Bulls' moment has arrived

TAMPA Saturday morning, he will leave his hotel room in downtown Gainesville and savor the two-mile trek to Florida Field. Amid orange-and-blue madness, he will proudly wear the green and gold.

Richard Lane, a Tampa-based insurance executive and longtime University of South Florida athletic booster, once thought it was unimaginable. Even now, he almost chokes up when acknowledging its reality.

"We're playing the Gators in football," said Lane, who graduated from USF in 1968. "We're going to The Swamp. This is our moment. It means so much.

"It means we've arrived."

First-year USF coach Skip Holtz, fully aware of the game's significance for the school's boosters, alumni and fans, said the Bulls (1-0) are facing a monumental task in Saturday afternoon's meeting against the No. 8-ranked Gators (1-0). At the same time, Holtz is preaching perspective, saying it's simply one of the team's 12 regular-season games, while downplaying any program-defining implications.

Good luck with that.

Outside the practice field's tarpaulin-covered gates, the USF community is preparing for a weekend like no other.

"I know what's going on," Bulls quarterbacks coach Peter Vaas said. "I have a sense of it. Even being around people throughout the offseason at community functions, they weren't talking about Stony Brook. They weren't talking about the Big East. They were talking about the Florida game."

USF, which will receive a $700,000 payment from UF for the game, quickly sold its allotment of 6,000 tickets. It has been long anticipated, originally contracted in 2002 and postponed from its initial date of 2009. (USF is scheduled for another Gainesville appearance in 2015, but no return games in Tampa are planned).

"I don't have a ticket, but I'm going to Gainesville anyway," USF freshman Will Morrow said. "I just want to be a part of it. I might not get into the stadium, but no way am I going to miss that atmosphere."

Ryan Morgan, a senior sports medicine major from Crystal River, will sit high in Section 318 with her friend, Lance Ives.

"It's going to be such a good time," Morgan said. "I think it's going to be a friendly rivalry type of thing. Until we win. Then it will get really intense."

And profitable.

USF alumnus Craig Brunstein owns Bulls Outfitter, the official merchandise dealer of the USF Alumni Association, on Fowler Avenue. In 2007, when the Bulls skyrocketed to No. 2 in the national rankings, Brunstein said he was "begging with the suppliers to get stuff here in time ... it was insane."

"This would be the biggest moment in the history of the football program, probably the biggest moment in the history of the school," Brunstein said. "That No. 2 ranking was just an artificial number. Nothing about beating the Gators would be artificial.

"I know there are a lot of Gators in Tampa who want the Bulls to do well. They actually root for USF. And they're like, 'Oh, we're so excited about how far you guys have come in such a short time.' But that air of superiority is still there. It's always there. It would be sweet to wipe that away. The fans are gearing up."

Despite the obvious disparity in experience - USF's program is 14 years old, while UF just had its 104th season opener - the officially licensed T-shirts carry USF's confident message:

"Stomp The Chomp."

"Stampede The Swamp."

"I don't think this is a long shot," Morrow said. "We won at Auburn (in 2007). We won at Florida State (17-7 last season)."

The victory against the Seminoles probably ranks as the program's most memorable accomplishment. But Saturday's trip to Gainesville could surpass that.

"Playing at The Swamp is what you always waited for," Bulls defensive end David Bedford said. "If you say it's not, you're lying.

"You can feel this game coming. It's in the air. If you want to be mentioned with the kingpins, you've got to beat them. You can't just make it a good game. We know that because most of us have been watching the Gators our whole life. We've been dreaming about that stadium."

Bulls sophomore quarterback B.J. Daniels, while participating in an AAU basketball tournament at the O'Connell Center, once snuck across the street to view the inside of Florida Field. Bulls offensive tackle Jake Sims, whose parents attended Florida, attended many Gator games as a teenager.

"I'm actually the first person in my immediate family to go somewhere other than Florida," Sims said. "My parents had all those Gator stickers on the car. But they got rid of them. It's all Bulls stuff now. So I guess, because of me, they got converted."

Sometimes, that happens.

Lane, the longtime booster who beat the drum for USF football long before it was instituted in 1995, knows all about such connections.

His wife, Debbie Harvey, is a second-generation Gator. Her mother was a UF cheerleader.

"Some of our Gator friends have asked her, 'You're going to be rooting for your alma mater, right?' " Lane said. "No, she told them she's rooting for USF.

"I imagine she'll be carrying a small Gator trinket somewhere. But she's going to be wearing green. How perfect is that? What a moment it's going to be."