When the power of persuasion doesn’t work, sometimes all it takes to get something important rolling is a not-too-subtle shove.
That’s what USF trustee board chair Will Weatherford did to kick-start one of the most important projects in school history. Armed with nothing more than a sense that an on-campus stadium was vital to the football program, Weatherford surprised everyone at the groundbreaking for the Indoor Performance Facility in 2021.
"Bulls Nation deserves to have a stadium on this campus,'' Weatherford said. "There's a renowned author named Victor Hugo who once said, 'There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.' Our time has come.
"These student-athletes, our 50,000 students, the alumni, faculty and administration, they all deserve a stadium on this campus. I'm here to tell you we're going to do it.”
And so they are.
The trustees approved a revised plan that increased the cost to $348.5 million. The original cost was $340 million. The new cost includes multiple upgrades to the facility.
You’ll soon start seeing construction cranes as the project approaches 2027 completion.
We can get into the bells and whistles later, but first let’s just deeply inhale what’s happening. For decades, USF athletics lacked cohesion and vision.
When the football program was launched in 1997, leaders didn’t even consider building an on-campus stadium. Instead, they believed that playing in the stadium for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave them the aura of a big-time program.
While it’s true that USF sometimes drew large crowds at home, most of the time at least half the seats were empty. When the program fell on hard times, crowds dwindled to an embarrassing level.
When the Bulls played on TV, the airwaves reinforced the image of a program in dismal shape.
It took leadership to change that.
Under Weatherford, President Rhea Law, and VP for Athletics Michael Kelly, USF began to make substantial investments in athletics. There had never been anything like that at USF.
Every program was upgraded.
Programs like cross country, track and field, and others, were considered collateral damage. They received new marching orders and resources. Facilities were brought into the modern age.
The only thing missing was the stadium.
When Willie Taggart was having success, I remember writing for The Tampa Tribune that USF needed to build a stadium.
When Charlie Strong was hired after Taggart left for Oregon, he matter-of-factly mentioned that, oh yeah, we’re getting a stadium.
But nothing happened until Weatherford spoke up. He was short on details that day but long on vision. And as a former Speaker of the Florida House, he knew how to get this thing across the finish line.
The first game in the new digs will be against Louisville. It would be, to use the language of head football coach Alex Golesh, “really cool” if that was USF’s first game as a member of a power conference. It's OK to dream.
A few weeks ago, The Athletic published a detailed story about why construction hadn’t begun even though the groundbreaking was last fall. I responded with a piece here saying delays in massive projects like this are normal, and everyone should just chill while they worked out the final financial details.
It’s happening, everyone.
And all it took was a shove to get it started.