Since we're at a time of year where Bulls news isn't constantly happening, I'm going to do a wrap-up of the best USF stories from the previous week each Friday. (Note to self: This needs a better name.)
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-- First things first. Skip Holtz surprised everyone by getting a commitment from T.J. Knowles, a wide receiver from Henderson, Nevada, by way of Saddleback College in California. Looks like the Bulls caught a lot of teams napping who thought he wouldn't be eligible to play this year. USF has a big hole to fill at receiver without A.J. Love, so what better way to fill it than with a big target? Knowles is listed at 6'8", 245 pounds, and he averaged almost 19 yards per catch last year for the Gauchos.
Here's some video on Knowles from Saddleback.
This has the potential to be comically unfair if he can make catches like this against stronger competition. If only someone on the Voodoo Five staff was living in the Las Vegas area and might be able to find out a little more about the guy...
-- Brian Bennett ranked the Bulls sixth in the BIG EAST coming out of spring, ahead of only Syracuse and Louisville. Ouch. Granted there are a lot of questions that will have to be answered when the games start, and we don't really have a clear idea of how the pieces will fit into the new puzzles that Todd Fitch and Mark Snyder are putting together. But sixth? That's Beef O'Brady's Bowl territory. I'm not sure this team can win more than 8 or 9 games with their schedule, but certainly USF has more upside than sixth place.
-- Good to have Scott Carter back on the beat. He was moving back to Tampa from Tallahassee and finally finished up this week. We all feel your pain, Scott, we've all moved at least a couple of times and it completely bites.
-- He also had an interesting post about how college programs are starting to hire personnel directors - people who don't actually coach, but basically ride shotgun over the team's recruiting efforts. These have been in the NFL for years and years, but they're just now getting into the college game. I could see this turning into an area that the NCAA feels the need to regulate, maybe sooner rather than later, because I'm sure Lane Kiffin is already thinking of hiring a 25-person staff to fill that role. All of whom will be "handlers" or "friends of the family" of kids he wants to sign, no doubt.
-- In a related note, the football coaching staff is fanning out this month with the ambitious task of visiting every high school in Florida, all 548 of them. Skip Holtz is prohibited from visiting them right now, but this is a great idea and relationship-building at its finest. We've seen time and time again that you never really know where the next great college football player will come from.
-- Tons of stories out there about the passing of Phillies pitcher, Hall of Famer, and USF baseball coach Robin Roberts. Joey Johnston has a good one that touches on his Bulls managing career, and the great Joe Posnanski got to talk baseball with him at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (highly recommended by me) in Kansas City.
-- Corey Dowlar at USF's Rivals site is going through last year's games one by one. So far he's made it through Wofford, Western Kentucky, Charleston Southern, and Florida State.
-- Behind the Rivals pay wall, there's a story about Tampa Plant quarterback Phillip Ely being interested in USF. I don't know what the story says, but it sure didn't take long for Holtz enrolling his son at one of the best football programs in the state to start having an impact on recruiting.
-- I am assiduously avoiding all the murky details of the Jim Leavitt lawsuit and all the back-and-forth currently going on. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know any lawyers, and the whole thing just makes me sad and depressed. So instead, here's an opinion from The Bull Gator on the topic.