September 3, 1999
The San Diego State Aztecs open their 1999 football season Saturday, Sept. 4th, against the South Florida Bulls. Kickoff is set for 6:05 p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium. USF is ranked 23rd in the I-AA preseason national poll. The two schools are meeting for the first time.
San Diego State is coming off a 7-5 record, including co-championship of the WAC Pacific Division and a trip to the Las Vegas Bowl. A total of 12,500 Aztec fans made the trek to Nevada for the postseason game.
USF, which is I-AA in 1999 but on track for a I-A debut in 2001, finished 8-3 in 1998.
The San Diego State contest marks the first for the Bulls against I-A opposition and marks the first road opener in the school's brief grid history. Incidentally, the largest road crowd that the Bulls have faced is 14,161 at Georgia Southern in 1998.
South Florida Head Coach Jim Leavitt, on Dec. 12, 1995, became the first football coach in University of South Florida history. The 39-year-old Leavitt enters his third season at South Florida with a 13-9 overall record. In the program's second season, he led the Bulls to an 8-3 finish and a national ranking as high as 11th, before finishing 17th.
SDSU marks the first-ever Division 1-A opponent for USF. The game will also mark the longest road-trip in USF's three-year existence and the largest road stadium in which the Bulls have played.
Defensively, USF is at its strongest this season, returning 10 starters who have played their position for the majority of the 22 games in the program's history. The Bulls will offer an attacking 4-3 scheme, that finished ninth in the nation in overall defense in 1997, and 11th in 1998. USF held the number-one ranking through the first five games of the 1998 season.
The glue to the Bulls defense is their secondary, a unit which has played together since USF's inaugural season. Leading the quartet is senior Anthony Henry, a 6-2 free safety, who is flanked by two outstanding cover men in Glenn Davis, 5-11 and Bernard Brown, 5-10. The two accounted for six of USF's nine interceptions last season.
The USF offense will have to replace a starting quarterback who finished with a passing efficiency of 156.11, a receiver with 23 catches for 537 yards (four touchdowns), two linemen and a tight end.
Junior Glen Gauntt was named the Bulls' starting quarterback coming out of spring practice. Guantt saw action as a backup last season, completing 62.7 percent of his 59 attempts, throwing just two interceptions. The offense does like to score, averaging 36.6 points per game last season, good for a national ranking of seventh.
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