MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The initials of former South Florida basketball coach Amir Abdur-Rahim are on the headset that USF football coach Alex Golesh wears on the sideline. And Abdur-Rahim's words that he said in 2023 have quickly become the credo of sorts for the Bulls as well.
“This ain't the same ol' South Florida, my brother.”
Abdur-Rahim, who died at 43 last year during a medical procedure, said those words after the first win of the 2023-24 season, his only one at USF and one where he led the Bulls to a 25-win campaign.
They went viral. They're still resonating.
Golesh — who became close friends with Abdur-Rahim — said them inside the locker room after USF opened this season by beating then-ranked Boise State. He said them in an on-field interview after USF beat then-ranked Florida last week. He had them shouted again by assistant coach DeMarcus Van Dyke in the joyous locker room after that game. And the 18th-ranked Bulls would love nothing more than to say them postgame yet again on Saturday, when they visit No. 5 Miami.
“More than anything, I think we’re just full of gratitude and really thankful," said Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a former NBA player who is president of the G League and the brother of the late USF coach. "And it’s just really cool that he has such an impact in a way that he’s kind of continued to be remembered.”
Oh, they're not forgetting his brother at USF anytime soon.
On the wall of the football facility are a couple of large photos of Amir Abdur-Rahim — who hardly ever missed a football practice — speaking to the football team last year. It was an hourlong session, Golesh recalls. USF's content team discussed capturing that meeting, as schools often do with such things now, to be able to post some video clips. Abdur-Rahim immediately shot down those plans.
“He said, ‘Zero content. This is me and my guys,’” Golesh said. “And it was like the realest hour you’ve ever seen in your life. It was really, really cool.”
That's just one example of how Abdur-Rahim continues to resonate within the USF athletic community. The Bulls do an awards show every spring to pay tribute to the best of the best at the school over the academic year. Abdur-Rahim and his staff won the coach of the year award in 2024. He accepted the trophy and immediately surrendered it to Erika Brennan, USF's women's golf coach at the time.
“He said, ‘No, they actually had a better year. We got more notoriety, but they had a better year than us,’” Shareef Abdur-Rahim said.
Fast forward a year. USF women's basketball coach Jose Fernandez won the award last spring. Mindful of what Amir Abdur-Rahim did the previous year, he decided to give it to USF's volleyball coaching staff.
There are more examples as well. At USF's basketball arena, students now watch from the Amir Abdur-Rahim Student Section. The American Athletic Conference established the Amir Abdur-Rahim Sportsmanship Award in his honor. His two former schools — USF and Kennesaw State — will meet this November in the Love Wins Classic, the start of a home-and-home series between the programs.
Golesh didn't plan to say those words after the Week 1 win. It just sort of happened.
“I just got this feeling of seeing him walking down the corridor, walking down our sidelines, smiling, saying ‘I’ve been telling y’all, this ain’t the same ol’ South Florida, my brother,'” Golesh said. “It just kind of came over me. I don’t even know why. And I’m not overly calculated in anything I say. I keep my emotions in check. But at that moment in the postgame, I was emotional for whatever reason. I felt him, in there with us in a lot of ways, if that makes sense.”
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