When Jose Fernandez became USF's women's basketball head coach — 25 seasons ago — the world was different.

USF's fledgling football program was housed in trailers. Michael Kelly, president of the Super Bowl 35 Host Committee, was preparing to stage the NFL's Big Game in Tampa Bay. Alex Golesh was a high-school sophomore in Ohio. Tom Brady was a third-string NFL rookie.

The Internet was in its infancy. Maybe you had a cell phone, but you probably didn't know how to text.

Photographer Michael J. Le Brecht took his first portrait of a spectacular high-school basketball player, setting the stage for his big break some 18 months later, a Sports Illustrated cover shot ("The Chosen One'') of the hoops phenom. The player's name was LeBron James.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, a middle-schooler named Taylor Swift began learning to play the guitar.

Romi Levy and Sammie Puisis were in diapers. The rest of the current USF women's basketball players had not yet been born.

At the movie theaters, "Love & Basketball'' was nearing the end of a successful run.

That screenplay could've been the story of Fernandez, then a cocksure, driven, hoops-crazy assistant coach just shy of his 29th birthday. His love of basketball had become an obsession. He was about to get "the biggest break of my life,'' ascending to the top spot with the USF women's program, which had registered only one winning league record in 16 seasons.

Greatness was not predicted — or expected.

A quarter-century later, Fernandez has authored a tale so improbable, it probably would've been rejected by Hollywood.

"Plain and simple, Jose Fernandez is a winner,'' said former USF All-American Courtney Williams, a WNBA All-Star. "He built something really good, something that lasted.''

USF's entire home schedule — particularly Thursday night's home game against the SEC's Vanderbilt Commodores — is a sentimental silver salute to Fernandez's 25 seasons with the Bulls.

Where do you start? Fernandez's teams have nine NCAA Tournament appearances (eight in the past 12 seasons). There were 19 victories against top 25-ranked teams, including a last-second triumph against No. 7 Stanford squad in 2021, when the Cardinals were the defending national champions. In 2009, Fernandez's Bulls, snubbed by the NCAA selection committee, won the WNIT championship.

He has recruited and coached players from over 22 different countries and 20 former Bulls are playing professionally worldwide. He has coached 40 all-conference players, two American Athletic Conference Players of the Year, two All-Americans, three members of the USF Athletic Hall of Fame and seven WNBA draft picks.

He's a two-time AAC Coach of the Year and his teams have captured league championships in both the regular season and conference tournament. He won a gold medal with USA Basketball's Under-18 National Team in the 2024 FIBA AmeriCup. This season, he is the Women's Basketball Coaches Association Vice President/President-Elect.

"He's the face of all that is good about USF athletics,'' Bulls volleyball coach Jolene Shepardson said.

But these days, how do 25 years at one place even happen? During Fernandez's tenure, there have been three USF presidents, five athletic directors and eight men's basketball head coaches (two interim).

"I don't want to say I've survived and overcome, but there have been some people I've had to deal with that I simply said, 'I will outlive them,' '' Fernandez said with a smile. "When you come in as a coach, you're going to get the kids excited and fired up to play for you. You sell your vision. You win. Then, typically, after the fourth year, you get the next job. You do the same thing there. After the third or fourth year, you go to another job. I haven't taken the typical path because USF is a special place.

"I've been most proud of sustaining success. It's hard. Look, I know I can coach. I can diagram plays. I can plan a practice. I think I make good in-game adjustments. But all of that is about 20-percent of my job. I'm the general manager of the organization, dealing with cost of attendance, Alston money, NIL, collectives, fundraising, managing the staff, recruiting, boosters, the game-day experience, all of that.

"I have changed tremendously in 25 years. I've definitely calmed down. I'm better at communicating with players and staff.''

But the one thing that hasn't changed?

"Everything about this game, being in the gym, the thrill of a big win, getting the team to play together,'' Fernandez said. "Man, I love basketball. I always have.''

The Path To Coaching

Julia Hackney, Fernandez's mother, said her son's career path was not surprising.

"I can't ever remember a time in his whole life when he didn't want to coach basketball,'' she said.

Fernandez grew up in Miami, living in the shadow of the Orange Bowl stadium, where the family made extra money by parking the cars of Dolphins and Hurricanes fans in their yard. He had Cuban and Spanish grandparents. His mother taught art and worked two jobs. His father wasn't around.

The rhythm of Fernandez's life was defined by a bouncing ball. He couldn't get enough of it. He worshiped the Boston Celtics and Larry Bird. At Southwest Miami Senior High School, where the student population was 98-percent Hispanic, the 5-foot-8 Fernandez mostly warmed the bench. When his academics slipped as a junior, he was dismissed from the team, but he regained his spot during senior tryouts.

"As a senior, I'd say Jose was our seventh man or eighth man,'' said Fernandez's high-school coach, Tom Moore. "He could shoot. Passable skills. He was skinny. As a 10th-grader, he could've passed for a sixth-grader. He got knocked down a lot. But he always got up for more.''

Fernandez idolized Moore, the man he wanted to become. Moore taught him toughness and how you never give up on kids, who often just need structure, accountability and the knowledge that someone truly cares.

As a senior, Fernandez was taken to the 1989 NCAA Men's Final Four in Seattle by Moore and Chuck Fieldson, another coach and a long-time neighbor. Fernandez accompanied them to coaching clinics, taking notes and asking questions.

"Jose worked hard and paid attention to details,'' Moore said. "He saw the game differently than most and just loved it. I thought he had a chance.''

Fernandez began as a student assistant coach at Miami-Dade Community College Kendall men's program, working with another coaching mentor, Cesar Odio, who he followed to Barry University.

For three seasons, he coached at the all-girls Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, a Miami parochial school with no basketball pedigree. His teams were 83-16. In the second year, Lourdes reached the Class 5A state final. His dozen players, mostly Cuban-Americans, worked the system to perfection.

Even then, Frank Alfonso, a former Miami-Dade player who served as Fernandez's assistant, remembers a driven head coach who couldn't unwind during post-game dinners. At the restaurant table, Fernandez would break out the sugar packets, the pink ones against the white ones, and ruminate about five-on-five situations.

"I've never seen such a mindset,'' Alfonso said. "Back then, I knew he would be great.''

He was headed back to Barry for a women's coaching position when USF coach Jerry Ann Winters reached out about a recruiting coordinator job. Winters heard about Fernandez's hustle and connections. He nearly passed on the Bulls, but took the advice of a coaching friend who said, "You'd be crazy not to go to USF.''

Seven months later, Winters was dismissed and Fernandez was elevated to head coach.

What had he inherited?

"USF had not won in women's basketball — in practically ever,'' Fernandez said. "They played some games at the Sun Dome, some games at the Corral. There was no admission to the games, so there was no following, no season-ticket holders.

"What was the plan? Were we having women's basketball just to say we have women's basketball? I mean … nonsense. I knew we could win here. We had to roll up our sleeves and work. People probably wondered who was this crazy Cuban from Miami. But I knew — very clearly — the two things we had to do.''

Recruit players.

Win.

"If you don't win, you're going to get fired,'' Fernandez said. "It doesn't matter how your kids do academically or how good you fundraise. There are a lot of really nice head coaches, very good people, who are unemployed. So I just had to go to work.''

More Than A Coach

When Fernandez was winding up his first decade at USF, when the Bulls were turning the corner toward perennial success, he hired Michele Woods-Baxter as assistant coach. They had mutual friends and she was attracted by his intensity, his energy and his "crazy good'' ability to develop players offensively.

Woods-Baxter, now the associate head coach, is in her 17th season at USF.

"I didn't expect it to work this way, but life happens, right?'' Woods-Baxter said. "I couldn't imagine a better head coach to work with. I've learned Jose is a brilliant basketball coach, obviously, but he's also a very sincere person, someone who cares. He's up-front with everything. He's a people person and he values great relationships. I've learned so much basketball from him, but I've also learned about working with people.

"The fans see this guy working on the court, sometimes with some emotion, and that's the image they have. But there are so many things about Jose that the fans never see.''

Former USF center Ezria Parsons began her college basketball career at Auburn.

"They (Auburn) put me in classes that didn't matter (academically),'' Parsons said. "Coach Fernandez said I was always welcome at USF and he would make sure I got my degree. He guaranteed it. So I transferred to USF.

"Well, there was trouble at home. I didn't want to play basketball whatsoever. I was done. Coach Fernandez wouldn't have it. His words stuck with me: 'I'll make sure you walk away with a degree.' There were times I didn't want to go to class or training. He motivated me. He talked real to me. He asked what would my family want?''

Midway through the 2005-06 season, which resulted in USF's first NCAA Tournament bid, Parsons asked Fernandez about traveling separately to a holiday tournament, the San Juan Shootout. That way, she could walk across the stage at graduation.

"I was the first person in my family to do that,'' Parsons said. "It meant everything. It meant the world. I flew down a couple of days later to join the team in Puerto Rico.

"Without Coach Fernandez, it never happens. This man was about more than what happened on the court. He actually did care about you.''

Fernandez's patient wife, Tonya, has long been accustomed to "just one more call'' taken over dinner or people pulling at her husband for a few minutes. When they met, she had no idea about the life ahead and what it meant to be a coach's wife. Now she would have it no other way.

"Sometimes, I'll look around the arena and my eyes get watery, looking at the program he has built,'' she said. "I also know that in his mind, the job is never finished.''

Shepardson, a USF volleyball player when Fernandez accepted the women's basketball job in 2000, remembers the early days, when victories were sparse. She also remembers the women's basketball players supporting the volleyball team and becoming a positive force around campus.

"I think Jose is the godfather of USF athletics,'' Shepardson said. "Before I took this job, before I even came for the interview, I called him up for advice. He has great passion for this place, but he also has emotional intelligence. He has a vision, but even more, he knows how to articulate that vision. He just understands the whole thing on a very deep level. Twenty-five years as a coach in one place is just amazing to me.''

Fernandez said when his coaching fire is extinguished, he'll know it's time to move on. He doesn't see that happening any time soon. But occasionally, he muses about a post-coaching life, maybe doing some television, working in an advisory position for the good of the game, living half the year at his Tampa lakeside home, the other half in a place like Spain or Portugal.

"Maybe I'd love it,'' Fernandez said. "Or maybe I'd drive myself crazy. Because there's probably nothing out there to replace the rewards and the purpose of being a coach. It's not a thing where you say, 'I'll get out of coaching by age blank.' It gets in your blood. It's who you are.''

Fernandez's sibling, Alex, a golf professional in Miami, refers to his older brother as a "miracle worker who made something out of nothing.'' Yet there's always another challenge.

The NCAA Women's Final Four will be staged at downtown Tampa's Amalie Arena. Can you imagine if USF got hot at the right time? But those are distant dreams. The reality is getting ready for Vanderbilt … and the game after that … and the game after that.

Fernandez said he loves chasing success.

"It's a lot different now than it was 25 seasons ago, when I walked in the door. People say, 'You've got to be realistic.' Well, what about being optimistic? What about not making excuses and outworking people? I'm the kind of guy who likes to accomplish things that haven't been accomplished before. That gets me fired up. This program was built on hard work and people … and we're still getting after it.''

Twenty-five seasons later, Jose Fernandez's fire still burns brightly. On the silver anniversary of an improbable head-coaching career, his approach remains solid gold.