In just its 11th season of football, South Florida sits in position to play for the national title, having achieved the coveted second spot in the initial Bowl Championship Series rankings behind Ohio State. That statement alone tells you what kind of year it has been in college football, with the unexpected suddenly the norm.

No. 2 SOUTH FLORIDA (6–0, 1–0 Big East) At RUTGERS (4–2, 1–1)
Tonight, 7:30 p.m., ESPN

But if the Bulls have taken the college football world by storm, there’s one man who wasn’t caught off guard. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese had the vision to snatch a rising USF program to bolster his conference following the departures of Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech, and no conference head has done a better job of putting his marquee teams in the national spotlight.

Tranghese’s vision will once again be on display tonight as USF visits Rutgers with national championship implications. That Tranghese once again has his top teams playing in the right place at the right time could be ascribed to luck — if he hadn’t pulled off the same trick last season. It was a pair of back-to-back Thursday night contests on ESPN last November that stamped officially the Big East’s ascendancy. Over the span of eight days, the conference put on a pair of unforgettable games between undefeated teams. After Louisville upset West Virginia, Rutgers shocked the Cardinals in one of the most memorable contests of the entire season.

South Florida has already been tabbed “this year’s Rutgers,” but the Bulls hope to achieve more than the 2006 Scarlet Knights — who finished 11–2. USF has already won at Auburn and beaten then-no. 5 West Virginia at home, and thanks to a three-week string of upsets has risen steadily to be in position to reach the January 7 BCS championship game in New Orleans.

How does a program with so little history achieve so much, so fast? Geography helps. USF is located in Tampa, in the heart of the nation’s most fertile recruiting territory. Its rise has also come as traditional Florida powers Florida State and Miami have lost some of their luster.

Rutgers coach Greg Schiano knows well what he faces tonight.

“They remind me of some of the Miami teams that I was a part of and played against,” said Schiano — the former Miami defensive coordinator — at his weekly press conference.

The Miami comparison is particularly apt, because the Hurricanes were the last program to rock the college football establishment as USF threatens to do this season. In 1983, an upstart Miami program took on the most traditional of powers, Nebraska, for the national title in the Orange Bowl. Miami proved too speedy and athletic for the supposedly unbeatable Cornhuskers, and the Hurricanes’ 31–30 win earned the program the first of five national titles it would win over the next two decades.

Like those Miami teams, this South Florida squad is built on speed. “The thing that separates them from a lot of teams that you watch is they can really run,” said Schiano. “Every position — even their offensive line runs well.”

South Florida’s speed was particularly evident in its win over West Virginia, which is not exactly a lumbering bunch. Time and again, South Florida defenders were in the West Virginia backfield, hitting quarterback Pat White and tailback Steve Slation before they could get started on the delay draws and counter options that are a staple of the spread offense.

No USF player spends more time in opposing backfields than defensive end George Selvie, who has already set school records with 11.5 sacks and 21.5 tackles for loss this season — both nation-leading figures. Selvie is such a disruptive force that the Bulls have not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 14 games — not since Rutgers star Ray Rice torched them for 202 yards on 35 carries in the Knights’ 22–20 win in Tampa last season.

Last week, South Florida faced the nation’s leading rusher in Central Florida’s Kevin Smith — and held him to 55 yards on 18 carries in a 64–12 rout. But Rice is coming off his best game of the season, as he had 196 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Syracuse.

Schiano has to hope the Syracuse game has his team back on track. The Knights had fallen completely out of the rankings after dropping back-to-back home games to Maryland and Cincinnati, then quickly fell behind, 14–0, to lowly Syracuse, thanks in part to another costly Mike Teel interception. But Teel rallied to finish 20-of-29 for 310 yards and two touchdowns as Rutgers won, 38–14. Teel has a tough task this week, not only dealing with the pass rush, but throwing against an outstanding USF secondary that has a pair of NFL prospects at corner in Mike Jenkins and Trae Williams. Their matchups with Rutgers receivers Kenny Britt and Tiquan Underwood will go a long way to determining the outcome of this game.

Teel’s USF counterpart, quarterback Matt Grothe, is the man to watch for the Bulls. He’s emblematic of this team in that he doesn’t do anything spectacularly well, but the net result is impressive. Passed over by more prestigious programs because of his size, Grothe is a great athlete who can beat you with his arm or his legs. Against Central Florida, he threw 212 yards and two touchdowns, and also ran for 100 yards and another pair of scores. Rutgers’ pass rush most pressure Grothe into mistakes. Against West Virginia, he threw a pair of interceptions into coverage when he failed to step into throws.

Tranghese isn’t supposed to have a rooting interest in this game, but you can’t blame him if he pulls for USF. A win puts the Bulls on course to play for a national championship, while a Rutgers upset merely puts the Knights back into Big East contention.

Mr. Levine is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com