College football

True believers

Since they started building this team on a bare field and in a trailer, the original Bulls coaches have clung tightly to their vision of success that resulted in today's first bowl appearance.

By GREG AUMAN
Published December 31, 2005

[Times photo (2001): Thomas M. Goethe]

THEN: For years USF football coaches used trailers as offices. Shared sacrifice and potluck dinners helped the staff bond into close friends.

	[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]
	NOW: The Bulls get a pep talk from Jim Leavitt in Charlotte, where a bowl game is another step for the program. "It's just a big family," safety Johnnie Jones says.
	[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]
	From left, offensive line coach Greg Frey, coach Jim Leavitt, defensive line coach Earl Lane and defensive coordinator Rick Kravitz have been together since USF football began.
	[Special to the Times (1997)]
	The original USF staff, top row, from left: Mike Hobbie, Jim Leavitt, Rick Kravitz and Greg Frey. Middle row, from left: Mark Stoops, Kevin Patrick, Calvin Magee and Frank Hernandez. Bottom row, from left: Renato Diaz, Mike Canales, Andre Waters and Earl Lane.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Before there were wins and losses, there were steaks and shish kebobs.

More than a decade after Jim Leavitt was first hired as USF's football coach, three assistants from his original coaching staff remain. Much of the Bulls' success leading up to today's Meineke Car Care Bowl against N.C. State can be traced to the continuity of their coaches, to a camaraderie that was forged in 1996, a year before USF would play its first football game.

"It's really hard to describe how close a staff we were," said Earl Lane, finishing his 10th season as the Bulls' defensive line coach. "We worked so hard for the same dream, everyone buying into the same thing. From Day 1, family was more than a word for us."

The Bulls had players and coaches in 1996 but no games, so the staff would gather at defensive coordinator Rick Kravitz's apartment to watch college football and chip in on a potluck feast of legendary proportions.

"We'd scrimmage in the morning, and then we'd hang out for 12 hours," said former offensive coordinator Mike Canales, now at Arizona. "We'd cook, we'd eat, and we'd think of the day when we'd be playing those games instead of watching them."

Calvin Magee, now at West Virginia, would bring boneless pork ribs, and graduate assistant Greg Frey would bring bratwurst and kielbasa. There were crab boils and shrimp linguine, beers and barbecue. Wives and girlfriends got in on it too, making desserts.

"None of us was making much money, but if everybody throws in $5 a person, you can buy a lot of food. It was ridiculous. We ate like kings," said Kravitz, who kept busy manning his grill. "Those days made us real close as a staff."

Leavitt wasn't a regular at the gatherings but remembers appreciating how his assistants, given a break from long days of coaching, were still happiest together as a group.

"It wasn't me, but those guys had fun," Leavitt said. "I stayed as far away from that group as I could. I'd show up for five minutes and leave, but they'd play cards, watch TV, have fun. They were a very close group."

Part of the closeness was a shared sacrifice. Kravitz, a Dixie Hollins graduate like Leavitt, took a pay cut to leave West Alabama and join USF's staff; Sheahon Zenger, now the athletic director at Illinois State, recalls his monthly take-home pay after rent was $100. Lane didn't get paid a dollar his first three years with the Bulls, juggling his work with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

Lane would work a midnight shift, typically from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., get home for a short sleep before reporting promptly for an 8:30 a.m. staff meeting, napping again in the afternoon.

"I got by on about 41/2 hours of sleep each day those first three or four years," Lane said. "I always felt extra blessed to be able to do the things I wanted to do, and that was being a cop and being a coach."

Frey was a graduate assistant for three years before joining the staff full time in 1999, and he said the coaches co-exist well enough that on top of spending all day together in meetings and at practice, they live together as well. As a GA, Frey shared an apartment with Kravitz, and one coaching generation later, Frey shares his house with offensive graduate assistant Chad Barnhardt, who was USF's first quarterback in 1997-98.

"It carries over to the players, because we all share the same bond," Frey said. "There's a lot of loyalty to each other and loyalty to this program."

Senior safety Johnnie Jones said he first became aware of how close the coaching staff was when he saw them going out to lunch together. At team dinners, there was no segregation of offensive and defensive assistants, and that encouraged the same intermingling among players. Their best friends are often on the other side of the ball, creating fewer factions in the locker room.

"They all blend in together, and that shows us by example," Jones said. "As players, we talk, and we might see something from a different angle about the offense, help each other out. We're all on the same team, and not just on Saturdays. It's just a big family."

One reason Leavitt, Kravitz, Frey and Lane have stuck around is that Tampa Bay is home for them. Leavitt and Kravitz played on the same football team at Dixie Hollins, Frey starred at Clearwater High before attending Florida State, and Lane played at Plant City High, later coaching at four Hillsborough County high schools.

"This is where we grew up, so it'd take a lot to make us want to leave home," Kravitz said.

The members of USF's original staff now coaching elsewhere keep up with the program's progress. Three of them - Canales, Mark Stoops and Eric Wolford - are assistants under Mike Stoops at Arizona.

"We all take pride in what they've been able to do; we feel like we were part of it," Canales said. "I still consider them my closest friends. They're the guys you talk to on Christmas Day. It's the closest staff I've been a part of in 22 years of coaching."

The coaches will often call each other on Friday nights, wishing each other luck for the next day's games, calling again Saturday night to congratulate or commiserate. The friendship is still about more than football; Canales will be in Kravitz's wedding this spring, just as Kravitz was in his. When Frey's mother died in March, "we all shared that heartache," Canales said.

Leavitt called Zenger two weeks ago to talk about the Bulls playing host to the I-AA Redbirds down the road, but the two friends wound up talking more about that first season.

"I drive people crazy here telling the same USF stories, but they're some of the best memories I've ever had," said Zenger, who was the Bulls' first recruiting coordinator. "The day I left, I was in tears. There's a different kind of person who goes somewhere to build something, rather than going somewhere that's already been built."

Today's game has given USF's coaches - current and former - a milestone they have looked forward to for a decade. The original four coaches posed together as the team took a walkthrough practice at Bank of America Stadium on Friday afternoon, and moments later, as the players broke their huddle, they shouted a single word that echoed through the empty stadium: Family.

"That first year, we knew we were doing something special, and that pulled us together," Kravitz said. "That hasn't changed."

[Last modified December 31, 2005, 00:48:13]