No Bull - University of South Florida

The University of South Florida Bulls are currently ranked second in the BCS football standings. Halfway through a turbulent college football season, the little known Bulls of the Big East Conference are undefeated and pointing towards a national Bowl Championship Series January game. The commuter college located in Tampa-St. Pete has come from literally nowhere to be counted as one of the top teams in college sports' prestige athletic division. Kudos to the school's administration, athletic department, football staff, and top notch players. Yet one must wonder how such an unglamorous, ordinary, state funded school is being listed with the icons of a sport so steeped in history and legend. Beyond starting a football program in the 1990's, how did USF gain admittance to the renowned Division One Big East Conference. Further, with most top Florida high school athletes opting for Florida, Florida State, and Miami, how did the school round up enough high caliber graduates to join their program. In an era when such stellar football powerhouses such as Notre Dame and Stanford are struggling along, here comes USF (and Rutgers, Louisville, Cincinnati, etc.) into the void. Part of the answer might lie in the unquenchable thirst for big time football conferences to move their membership into heavily populated areas for television revenue. So when the Atlantic Coast Conference raids the Big East for Boston College and Virginia Tech, the Big East responds by taking Louisville and Cincinnati from the lesser Conference USA. Universities are throwing away time honored rivalries and regional affiliations as they chase ever bigger bucks. Since Miami left the Big East, the Conference wanted to keep an imprint in population rich Florida and replaced the Hurricanes with the now successful Bulls. Hoping to gain national prominence through sports, USF has poured the requisite amount of money into a nascent program that is now astounding the college world. Having broken the mold as an "expansion franchise" there should be little doubt that other schools will follow suit and throw money into a sport that seems to be following a pot of gold that continues to runneth over.