by Patrick Zier | Nov 14, 2025 |
TAMPA – Before he and his team headed for Annapolis, MD. and Saturday’s showdown against Navy, South Florida Coach Alex Golesh was asked what it was like for his team to be playing a “meaningful game” in November.
Were the players aware of the impact the outcome could have on their season? That a win here might be the stepping stone to the College Football Playoffs?
Was there more intensity in their preparation, more focus on getting the job done?
“My hope is that if we’re truly process driven, there’s not,” Golesh replied. “You don’t ever want to make one game bigger than the next, you don’t want to make it bigger than another one.
“Obviously, these guys know they’re playing for something,” Golesh continued. “They know that. I talked about it after our sixth win (which made the Bulls bowl eligible for the third straight year).
“The feeling in the locker room was different. There was no conversation about a sixth win. There were no bowl bound t-shirts given out. That’s not our standard.
“I said it the last two years when we got to our sixth win, that that was never the standard. And so I think they know that they’re playing meaningful football obviously. they know that this game is important, but they all are for us,” Golesh said.
“It’s about us being the best version of ourselves on Saturday, which is our process. Being elite throughout the week. I’ve not classified it as an extremely meaningful game or an extremely important anything.
“I think when you do that you’re diminishing anything you do after that. They’re all really important, but more important than the game on Saturday is us taking advantage of today,” Golesh declared.
“I know you get sick of hearing me say that but it’s truly the case, because if you live that roller coaster lifestyle, up and down based on who you’re playing, then it’s going to look like that. And that’s what we’ve tried to eliminate in this program, the inconsistency week-to-week.”
That culture, that attitude of being the best you can be at whatever you do, trying to improve each and every day, has clearly taken hold at USF. That has become this team’s goal, not whether it wins or loses. And it’s probably the main reason the Bulls have been getting better.
Mac Harris, a standout linebacker for USF, put it this way. “We’ve just got to focus each and every week on just being the best version of ourselves,” Harris commented.
“When you are process driven the results don’t matter. So as long as we continue to prepare the right way and try to perfect our process I can go to sleep at night with whatever the results are,” Harris said. “That’s how we operate.”
“I think we’ve really done a phenomenal job this year, and the past couple years, of building a culture of taking it one day at a time, one play at a time, one game at a time” starting center Cole Best, another team leader, commented.
“One thing I’m really proud of as a team is I don’t sense anybody really looking too far into the future or worrying about all the stuff you hear in the media,” Best said.
“It’s definitely exciting and guys are really juiced up. There’s a lot on the line this week and every week, but I think the overall vibe has been great. Guys are just ready to come in and work every day,” Best remarked.
So the Navy game is important to this team, but only because it’s the next game up, not because of what it could mean in the long term. And when it’s over, getting ready for UAB will be the most important, because that’s the next game on the schedule.
That’s the way you win championships, and winning championships is the way you get to the College Football Playoffs, and while Golesh hasn’t articulated it in so many words, that’s the standard at USF now.
by Patrick Zier | Nov 9, 2025 |
It was a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with NASCAR. A point system that rewards finishing and actually punishes racing.
A playoff patterned after those in pro football, baseball and basketball that doesn’t work because NASCAR isn’t pro football, baseball or basketball.
A championship race where you don’t have to win anything to win everything. That’s how Kyle Larson, who never led a lap and finished third in the race, ended up with the title.
But don’t blame Larson. He just did what he needed to do under the current format. Blame NASCAR, which refuses to recognize that stock car racing is not like any stick-and-ball sport and needs to do its own thing in its own way.
By all odds Denny Hamlin, the best driver in the sport right now and one of the best all-time, should have won Sunday’s last race at Phoenix and the championship.
But he didn’t, and it’s time for NASCAR to realize that because of the nature of the sport, it can’t have a playoff. The champion has to be determined by a body of work over a full season.
A quarterback can throw a costly interception in the first quarter of the Super Bowl and come back and throw the winning touchdown pass in the fourth.
A baseball player can strike out in the first inning of the final game of the World Series and get the winning hit in the ninth.
A basketball player can miss every shot in the first half and win the game with a basket at the buzzer in the second.
But in NASCAR, if you blow a tire or hit the wall or if a caution falls at the wrong time, unlike other sports, you can’t recover from that. You’re done.
And the final race at Phoenix is an example. Hamlin and William Bryon dominated the day, but got almost no credit for it because of the way the point system is structured.
Between the two of them, they led 223 of the 254 green flag laps, this according to lapraptor.com. Until Byron blew a right front and wrecked on lap 309, neither one of them had ever run out of the top 10 and most of the time they ran in the top three or four.
But because NASCAR awards points based on where you finish, not how you compete, Byron got four points for finishing 33rd, meaning 32 drivers got more despite the fact virtually none of them deserved more.
One was Justin Haley, who finished 14th and got 23 points. Again according to lapraptor.com, Haley never led a single lap, never ran a lap in the top 10 and spent the vast majority of the race running in the 20s or 30s. He managed to get to 14th at the end of the race.
Then there’s the matter of how drivers make the playoffs. All you have to do is win one race and you’re in. Austin Cindric, who has been an anchor around the neck of Penske Motorsports and virtually non-competitive for years, won at Talladega.
So he got in despite the fact anybody can win a superspeedway race and he did
absolutely nothing the rest of the season, recording just two top fives. On the Old Guy Sport competition index, a better judge of who’s running well and who isn’t than the NASCAR points system, Cindric scored just 43 points.
For comparison Hamlin, the OGS champion, had 677 and Larson, second in the OGS rankings, had 530. Ryan Blaney was third with 516 and Chase Briscoe fourth with 507.
Three others who used the ‘win and you’re in’ crutch to make the playoffs were Austin Dillon, whose lone victory was at Richmond and who didn’t have another top five finish; Ross Chastain, who won at Charlotte and had four other top fives; and Shane van Gisbergen.
Van Gisbergen had an impressive five wins, all of them on road courses where he established himself as one of the best ever in NASCAR at that discipline, but he didn’t have a single top five on ovals, the bread-and-butter of NASCAR racing.
Commenting after the Phoenix race, Hamlin summed up his disappointment. “I did the best I could,” he said dejectedly according to NASCAR’s website. “Everything I prepared for happened. I felt like we responded. Even losing track position at one point, just battling back.
“I did really well on restarts and I hadn’t been good on restarts for the bulk of the year,” he said. “This team brought a great championship car and I felt like I drove it just right up until two laps to go (actually, Hamlin was pretty much trapped at the bottom of the track for the last two laps so there really wasn’t much he could do).
“I don’t know. It’s just so unfortunate. Gosh, you work so hard. This sport can drive you absolutely crazy,” Hamlin continued, “because sometimes speed, talent, all that stuff, just does not matter.”
He’s right. And NASCAR needs to change that.
by Patrick Zier | Oct 30, 2025 |
It was supposed to be a warm-up. It might have been a warning. Three top Toyotas, two of them headed for Phoenix and a shot at the NASCAR Cup championship, all blew up Sunday at Martinsville.
Denny Hamlin, who has 20 years at Joe Gibbs Racing and 19 playoff appearances without a title, and JGR newcomer Chase Briscoe, also in the final four, both lost engines during the race along with Riley Herbst, who drives for Hamlin’s 23X1 team.
This is starting to become a bit of a concern for Toyota and particularly Hamlin, who has had some problems prior to the race at Martinsville. The week before at Talladega, Hamlin had a throttle issue. The throttle regulates the air-fuel mixture flowing to the engine which is obviously critical to the car’s performance. And before that in the Kansas race, he had trouble with his power steering.
While these issues seem unrelated, if any of them – or something else – pops up at Phoenix, Hamlin could once again be denied any chance at a championship, as has happened numerous times in the past.
“I could be worried but I can’t do anything about it so I’m still optimistic,” Hamlin told reporters at Martinsville according to NASCAR’s website.
“We’re gonna put our best foot forward and hopefully it’s enough. That’s all I can do. Our performance is good, we’re running up front,” Hamlin said. “As long as we can keep it together we’re fast and capable. I think I’m gonna have to win next week to win the championship, and we’re gonna come prepared to do that,” Hamlin declared.
Team owner Joe Gibbs said Toyota and JGR examined the faulty engine parts after the Martinsville race in an effort to determine what went wrong and correct it.
“We got all the parts out,” Gibbs said according to NASCAR.com’s website. “We looked at everything. I think issues with the motors are always concerning. You never want that to happen.
“I think we kind of understand where we are and what those parts were (that caused the engine failure) and have made adjustments. Those parts will not be in the cars this week so we feel good about that,” Gibbs declared.
Neither Gibbs nor Toyota have identified what parts failed, but it is reasonable to assume Toyota thought they were reliable when they were originally installed, and if that’s true then there’s no way to be sure replacement parts won’t break as well.
Engine failures are a rarity in NASCAR now but Gibbs’ comments, while reassuring, didn’t seem to indicate that Toyota knows for sure exactly what happened and if that’s the case, it can’t be sure something won’t happen again.
Whether or not he wins the championship, which is about the last thing Hamlin has left on his racing to-do list before he retires, possibly in two years, he has clearly been the dominant driver in Cup this year.
Extremely perceptive and with the most analytical mind in the sport, Hamlin has been able to make adjustments as he ages that has kept him on top at a time, he’s nearly 45, when almost all of his competitors would be getting out of their cars.
His six wins are the more than any driver this year and his ability to understand and get the most out of his equipment, his ability to pace himself, to know when he needs to make a move and when he doesn’t, give him a mental edge over the competition.
“I think his experience, as you know in pro sports that’s just something you can’t teach, gives him an advantage,” Gibbs, who was a Super Bowl winning coach before he went into racing, commented.
“You’ve got to experience things and he understands that,” Gibbs continued. “He works extremely hard on the sim (the racing simulator), his preparation and everything else he needs to do to get ready to race.
“That’s where his experience really means a lot,” Gibbs remarked. “He understands you’ve got to be able to get to the final four, and we’ve done that, and now it’s down to one race and you’ve got to make it happen.”
There’s no question Hamlin will do his part. The question is, as it has been in the past, whether situations beyond his control and his supporting cast will do theirs.
NASCAR NOTES
Old Guy Sport pre-playoff final four picks: Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney, William Byron. Drivers in the final four: Hamlin, Briscoe, Kyle Larson, Byron.
Three most likely winners at Phoenix Sunday: 1-Blaney, 2-Hamlin, 3-Larson. First race winner at Phoenix this year: Christopher Bell. Top five in first Phoenix race: 1-Bell, 2-Hamlin, 3-Larson, 4-Josh Berry, 5-Chris Buescher.
Last week’s OGS Martinsville picks: 1-Blaney, 2-Bell, 3-Hamlin. Martinsville winner: Byron. OGS record after 29 races: 13-15 (no Pocono pick) .464.
OGS competition index top 10 after 29 races: 1-Hamlin 652 points, 2-Briscoe 507, 3-Larson 500, 4-Bell 473, 5-Blaney 465, 6-Byron 439, 7-Shane van Gisbergen 368, 8-Chase Elliott 274, 9-Bubba Wallace 186, 10-Joey Logano 185.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks similar to Phoenix): 1-Blaney 222, 2-Hamlin 211, 3-Byron 185, 4-Bell 161, 5-Larson 147, 6-Briscoe 122, 7-Logano 96, 8-Elliott 91, 9-Brad Keselowski 80, 10-Alex Bowman 74.
