USA Today: Head coach Jim Leavitt loving it at South Florida

[Jim Johnson]

Head coach Jim Leavitt loving it at South Florida

By Jon Saraceno, USA TODAY

TAMPA  One of the finest college football coaches you probably never heard of recalls being "pretty wild growing up" in nearby St. Petersburg. That was in the untamed '70s. There was the beach, girls and …

Well, you know.

Then, life began to transform for Jim Leavitt.

"As I got older," he says, "I loved academia."

He easily could have ended up Dr. Leavitt, sports psychologist. Or with a career as a beachside hotelier. Perhaps even a Lutheran minister, as his brother did.

Instead, at 38, as he considered leaving the profession he loved, he became head coach at South Florida. A dozen years after he led the charge for the nascent program, the Bulls popped up in both top-25 polls, as powerhouses Miami and Florida State have vanished.

Two weeks ago, the Bulls (2-0) upset Auburn on the road, 26-23 in OT. Saturday, they welcome lightly regarded North Carolina into Raymond James Stadium, even as Leavitt preaches not to look ahead to next weekend's Big East biggie  West Virginia.

"We've only built the foundation," Leavitt cautions. "But the foundation is rock, not sand. What we do on this rock is going to be interesting. Really, the hardest part is now. The hardest part is making sure I keep things in perspective, which is very difficult."

Beginning in 2009, the Bulls play the Hurricanes five seasons in a row. They play Florida in 2016. A year ago, they stunned the Mountaineers (and Louisville the year before), thereby mitigating their growing pains.

That includes seeking victories in the classroom. But in the NCAA Academic Progress Rate data released last spring, the South Florida football team posted a 910, lowest among the Big East's football teams, lower than the national average for Division I-A football programs (934) and lower than the University of Central Florida (928), the Bulls' main recruiting competition.

"We're signing players similar to what we have all along, to be honest," Leavitt says. "A lot of top players listen to us. Signing them is still some work. We work hard on players receiving degrees  it doesn't have to be a (jock) stereotype. But a lot of kids come from fatherless homes. That's the biggest change I've seen the last 15 years. I have a lot of players who don't have a mom or a dad. Developing discipline is hard work."

For decades, South Florida was staunchly anti-sports. By 1991, a group of faculty, students and alumni convened to ascertain the viability of creating a football program. Leavitt was interviewed by some skeptical deans. In 1997, USF finally fielded a football team.

"I've been through three presidents, three athletic directors, three logos," Leavitt says with a raspy laugh.

Long before the phrase "student-athlete" was in vogue, he was the epitome of it. Leavitt not only lettered in two sports at Missouri (football, baseball), he was a man of letters. He finished with a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in counseling.

While defensive coordinator at Division II Morningside (Iowa) College in the mid-1980s, he once was assigned to drive Tom Osborne to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes function. He took a longer route so he could pick the brain of the Nebraska coach and Ph.D. because, in his late 20s, Leavitt was wavering on coaching. By the time Hayden Fry gave him a graduate assistant position at Iowa in 1989, he was working on his dissertation. "I wrote three chapters. I was doing my research when I took the job at Kansas State."

Leavitt walks to his desk and pulls out a manila folder containing an unfinished 40-page typewritten report: "Religious Orientation and Burnout, An Investigation of Intercollegiate Division I Football Coaches."

"I was fascinated by it," he says.

But still spellbound by coaching.

Leavitt remained on Bill Snyder's Wildcats staff from 1990 to 1995, the last four seasons as co-defensive coordinator with Bob Stoops, now at Oklahoma. Just before South Florida hired him, he was ready to get out of coaching for good because, as he says, "I didn't want to wake up one day and be a 70-year-old assistant."

He has used his educational background in psychology as a coach but ultimately learned that the best players are self-motivated. Relying on visualization techniques, and the like, only go so far. While doing post-graduate research, he once showed a volleyball team a motivational video before it played a match.

"They were fired up. Then they got killed," he says.

Then there was the time, while coaching at Dubuque University, Leavitt delivered rousing oratory during halftime of a playoff game. "Afterward, a player comes up and says, 'Coach, that was the best speech I ever heard.' I remember thinking one thing:

" 'Yeah, but what good did it do?' "

With that, Leavitt chuckles. And leaves for a meeting to figure out how to make sure he has an infinitely more blessed Saturday than the Tar Heels' Butch Davis.

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