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'All about us': South Florida is college football's coolest underdog after upsets
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- 'All about us': South Florida is college football's coolest underdog after upsets
As a college football enthusiast, Alex Golesh counts Florida's Tom Petty fourth-quarter singalong at The Swamp among the sport's coolest traditions.
As South Florida 's coach, Golesh wanted his team to ignore the theatrics.
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Don't listen to the fans sing "I Won't Back Down." Don't pay attention to the cell phone flashlights illuminating the sky. Don't get sucked in by the stadium atmosphere.
Tune out the Gators. Sing your own tune. Then, win the fourth quarter.
Golesh's Bulls sing a song of their own to get hyped before the fourth quarter. So, while Florida fans belted Petty, a boombox on the Bulls' sideline pumped Meek Mill's "Dreams and Nightmares."
"I'm super biased," South Florida linebacker Mac Harris admitted with a laugh, "but I would definitely say" the Bulls' song is better.
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More appropriate to the moment, for sure.
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The fourth quarter became the Gators' nightmare and the Bulls' dream, culminated by Nico Gramatica's field goal for an 18-16 South Florida victory .
"Words cannot even describe the feeling once that clock hit zero, what it meant to go defeat that opponent," center Cole Best said. "It was huge."
A huge victory for a team vying to represent the Group of Five in the College Football Playoff, and a huge moment for a program ascending in Golesh's third season.
South Florida cornerback De'Shawn Rucker (22) celebrates with teammates after the Bulls defeated Florida at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
South Florida dismantled Boise State in Week 1. That caused a ripple. Taming the Gators spurred an eruption.
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The Bulls moved into the Top 25 rankings ahead of their game against No. 6 Miami.
"You talk about real confidence and being ready for the moment, I think we've put that on display, for sure," Best said. "When that time came (in the fourth quarter at The Swamp), it was all about us."
South Florida shows Gators what it means to 'win in the margins'
Golesh detests vapid mottos and slogans.
"It's all bulls***," he told me. "Your identity is what you put on film."
True enough, but one phrase caught my attention in interviews with Harris and Best, a pair of team veterans.
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Win in the margins.
As Best put it, winning in the margins means "constantly nit-picking and finding small, little ways to make your process better."
Or, to quote Harris, "No small detail undone, no rock left unturned."
That's winning in the margins.
How better to describe the win against the Gators?
"We played harder for longer," Golesh said, "and we played smarter for longer."
The Bulls got the details right. The Gators hocked up the details and ejected them in the form of a loogie .
"It really came down to, one team was more disciplined than the other," Best said.
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That neatly sums up how South Florida emerged as a playoff contender, while Florida fans crave a coaching search .
Watch a broadcast of a South Florida game, and you'll hear all about the Bulls' up-tempo spread offense. Golesh learned the system working as Josh Heupel's coordinator at Tennessee and Central Florida.
You don't beat consecutive ranked opponents purely off tempo, though.
Golesh was a 19-year-old Ohio State student when he began his coaching career as a high school defensive line coach, and he says he sees the game "through a defensive lens." He's also coached special teams, giving him experience in all three phases.
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Within the Group of Five ranks, Boise State has long set the standard for culture and stability. When you play Boise State, expect to face a gritty team, with a devoted ground game, a dependable quarterback and a tough defense.
That's why it spoke volumes that South Florida smashed Boise State.
"That," Golesh said, "was a program win."
Alex Golesh goes from Russia to major college football
The Bulls have become one of college football's top stories. Golesh has a neat story of his own .
Born in Russia, Golesh immigrated to the United States in 1991 with his parents, brother and grandparents. The family came with $400. Golesh arrived in New York at 7 years old, not knowing a word of English.
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Golesh still speaks some Russian, though not as fluently as he once did. He once told me he still can recall standing in line at the grand opening of a McDonald's in Moscow in 1990. By Golesh's final summer living in Moscow, tanks were on the streets and in the Red Square. Hardline Communists staged a coup . The Soviet Union was on a path to dissolution.
Golesh's dad worked as a telecommunications engineer in Russia. His parents traded a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle in Russia for opportunities for their sons in the USA. That resulted in a humble restart for the family in Brooklyn. They later moved to Ohio.
His parents' Russian college education wasn't recognized in the U.S. Golesh's dad drove a delivery truck after immigrating. His mom worked odd jobs before earning an associate's degree and getting a job in a nursing home.
Golesh took inspiration from his parents' sacrifice. As he told me a few years ago, he feels driven to make good on "everything that they have done for" him and his brother.
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As a kid in New York, Golesh met a coach from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at a summer camp football clinic. The coach invited Golesh to be a ball boy for the academy's games. He fell in love with the sport.
When Golesh considers his journey, he thinks about moments like being Tennessee's offensive coordinator for the Vols' upset of Nick Saban's Alabama in 2022 , on a night Tennessee fans smoked cigars and toppled the goal posts. These recent triumphs against Boise State and Florida will claim a special place, too.
Nearly 600 text messages flooded into Golesh's cell phones within 24 hours of South Florida's takedown of Florida. Everyone wants to pat a Bulls coach on the back after he upsets the Gators.
By Sunday evening, though, Golesh had turned his attention to film of Miami.
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This journey's not finished for a team with a quarterback as talented as Byrum Brown and a defense this stingy.
Byrum Brown, plus defense, spurs Top 25 ranking
Golesh transformed USF into the American Conference's top recruiting program. Early in a coach's tenure, though, it helps if you can cook with ingredients you inherited.
The Bulls won just one game in Jeff Scott's final season. Two South Florida quarterbacks went down with injury, thrusting Brown into starting duty as a freshman. Golesh saw on film the portrait of a young quarterback who "played his ever living guts out."
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Brown won a competition to retain the job ahead of Golesh's first season. Now a senior, he's generating early longshot Heisman Trophy buzz after outplaying Florida's DJ Lagway.
Facing Brown and USF's tempo offense in practice leaves the Bulls' defense in tip-top physical condition. Come game day, Harris said, the defense feels inspired to generate stops so Brown can work his magic.
That defense has surrendered just two touchdowns through two games.
"The offense is fun and sexy," Golesh said, "and that's part of it, ... but, at the same time, it prepares our defense."
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Alex Golesh: USF 'has no ceiling'
Speculation about Power Four jobs becomes a steady companion to any successful Group of Five coach. Sure enough, as hot seats ignite from Gainesville to Stillwater, Oklahoma, you'll see Golesh's name on hot boards.
Asked about this, Golesh says that beats the alternative of coaching a team that stinks.
"We'll take it in stride as it comes," said Golesh, 41, who points out his history as an assistant coach was not that of a job-hopper.
"I'm really, really, really happy here," he said. "This is one of the coolest jobs in the entire country."
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It's becoming cooler by the day. South Florida, since 2021, has either completed construction or committed funding to football facilities projects totaling more than $375 million.
That includes a locker room renovation, a weight room upgrade, and a $22 million indoor performance facility.
The Bulls play home games at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL's Buccaneers, but they've broken ground on a $349 million, 35,000-seat on-campus stadium, set to open in 2027.
"This place has no ceiling," Golesh said. "You could build whatever you want."
So far, he's built a program that conquered The Swamp. The Gators sang that cool Petty song, but the Bulls marched to their own tune and didn't back down.
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Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: South Florida, Alex Golesh become cool underdog after upsets
