Jim Leavitt has been the University of South Florida football coach from the start of the program’s existence. He may well be here many more years.

Leavitt loves his college, his job, his future, his wife, his Tampa Bay, his big SUV, his staff, his players, the 120,000 USF alumni who live around here, a full Raymond James Stadium for Bulls games… well, that’s not it but it is enough. And, Leavitt spends a lot of time telling all that this is where he wants to end his time on the sidelines.

Leavitt has been saying those things a lot lately. It has been recruiting time for his teams of the immediate years ahead.

“I can tell them with assurance that I will be here when they’ll finish their time at USF,” said the big, healthy, muscular Leavitt, who smiles a lot these days, says.  It is the offseason.

“I’ve told you before and I tell you again, I ain’t going nowhere.  Nowhere. And, think about it now. Think about the coaches that would apply to come here. Be a long line to come here, now,” he told Jesse Gonzalez and me over lunch at Donatello’s.

Leavitt loved it even before last season, his and the school’s best. Lost three, tough losses. Had a fine team, he did. He and the Bulls won fans like never before, sellouts actually. And speaking of sellouts, the West Virginia game was one, at Ray Jay, and so hear this from Leavitt, who can seem so ugly on the sidelines, if betrayed:

“The night before the game, we were staying at the Downtown Hyatt. I couldn’t sleep. I was so nervous and excited,” Leavitt began telling us.

“I dressed. And I got up and started walking the half mile to my place on Harbour Island.  When I got to the Convention Center, I looked back and up and I saw that the Sun Trust people had made the top of the building green, our USF green. Lights. It was so beautiful and to me, so moving. I don’t know if anyone else was. but it gave me a lift. I felt like it helped me to know we had made it, or were making it.  I went to home, told my wife about it and got a good night’s sleep. I walked back to the hotel in the morning before daylight, moved still.

“The next night we beat West Virginia before a packed Ray-Jay. What a night. What a sight, that green tower the night before? Hmmmm. Meant so much to me,” said this earnest man.

And, so, well, the year was a tad different in recruiting, not helped, as thought USF might be by the troubles at FSU and the confusion at Miami, or, as reported.

“No,” said Leavitt, “we did fine, I think. You know about some recruits, but, no, it takes years. I think USF did fine. And FSU and Florida did fine and so did Miami. Tough state and we are trying to make it in four.”

He will, with appropriate support of president Judy Genshaft, strong leader, and the rest of the ever-growing family.

USF is on a roll in football, and should be. Got everything, including a major metropolitan area about it, Tallahassee and Gainesville do not have, but we know what those two great schools and football powers do have — years in the business and tradition and alumni everywhere. Miami, FSU and the Gators now have won national championships and have Heisman Trophy winners.

There should be no stopping USF, unless it stops itself.

Leavitt even sees more progress ahead. He has three sound offensive players around whom to build his team next year: quarterback Matt Grothe, running back Mike Ford, and wideout Taurus Johnson. Not a bad nucleus, eh?

And a new symbol, eh, coach?

The Green Tower atop the Sun Trust Building in Tampa.