A busy summer of comings and goings in USF's athletic department continued Thursday with news that sports information director John Gerdes, approaching his 20-year anniversary with the Bulls, is stepping down to become athletic director at St. Petersburg Catholic.

Gerdes, a 1980 SPC graduate, said he was excited about the opportunity to return to his roots -- his parents still live in St. Petersburg. Check out Joe Smith's work on our Preps blog for more information on the SPC side of things.

You won't find many athletics staffers who have been at USF longer than Gerdes, whose last day will be August 3, coincidentally the 20th anniversary of his first day. It's the second departure in a month for USF's sports information department, following men's basketball SID Scott Kuykendall leaving to run the sports information department at Marquette. New associate athletic director Bill McGillis now has two hires to make in a short amount of time -- football media day is August 7.

John has certainly helped make the occasional difficult situation easier in my three years on the beat and kept the easy ones from getting too difficult. We wish him well in his new job.