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Bulls Give Tampa Valuable Face Time

JASON BEHNKEN / The Tampa Tribune

University of South Florida fan Nate Hopkins of Oldsmar cheers on the Bulls. (Sept. 28, 2007)

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 15, 2007

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TAMPA - Die-hard college football fans across the nation probably couldn't point to Tampa on a map even if they had, well, a map.

But all that is changing, what with the upstart University of South Florida Bulls football team making its splash on the national landscape.

Ranked second in the nation, the Bulls, a team that began the season in the obscure mass of unranked college football programs, are now imposing their will on the football elite and making a name for themselves while showing the rest of world where Tampa is.

Contender or pretender arguments aside, college football fanatics are casting their gaze onto Tampa and USF as the new kid on the BCS block.

Is Tampa the new Gainesville or South Bend and or Tuscaloosa?

Most people outside the state may have thought the University of South Florida is in South Florida. How foolish. Let's get it right. Pull out your maps and find the University of South Florida campus. It's in North Tampa near the west coast of Central Florida. Got it? Fans of universities in Cincinnati and Louisville should check their maps and start booking flights to Tampa, not Miami or Fort Lauderdale, to catch the two remaining home games this season, Cincinnati on Nov. 3 and Louisville on Nov. 17.

Recognition that comes with a potential college football national championship means a lot to the area, city and county officials say.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, herself an alumnus of USF, said the feeling around town is ecstatic.

"I think this is having a huge impact on this community," she said Monday morning, a day after the Bulls were named second in the nation. "There are hundreds of thousands of alums, and they're always proud of their university. But they never had a real emotional way to express that. This is providing that. This is big. This is really big.

"People love USF, generations have gone there, and with the rapid rise of this football team."

For a moment, the words stopped coming.

Iorio finally concluded: "The feeling at the games is just electric."

There is no downside to this for the community, she said. The success of the program offers up a national stage for Tampa and can only benefit the area in the eyes of outsiders.

It's sort of like when the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl a few years ago, but not exactly, she said.

"There's a big difference between college and professional," she said. "With college, there is just a feeling that the players are students, they are doing this for the loyalty to the school, and that connects to the loyalty to the school by the community."

"It's a different feeling," she said. "There's nothing more exciting than college football."

Hillsborough County Commissioner Rose Ferlita, who received her graduate degree from the University of Florida in that tiny, out-of-the-way town of Gainesville, somewhere to the north of here, also is fully behind the local team. The Gators, for those still interested, are ranked 14th.

"The spirit of support in our community for football and for USF is at an all-time high," she said Monday morning. "I'd love to say that my alma mater, the University of Florida, is right on their heels in the lineup, but not right now.

"This will, without a doubt, be a billboard attraction to encourage enrollment at USF, be a wonderful economic development tool, and will let the football world know that USF and our community is on the move.

"Go, Bulls."

The vice president of public policy for the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, Chris Smith, a graduate of Florida State University in a town that is almost too far to drive to, said it's great to have a football powerhouse in Tampa. (Seminoles are not even ranked.)

"It's certainly going to bring national attention to this university and this area," he said. People who live here already know the assets offered by USF, including its partnership with the business communities, he said, "and we are just extending that audience tenfold by the notoriety that comes with the football team."

Folks who might never have known about USF or where Tampa is, for that matter, are tuning in, he said, and that's getting "more and more people around the country and the world to pay attention."

Former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, who presided over this town when the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, said there is no downside to national recognition brought by sports programs.

"You can't buy that at any cost," he said Monday as he got ready to head to South Dakota for a hunting trip with friends. "It's fantastic for the community, and it's fantastic for the school."

He said everything is enhanced across the board when local sports teams play on a national stage.

Greco flew back from San Diego with the Bucs after they won the Super Bowl in January 2003, and on the approach to the airport, the team saw the stadium filled with people ready to greet them.

"When we flew over Tampa at night, we looked down and saw this stadium filled with people, and almost everyone on the plane was crying," he said. On the drive to the stadium, "we saw all the people lining roads, and they were not all football fans. It was just that everybody felt good about where they lived."

Everywhere he goes the past few weeks, he said, people are talking about the Bulls.

Two of his hunting buddies already are arranging flights back a day early so they can catch the USF-Rutgers game Thursday night, he said.

Politicians and business moguls all have opinions about what the recognition does for the community. Some are less vocal than others.

Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee, a graduate of the University of Tampa (intramural football only), could only muster these words Monday morning, delivered through a secretary:

"Go, Bulls."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or at kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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