When Indiana became arguably the unlikeliest college football national champion last season, there was much said about the makeup of the Hoosiers' roster.
Head coach Curt Cignetti leaned heavily on older, more experienced players. He had 47 players between the ages of 22 and 25. Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, at age 22, was in that group.
The team Indiana beat in the national title game, Miami, was also stocked with veteran, experienced players. Quarterback Carson Beck was in his sixth year of college football at age 23.
USF's Brian Hartline saw the effect of that close up -- and it wasn't pretty. Indiana pinned OSU's first loss of the season on the Buckeyes in the Big Ten title game. A couple of weeks later, Miami went to Ohio Stadium and eliminated the Buckeys from the playoffs.
The saying goes that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em -- which Hartline has, sort of.
Hartline has put together a roster at USF heavy on experience, but he is not losing focus on the importance of high school recruiting.
The Bulls, who concluded spring practice last week, have 28 seniors/grad students. There are 13 redshirt seniors, nine graduate players, and six actual seniors. And 24 of those players came from power conference programs, including quarterbacks Michael Van Buren (LSU) and Luke Kromenhoek (Mississippi State).
They also have 14 redshirt juniors who will be entering their fourth year of college football.
This doesn't mean Hartline is writing off high school recruiting -- not at all.
"I am heavy on high school development, and high school recruiting. We would love to go out and try to attract the guys that we went on our football team. If we're not able to get them, for whatever reason, or they choose to go somewhere else, then we'll look to supplement otherwise (through the Transfer Portal)," he said.
"But right now, I think that we are trying to do a really good job building relationships (with high school players and coaches), identifying the right guys. guys in high school that know and are certain about what we can develop this place into, and we want those guys on our team."
To be fair, Hartline and his staff had no choice but to hit the portal hard this off-season because so much front-line talent left Tampa by the same way. USF added 41 players through the portal and didn't have much time to put a high school class together.
Judging by the overall reaction to how this team was put together, Bulls fans have a lot to look forward this fall. 247Sports ranked USF's portal class as tops in the American Conference. Hartline said he doesn't judge a potential transfer player by the number stars on his rating. He digs deeper.
"Frankly, in a lot of our conversations, we try to be very honest, very forthright, and kind of challenging, and asking why it would be different for you (at USF) after it didn't work out somewhere else. We try to do a really good job of finding people that see value in us, because our goal was to make it hard," he said.
"Are you gonna run run again or you gonna tough it out and get better? I think we did a really good job finding a lot of right-minded young men. And then I think the team, the guys we had here, brought them along. It's a combination of both. They know the standard. They know what it looks like, they know what it could be, and the passion on both sides help mold that."
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