A defining trait of Alex Golesh’s tenure as USF’s head football coach is his relentless recruiting drive. We know the sorry state of the team when Golesh was hired in December 2022, but as he restocks what was a bare cupboard he has made the Bulls relevant again on the recruiting trail.
On3.com reported that Golesh and offensive coordinator Joel Gordon have targeted rising senior quarterback Stephen Cannon of Benedictine Military School in Savannah, Ga. for their 2026 class.
A sentence in Mike Singer’s On3 story tells you much about how Golesh and his staff operate.
He wrote, “USF offered Cannon when he only had 14 varsity passes to his name.”
USF head coach @CoachGolesh and offensive coordinator @CoachJGordo had a big visit with a key 2026 QB target on Monday 👀🤘
— Mike Singer (@MikeTSinger) January 7, 2025
Intel: https://t.co/iuRtwLc7RK pic.twitter.com/l8ElcIbMlK
Cannon sat behind five-star quarterback Luke Kromenhoek until he became the starter last year.
The Bulls ended last season with four quarterbacks on their roster and incoming St. Augustine High QB Locklan Hewlett will be the fifth. That might seem like a crowded quarterback room, but in today’s NIL world, that room can thin out quickly.
Byrum Brown’s injury against Tulane put a spotlight on why depth at that position is vital. When Izzy Carter entered the transfer portal after the regular season ended, that magnified the situation even more.
That brings us back to Golesh and his staff.
USF has had six head coaches in its history, and the peaks and valleys of the program were directly related to recruiting.
The Bulls have had 30 players drafted by the NFL, and founding coach Jim Leavitt and his staff recruited 22 of them.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Deadrin Senat were the last Bulls drafted, and that was in 2018.
Get the picture?
Besides his go-go-go approach to recruiting, one thing I like about Golesh is the way competes for players against power conference schools. He makes players that every program covets tell him no, and not all of them do.
Four-star tight end Jonathan Echols, for instance, originally committed to Tennessee but flipped to the Bulls. Incoming freshman wide receiver Christian Neptune chose USF despite multiple offers from power conference schools.
Golesh continually says he was hired to build a program and not just a team. While the portal is a tool to fill a specific need here and there, you can’t build a program that way. Since arriving at USF, Golesh’s three recruiting classes have been highly ranked among Group of 5 programs, and even ahead of some power conference schools.
While some players have hit the portal, many more have stayed. That bodes well for next season and beyond.