USF: The Program that Almost Was

Yeah it nearly sounds like a 30 for 30 topic but I figured this could be an interesting discussion. Has anyone ever seen a program climb out of obscurity, appear to be on the "cusp", and then completely collapse?

Jim Leavitt was their first ever coach in 1997. In his final 4 seasons he had 34 wins for the Bulls scoring wins against WVU, @UNC, NC St., @AU, and @FSU. If I recall correctly they were steady in the polls for a while and climbed up pretty high at times.

So Leavitt gets canned. I'm not sure how the USF fans felt about the Skip Holtz hire but I didn't think it was a bad hire considering Skip's resume. ECU had won 3 games in it's previous 2 seasons before Skip. By Skip's 3rd and 4th seasons (his last 2) ECU won 18 games and 2 CUSA titles. So it seemed to make sense to me that he could work with an "up and coming program"

In his first season Skip went 8-5, the same record of Leavitt's last season. However in Skip's last 2 seasons the Bulls went 5-7 and then sank down to 3-9 losing to teams like Ball St. and Temple. Skip was let go and their new coach, Willie Taggart, went 2-10 in his first season last year.

So what the hell happened? Did their recruiting really fall of that much because of Leavitt's departure?

As deep as the state of FL is has USF just been getting boxed out too much? UF is always talented, FSU has reemerged, UCF has won 10+ games in 3/4 seasons, nearby 'Bama and AU are rotating title game appearances, SC and Clemson have been top 10 programs the last 3 years and both love to get into that FL talent pool, etc.