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O’Gara: Alex Golesh already has Alabama’s attention. Now, the USF coach is one that the SEC should keep an eye on
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Alex Golesh got everyone’s attention with his response.
At AAC Media Days, the Year 2 South Florida coach fielded a question about aggressive scheduling and how it wasn’t necessarily recognized by the College Football Playoff selection committee. USF will face Alabama (this Saturday in Tuscaloosa) and Miami in September. Golesh’s first sentence was a head-turner, to say the least.
“Bama and Miami gotta play South Florida,” he said.
Here’s the clip of USF HC Alex Golesh (@CoachGolesh) saying his now famous quote, “Bama and Miami gotta play South Florida!”
And not that anyone cares, but he was asked the question by a credentialed independent podcaster with the #1 show on YouTube for AAC & G5 football ✊ pic.twitter.com/YkNktJfKvX
— Trey Smith (@imtreysmith) July 24, 2024
Yeah, that’ll make the rounds.
Golesh deserves to feel confident after he helped the 1-win USF program — the Bulls had 4 total wins in the previous 3 seasons — improve by 6 wins in Year 1. Go figure that Golesh received the most attention for a loss. Playing a 1-score game deep into the 4th quarter against Alabama had plenty nationally wondering about the state of the Tide, but locally, the discussion was what it meant for USF’s foundation to suffer that kind of a close loss. Golesh, however, didn’t see it that way.
“After that game, there were so many questions of ‘What does this do for you guys? Is this the confidence-builder you needed?’ I’ll be honest with you … moral victories and these hypotheticals, we played close … this is what we dealt with 2 years ago in Knoxville. The standard is, you win that game. We didn’t reach it. We’re gonna coach our kids and explain why we didn’t,” Golesh told SDS in April. “Were there some positives? Yes. Did we play really good defense? We certainly did. But in terms of the big-picture importance of it, I’m guarded against saying that it was anything bigger than that.”
Golesh will get a chance to avenge the Alabama loss on Saturday, albeit as a 31-point underdog (via DraftKings) in Tuscaloosa. New coaching staff or not, the Tide will be well aware of what he brings to the table, especially as Tennessee’s offensive play-caller in 2022 when the Vols beat Alabama for the first time in the Nick Saban era.
Beyond Alabama, the SEC should also have the 40-year-old Golesh on its radar.
If there’s an SEC vacancy after 2024, there’s a good chance that you’ll see Golesh’s name surface as a potential candidate, especially if he can lead USF to another multi-win improvement after returning a team that ranked No. 8 in FBS in percentage of returning production.
If Billy Napier’s days at Florida are numbered, perhaps the Gators would pursue a coach like Golesh who’s already establishing himself in the Sunshine State (he also worked as Josh Heupel’s co-offensive coordinator at UCF in 2020). Golesh’s wife, Alexis, grew up in Arkansas. If Sam Pittman can’t turn things around in 2024, that job could make sense, too.
One would think any SEC program with a vacancy would be interested in someone who already helped lead a prolific SEC offense as a coordinator (2021-22 Tennessee) and had success turning around a Group of 5 program in an SEC state. It’s not that Golesh is outwardly seeking those opportunities. But in less than 2 years on the job, his rebuild in Tampa should have plenty of attention from athletic directors.
“I was telling my wife this (in spring). This is the most fun I’ve had coaching football because I feel like they’ve taken on this identity that we’ve tried to create and they have really embraced it,” Golesh said. “I love walking into this building. I love being with our coaches. I love being with our players. It’s not as much about me as much as it’s just genuinely a really, really cool environment … just where we came from, holy camoly. That’s where it’s refreshing.”
To understand Golesh’s mindset, one must understand where he came from. He’s a first-generation American who was born in Moscow (formerly in the Soviet Union), where he played “a lotta soccer and hockey.” American football didn’t become a staple in his life until his parents decided they wanted a better life for him and his brother. They moved the family to Brooklyn, New York when Golesh was 7. His dad made ends meet by working both as a truck-driver and at Little Caesar’s.
“He didn’t help me get any job,” Golesh said. “But he did teach me how to work.”
Golesh fell in love with football while watching Michigan-Ohio State and Florida-Tennessee at their cable-less home. That led to him working as a student assistant for Jim Tressel’s staff at Ohio State.
(When Golesh got the USF job, Tressel was one of the first to call. He was planning to move to the Tampa area in 2023 and he wanted to know if he could occasionally attend USF practices. Golesh gladly extended an open invitation to his former boss.)
Golesh eventually had to leave Ohio State to get his coaching career started. For a decade, Golesh worked as a tight ends coach/running backs coach/recruiting coordinator at Toledo, Illinois and Iowa State, where he played a pivotal role in the late recruitment of Brock Purdy after schools like Alabama and Texas A&M swooped in before the February Signing Day.
Of course, the biggest career-launching move for Golesh was the 2 years he spent at Tennessee, where he called plays for Heupel’s offense. It wasn’t just the aforementioned Alabama win that made him a candidate to get his first head-coaching gig. He helped the Vols improve by 18 points per game in Year 1, and in 2022, he was the play-caller for the No. 1 scoring offense in America. That historically prolific 2022 Tennessee offense wasn’t a coincidence; that was a plan that came together.
“When I say every minute of every day was planned out,” Golesh said, “every minute of every day was planned out.”
Golesh established himself as a grinder, not just because he loves his Red Bull fridge and averaged 4 hours of sleep during his first few months on the job at USF (he’s now up to an average of 5). So far, the results suggest that Golesh knows what he’s doing.
One reason his Year 2 confidence is high is he said USF didn’t lose a single player in the portal that it wanted to keep. Hence, that No. 8 percentage of returning production ranking.
Whether that results in a third consecutive year in which Golesh takes part in a down-to-the-wire game against Alabama remains to be seen. He’s had plenty of time to think about the impact that last year’s Week 3 loss to the Tide had. Admittedly, his perspective shifted a bit after being initially frustrated at himself that his offense had a 3-point effort.
“(USF strength coach George Courides) came up to me in the locker room after the game and I was hot, more so at myself than anybody else. He’s like, ‘Yo, AG. These guys were not ready for what would’ve come if we had won that game,’” Golesh said. “I’m like, ‘Whatever, dude. I don’t know what that means. That’s a cop-out.’ He’s like, ‘I’m just tellin’ ya.’”
He won’t accept any moral victories Saturday in Tuscaloosa, but there’s no denying that if he leads a 60-minute effort against the Tide again, there’ll be a clear takeaway.
Golesh will have earned everyone’s attention.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
