USF's Skip Holtz: 'It's time to move forward'

On that night nearly seven months ago, Skip Holtz walked into a room full of strangers, many of them looking back with unwelcoming stares.

Most had heard of the last name, but that was about it. Not only was Holtz a stranger to the University of South Florida football team, he suddenly was the Bulls' coach.

With players reporting today and practice opening Thursday, Holtz continues his quest to slowly assert himself as the new face of a wounded program.

"I think there is still some healing that needs to take place," he said Tuesday at the Big East's football media day. "Adversity isn't always a bad thing.

"Right now, having a little bit of that cloud (over the program), I don't think has necessarily been a bad thing as we went into winter workouts, and we went into spring practice, and we went into summer. But what I've got to do a great job of now as head coach - and that is one of the reasons why I think taking this team away to camp is such an important part of it - we've got to come together as a team.

"It's time to move forward."

Holtz's approach is part of the fallout from USF's messy divorce with Jim Leavitt.

In a span of a week in mid-January, the only head coach the program had ever known was fired, replaced by the son of a college football coaching icon.

The night before he was officially introduced as USF's coach on Jan. 15, Holtz flew to Tampa and called a closed-door meeting to introduce himself to his new team. Holtz's words were measured, his tone respectful of the situation.

Holtz understood this was unlike any other challenge he had faced in his career.

"There was an awful lot of adversity in the program," Holtz said. "I don't think you can come in and tell your players, 'Ah, grow up, toughen up, get over it.' There was some healing that needed to go on and we needed to be sympathetic to what that football team went through at the end of the year."

Holtz was hired after Leavitt was dismissed once a four-week investigation concluded Leavitt acted inappropriately - and later interfered with the investigation - of an incident with player Joel Miller during halftime of the Bulls' victory against Louisville on Nov. 21.

A lot of players on the team wanted Leavitt to keep his job. Others were uncertain. Some wanted him gone.

The division was obvious to Holtz.

Instead of coming in and trying to force his personality and way of doing things on the team, Holtz has tried to allow the combustible situation to work itself out.

"Time heals a lot of wounds," he said.

Senior center Sampson Genus liked Holtz from the start, but he understood how many of his teammates remained wary in those first weeks after Holtz's arrival.

Slowly, Genus has seen Holtz make his mark and rebuild a broken team.

"The whole time going through the summer, we were trying to find ourselves with a new head coach," Genus said. "We've bonded a lot more.

"What he has done had a big effect on the team in a short time."

As the starting quarterback, B.J. Daniels is one of the team's most important leaders. He enters fall camp without any concerns about lingering resentment over Leavitt's firing.

"Coach Leavitt recruited me and gave me a scholarship, so I'm always going to be grateful to him," Daniels said. "But Coach Holtz is here now.

"He really wants to change this program and turn it around in a positive way."

As part of that mission, the Bulls will head off for 12 days of camp in Vero Beach. The attempt to build team unity is something Holtz started thinking about as soon as he took over a wounded program.

"I think this is exactly what the team needs right now," he said. "We are not where we need to be right now as far as close enough as a football team to go through a season that we're about to go through. We've got to get some different personalities to come all together.

"We've got to come out of there as one team."