Quote:Bob Ford | Intruder joins BCS's cozy table
South Fla. becomes a title threat.
By Bob Ford
Inquirer Columnist

The first edition of this season's Bowl Championship Series standings is out and, nestled near the top among all the usual suspects, you can find the University of South Florida.
Finding USF isn't always that easy, even with the aid of a map of Florida. And finding the Bulls among the elite of college football is somewhat surprising, since they started playing football at USF about a week ago Thursday.

But the computer doesn't lie (that's the next stage of programming), and South Florida is ranked second in the BCS standings, just behind Ohio State. Theoretically, if the 7-0 Buckeyes and the 6-0 Bulls win the remainder of their games, those teams would meet Jan. 7 at the Louisiana Superdome for the national championship. USF continues its trek toward that goal tomorrow night at Rutgers.

The theory of the eventual championship meeting doesn't take into account the stodgy human element in the process, those who vote in the weekly polls. Some of those folks, particularly the coaching traditionalists, might look at one-loss teams such as Louisiana State, Oklahoma, Cal, Oregon and Southern Cal and find one or all more worthy than an upstart Big East program.

The voters could do some serious fudging, and things could get even messier than usual for the BCS mafia during its annual money grab.

Those are worries for later in the season, however. For the moment, it is enough to merely ask the question: the University of South Florida?

The first answer is "Tampa," which, geography majors will note, is closer to Florida's northern border than to its watery southern tip. At the time the school was founded in the mid-1950s, though, it was the southernmost state university, and that's the reason for the name. Sunshine State University and Citrus State University were also considered for the little school built on the abandoned World War II-era airstrip, so, all things considered, it could have been worse.

One thing South Florida isn't these days, by the way, is little. USF is the ninth-largest university in the country, with over 40,000 enrolled students spread over four campuses.

It is, however, new to the world of big-time athletics. The Bulls played their first football game in 1997 and didn't graduate to Division I-A until 2001. Among the legends of USF's humble beginnings is that head coach Jim Leavitt bought the program's first washer and dryer out of his own pocket and once had his assistants shine their car headlights onto the practice field so the team could work out at night.

These are nice stories, and might also be true, even the one about the VCR that didn't have a remote control, making the coaches get up every time they wanted to look at a play again. Leavitt, who is still the coach, earned $75,000 his first year and makes $1 million a year now, having turned down overtures from Alabama and Kansas State.

South Florida got to where it is because of some luck, a lot of effort, and, according to some snarky observers, because of a flexible enrollment policy. Alabama coach Nick Saban told a Birmingham newspaper that six of USF's defensive starters would have gone to either Florida or Florida State, but couldn't get in.

"Who's he, making a statement like that?" Leavitt said angrily, which is a pretty good point itself.

"Why that bothers me is that it takes a hit at the credibility of our program, that we can't do it with just hard work," Leavitt told reporters. "There always has to be some reason. That is the heart and soul of our program, so he's attacking the heart and soul."

We'll leave aside for now the pristine academic tradition of Alabama football - not to mention football at Florida and Florida State - and look at the luck component that got USF ahead of those schools.

When the Big East suffered the defections of Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech - and was too darn proud to invite Temple back - it went looking for new schools to join the conference.

According to those involved in the decision-making process, one of the choices came down to taking either South Florida or Central Florida. The schools were about even in football, but USF had stronger programs in some other sports. The Bulls were invited, and they jumped from Conference USA to the Big East for the 2005 season, perhaps because their women's soccer team was better than UCF's. Who knows?

And now the Bulls - fresh from pounding Central Florida, 64-12, on Saturday, by the way - are in line for the national championship game.

They are a good team, to be sure. The Bulls won at Auburn this year and beat West Virginia. The rest of their schedule contains only one team ranked in the top 25 by the BCS (Cincinnati, at No. 23), but you could say the same about Ohio State, too. (The Buckeyes will face Michigan, No. 25.)

Welcome to the new, microwavable world of big-time football. Land a conference slot, get some players, stir vigorously, and wait for the BCS to find you. After all these 11 seasons, the University of South Florida has been found.

In Tampa, as it turns out.