As USF ends spring football practice, Brian Hartline focuses on building consistency

By any measure, new USF football coach Brian Hartline and his staff assembled one of the best -- if not THE best -- Transfer Portal classes among non-Power Conference schools.

As USF wraps up Hartline's first spring practice, it is worth wondering how it all came together. Practically everything was new. It was a new coaching staff that had to learn to work together. There were 41 new players that joined the Bulls through the Transfer Portal.

For those who stayed from last year, there was new terminology to learn and teammates' names to learn. So the question begs, what formula did Hartline and his staff use to decide which players they wanted to be a part of USF football?

Talent was important, of course, but an individual's makeup mattered greatly, too.

"We gotta give ourselves a great chance by getting the right kind of people in the building. 
You know, nothing's ever going to be perfect, but I think that the consistency of my message, the consistency of how we act as coaches, the consistency of our expectations, not accommodating too much, and, you know, understanding what we would talk about a lot," he said.

"Like, the game doesn't care. We care as individual, but once you get between those those white lines, game doesn't care. The game only cares about your prep, only cares about your effort. It only cares about what you do from play to play, right?"

After Sunday's spring game exhibition at Corbett Stadium, the thoughts turn to preparation for training camp in August. That's when many position battles will be won, and those decisions could go deep into camp.

There will be considerable focus on which quarterback will succeed Byrum Brown. It appears to be a two-man race between LSU transfer Michael Van Buren and Mississippi State transfer Luke Kromenhoek.

But a name to keep an eye on is running back D.J. Crowther, a transfer from Dartmouth.

"DJ. has done a good job. I think that running back room as a group has done a good job. And I think that we're going to be very blessed to have a handful of guys that we can rely on in that room for sure, at least early on. DJ. being one of them," Hartline said.

"He's a really good downhill back, smart, never really gets flustered, not an emotional guy, and he's very centered -- makes a mistake, moves on. He's very mature from a mentality standpoint. He's physical. He can be a short yardage back. He's doing a really good job of building his basis of trust and competitive excellence and making the play when the ball is in his hands. The more and more he can keep building that, the more and more I'm sure the team will continue to trust him as well."

Obviously, this will be a big step up in competition compared to the Ivy League, and Crowther understands why people might have questions.

"I feel like a lot of people are curious about at the end of the day, it's just football, you know what I'm saying? You got to put in the work, you put in the work, work will pay off," he said.

He was very productive last season at Dartmouth, running for 929 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also caught 16 passes for 120 yards. He's a straight-ahead runner with good speed, and at 5-foot-10 and 215 pounds, he has the size to perhaps make a difference for the Bulls.

"I really do everything trying to attack the defense vertically, get downhill, and not let the first man bring you down," he said.

So, with this being Hartline's first spring as a head coach, what stood out most to him about the job?

"There's just so many things that you have to work through and experience, and you just never have enough time. That's probably the biggest thing. So, but being organized, making sure we attack it to where we're checking boxes and putting ourselves in situations has been very purposeful," he said.

"I think it's been good. But at this point, frankly, I we can't do stuff enough. So I'm probably ultra paranoid more than anything else. "

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