You don't have to pay, but here you lazy incompetent *****
This was all you needed to see: Mark Richt flashing the "U" sign with his hands.
"I know everyone's excited for me to do this," he said.
A room full of Hurricane players, officials and fans cheered. But it wasn't the hand signal or conversation that really told this story. Richt could have said or done anything and won his introductory news conference as the University of Miami's football coach Friday morning.
It was the idea of Richt, standing here, that made this a watershed day for Miami. Even before coaching a game, his presence took this program to a place it never entered in winning five national titles.
It's in the big-coach business now. That means, by extension, it entered a world no one considered possible at this small, private school.
The big-money business.
"This is just one part of the vision for the school," said Stuart Miller, a Board of Trustee member who with his company, Lennar Corporation, has pledged more than $200 million to the university's medical school. "There's football, there's the medical [component], there are other parts — it's all part of making this a great university."
Photos: Mark Richt through the years
From his recent run at Georgia, to his days as a Bobby Bowden assistant at FSU, to being a backup QB at UM in the early 1980s and even a full-haired star passer at Boca, this is new Miami Hurricanes coach Mark Richt.
Where did this money come from? How much is there? No one was saying and, as a private school, no one had to say. But Richt will make $4 million a year, a source said, or roughly what he made at Georgia.
Al Golden's contract was estimated at $2.5 million, and that was much higher than the ACC-low contract Randy Shannon initially had for under $1 million. And the larger program's finances? Well, Shannon lobbied for money from players who graduated to the NFL.
That's where the school's athletic finances were a decade ago. The joke around the athletic department was Miami had the same rich boosters showing up to events, year after year. And how did they stay rich?
"They never donate to the school," the punch line went.
In previous decades, the philosophy of Miami athletic directors Sam Jankovich and Paul Dee was to hire young and talented coaches who would succeed in such a manner that they'd stay a short while and make big money on their next job.
"You have to know who you are," Jankovich once said.
It worked for Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson and Butch Davis, who won big and made NFL millions. Richt represents a change to that idea. His arrival says Miami has entered the business of big-time athletics for the first time.
"The directive given to me was to compete to be the very best, and to be the very best that means you have to get the very best," athletic director Blake James said.
James had a long meeting with Richt on Tuesday to discover if the two sides were "a good fit," he said. "We spoke for quite a while about what he needed to be successful."
That surely went beyond personalities and philosophies. It also had to do with money. Paying for a staff. Upgrading facilities. James said he's had a to-do list in recent years and checked items off. A new athletic center. Better meeting rooms.
It's still a long way from some schools. North Carolina, for instance, has finger-imprint access for players to enter a weight room overlooking the football field. Georgia just got an indoor facility, which is high on Miami's list.
The fact Miami has won five national titles in 32 years tells a coach can win here. Richt must also do cartwheels thinking about Miami's ACC opponents compared to Georgia's SEC ones.
His record against the ACC team he played annually, Georgia Tech? It's 13-2.
His record against the SEC team he played annually, Florida? It's 5-10. (That's the only SEC team Richt had a losing record against.)
One concern about Richt is he might be burned out after 15 years at Georgia.
When Miami's plane came to pick him up Wednesday afternoon, he asked to have videos of the last two years' games and film of this year's recruits flown in on it to watch. Does that sound like a tired coach?
"Mutual agreement," Richt said at one point Friday, chuckling but not chuckling, in describing the way his firing by Georgia was described. Does that sound like an unmotivated coach?
Everyone knows Richt offers instant credibility to Miami. But the real story is Miami offered big-time dollars for him. That's a world they've never entered. That's something for fans to applaud Friday, along with whatever the new coach said.
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