The pressure is clearly on for Al Golden at Miami. In his rankings of coach stability, our Travis Haney pegged Golden as the ACC's most likely coach to be gone in 2016, and the Raleigh News & Observer wrote this weekend that the middling results for the Hurricanes under Golden simply aren’t good enough at a place like Miami.
Examining Al Golden's impact at Miami - ACC Blog - ESPN
Of course, so much of the narrative is set in Miami's golden age. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, Miami was among the most feared, talented and successful programs in the country, but that’s not the team Golden inherited. Instead, he walked into a mediocre program that had scuffled since joining the ACC and was further diminished by the cloud of an NCAA scandal. It was tough sledding, and therefore it seems that Golden’s tenure shouldn’t be measured against where Miami wants to be so much as where it recently was.
In other words, is Golden on the hot seat simply because he hasn’t met unrealistic expectations or because he hasn’t carried Miami far enough from its humble starting point?
2006-10
2011-14
Record 28-23 28-22
Pts/Game 26.2 30.3
Pts Allowed/G 23.2 25.4
vs. bowl-eligible P5 teams 13-20 13-18
ESPN300 recruits* 32 34
NFL draft picks 16 18
Note*Includes Golden's first four signing classes and the four classes prior to his arrival.
Comparing Golden's four years with the Hurricanes to the four years previous, it's hard to see marked improvement in the aggregate. Miami won 28 games in the four years before Golden arrived, and it has won 28 during his four-year tenure. The Canes’ record against bowl-eligible teams, its success landing top-level recruits and the development of NFL talent has all remained effectively the same. It's fair to suggest that Golden has dealt with a tougher ACC during his run -- particularly with the rise of Florida State -- but for Miami fans, his 0-4 record with an average margin of defeat of 19 points against FSU hasn't engendered much sympathy.
Golden has managed to continue recruiting well in spite of NCAA sanctions, however, and he has a potentially program-defining class lined up for 2016 — assuming he can stay around that long.
Given that level of recruiting though, is it fair to suggest Miami should be performing better on the field?
There are six Power 5 programs that have signed between 30 and 38 ESPN300 recruits from 2011-2014: Miami, UCLA, Oregon, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Oklahoma. Of that group, only Ole Miss -- which has played a markedly tougher schedule -- has a worse record than the Hurricanes. The other four programs have at least seven more wins over that same span than Miami.
Even comparing the Canes to other programs that dealt with NCAA issues, the numbers aren’t encouraging.
NCAA Effect On Winning And Recruiting
Team
4/5-star signees
Wins
Wins/recruit
USC 47 36 0.77
Miami 34 28 0.82
UNC 26 28 1.08
Penn State 18 31 1.72
Miami, USC, Penn State and North Carolina have all endured their share of NCAA obstacles in the past few years, including scholarship reductions and bowl bans, but USC and Penn State managed more wins, and North Carolina had roughly the same success on the field despite fewer top recruits.
Still, sometimes growth takes time, and USC and Penn State certainly were starting from a better position than Miami when Golden arrived. So let’s compare Miami to its peers from 2006 through 2010. There were 11 P5/AQ (Power 5/Automatic Qualifying) teams that won between 34-36 games, including Miami. If we look at that group four years later, Miami is smack dab in the middle in terms of wins and losses.
Growth Under Golden
Team Wins/season 2005-10
2011-14
Louisville 6.8 9.8
Notre Dame 6.8 9.3
Texas A&M 7.0 8.8
Michigan 7.0 7.8
Arizona 6.8 7.5
Miami 7.0 7.0
Northwestern 6.8 6.5
Maryland 6.8 5.0
Wake Forest 7.2 4.5
Kentucky 7.2 3.5
Kansas 6.8 2.3
The teams ahead of Miami on that list are rising programs: Louisville, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Michigan and Arizona. All five have some positive buzz in 2015, though its also worth noting that coaching changes signaled a turning of the tide for each program. And the list behind Miami consists nearly entirely of historically bad programs that had a brief rise in the mid-2000s: Northwestern, Maryland, Wake Forest, Kentucky and Kansas. That is probably not a crowd Miami fans would like to be associated with.
In any case, the problem clearly isn't that Golden has failed at Miami so much as he has been unable to alter a status quo that has existed for more than a decade now. But perhaps there’s hope. For all the hot-seat talk surrounding Golden, there’s reasonable excitement for quarterback Brad Kaaya. Yes, Miami has been a middling program for a decade, but it also hasn’t had a field general quite like him. And as Phil Steele writes, Miami could be a team poised to make a big stride in 2015 -- moving from the middle of the pack back to a 10-win institution. Or maybe nearly a decade of seven-win seasons has established a new normal, and the responsibility for that belongs to the university far more than Golden.
What’s clear, however, is 2015 promises to be a referendum on Miami’s future -- a step toward rejuvenation with a stellar signing class on the way or another year of mediocrity with change looming.
