The Big Four?

• Promote This Article
•  Share on Facebook
•  Share on Digg
•  Share on Reddit
•   Save to del.icio.us
•  Stumble It!

For anyone who follows college football in Florida, the idea of “The Big Three” is held as a fact.  As the story goes, Florida, Florida State, and Miami are “The Big Three” schools in the state of Florida, holding a mythical and factual edge over the other football playing schools in the state.  Long the flag bearers of the state when it came to football, Miami has five national championships, Florida has three, and Florida State has two.  The other schools, most notably UCF and USF, have no national championships between them.

But, in recent years, “The Big Three” have fallen on hard times.  Florida suffered during the Ron Zook years but has since rebounded nicely under superstar head coach Urban Meyer.  Miami missed a bowl just two years ago and hasn’t been nationally relevant since their 2003 National Championship Game loss to Ohio State, and Florida State has been hit by NCAA punishments and has become a shadow of the once dominant program that ruled the state in the late 1990s.  Aside from Florida in the last few years, “The Big Three” have been anything but.

So what is the point of writing that?  It is to examine how strong of a hold “The Big Three” have over college football in the state of Florida.  Can they be supplanted by another program in the state or could we even see a future “Big Four?” 

That is where the USF Bulls come in.  A school with the second largest enrollment in the state (behind only Florida) and with a large alumni base and a large potential market in Tampa, USF has always struggled to attract fans to Raymond James Stadium (also the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).  In 2007, USF made waves by riding a big win over Auburn all the way to the #2 team in America before falling off and ending in the Sun Bowl, where they were destroyed by Oregon.  Last year the Bulls weren’t stellar either, limping home to a berth in the St. Petersburg Bowl against Memphis.

Certainly the Bulls have struggled lately, perhaps it’s that a program that is this young (they only began playing football in 1997) still has some growing pains to deal with.  The Bulls have only had one head coach in Jim Leavitt, and perhaps there is a need for a change.  Whatever it is, though, the Bulls seem primed to make the jump from just another school to join the pantheon of college football in Florida by either supplanting Miami or Florida State from “The Big Three” or forcing their way through the glass ceiling to form “The Big Four.” 

The Bulls have plenty of opportunities to prove themselves, too.  They have an annual home-and-home game against Miami beginning this year.  They have Florida State on the schedule this year and Florida on the schedule next year.  If they can begin to get some key wins (like that win against Auburn in 2007) the fans will come as well.  One thing that anyone can tell you about Tampa is that the fans will come if the team wins.  If USF can build a consistent winner and challenge the power schools in the state on an annual basis (and they have good shots against Florida State and Miami this year) the fans and the donations will come in quicker than anyone could imagine.

That is the Bulls’ key to success.  They have to keep winning.  The Lightning and the Buccaneers have both proven that fans will come if the team is winning but also that fans will stay away if that team goes through a rough patch.  But how to hold onto those fans, then, in USF’s case?  You can’t count on fans to be there every year as there is always the chance for that rough patch and that makes it very hard to match a school like Florida that has such a large and consistent booster base.  That’s where the large enrollment comes in.  With over 48,000 students now in the USF system (it features several campuses), USF has a large market that can be tapped.  With most of those students staying in the area, too, USF can keep building a fan base.

After a few generations, USF can become entrenched in families.  It has not had the ability to do that, yet, as the school has always been forced to cut into long held family ties with the other big schools in the state.  It’s just a matter of time before USF can start creating their own family ties and that will only help the Bulls that much more.

So, no, the Bulls probably won’t win a national title in the next several years, although a Big East championship is certainly in the reach this coming year and, with that, the Bulls first BCS bowl game.  But, when someone asks you the team who most people don’t think of who could make some serious national waves in the next several years, look no farther than the USF Bulls.

They are a team in a fertile recruiting area, with a nice facility, a coach who loves the school, a huge market (for fans and television), and also more than enough students to start getting a large booster base. 

As much as I hate to say it as a Gator fan, USF is a program that is on the rise and could break through the glass ceiling and create “The Big Four” in Florida.