USF’s athletics brass and a slate of newly hired coaches took their show straight into downtown Tampa on Thursday, closing out the Bulls Coaches Tour with a midday stop at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. The finale put the program’s message directly in front of alumni and season-ticket holders, highlighted the coaching overhaul and a few players, and underscored a clear goal: turn a busy offseason into visible momentum on the field. For a department that has reworked much of its staff, the tour doubled as a public progress report on where the Bulls are and where they say they are headed.
Rob Higgins, USF’s CEO of athletics, told the crowd, “It’s all gas, no brakes,” framing the tour as part of a broader push to fire up the fan base, as reported by Tampa Bay 28. The swing through the region was branded as the Bulls Coaches Tour presented by Shumaker, with the university’s event listing detailing earlier stops in St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee along with the May 14 Tampa finale, according to USF Athletics.
New coaches on stage
New faces dominated the stage as Higgins put his recent hires front and center. Brian Hartline, Chris Mack and Kristy Curry all joined panel conversations that focused on roster building and program culture. WUSF has reported that Mack wasted little time in vowing to chase impact transfers and set immediate expectations for men’s basketball, while Associated Press coverage carried by The Washington Post detailed Curry’s move from Alabama to take over the women’s program. On the football side, Fox13 Tampa Bay has outlined Hartline’s formal introduction to Bulls fans. Across the board, the message stayed remarkably consistent: staffing and recruiting are at the top of the department’s to-do list.
Player voice and community work
Wide receiver Mudia Reuben handled MC duties for the event, steering several panel discussions that Tampa Bay 28 highlighted as a standout element of the day. Reuben, a Stanford transfer and graduate student, has used his NIL opportunities to create the Nigeria Water Project, with the organization’s site documenting borehole work and posting photos from village installations at Nigeria Water Project. His on-field bio is listed by FOX Sports. The combination of roster talk and community-focused storytelling helped the tour land more like a neighborhood event than a run of stiff press conferences.
Where the program goes next
Higgins also reiterated that USF’s long-discussed on-campus stadium is scheduled to open in 2027, a timeline reflected in the “Coming 2027” label on the facility overview posted by the University of South Florida. Paired with a cluster of high-profile coaching hires, that construction timetable is being packaged as the backbone of a push to move more season tickets and supercharge recruiting through the summer. The Bulls Coaches Tour may have wrapped in Tampa, but what happens next with staffing, recruiting and stadium construction will determine how quickly fans see those big promises turn into results.
