Jim Leavitt
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 3-2
2005Meineke Car Care BowlL 0-14
2006PapaJohns.com BowlW 24-7
2007Sun BowlL 21-56
2008St. Petersburg BowlW 41-14
2009International BowlW 27-3
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
4-0 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Greg Schiano.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
Style position and drift
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
How much that moved, against every other stint
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Two numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2021 roster arrived on his watch — 121 of 131 players. The other 10 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 17% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 17 of 17 signees (100%) across his 2021–2021 tenure, drawn from 1 state in all.
- median hometown distance
- 186 mi
- within 100 mi
- 43%
- within 500 mi
- 85%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 11%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
Followed Sonny Dykes (2018–2021) · succeeded by Rhett Lashlee (2022–now).
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1st-best South Florida tenure of 9 by the numbers.
Succeeded by Skip Holtz (2010–2012).
| Season | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 7-4 | 8-3 | 9-2 | 7-4 | 4-7 | 6-6 | 9-4 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 8-5 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | 26 | 32 | 66 | 63 | 80 | 64 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | 6 | 87 | 78 | 94 | 91 | 80 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | 32.7 | 25.8 | 35.2 | 33.3 | 39.8 | 29.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | 18.8 | 26.5 | 29.1 | 36.6 | 40.6 | 36.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | 30.8 | 40.5 | 20.8 | 19.4 | 25.0 | |
16 NFL Draft picks: Kenyatta Jones (2001), Anthony Henry (2001), Bill Gramatica (2001), Kawika Mitchell (2003), Shurron Pierson (2003), DeAndrew Rubin (2003), J.R. Reed (2004), Stephen Nicholas (2007) + 8 more
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
1st all-time at South Florida
Was he good?
A mixed record — ahead of expectations by some measures here, behind by others. The honest read is that it depends which lens you use.
Model fit as of 2026-09-04.