by Patrick Zier | Dec 13, 2024 |
Officially, South Florida’s football season ends Christmas Eve with a bowl game in Hawaii. Actually, it ended Saturday, Sept. 28th, with 9:10 left in the third quarter at Tulane. That’s when USF quarterback Byrum Brown went down with a lower leg injury that has kept him sidelined since and pretty much sidelined the Bulls’ offense as well.
Before all this happened, it was expected that Brown would build on his highly successful 2023 season, when he started to attract attention as one of the better quarterbacks in the country. Brown was – and is – pretty much of a do everything kind of guy. In 2023, he threw for 3,292 yards and 26 touchdowns. He also ran for 809 yards, tops on the team, and added another 11 scores.
That led to Brown being nominated for the Maxwell Award, the Walter Camp Award, the Davie Brian Award and the Johnny Unitas Award. It also got him noticed by a lot of Power Four conference schools, who saw top level talent in a 6-foot-3, 229-pound duel threat quarterback who could be the solution to a lot of problems at a lot of places if he decided to leave South Florida. And while it was not openly talked about around USF, the possibility of Brown moving on after this season was there if he opted to enter the transfer portal.
All that changed at Tulane, but almost immediately after he got hurt, Brown was back on the practice field and his presence at practice fueled intense speculation about his status. Virtually every week during the season, Golesh was asked about his availability. Will he play this week, will he play next week, how about the bowl game?
“I don’t want to overplay it or underplay it,” Golesh said. “He’s been practicing and preparing ever since he got hurt. He has prepared to be the starting quarterback. Byrum is a highly intelligent young man,” Golesh said. “He’s a great communicator. He tells the doctors and the training staff exactly how he feels.”
Because of the way he plays, Brown needs a strong lower body. “I remember having this conversation a year ago when he was banged up,” Golesh continued. “You have to be mentally tough before you can be physically tough and he wants to play, but for Byrum especially, he’s got to feel real good, particularly in his lower body, to go play his game because he creates so much. He’s got to be able to move around.”
In Brown’s absence, Bryce Archie has been running the team and while he has done a respectable job, he is not Brown, so Brown’s return for the bowl game against San Jose State would give the Bulls a definite boost. “Young men are resilient, and every time we’ve had adversity, they’ve adjusted,” Golesh said. “We’ve had to make changes and they believe in Archie, but going back to what they’re used to would certainly be nice. They’d be more than excited to get Byrum back healthy.”
Although he’s had a long layoff, if be does play in the bowl game Golesh doesn’t think that will have much of an impact on Brown’s play, probably because he has continued to practice. “Obviously, he will have to adjust, but we try and create as competitive an atmosphere in practice as we can,” Golesh said.
So, Brown should be ready to play if he is able to play. And will he be able to play? “I’ve said from the beginning I would never put somebody out there that’s not healthy enough to perform,” Golesh commented. So we – and San Jose State – don’t really know Brown’s status, which is probably exactly the way Golesh wants it.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 2, 2024 |
It has not been a good year for college football in Florida. With apologies to Miami, not much has gone right. Florida State, at 2-10, has been knocked to the mat and Florida is struggling to get off it. Central Florida has been unable to establish itself in the Big 12, and South Florida, which is eying a promotion to the big time, stumbled when it lost to Rice Saturday to finish 6-6, a bit of a dip from last season.
But it is the status of the programs at Florida and Florida State, the state’s two flagship universities, which is of the most concern. Again with apologies to Miami, they are the bellwethers. They lead the way. If they don’t have it together, college football, here. struggles to keep it together.
The annual Florida-Florida State game is an example of this. In the Bobby Bowden-Steve Spurrier years, it was not only the most important game in the state, if was frequently one of the most important games in the nation. It was a battle that could, and did, determine national champions. In 1996, Florida went into the contest ranked No.1 in the country with Florida State No.2. Florida State won, 24-21, setting up a rematch in the Sugar Bowl. Florida smashed FSU in New Orleans, 52-20, giving Spurrier and the Gators their first ever national championship.
This year, nothing was on the line except pride. FSU had a chance to save its season, it didn’t, and Florida needed to keep a late season surge intact. It did.
Where this leaves these two programs is uncertain. FSU’s Mike Norvell went into the year with high hopes and expectations. FSU was coming of a 13-0 regular season run in 2023 and then, for reasons that are not fully understood, the ‘Noles fell apart. They couldn’t beat anybody, or at least not anybody that mattered.
For football in Florida to become relevant again, FSU must become relevant. It must reach a certain standard, and maintain it. Norvell knows this. “It’s a disappointing end to an awful season,” Norvell said at a post-game press conference shown on the school’s website. “Very disappointing that we performed the way we did. Like I told the team in the locker room, this is getting fixed. It’s going to be an immediate, fast fix. We are going to make sure that every person who is a part of this program is all in on that process,” Norvell declared.
For the Gators, things are not quite as desperate. This was Billy Napier’s first winning season in three years and while Florida still has a long way to go to reach the level of the Spurrier-Urban Meyer years, there were signs of a rejuvenation in the second half of the season.
Napier said he felt the team turned the corner in the off week before the Tennessee game. Florida would lose that one, 24-17 in overtime, but the Gators stood toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country and it appeared to give them the confidence they needed.
“I think midseason, that’s when it all kind of came together,” Napier said according to a post-game video on on on3.com. “I think the players did a good job of kind of putting their blinders on the first month and didn’t allow excuses, didn’t allow blame and really just went back to work. Go back to that first open date before the Tennessee game, and I think the Tennessee game was pivotal, the way they responded there.”
That game appeared to get the Gators going as they followed up with big wins over Ole Miss and LSU and finally Florida State. Now, the challenge becomes keeping that momentum into a bowl game and then 2025.
And FSU? “We’re done playing the way we did this year,” Norvell declared. “I take full responsibility for that. I’m willing to do what’s necessary to make sure we don’t ever have another season anywhere like the one we had this year. So to the Florida State fans, the university, past players, the players in the locker room, I’m sorry. It will be fixed,” Norvell emphasized.
If he can pull that off, it would go a long way towards fixing college football in the state. And again with apologies to Miami, college football here is in desperate need of fixing.
by Patrick Zier | Nov 26, 2024 |
The pressure to win is there. It is always there at Florida, where first Steve Spurrier and then Urban Meyer set a standard of excellence that is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain. Winning is hard anywhere, but it is especially hard in the SEC.
You get some idea of the expectations at Florida when you remember that the Gators dumped Dan Mullen, who won a lot of games but no championships, for a relative unknown named Billy Napier. Napier was highly successful at Louisiana Lafayette, but Louisiana Lafayette is not Florida and the Sun Belt Conference is not the SEC.
And so it was that Napier came into 2024 on the back of two losing seasons, far below what Mullen had accomplished and no where near the championship teams he was supposed to mold.
And Gator Nation was edgy. This wasn’t what they had signed up for. So, despite what many felt was probably the toughest schedule in the nation, Napier needed to deliver.
Napier knew that, the players knew that, everybody knew that. But playing teams like Georgia, Texas and Tennessee is one thing, beating them is another. And the Gators didn’t beat them, and Gator Nation became more restless.
Then, just when Napier appeared to be halfway out the door, nationally ranked LSU came to town and suddenly, Florida rose up and knocked them down. Then came nationally ranked Ole Miss, and the same thing happened. And so it is that a season that had a disastrous start and a disastrous middle may now have a season saving finish.
Now, a team that had been written off by everybody as the year went along, is suddenly being given a second look, even getting votes in the AP top 25 poll.
“So obviously when you’re going through a struggle and you’ve had some setbacks keeping your enthusiasm is really important,” Napier said at his press conference following the Ole Miss game according to Florida’s website. “Okay, you’ve experienced some success. Can you handle that? Can you ignore the hype? Can you have the right mix of humility with that? I think that’s the key,” Napier commented.
“What are the buttons you push that motivate the players?” Napier asked.
“You’ve got to have good leadership at the player level,” he continued. “That’s where there’s collaboration. I always ask some of our guys where we’re at. They know more than I know or our staff knows.”
For Florida, what’s important now is that the team has no letdown. The Gators should beat the Seminoles easily this Saturday, but this is a bitter rivalry. “This is going to be a challenge,” Napier said. “You’ve got to go play at their place and we’ve been there before and they’ve beaten us the last two years and we know the records will be thrown out.
“So you put the ball down at 7 o’clock up there and we’ve got to be ready to go.”
For the Gators, this season has been one long climb. But they have endured and are almost to the top of the mountain. And there sits Florida State, just waiting to knock them off.
