South Florida fires Jeff Scott after four wins in 30 games
South Florida has fired coach Jeff Scott with three games left to go in the 2022 season.
The Bulls are 0-5 in AAC play and 1-8 overall after a 54-28 loss to Temple on Saturday. USF hasn’t beaten a team at the top level of college football all season. Its lone win came against FCS opponent Howard in Week 2.
Scott came to USF after a long stint as Clemson’s co-offensive coordinator. The Bulls went 4-26 since he took over as head coach in 2020.
"When Jeff came to Tampa in December of 2019, we had high expectations for where he could take our football program," USF athletic director Michael Kelly said in a statement. "While he did so many things right, including rebuilding our culture, pushing forward our Indoor Performance Facility, and engaging our community, the on-the-field results fell well below our standards. He is a tremendous person and class individual and we wish him, Sara, Savannah and Hunter all the best in the future.
USF came nowhere close to meeting those high expectations in Scott's tenure. He replaced former Texas coach Charlie Strong after Strong was fired in 2019. The Bulls won 10 games in 2016 in Willie Taggart’s last season and then went 10-2 again in Strong’s first season with the team.
But things cratered after that. Strong’s teams went 7-6 and 4-8 in his last two seasons and have been even worse under Scott. USF’s lone win over a team at the FBS level came in 2021 when the Bulls beat Temple 34-14. The other three wins have been over FCS opponents.
USF said that Daniel Da Prato would be the team’s interim coach for the final three seasons. Defensive coordinator Bob Shoop has also been fired along with Scott. Former Florida State linebacker Ernie Sims will take over as the team’s defensive coordinator.
Scott, 41, was an assistant coach at Clemson from 2008-19 before his stint at South Florida. He worked his way up the ladder under coach Dabo Swinney and coached the team’s wide receivers before becoming the co-offensive coordinator with Tony Elliott in 2015. Elliott and Scott coordinated national-title winning offenses with Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence as Clemson became one of the elite programs in college football. Elliott left Clemson after the 2021 season to become the head coach at Virginia while longtime defensive coordinator Brent Venables is in his first season as Oklahoma’s head coach.
