What's the trick to turning $1 million into a possible national championship in football?

Even crazier, imagine hiring a football coach 18 months before fielding a team?

You might have to ask the miracle-working University of South Florida about its unusual trip from nobodies to somebodies.

Dick Bowers, a former University of Tennessee basketball and baseball player and former South Florida athletic director, could tell you about that unlikely road the Bulls took to become No. 2 in the country.

Bowers, a retired South Florida athletic director and associate dean of USF's school of business, was approached about 12 years ago by an avid supporter who asked what it would take to get football started at the school in Tampa.

"About a million dollars," Bowers replied as he recounted the story by phone Monday from his home in Florida.

Ed Rood, a Tampa attorney, anted up, pledging $1 million. The school, whose president several decades ago opposed any kind of college sports, met in various groups - alumni, athletic council and board of regents - and then decided to go forward if $5 million could be raised.

That happened, too.

Now, as Bowers says, "People in the Tampa Bay area are going nuts over this team. The tea leaves are falling in the right place, and the excitement is taking this area by storm."

The team and its coach, Jim Leavitt, are in their 10th season and still building. Leavitt was hired in December of 1995 and fielded the Bulls' initial team in 1997 in Division II. South Florida, which has grown to an enrollment of almost 50,000, moved to Division 1-A in 2001, joined Conference USA in 2003 and the Big East in 2005.

The Bulls began cause raised eyebrows with an upset of West Virginia last year, a 26-23 over Auburn last month and another upset of the No. 8-ranked Mountaineers, 23-13 this season.

Suddenly the Bulls (6-0, 1-0 Big East) are No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25 and No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series standings.

"It's amazing," Bowers said. "We usually average about 35,000 a game, but this year it's been about 65,000 - including 68,000 last weekend against Central Florida."

Bowers attributes USF's rapid emergence to good recruiting within the state.

"We've got two or three players who are the real playmakers," Bowers said. "The quarterback - Matt Grothe - wasn't highly recruited, but he has a knack of turning a bad play into a good one. He's exciting. and he's only a sophomore."

Grothe is from Lakeland, Fla.

Bowers, who helped organize all of USF's sports except football, said Leavitt and his staff operated the first two years from offices in trailers parked behind USF's baseball field.

"Can you believe that right now we're the best team in the state of Florida?" Bowers asked. "Ahead of Florida State, Miami and Florida.

"That's something when you consider that the first USF president I worked for didn't even want the school to have athletic programs - especially football," Bowers said. "In fact, he forced me to cancel Bill Wade as speaker at our sports banquet the year Wade led the Chicago Bears to the NFL championship. Bill - who was national president of Fellowship of Christian Athletes - came to town anyway and spoke to overflow crowds at two churches."

But things changed, and Bowers said the desire to field a football team really took off when Rood's million-dollar pledge was handed to USF president Frank Borkowski in 1995.

But, Bowers acknowledged, "We could take a nose dive at Rutgers (4-2, 1-1) on Thursday night."

Leavitt, a St. Petersburg, Fla., native who was hired away from Central Connecticut, has done most of his recruiting in Florida. Ninety percent of the USF players are Floridians.

Bowers is as impressed by Leavitt as he is with Grothe.

"If we run the table - and we have six more games, including Thursday at Rutgers (TV: ESPN, 7:30) and the next week at UConn - Leavitt will be national coach of the year."

For that to happen would be unheard of for a team that was never ranked in the Top 25 before this season.

Football has been well worth that first $1 million, Bowers said.

" We're at the right place at the right time, geography-wise," Bowers said. "We have a great academic institution as well and one of the best best cancer centers in the world."

Even though he's been caught up in the excitement, Bowers offered a realistic opinion.

"If they run the table they'll be in New Orleans (for the BCS championship)," Bowers said. "A lot of this has been luck, but we have some good players. If we had to match up with with SEC teams week after week they'd wear us down in no time ... And, if we played Florida, we might win one out of 12.

"Then again, we beat Auburn who beat them (Florida). I can't believe we're ranked No. 2."

More On Bowers: When he was athletic director, Bowers coached the USF golf team while searching for a coach and was instrumental in getting the school's golf course constructed. While in Burma on a Fullbright Scholarship, Bowers won the Burmese Open.

He became assistant AD in 1963, and was athletic director 1966-82 before becoming associate dean in the school of business for 20 years.

Bowers played baseball and basketball at UT 1950-52 and coached the Vols' freshman basketball team in 1953.

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.