.
OGS competition index top 10: 1-Hamlin 536 points, 2-Briscoe 443, 3-Larson 375, 4-William Byron 326, Christopher Bell 326, 6-Blaney 314, 7-Shane van Gisbergen 295, 8-Chase Elliott 179, 9-Bubba Wallace 173, 10-Alex Bowman 158.
OGS top 10 on short tracks (tracks most similar to Bristol): 1-Hamlin 211, 2-Larson 136, 3-Briscoe 112, 4-Bell 110, 5-Byron 80, 6-Bowman 74, 7-Blaney 72, 8-Austin Dillon 63, 9-Elliott 50, 10-Wallace 41.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 4, 2025 |
Chase Briscoe is killing it. Since early May, Briscoe, not Denny Hamlin, not Kyle Larson or anybody else you care to name, has been the best driver in NASCAR.
Over that period, Briscoe has dominated the Old Guy Sport competition index, which measures competitiveness on all tracks except superspeedways (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) because you can’t measure competitiveness on those tracks.
Avoiding the big wreck and being at the right place at the right time on the last lap determines who wins and how you finish at those places.
Meanwhile Briscoe, in his first year in an elite car, has pushed everybody else aside including his teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing. Nobody expected this, and Gibbs, in fact, was criticized for picking Briscoe out of the rubble of Stewart-Haas Racing when that organization finally collapsed last year and he needed somebody to replace Martin Truex.
But Gibbs has been vindicated. Briscoe started to muscle his way to the top after the race at Kansas, where he finished fourth. Expectations for him were high all along because he was driving for one of the two best teams in NASCAR, but until that race he was struggling driving a car that could do things he never dreamed of doing with Stewart-Haas.
“Kansas was like the light switch,” James Small, Briscoe’s crew chief, commented on NASCAR’s website after last week’s win at Darlington. That victory made Briscoe the first driver to advance to the round of 12 in the playoffs.
“I really think that’s when things started coming together and him understanding it,” Small said. “I think just within the team, with Chase himself and everything, I think it was the final stage at Kansas,” Small said.
According to the OGS competition index, ever since then Briscoe has been running away from everybody else. Counting Kansas, Briscoe has two wins, three seconds, one third, one fourth and one fifth over the 14 race period and has led laps under green in four other races, meaning he has been blanked in only two.
That totals up to a whooping 343 points on the OGS competition index, far more than anybody else except maybe Shane van Gisbergen, who has 295. But van Gisbergen got all of his points with four straight road course wins. He has yet to score a single point on an oval. Hamlin, with 254 points, almost one hundred fewer than Briscoe, is third and William Byron, with 187, is fourth.
That it took Briscoe a while to settle in is understandable. Briscoe has always known what he had to do to win in a race car, he just never had a car capable of doing it until he got to Gibbs. So it took him a while to realize things were different now.
Briscoe is a guy who has always had to prove himself, beginning when he was a youngster and his dad didn’t really want him to race. The climb has been long and hard and mostly in inferior equipment, which kept the pressure on as Briscoe tried to stand out from the crowd.
But it’s made him mentally tough. Nothing was given to him. “I don’t know, I’ve always just loved being in high pressure situations,” Briscoe said. “I feel like I just perform better for whatever reason.
“I feel like my whole career has been a high pressure situation. There was no backup plan. You might only get one race, you’ve got to go perform, show your worth,” he continued. “I’ve always felt like every week I’m still auditioning to prove I belong here.”
“We went through a whole process of who’s going to replace Martin (Truex),” Gibbs remarked. “The way we do things at our race team, it’s everybody sitting around, all of our management group, and we go through a lot of discussions; who would fit best, who matches up with our sponsor.
“And certainly we felt like Chase matched up well with Bass Pro Shops,” Gibbs said. “It’s a big process. It’s very important because that’s a quarter of our race team. We got a lot of people depending on that.
“It becomes critical, those decisions, because we all know you’re not going anywhere unless you’re got a really, really good crew chief and a really, really good pit crew and a really, really good driver,” Gibbs said.
And Briscoe, as he has proven over the last few months, is a really, really good driver.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at St. Louis: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at St. Louis: Austin Cindric. Top five at St. Louis last year: 1-Cindric, 2-Hamlin, 3-Brad Keselowski, 4-Tyler Reddick, 5-Joey Logano.
Last week’s Darlington picks: 1-Hamlin, 2-Larson, 3-Ryan Blaney. Darlington winner: Briscoe. OGS sport season record after 22 races: 10-11, no pick in Pocono race.
OGS competition index top 10 after 22 races: 1-Hamlin 472, 2-Briscoe 403, 3-Larson 366, 4-William Byron 326, Christopher Bell 326, 6-Shane van Gisbergen 295, 7-Blaney 293, 8-Bubba Wallace 161, 9-Alex Bowman 158, 10-Chase Elliott 148.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most similar to St. Louis): 1-Hamlin 261, 2-Briscoe 232, 3-Larson 229, 4-Byron 186, 5-Blaney 119, 6-Wallace 118, 7-Ross Chastain 102, 8-Logano 79, 9-Reddick 73, 10-Bell 71.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 4, 2025 |
TAMPA – There’s no denying it. Florida has the toughest schedule in the country, and South Florida just made it tougher. For Florida, this wasn’t supposed to be a big game. LSU is a big game. Miami is a big game. Texas is a big game. Georgia is a big game. All are ranked in the top 10 in the country.
And then you have Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Florida State. That last wasn’t supposed to be a big game, either, but after beating Alabama, the ‘Noles are ranked in the nation’s top 25, as are all the rest. USF, by the way, received votes after hammering Boise State.
So Florida knows it will have more on its hands than expected when it collides with USF Saturday in Gainesville.
One of the most interesting aspects of this game is the battle of the quarterbacks, Florida’s DJ Lagway and USF’s Byrum Brown. Both are coming off injuries that impacted their team’s season a year ago and both looked healthy and strong in their openers last week.
There is no question that from a physical and talent standpoint, Lagway is elite. Playing to his potential, he is probably as good as anybody in the country. But Brown is really not far behind. He can carry a team on his back. He’s a difference maker.
But USF has more going for it than just Brown. With Brown, the offense is potentially explosive and the defense appears to have taken a major jump forward.
“This is a team, not a one-quarterback show here,” Florida Coach Billy Napier commented according to Florida’s football website. “It’s going to be important to contain him (Brown). We’re going to have to rush as a team and work together to compress the pocket and keep him in the pocket,” he added.
For Napier, this is a potential “gotcha” game. He can’t lose this, not with the schedule that’s in front of him. There is tremendous pressure on Napier to produce an SEC contender after three years of mediocrity, become relevant again nationally, and a loss to USF would be potentially devastating.
Napier saved his job last year with a late season turn around that started with wins over 22nd ranked LSU and 18th ranked Ole Miss, a decisive victory over arch-rival Florida State and a bowl win over Tulane.
It continued when the Gators crushed Long Island U. in their opener this year, and Florida simply can’t afford to go off the rails against USF.
From a South Florida standpoint, this is another huge game, a chance for this team to continue to develop a winning attitude, to see if it can put the Boise win behind it and move on.
“It’s part of growing, it’s part of what we’re building, right?” USF Coach Alex Golesh said here this week. “It’s, and I said it a week ago, it’s part of handling success. Wining programs are able to do that because winning programs are used to winning,” Golesh said.
“I think in a winning program you truly forget about it (winning a big game) the next day and you move on. We’ve conveyed that to them (the players), we’ve pushed the heck out of doing that,” Golesh said.
“I think anytime you’ve got an opponent like we have if you’re looking behind in any way you’re out of your mind,” Golesh emphasized. “And truly, I think these guys are mature enough to handle that.
“All you’ve got to do is look up and see what’s in front of you,” Golesh continued. “If you’re going to take a breath and say this happened a week ago and I’m going to enjoy it you’re going to get your brains beat out. It helps that we’re playing a really good football team in terms of that and I think the guys are mature enough to handle it,” Golesh said.
In some ways, the Florida game will define USF’s season. You’re on the road in a hostile environment after a big win. Good teams move on. This is today. Forget yesterday, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The Bulls don’t have to beat Florida, but they must go in believing that they can. They have to believe in themselves, because if they collapse here, if they get knocked out, last week’s dominant win over Boise may look good, but it will mean nothing.
PAT’S PICKS
Florida over USF: The Gators are skating on thin ice here. If USF plays up to its potential, this could be a slugfest.
Miami over Bethune-Cookman: Why do teams even schedule games like this?
FSU over East Texas A&M: See Miami over B-C.
UCF over North Carolina A&T: This isn’t as bad as the other two, because UCF isn’t nearly as good as the other two, but it’s still a game that shouldn’t be played.
Last week, 2-3. For the season, 2-3,.400.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 29, 2025 |
The game was sluggish from the start, like two heavyweights trying to land punches with their feet stuck in cement.
South Florida had eked out a 10-7 halftime lead, but there was no indication that would stand up, not against a Boise State team which is considered the Alabama of the Group of Five, had just been in the College Football Playoffs and had everyone wondering how long it would take before it asserted its dominance.
Maybe now, midway through the third quarter with USF in a punting situation, fourth-and-6 at the Boise 45, the Broncos would take control. Out came the USF punt team. The ball was snapped and then something unexpected happened.
The punter was not the punter. Instead, it was freshman quarterback Locklan Hewlett, a player of much promise but not someone who figured prominently for the Bulls this year.
And Hewlett did not punt. Instead, he looked downfield, where USF’s Keyshaun Singleton had gotten behind the Boise defense and was streaking toward the end zone. Hewlett lofted the ball. Down the field it flew, into the waiting arms of Singleton, who grabbed it and took it in for a score.
And just like that, it was USF 17, Boise 7. On the sidelines, Byrum Brown knew. “As soon as he (Hewlett) threw it, I started running toward the (end) zone,” Brown said according to the USF football website. This was a game changer. It would wake up the dormant USF offense; Brown would wake up the dormant USF offense.
Brown would be the guy of whom Boise coach Spencer Danielson said “he will be one of the best football players we see all year, on either side of the ball. I’m not just talking about being one of the best quarterbacks we will see, he’s one of the best football players we will see during the 2025 season,” Danielson emphasized.
The fake punt was, no doubt, the biggest play of the game. It invigorated USF, gave it a fresh rush of adrenalin which woke up the offense and let it overwhelm Boise.
It could be the biggest play of the year if USF capitalizes on the opportunity it created. With the win, USF now has a legitimate path to the CFP; not an easy path, but a legitimate one no matter what happens against Florida and Miami.
And, if USF can pull that off, get to the playoffs, then it could arguably be the biggest play in USF history.
For the last two years under Coach Alex Golesh, USF has been a dormant volcano. There has been some smoke and fire, a lot of rumbling, enough going on to grab your attention while Golesh put his plan in place, but no real eruption.
He has stressed believing in the process, that this team’s ability to move up the football ladder depends not only in believing in themselves but believing in what they can do as a team, independent of the coaches’ urging. The players must lead, not the coaches. The coaches are there to guide the process and install the system.
“I’ve said it ad nauseam to our team, until it becomes player driven it will not break out and I felt like tonight (Thursday) it was truly player driven,” Golesh said.
“Ultimately, when you truly believe in each other you truly have a brotherhood which is really, really hard to do in college football right now,” Golesh said.
“You’re going to play for the guy next to you and you don’t want to let him down. They’ve (his players) bought into that, they’ve worked that way,” Golesh commented. “I thought we were physically ready, I thought we were mentally ready and we put it all together tonight (Thursday).”
“It’s a new standard, a new expectation (for this team),” Brown declared. “This ain’t the same old South Florida anymore.” Hey there up in Gainesville, you hear that?
