TAMPA, Fla. -- Brian Hartline's office at South Florida features the trappings of his football life -- a sideline picture of him and LeBron James at Ohio Stadium, signed jerseys from his assembly line of star NFL receivers and his own NFL helmets from playing in Miami and Cleveland.
Near the pictures of Hartline and his family celebrating Ohio State's 2024 national title, there are a dozen or so coffee pods that symbolize the urgency of his newest job as South Florida's coach. Black coffee only, Hartline jokes, is the fuel to push forward.
Just outside the office window, a few out routes from Hartline's office, looms a glimpse of the future of USF. The school is building a new $410 million on-campus practice facility and stadium -- $350 million for the stadium and $60 million for the offices/operations center -- that will open in 2027. That will come after the program's first 30 years were played off-campus.
Hartline arrives at USF at a fascinating moment for both the school and the industry, as college sports face an imminent yet ambiguous ticking clock amid some type of seismic paradigm shift. And his challenge is both simple and daunting -- win big at a place that has never consistently won big in football to unlock the program from its cycle of perpetual potential.
"I think we've had an inferiority complex for a lot of years, and I think we've been crippled by leaning into potential as some sort of metric for success," USF CEO of Athletics Rob Higgins told ESPN. "And so those days are over, and we're arriving in this very moment in a very big way and at the most critical time in the history of not only the university, but also of college athletics."
Higgins' job since being hired last September has been to capitalize on a recent burst of momentum in football and basketball amid the backdrop of imminent change in college sports. When the next round of conference realignment lands, USF wants to be positioned for the top tier of the sport.
Hartline's task is to take a USF program that has long been defined by that elusive potential and muscle it into reality, maximizing the school's 50,000 students, AAU designation, the state's top media market and the vast local recruiting resources.
"The goal was to find a place that could consistently win and chase championships" Hartline told ESPN. "Not just win but play at the highest level. There's just so many things here that checked all the boxes here in this modern era."
When will there be a college athletics shake up that could afford USF an invitation to do that? No one is sure. But it's wise in these unstable times to build for the moment, win games and stay caffeinated.
South Florida climbed to No. 2 in the country in 2007, an early flash point in program history that has not been close to being replicated.
In just 30 years of football, USF has climbed from independent to Conference USA to the Big East and then the American. Along the way, they've failed to win a league title, never played in a conference title game and, most recently, went from 2018 to 2024 without a winning record in conference play.
Enter Hartline, who has earned the reputation as the best wide receivers coach, arguably, in college football history and brings both high-end coordinator success at Ohio State and an NFL pedigree. He's got a Mike Vrabel-like front-of-the team presence and significant recruiting credibility in the state.
As he pointed out from his office to the cranes looming over the USF practice fields, Hartline summed up his first seven months this way: "As much as I thought it would be something great here, it has exceeded my expectations."
Entering the season, only USF and Memphis have announced a commitment to full revenue share of $21.3 million among schools outside the power leagues. Not coincidentally, they are high among those with a chance to move up amid conference realignment ripples.
For USF, history shows nothing is given, even with prime geography and rapidly increasing resources.
"Quite frankly, the last time that realignment happened of any substance, we just picked a really bad time to be bad at football and men's basketball," Higgins said. "And right now in this moment, we're choosing success on a lot of different fronts."
The Bulls return just three starters from a 9-4 team that beat Florida last year. With coach Alex Golesh having jumped to Auburn, the Tigers this year will start at least six USF transfers. (That's double what USF will bring back and start in 2026, as 13 total USF players went to Auburn.)
Such is the fragile nature of Group of 6 football, as American Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti said at that league's media days that 78% of first-and-second-team all-league players transferred up. That's the modern caste system that the new rules of the sport have created in recent years, prompting urgency to get to the other side of the river as a clock for change ticks like a "60 Minutes" intro over the industry.
Golesh, for one, left his three years at USF "really convicted" that the Bulls could transition into the top tier of the sport.
"There's a sense of me that's like, 'Man, I left before I was able to really accomplish what we really wanted to accomplish,'" Golesh told ESPN. "Part of that is that stadium. Part of it is that facility. I think that place could be really, really special. And it's about getting in the right conference, but there's backing. There's corporate backing. Rob Higgins is really good. Once that facility is done, it eventually will be an upper-echelon program in my opinion."
What will USF look like on the field this year? Hartline channels his football life by projecting glimpses of Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer and Ryan Day. They'll be a quarterback battle between LSU/Mississippi State transfer Michael Van Buren and Mississippi State/Florida State transfer Luke Kromenhoek and a few high-profile former Buckeyes, including receiver Bryson Rodgers and defensive end C.J. Hicks.
Hartline hired East Carolina's Josh Aldridge as the defensive coordinator, who oversaw the American's top defense in 2025 and extensive experience against the academies. (A big deal in the American, with Army and Navy as standouts in the league.) On offense, Hartline brought veteran college coordinator Tim Beck, who has held varying coordinator titles at six different schools.
"I believe in the holistic approach -- we are in this together," Hartline said. "We are not here just to be this high-powered offense that doesn't give a crap about the defense. We will not think that way.
"Tressel was a big part of that and still in my blood. Ryan [Day] always thought that way. So did Coach Meyer. So that's the blood that I've been around. We're going to take a lot of pride in maximizing what our guys do best. And that's really, really important."
What it looks like on the field will be critical, as every season will be an audition for USF as it looks to till a familiar path -- building the infrastructure and flashing enough on the scoreboard to change the school's league paradigm.
Any potential conference move projects similarly to Louisville's leap to the ACC in 2014 or Houston and Cincinnati's respective jumps to the Big 12 in 2021. Like them, South Florida is a school looking to build up and win enough to be known as something more than a commuter school.
"I think we've only really leaned into that commuter school designation by playing our home games 30 minutes away," he said. "To now finally have this long awaited home of our own right here on campus is just so special."
The race to the next iteration of what college sports will look like is mostly done in the shadows, with constant clandestine courtships from ACC and Big 12 schools to the SEC and Big Ten. Those pebbles thrown at the bedroom windows are generally unrequited, but when they are answered in the next few years there's an inevitable trickle-up from the Group of 6 level.
Enter Higgins, a former ball boy as a kid, manager as a student and proud graduate who worked at the school for four years before becoming a household name in the sports industry by leading the Tampa Sports Commission for more than two decades. (He was texting with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey while giving ESPN a campus tour last week, as Higgins spearheaded the Tampa location of SEC media days.)
Higgins joked that he served as a therapist for the modern college athletics environment for many of his friends in the athletic director space. Though many veterans are fleeing their roles with all the uncertainty, he ran to this job nine months ago because of his belief in USF's future.
"The more they talked about wanting to get out, the more I felt like I wanted to get in," he said with a laugh.
The job for Higgins is part occupation and part calling. He's a graduate, along with his parents and sister. He met his wife in a meeting on campus nearly 25 years ago, soon after she graduated from Kansas.
Higgins, 47, always thought he'd have a shot to lead USF in the twilight of his career, but a colorectal cancer diagnosis in 2024 changed his perspective. Both Higgins and his father, Jack, got a cancer diagnosis within month of each other. (Rob scheduled a preventative screening after Jack's bladder cancer diagnosis.) They recovered together and rang the bell at the Moffitt Cancer Center one month apart. Both are cancer-free and get screened every three months and have been advocates for others to be screened. For Rob Higgins, the experience proved transformative.
"I'd always dreamed of leading this athletic department, but maybe a little later on in life," he said. "But when you learn that the days are long, but the years are short and you can't put off dreams for days that you may not ever have.
"It felt like the absolute perfect time to do this."
And these days, Higgins channels the passion for his school by donning a hard hat, hopping on a golf cart and giving a visitor a tour of what USF could become.
Amid the muddle of stadium construction, he points out what will be the state's longest rooftop bar, two hidden speakeasies and all the modern amenities within a stadium that will hold nearly 35,000 fans. The football facility will have all the modern trappings, including underwater recovery and a barber shop.
Hartline's arrival comes amid a time that percolates with promise, as Higgins calls the coaches at USF "proven leaders with something to prove." They include new hires in former Xavier/Louisville/Charleston men's basketball coach Chris Mack, who had led nine teams to the NCAA tournament. Former Alabama women's basketball coach Kristy Curry also arrived this year. She came from Alabama and brings 14 NCAA tournament appearances and one Final Four as a head coach.
As the 2026-27 school year begins, Higgins knows landscape changes are coming. And after 30 years of USF football, the stadium signifies the brightest beacon that the Bulls are on the rise.
"It's a race against time in every sense of that phrase," he said. "And we're treating it as that. We're working around the clock, literally. Every second right now matters. And there's not a second that we have to waste. And that's what this university and this program deserves."
The black coffee is already being brewed.