TAMPA, Fla. — The USF football program starts a new chapter with a new head coach as they open the regular season this weekend.
Bulls first-year head coach Alex Golesh will run onto the field for the first time as a head coach. He has a lengthy to-do list as he and his staff try to rebuild a program that has only one FBS win in the past three seasons.
One thing that's not on that list is a special pregame speech before Saturday's kickoff at Western Kentucky.
"If it’s going to come down to our pregame speech, we have bigger problems at that point," Golesh said at his weekly news conference. "I think at the end of the day, the guys know the expectation. The guys know what our standard is. I don’t know what I could tell them to get them going that they don’t already know."
Golesh said he and his staff have to reteach the players what it's like to be part of a Division One program, and the players are responding.
"They enjoy working. They enjoy the practice. They enjoy the competition. I don’t know that I ever doubted it. I just didn’t know," Golesh explained. "Every time you go out to practice, and you give the guys a competitive situation, they go attack it."
No one has to worry about the players being ready to compete against somebody other than their teammates, especially after they spent an entire offseason laying a new foundation.
"I’m so excited. Words can’t even describe how I’m feeling right now," said offensive lineman Donovan Jennings. "We put in so much work for this opportunity coming up right here. You couldn’t ask for a more ready team, a more hungry team and a more humble team. We’re just ready to get after it and attack this Saturday."
The Bulls upperclassmen haven't tasted victory very much during their careers. They say they've changed their entire philosophy. They used to believe they could win. Now they expect to win.
"We’re going in with the mindset that we expect to win this game," defensive back Aamaris Brown said confidently. "We’re not going in thinking we hope we can win this game, we believe we can do it. No. We’re going in there like, 'We’re going to go win that game.'”
USF kicks off at Western Kentucky Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The game will be televised on the CBS Sports Network.
