Willie Taggart, welcome back to the list of hot coaching names.
Taggart — remember him? — was the artist formerly known as the architect of Western Kentucky football. Taggart, in relatively short order, guided the Hilltoppers from the 0-12 cellar at the end of the 2009 season (under former coach David Elson) to a 7-5 record two seasons later. In 2012, WKU made its first bowl game. Taggart left a strong program to Bobby Petrino in 2013, and when Petrino moved to Louisville in 2014, Jeff Brohm — who worked for Petrino during his first go-round with the Cardinals a decade ago — stepped in and began his head coaching career. WKU is thriving, to the point that it is about to host Marshall for the Conference USA East Division championship this weekend.
Taggart is the man who got the ball rolling for the Hilltoppers.
It was with this reputation as a fixer of programs that Taggart — a former Jim Harbaugh assistant at Stanford — came to South Florida at the age of 36. After entrusting the program with older coaches such as Jim Leavitt and Skip Holtz, the Bulls (rightly) decided that they needed a newer, younger face to create energy and optimism within the program. Taggart was seen, with considerable legitimacy, as a man who could recruit the state of Florida and do a good job of picking off (and up) the talent the bigger schools didn’t want.
No one said this was an easy job, coaching in the shadows of Florida State and Florida and Miami, but naturally, any coach at any stop needs to begin to show progress in a third season. If that third season comes and goes without witnessing any appreciable impact or pattern-based shifts, everyone in and around the program begins to worry.
Therefore, with this in mind, it had to concern plenty of people in Tampa that USF began this — Taggart’s third season — with a 1-3 mark. The losses to Florida State and Memphis did not offer too much cause for concern, but the game sandwiched between those defeats — a 35-17 loss to a bad Maryland team which has faced quarterback problems throughout the season — suggested that this program was not being turned around. The 1-3 start was mostly the product of a demanding schedule, but the Maryland game offered Taggart’s critics more than a little evidence that this team was stuck in the wrong place.
Now, “stuck” is the last word one could possibly use to describe the Bulls. South Florida has become good enough to morph into the best win on Florida State’s schedule. The Seminoles obviously want to change that by beating Florida this Saturday. Yet, while we’re on that subject, South Florida could probably beat Florida on a neutral field right now.
The Bulls aren’t just a team which has played better in November and has wrapped up a bowl bid. South Florida is thumping opponents which are average at worst, formidable at best.
This past Friday, USF took care of an average opponent from Cincinnati. What was and is noticeable is that the Bulls did so in an anything-but-average manner.
51-3 is a hugely convincing final score. South Florida achieved that in the course of just under one half against the Bearcats, the preseason favorite in the AAC East Division.
The week before, South Florida ran through Temple’s legitimately good defense — you know, the one which made Notre Dame’s offense look ordinary, and the one which humiliated Penn State on opening day — like a knife through warm butter. The Bulls hung 44 points on the Owls, easily becoming the team which figured out Matt Rhule’s defense better than anyone else in college football this year. SMU scored 40 on Temple, but that was a short-week-turnaround game for the Owls, and plenty of SMU’s points were scored in constant catch-up mode. USF clearly put together the most complete offensive performance of any Temple opponent.
USF might have been a below-average win for an FBS team in September. It might have been a merely average win in the middle of October after victories against the likes of Syracuse and Connecticut. Now, beating South Florida is a genuinely good win, reminding us how frequently teams change throughout the fall… and the college football season tucked inside it.
