USF begins the pursuit for its first football conference title Saturday at Tulane

It’s mind-boggling that USF has never won a conference championship in football. The Bulls have been playing since 1997, had multiple good teams, and have appeared in the national rankings.

Despite living in one of the nation’s top states for high school football talent, they never found their way to the top of Conference USA, the Big East, or their current home in the American Athletic Conference.

They had second-place finishes in their AAC division a couple of times during the Quinton Flowers era, but that’s the high-water mark.

But hope springs eternal, which brings us to Saturday’s game at Tulane. It’s the first conference game for the Bulls this season, and we’ll have a good idea afterward if this could be the year that USF earns that elusive first championship.

“It’s conference play, time to go, and I think they'll be excited," Bulls coach Alex Golesh said. "They'll be ready. And I am certainly excited to start conference play.”

Tulane is 2-2, as is USF.

The Green Wave beat two lesser non-conference programs but lost to a pair of “name” teams – Kansas State and Oklahoma. The Bulls have taken a similar path this season.

“They played some really good football teams. They've had to battle and have played high-level football,” Golesh said. “They are really sound in what they do on both sides of the ball.”

Tulane brought in Jon Sumrall as head coach after Willie Fritz left to coach the University of Houston team. Before taking the job, Sumrall led Troy to a 23-4 record, two Sun Belt Conference championships, and a pair of double-digit winning streaks

“Four games into their (season), you could tell they've got an identity on all three sides of the ball,” Golesh said. “That's a well-coached football team. I have a lot of respect for that staff, and certainly Jon and what he's been able to build in four games.”

What is USF’s identity after four games?

It’s hard to tell.

“So, who are we? What are we? I think at our best, we're a really, really good football team that operates at a high level. At our worst, it doesn't look good,” Golesh said.

In last Saturday’s 50-15 loss to 8th-ranked Miami, we saw both sides of what Golesh meant. Twice in the first half, USF had the lead – the first time Miami trailed all season.

But then the Bulls surrendered a long touchdown pass near the end of the half, and things fell apart from there. Miami outscored the Bulls 28-0 in the second half.

“And so when you're building, when you're trying to change a complete roster, culture, expectations, standards of everything that's going on, you go through moments like that,” Golesh said.

“And as much as it sucks and as much as you want to be there ready for that moment, obviously we weren't ready for that moment. And that falls completely 100% on me and nobody else in terms of making sure that we're ready for that moment.”

The Tulane game represents another “moment” for the Bulls. To go on the road and beat a team picked ahead of them in the preseason conference poll would be a program-changing event. It would show they can shake off the disappointment of Miami and beat a talented team expected to contend for the AAC championship.

“We try not to focus on what happened last week. We're coming into conference play, so right now, we're just focused on Tulane,” defensive lineman Decarius Hawthorne said.

“It was a tough loss, of course, but we went over the film, studied what we messed up on and what we need to get better at, and then we just keep trucking forward.”