ORLANDO, Fla. — South Florida head coach Alex Golesh has stressed the Bulls’ connections to the Tampa Bay area throughout his 22-month tenure.
His social media hashtags are #StayInTheBay for homegrown recruits and #ComeToTheBay for everyone else. He wears 813 caps for the area code of Tampa and Hillsborough County. The shirt he repped Tuesday had a green Florida logo with the Bulls’ seven-county home region covered in gold.
It was there, near the bottom of the gold, where Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday evening in Siesta Key. Golesh’s program was still reeling 67 hours later, 80 miles from home and 130 miles away from the eye of destruction.
“Obviously in every imaginable way, our whole community’s hurting,” Golesh said after Saturday’s 21-3 loss to Memphis. “The whole western part of our state is hurting.”
So is his team. Though Golesh didn’t get into specifics, he acknowledged he has players and coaches “going through a lot” after Milton, which has killed at least 23 people across the state in one of the biggest natural disasters in Tampa Bay history.
Glance through the roster Golesh fielded at Camping World Stadium, and you can see the gut-wrenching ties. Two dead in Tampa, including a woman crushed by a tree branch 10 south of campus. Two more across the bay in St. Petersburg, hometown of offensive lineman Hayden Zepp. An unanswered 911 call in Volusia County, home of defensive back Ben Knox. At least 45 players from counties that reported a fatality.
And that’s just the worst of it.
Stopped by USF before heading to Orlando for the Memphis game. A street lamp by the basketball arena freaking snapped in the storm pic.twitter.com/zddnuVFvmL
— Matt Baker (@MattBakerCFB) October 12, 2024
As of Saturday night, more than 1.1 million Floridians were still without power. Fuel is nearly impossible to find, with most pumps bagged or plastic-wrapped shut. One tool, GasBuddy, showed more stations near South Florida’s campus that had no gas or power (24) than were fully functional (14). The few stocked stations had lines as far as you could see. Senior accounting student Dan Kahley had 23 miles left in the tank of his Ford Focus before he finally filled up at 1 a.m.
He got enough to make it to the game, as part of an announced crowd of 3,365 with limited ticketing at a venue that seats 60,000.
“Probably the hardest week I’ve ever had in terms of being a leader, being a husband, being a father in my career,” Golesh said. “And it doesn’t compare to what some people are going through back home.”
As the storm approached, the American Athletic Conference pushed the game back a day and moved it from the Bulls’ normal home (Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium) to Orlando. The Bulls moved, too. On Tuesday, they evacuated to the Orlando World Center Marriott, which had enough rooms, food, power and everything else needed to take care of a couple hundred players, staffers and family members. With power still out on parts of campus, the team planned to stay in Orlando on Saturday night before reevaluating Sunday ahead of next week’s home game against UAB.
Whenever they fully return to Tampa, they’ll see a campus that’s battered. The storm blew the O-U-T of “South Florida” off the front of the Bulls’ 21-month-old, $22 million indoor practice facility. Snapped a streetlamp in the basketball arena’s parking lot. Uprooted trees and tattered banners. Bent the USF Bull Run sign in front of the department’s main building, the Lee Roy Selmon Athletics Center. Flooded one of the main arteries, Fowler Avenue, so much that Tampa mayor Jane Castor called it “Lake Fowler.” The USF Barstool social media account posted a video of someone kayaking down it.
“I couldn’t believe when I saw people canoeing there,” South Florida senior Michael Stewart said during his pregame tailgate.
The devastation hasn’t stopped. Second- and third-day flooding ravaged Pasco County, just north of Tampa. Residents were evacuating a neighborhood seven miles down the road of running back Kenny Walker’s high school. As the Bulls were kicking off, the Tampa Police Department was rescuing a man trapped in his car amid high waters. Linebacker Mac Harris still has no idea what kind of shape his apartment is in. Quarterback Bryce Archie hasn’t been able to check on his gray and white cat, Pluto.
Through all that, the Bulls had a game to play. Golesh grew emotional thinking about it. As he was sitting through meetings Tuesday night about moving the game, meteorologists were warning about a storm surge that threatened to be not just disastrous, but catastrophic to the area where Golesh got married, bought a home and is raising two children.
“I had a sick feeling to my stomach the entire time, with, ‘Man, are we doing what’s right?’ Golesh said. “‘Are we not?’”
There are no good answers. So the Bulls played.
Maybe the four quarters were a respite from the storm’s aftermath, but they weren’t an escape. They couldn’t be. Four days ago, the stadium grounds were used as a hurricane prep site; the lounge lobby still had 16 sandbags sitting out front. The in-game host welcomed fans to their “home away from home” and asked them to cheer for themselves for simply finding a way to get there. South Florida’s helmets sported stickers with “OUR CITY,” with the Bulls logo in place of the U over Tampa Bay’s spot in the state.
Then the game kicked off, and the Bulls fell behind 14-0 in the first 10 minutes. Golesh bemoaned the defense’s slow start and an offense that amassed 258 total yards and went 1-of-13 on third down. He, as always, dismissed the idea of any sort of moral victory.
But he also said that he asked his displaced team for only two things during a historically trying week: Play with full effort for 60 minutes and stay focused despite the fears and unknowns.
“And,” Golesh said, “they did that.”
(Photo of Bryce Archie: Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
