How Alex Golesh and USF Emerged as College Football’s Trendiest Underdog

Seven-year-old Aleksey Golesh and his family arrived in New York in 1991 with $400, a few bags of clothing and a work ethic. That was basically it. Fresh off a 747 from Moscow, they did not know English. They did not know the culture. They just knew that life was volatile and dangerous in their home country of Russia, and the U.S. was a place to start anew.

Aleksey’s grandfathers, both of whom were career military men, told the family repeatedly, “This is bad here. You need to leave if you can.”

After two years of working through red tape and diplomatic channels, the opportunity came. An aunt met the family of four at John F. Kennedy International Airport—Vladimir, Bella and sons Evgeni and Aleksey. They settled in a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, with the boys eventually going by Americanized names Eugene and Alex.

Bella and Vladimir took jobs less lucrative or prestigious than they’d held in Russia, but it didn’t matter. They would hustle to make ends meet. Hard work was the way out and the way up.

“To drop everything and go—they sacrificed everything so my brother and I could have better lives,” Alex Golesh says. “We didn’t have much growing up, but I didn’t know it.”

He didn’t know he was poor. He didn’t know the language. He certainly didn’t know a thing about that most American of sports, football. Yet coming to America put Golesh on a path toward wealth and success that was completely unforeseeable when he arrived.

A football camp at the Merchant Marine Academy. Become a ball boy with that program. Fall in love with the sport. Move to Ohio and realize early in high school career he wanted to coach. Become a defensive line coach at Westerville Central High at age 19, while a student at Ohio State. Work up inexorably from there.

Golesh’s late grandmother, who died in 2018, asked him early in his career whether he would coach other sports during the football offseason—like maybe be the track coach wherever he worked. He had to explain to her the immersive nature of football.

Today, that redheaded Russian immigrant is the head coach of the 2–0, No. 18-ranked South Florida Bulls, the trendiest underdog program in college football. USF upset 2024 College Football Playoff entrant Boise State in the opener, 34–7, then shocked then-No. 13 Florida in The Swamp last Saturday. The third-year coach’s voice was thick with emotion in his postgame interview on the field.

“This ain’t the same old South Florida, my brother,” Golesh said, echoing the words of USF’s late men’s basketball coach and his close friend, Amir Abdur-Rahim.

Amir would be loving what Golesh is doing in Year 3 as the leader at USF, a season that could alter the course of the entire program, and Golesh’s own career. The Bulls haven’t been 2–0 or ranked in the Top 25 in seven years, which has spurred a geyser of excitement and attention for a longtime underachiever.

An even bigger opportunity looms Saturday: No. 5 Miami, again on the road. USF has vaulted to the head of the Group of 6 conference pecking order for a potential playoff spot, and a victory over the Hurricanes could push the Bulls beyond that—it could put them on the path toward an at-large bid, if necessary.

This unexpected start has the school and its supporters dreaming of even more grandiose things on a macro scale. Power-conference membership, which eluded USF when the Big 12 expanded (inviting rival Central Florida and three other schools), remains the Holy Grail. When the next round of realignment happens, USF intends to be ready—and winning big games is the best way to signal readiness.

The natural byproduct of these early triumphs is the elevation of Golesh’s profile as the proverbial hot coach. After a strong stint as offensive coordinator at Tennessee, he immediately took USF up from one win in 2022 to seven in his first season, then a second 7–6 record last year while dealing with an injury that knocked out quarterback Byrum Brown for two months. Now his name is in speculation rotation for power-conference jobs—news that Golesh said had not reached his ears in his current information blackout. His wife, Alexis, dropped it on him one night this week.

That was nice and all. But the very thought of another job change and rebuilding task exhausted him.

“Can you imagine starting this s--- over again?” he says he told Alexis. “Starting over is miserable. It’s hard.”

Right now, hunkered down in the Bulls’ football facility 16 hours a day, Golesh has no bandwidth for such speculation. He’s narrowed his focus to building a game plan for Miami. Part of the job of a coach at a breakthrough program is taking all the media calls time will allow, but it nags at the back of the coach’s brain.

“I’m cheating the process by talking to you,” Golesh says to me on the phone Wednesday night, during a brief break in game prep.

It’s an understandable emotion, because he’s seen how far the process has taken his program through his first 25 games on the job. He became that way as an assistant to Matt Campbell, first at Toledo and then at Iowa State. When obsession over details works, it breeds more obsession.

Golesh has asked his players to assess how they do literally everything in a day. Choosing a wake-up time, what to eat for breakfast, where to park on campus (in hopes of avoiding tickets), what music they listen to, how they greet each other at the facility … the granular details went on and on. And the results started trickling in.

“We stopped doing dumb s--- at practice,” Golesh says. “Our grades went up. Our [positive] drug tests went down. I could see the changes through the spring and summer. The kids were getting it.”

At one team meal, Golesh saw a freshman cornerback sitting with a senior center and beamed. During preseason camp, each of the Bulls’ 33 seniors was given an opportunity to address his teammates. One in particular stood out.

Sixth-year linebacker Mac Harris was “a complete knucklehead when we got here,” Golesh says, not judgmentally. (He described himself as “kind of a knucklehead” in high school.) Harris told the team that early in his USF career, he had no leaders to emulate. His goal upon leaving was to provide an example so “the young guys know what it means to do things right.”

Golesh listened to that and said to himself, “We’ve f---ing broken through.”

Then came the breakthrough on the field. Opening up by thumping the Broncos was a revelation, with the defense producing three takeaways and two red zone stops. Following that up with the gritty win at Florida, with a closing drive for the winning field goal, was a testament to perseverance and poise under pressure.

Brown, back from a broken leg, has been the hub. He’s leading USF in rushing and has produced successive solid passing games. Perhaps most importantly, Brown hasn’t thrown an interception in his last nine games and has just one fumble in that time. The Bulls haven’t yet committed a turnover this season.

Golesh isn’t much of a slogan guy, calling that sort of thing “fluffy.” He defaults to Sunday-to-Friday preparation more than rhetorical motivation.

“After the Boise game, the response was to hammer down on process,” he says. “As a player, if you felt good in that game, rinse and repeat your process. If you didn’t feel good, or didn’t think you played as well as you could have, examine why and adjust your process.

“After Florida, same thing. We did all the work to be ready. The night before those two games—in my heart I thought we were going to win the games. I knew it.”

Golesh is making no such declaration this week. Not publicly. He simply told his team this: “If you don’t cheat your process, we’re going to go play Miami really, really tough.”

Vladimir and Bella Golesh have moved to South Florida—ostensibly to retire, but that hasn’t fully worked out. They’re not the retiring types. So they’re enjoying following the Bulls, embracing this strange sport their youngest son took up as a career path.

“I see my parents after games and I kind of tear up,” Alex Golesh says, thinking of the family’s improbable story. “They’re truly enjoying the journey and the ride.”