The University of South Florida on Tuesday approved the funding of a $340 million on-campus football stadium, the Tampa Bay Times reported Tuesday.
“I’m very confident that we’ve got the right structure in place to be able to support this,” vice chairperson Michael E. Griffin told the paper.
USF football has shared the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since the program's 1997 founding (the since-demolished Tampa Stadium, known as the "Old Sombrero," in 1997, and Raymond James Stadium since 1998). Raymond James has been the home of numerous successful Bulls teams -- the program claims six bowl victories and posted 12 .500 or better seasons from 1998-2010 -- but the program has stagnated in recent years.
USF is 8-37 since 2019, and rival UCF, which opened its own 45,000-seat on-campus stadium in 2007, left the Bulls behind to join the Big 12. Leaders pitched the stadium as a plan to revitalize the USF brand -- in football, and for the entire university.
As the Times reported last year, debate about whether to build an on-campus stadium dates back to 1957 -- 40 years before the school ultimately played its first football game.
Barring an unforeseen setback, that time will finally come in 2026. The new facility is expected to include a new football ops center.
Once the Bulls make the move, the list of FBS schools playing home games in NFL venues will drop to four: Miami, Pitt, Temple and UNLV.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.