|
The voice of USF Athletics, Jim Louk, will routinely put down his radio headset and pick up the pen to share his perspective on the history of USF Athletics.
Louk has been broadcasting games for 27 years and is the resident historian in the Athletics Department hallways... So this week he remembers the first moments in USF football history with Happy 15th Birthday, USF Football.
Pinning down the birthday of USF football is pretty subjective. There were a lot of key dates, and more than a few that could be considered “the beginning”. This is being published on Sept. 15 though, so I'm getting out the birthday candles.
There were multiple stops and starts for USF football in the early days, with some efforts to begin a program dating back as far as 1980.
It began to get serious in October 1991 when an on campus group met to discuss the feasibility of starting football. Even then, though, not many of us would have predicted we'd be on the field for real in just six years.
The feasibility study group gave a thumbs up on April 2, 1992.
The Athletics Council signed off on their recommendation on Dec. 3, 1992 and on June 28, 1995, USF announced it had achieved a self imposed $5 million dollar fundraising goal.
Season ticket sales, or at least season ticket reservations, were moving along as well. The very first Bulls football advertisement USF athletics created was a newspaper ad instructing Bulls fans to “Stop Dreaming” and start acting by getting a season ticket deposit in. Believe it or not that ad ran in a local newspaper way back in 1993, nearly four years before the Bulls took the field.
How about that helmet in the ad? We were guessing on a lot of things then.
The look had changed by 1994, when we had a tough looking bull at the center of a “Footbull” campaign.
The first public scrimmage is a key date, also. On September 6, 1996, the Bulls ran out onto a makeshift football field at the USF Soccer Stadium for a practice in front of more than 5,000 fans. And of course exactly one year later on September 6, 1997 was the inaugural game at Tampa Stadium, as good a date as any to mark day one of the program.
So there are some of your choices for the birthday of USF Football. You could make a good argument for any of them, and probably a few more.
I'm taking September 15, 1995.
On that day, USF Football was truly born, right on campus.
The UCF campus.
Of all the places, right?
That was the day a group of Bulls officials went before the Board of Regents in Orlando to ask for final and official permission to start a football program.
Although it was far from the first presentation made, if everything went right, it would be the last made before the official start of the program.
Within the athletic department, the feeling by that time was of cautious optimism. There was a five million dollar financial war chest raised and in the bank. Orders for season tickets were strong. USF President Betty Castor and Athletic Director Paul Griffin had been to Tallahassee to lobby for the creation of the program. Questions had been asked and answered. Was there opposition? Absolutely. But it seemed like the momentum was in our favor.
All the signs pointed in the right direction, but few of us were resting easy.
Recently I asked USF Foundation Partnership for Athletics President Lee Roy Selmon, who was part of the contingent travelling to Orlando, to recall the big day.
“There was some resistance over adding another football program in the state,” he said. “So there was always that spot of uneasiness in the back of my mind.”
“How are you going to do this financially was the question we kept hearing,” said Selmon.
The strength of the USF Football movement was illustrated in the delegation that went to Orlando that day. Of course Castor, Griffin and Selmon were there. So were other department members and a cross section of business and community leaders. Fans were there too, and students, to show support for what they hoped would be the newest college football program in the nation.
USF Athletic Association president Tom Gerberding was there that day, making the drive to Orlando with staffer Mike Lewis.
“Everything sounded good, but we weren't sure what was going to happen,” Gerberding recalls. “After the vote there was such relief.”
The painstaking preparation taken over the years by USF leadership was quickly evident. As important and as groundbreaking as the day was, it was also somewhat routine.
There was only one dissenting vote.
The Bulls had a football program.
Selmon says the ride back to Tampa didn't really include the “what's the first thing we ought to do now” discussions that you might expect.
“We were cherishing the moment. We had a little relaxed period…the push had been to get the approval done.”
It was such a relaxing period that they waited all the way until the next morning to start the head coach search.
What lay ahead was just under two years of work to get the team on the field, with plenty of special memories in our future; ones that may now obscure the importance of that September day in front of the Board of Regents.
For Selmon, that's not the case.
“It was the culmination of the efforts of so many people. That's what I remember and value from that day,” Selmon said.
So, happy birthday USF football.
Let's hope the next 15 years are as much fun as the first 15 have been.
GO BULLS!
|
