Pundits are taking a "wait and see" approach to USF football this season

Believe it or not, we are in the window where USF football looks like the next big thing on the university's sports calendar.

The American Conference Football Kickoff and Media Days will be held July 23-24 in St. Petersburg, and that's only about six weeks away. It'll be a chance for new Bulls coach Brian Hartline to be center stage on a league-wide level for the first time as the head man.

You may ask why this event will be held in St. Petersburg. To me, it's just part of USF's wider strategy to market itself as Tampa Bay's team -- not just Tampa's. In a world of Gators, Seminoles, and Hurricanes, USF wants people -- at least in its home footprint -- to embrace the Bulls.

That becomes easier to do as the on-campus stadium nears completion for the 2027 season. Crowds of 35,000 at Raymond James Stadium -- the Bulls' home since their inception -- leaves TV to pan over a like number of empty seats. The same size crowd in their soon-to-be new home will show excited Bulls fans from all camera angles.

Game changer.

Well, let's amend that "excited fans" thing with a caveat. The Bulls will need to live up to their end of the bargain. That's where Hartline comes in.

The Bulls have been playing football since 1997 and have never won a championship in any of their leagues -- Conference USA, the Big East, or the American. They finished second a couple of times but could never get over the top.

Think of how electric it would be to end that drought this year and come into 2027's home opener with Louisville off an American Conference title and -- dare we think it -- a playoff berth.

The early prediction models don't line up in that direction.

College Football News projects an 8-4 record, which seems in line with many of the other sites. It calls for "almost certain wins" over Delaware State, FIU, Kent State, and UAB. The good news is that it doesn't predict any "likely losses."

Every other game on the schedule is rated a 50-50 tossup, including an early non-conference trip to Bowling Green of the MAC.

Writer Pete Fiutak of CFN took a deeper dive into what he expects from the Bulls.

After noting the success Alex Golesh had in three years, he writes, "In comes Brian Hartline, a young offensive coordinator star at Ohio State, and he's bringing over a fantastic coaching staff, a whopper of a transfer class, and the expectations and upside to do even more with the program.It might take a little bit to get there, though."

We liked that all the way up to the last sentence, but he makes a valid point. After so much turnover -- 41 players coming in through the Transfer Portal along with a mostly new staff -- there are bound to be some potholes along the way.

The Bulls are banking on a vastly improved defense to smooth out the ride. Remember the heartache last season when fourth-quarter defensive lapses cost the Bulls wins at Memphis and at Navy?

A potentially game-wrecking corps of transfer linebackers -- Grayson Howard (Florida), Michael Harris (Maryland), and Sam Robinson (Rutgers) will team with returnee Zavier Hamilton form a unit that could put a stop to those nightmare finishes of a year ago.

The offense -- likely led by quarterback Michael Van Buren -- should hold up its end of the bargain. So, yes, the potential is there for the Bulls to break through in the American at just the right time.

Bottom line?

"It's almost never the right call to assume a program will get better with a boatload of new transfers after losing all the stars in one big push, but there's a chance the Bulls are sound from the start.," Flutak wrote.

"It'll look different, and it might not always be as much fun as the USF style was under Golesh over the last few years, but there's no reason to shoot for anything less than the American Conference championship."

Sounds reasonable.

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