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Keep up to date with all the latest Miami Hurricane news and anouncments.

2008 Summer Send-Off
August 9, 2008

The 2008 Freshman send off was held yesterday, 8/9/08, at the Coca-Cola
headquarters and I think it was a rousing sucess. Although there were
only 7-8 incoming freshman and their families, a good time was had by
all. Students were able to interact not only with us old-head alums,
but a few current students were there as well.

I met about 3 young men and women who are rising sophmores and attended
this event last year. In fact a few were currently good friends that
had actually met each other at the send-off last year. And that's
exactly what we want: the ability for the kids to meet others so they
will feel apart of a family once they attend the U.

I've added several new pictures from the event, as well as the
Executive Board meeting held earlier in the week. Stop by and check
them out. GO CANES!

Click here to watch the pictures.

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Is Shannon the Answer at Miami?

In an age of instant gratification, the college football landscape is more dangerous than ever for coaches trying to rebuild a program. Is Randy Shannon the right man to deliver the Hurricanes to prominence again? If he is, will he be given the chance to prove it if his teams don't live up to expectations right away?

In today's world of college football, the culture surrounding the coaches that lead these teams has become almost a caricature of itself. The internet age has only hastened every fan's need to feel entitled to dictate a program's terms to its administration.
In a way, while fireronzook.com may have helped achieve its goal of ridding the Gators of their post-Spurrier, uber-recruiting nemesis to the Big Ten (or, more specifically, Illinoizzzze, as the Zooker mispronounced in his initial press conference), it also spawned a mad spiral of decaying job security among every coach in the land.

Suddenly, expectations for job performance were not dictated by the athletic director, but the guy with a high-bandwidth connection and a very, very unrealistic expectation level for his favorite college football team based on what previous squads had done.

Perhaps the most perplexing example of this phenomenon came in Minnesota, as Glen Mason was canned after a bowl loss to Texas Tech. Mason, who proved capable of bringing bowl season after bowl season to the Golden Gopher faithful, was shown the door, more or less, because his teams weren't bad but, rather, not spectacular. Mediocrity, or even a little better than mediocrity, it seems, was not enough for a program that suddenly needed to be taken to the "next level." Good deal, then, ambition is always a good thing.

Tim Brewster was then hired as the man for the job, in large part due to his recruiting acumen. Why not? If the internet taketh away a coach's job, it can also giveth hope to the masses of fans and boosters who did so by placing kids with stars next to their names to assuage them.

(The following monologue can be attributed to every fanbase at some point in time, so while I use the Gophers as an example, feel free to place you own team here.)

"See, we may suck now (see Minnesota's 2007 nightmarish trainwreck of a season), but we'll be good later. Therefore, we will place total faith in this guy that led us to our most disgustingly pitiful season in years because, OBVIOUSLY, he will make us an unstoppable juggernaut in the near future, duh. Screw that last guy that had us getting to bowl games every year and not losing to FCS teams."

How does any of this relate to the one they call the "U"? Well, it's only Randy Shannon's second season, and the rebuilding job he's started at Miami will take longer than that. The questions then, are a) will he be the right man for the job; and, if he is, b) will his fans be patient enough to realize that (especially if Miami's on-field performance doesn't prove that without a shadow of a doubt right away)?

In my opinion, the first question is the easiest to answer. Yes. Absolutely. Randy Shannon was the right hire for that job. Was he Miami's first choice? Nope. Does that matter? Nope. Look, any realistic fan of that program knew no coach in their right mind was going to jump at that offer. No way.

Why? Hmmm, let's see, a complete meltdown in discipline under the previous regime? No? What about the multiple years of poor recruiting that decimated the team's depth chart in multiple positions? The outdated facilities? The expectation of the fanbase to dominate anyone and everyone constantly despite these factors? Anyone?

Ah, yeah, you, Randy, thanks for bailing us out there, bud. Whooooo. We were getting desperate there for a minute.

Fine, so be it. USC was flipping to the very back of its big black book before it happened to stumble upon Pete Carroll, too.

What Shannon did in his first year, despite a bowl-less season for the Canes, was notable. First, he put discipline as priority No. 1. There were no ugly, FIU-style brawls on the field and no major incidents off it. Players on both sides of the ball spoke to the level to which no corners were cut, and no excuses were allowed.

The second thing he did well was recruit. Of course, we won't know how well until a few years from now, but he succeeded in targeting a larger percentage of the South Florida talent that served as the program's lifeblood in its heyday. That was before, well, just about EVERYONE put their hands in the Dade and Broward County cookie jars while the Canes were left starting "five-star" talents from other states that never panned out.

Yes, on the field, the play, at times, was dreadful. We're talking, "48-0-beatdown-to-Virginia-in-the-last-ever-game-at-the-Orange-Bowl" dreadful. Players looked disinterested and were openly accused of downright quitting in that game by Cane legacy but future Gator Matt Patchan.

Well, then. Seems like the Canes were left with a coach that can recruit but can't coach a lick and instills such great discipline that his teams visibly throw in the towel when things aren't going so well.

Right?

Not exactly. First of all, every team that has a first-year coach that comes in and wants to clean house in the discipline department deals with the detritus of a bad attitude left behind. Even the players that "buy in" to the new coach's system won't be the majority right away, because in most cases if those kids were the majority there wouldn't be a need for a total attitude overhaul in the first place.

In such instances, it's not a real fair way to judge a coach's ability to out-scheme another right away. It's just not. You can't judge a team's performance when half of its players are on the same page and the other half simply don't give a hoot.

That said, Shannon had the right message for his team following its bowl-less 2007. You could almost hear Shannon's voice through Javarris James' quotes in the Sporting News magazine preview: "We've lost a lot of respect. People don't respect us, so it's time to outwork people so they will respect us."

Refreshing, isn't it, to hear that kind of statement from a program that pretty much invented the modern example of ostentatious braggadocio?

Regardless of whether or not Shannon was the first choice or how his team played last season or whether these recruits will turn into studs rather than flops, isn't that the message you want to hear as a Hurricane fan going forward? Don't you want the players to finally be coming from a place of humility and tireless work ethic, the very foundation on which Howard Schnellenberger first brought the program to prominence under even more adverse circumstances?

Yes? Alright then, onto question two.

That leads us to the question regarding a collective patience level, which in my opinion is always the toughest to answer. And at a place like Miami, it's even tougher, because what can you possibly expect other than a total schizophrenic set of peaks and valleys of utter domination and complete and total embarrassment?

Yes, Miami became a white-hot national power in the eighties and most of its fans harken back to this era because, hey, everyone loved the Canes back then. Before Schnellenberger arrived? Ah, whatever. There's a reason why Bruce Feldman's book, "Cane Mutiny" (which pretty much had a ringing endorsement of Larry Coker's coaching ability), basically starts when Schnellenberger arrived. Before then, there wasn't much sizzle to the program.

After that, well, you thought Rutgers or maybe Kansas or Missouri has had a meteoric rise to power in recent years? Ah, not really. The Canes went from an afterthought program to the hulking, fire-breathing mega-dynasty that trampled traditional powerhouse programs such as Notre Dame and Oklahoma in its wake.

Then came the ensuing probations, off-the-field incidents and poor decisions that end up wiping such dynasties out in a heartbeat, and the Canes were back at square one. Butch Davis then methodically built the program back up and, by the time he'd left, Larry Coker had the Canes in back-to-back national title game appearances with a crystal ball to take home from the first one.

Ah, surely, this meant the onset of another 80s-type run. Not really. In 2005, Miami had an otherwise palatable season if not for a 40-3 curbstomping at the hands of LSU.

But, hey, what's one miserable bowl performance among national title-winning coaches?

(Not you, Bob Stoops, Coker. Remember, only one.)

Okay, but next season brought the FIU brawl, more blowout losses and a bowl win (but over Nevada. Getting your skull beat in by a mega-loaded LSU team was all well and good, but when the Cane fans had to lower themselves to appreciate a bowl win over a mid-major team, heads had to roll).

Cane fans should be patient, if, for nothing else, then for the sheer fact that they have no other choice. No one else wanted the job, Shannon stepped up to take it. The man at least deserves a fair shot given that, for better or for worse, getting rid of him without doing so will make you wish for the times you got to go to a meaningless bowl against a team like Nevada.

Ask Minnesota fans to compare the comeback loss to Texas Tech two years ago to last year's losses to Bowling Green, Florida Atlantic and North Dakota State. First-year growing pains suck, whether it be Alabama losing to Louisiana-Monroe last year or Colorado losing at home to Montana State the year before. Don't boot one coach out the door because you're not USC and then throw the next guy under the bus because, well, you're still not USC and you won't be satisfied until you are.

It doesn't work that way.

As Matthew McConaughey preached in his best work, "Dazed and Confused," as Wooderson, the has-been stoner guy in his 30s who still picks up high school chicks: "Patience, darlin'. Patience," as he reassures one girl about the prospects of a party later that night.

Wooderson, the former all-district player who tries to tries to reconnect with his bygone glory days by morphing into a creepy, Texas-style, NBC Dateline pedophile, could just as well be waxing philosophic to Miami fans as to himself about the benefits of holding off one's urges until a promising freshman turns 18.

The line is delivered with a simple, soothing tone, as if to say, "Don't worry. Give me some time and, trust me, good times once again are ahead."

By Adam Kurkjian
CollegeFootballNews.com
July 27, 2008

 

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