forums

It occurred to me while watching the game Saturday..

Trav said:
Somewhere in the second quarter I think, I was doing what I seemingly do most games, and most seasons over the past 15 years or so. I'm waiting for this team to wake up. I'm waiting for everything to click and the team to show that they're the ones with the superior athleticism, size, talent, and will. And then just sort of occurred to me, I'm waiting for something that's not coming.

There's just something deeply wrong with the entire program. And what I do, and we all do, as is our natural inclination, is to try to look for that one thing. Well it's Diaz, we just need a new head coach. Well it's the OC, it's the DC, it's our linebackers, it's our OL, our receivers still can't catch, our quarterback is short and coming off an injury. It's our tackling. It's our preparation. It's our S&C.

But, it's all those things, and it's so much more. I get accused of being a Diaz slurper, and I'm not. I think it was another really risky higher. Another guy with no experience, and some degree of success as a coordinator, but not a whole lot to indicate that he had some kind of great coaching pedigree. But what's funny is people acting like he's suddenly the problem. As if Coker, Shannon, Golden, and Richt never existed somehow. Yea I get how things imploded under Coker and Shannon, but Golden was what half this board is clamoring for again right now. A guy who turned around a fledgling program and made them respectable. And how did Richt forget to coach? Sure UGA had a ceiling but things never imploded on him like they did here in 2018. What happened?

And how is it Lashlee forgot everything? How is it he got a bunch of guys to put up massive #s at SMU with a bunch of guys Miami wouldn't even recruit. The comp isn't THAT dramatically better here. You certainly can't say that about an App St.

I'm watching the App St game and I'm seeing a bunch of kids that Miami wouldn't have even sent a letter to pushing around our big 4 star recruits with elite offer lists.. And then rub their faces in the dirt and tell them about it. And yes we made enough plays to find a way to win, but how did we get to this level when we're life and death with a decent G5 team... Again. Yea they have chips on their shoulders, but so do all the G5 kids on teams that get served up to P5 schools early in the season before the conference schedules. And unless you're FSU, the talent disparity takes care of itself, no matter how bad those kids want to prove their worth.

But not with us. There's almost this pervasive rot that never goes away since the 2005 Peach Bowl. Like it seems they're doing what they need to do in the off-season to train and prepare but once the lights come on there's not an extra gear to meet the challenge. Yea some weeks there are, but it's never consistent. The difference in the way a Tyrique Stevenson plays, with physical abandon and toughness every play, compared to everyone else is so jarring you almost feel like he doesn't belong on the field with these guys. And then you start to realize why guys like him choose to go other places. Because kids like that are watching us play, and turnover chains and TD rings and models on the beach and everything else is nice and fun but it's gilded and these guys are football players. They're watching what's happening on the field and that edge just isn't there. It's about WAY more than scheme.

They're seeing what we see and they're just not interested. Now I think we've started to get some of those type of guys. I think James and Avante are those type of dudes. But the rot is still there. And it can't be fixed with one recruiting class. Yea these kids want to win. They want to play for championships. But want to and making it happen are two different beasts. And the former greats like Michael a Irvin occasionally in their ear or Ed Reed on staff and in their ear EVERY DAY can't just flip a switch and make it happen.

I don't know the answer, and I don't know if there are any easy ones, or any at all. And my only defense of Manny is that he tires to address the obvious problems. But he's in over his head, just like the last 3 guys. If/when we move on from the Manny regime, it'll be another top to bottom cleanse, but the cleanse will have to go so much deeper than any of these guys realized. Who's up for that?
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ANSWER:

- Lashlee tries to establish run, because that sets tone for EVERYTHING
- OL is subpar and CAN'T establish run
- Lashlee continues to try and establish run rhythym
- Lashlee calls short slants/sweeps/etc with limited success
- Lashlee continues to try and establish run rhythym
- Canes freahman K asked to score points from 50 yds out

Wash, rinse, repeat
 
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Trav said:
Yea that's fair, but Shannon did some of that hard-a$$ stuff he learned from Jimmy and guys didn't respond to that at all. I'm not sure if you could do that with today's egos and literal endorsement contracts before they even set foot on campus. I know Saban does some of that, and there's certainly accountability lacking, but I don't know if that's the one and only answer. Part of the problem is the culture down in Miami with agents and handlers and influencers and all the other bullsh*t, which Cribby has alluded to, and keeps away a lot of big time coaching candidates. I don't think we can just go back to the way Jimmy did it, because the world is different, and South FL is way different.
Click to expand...

Trav, I dont disagree with you, times have changed, you cant do 'the Junction Boy's anymore like Bear Bryant. You have to evolve your coaching methods with the times. But I really do feel there is a sense of entitlement from our players. And the things Ive been told recently..... geez..

But I remember years ago I met Tino Dominguez, he was the equipment guy for years at USC, went through all sorts of staffs. He was the Yosemite Sam looking guy on the sidelines. If you ever want the scoop on players, go to the equipment staff -- they have the scoop on where all the bodies are buried

Anyways, Im talking to him and someone asked if Pete Carroll ever really got angry at players. His answer was, "No, he really is upbeat. and if someone ****es him off, say a CJ Gable (a running back) well, he'll just put in Stefon Johnson or Marc Tyler in is place and sit him. That gets the message across real fast."

Thats when USC had like 8 blue-chip running backs on the roster

Right now, my biggest frustration is that I dont think Manny does that, at all. It's why we keep seeing the same mediocre-to-bad upperclassmen. I know, were only 2 games into this season but I really think he needs to have a bit of a youth movement going on heading into ACC play (especially with the transfer portal).

I get it, you can't coach like you did in the past and go all Bobby Knight, but can we at least hold guys accountable through playing time?
 
Empirical Cane said:
ANSWER:

- Lashlee tries to establish run, because that sets tone for EVERYTHING
- OL is subpar and CAN'T establish run
- Lashlee continues to try and establish run rhythym
- Lashlee calls short slants/sweeps/etc with limited success
- Lashlee continues to try and establish run rhythym
- Canes freahman K asked to score points from 50 yds out

Wash, rinse, repeat
Click to expand...

Lashlee is an expert at setting up 3rd and long consistently as he continually tries to jam the ball up the gut
 
Trav said:
I think just saying "it's the administration" is again oversimplification. The admin isn't dropping passes and blowing coverages and getting pancaked by 2 star recruits. And it's not like we're having to deal with hoping AJ Highsmith can play safety or Khalil Jones can catch passes anymore. There's enough talent to beat an App St comfortably by we can't. There's enough talent to at least hang with Alabama but we can't.

What exactly could Highsmith magically do that Ed Reed can't or won't?
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How is it an oversimplification? Kids dropping passes, blowing coverages, etc. is presumably because they aren't being coached properly, which leads directly back to the administration who has hired blanks going all the way back to Coker.

You aren't suggesting that we have literally missed on recruiting for over 15 straight years right? Are you suggesting that for 15+ years, we just have had immense bad luck and have recruited kids who can't catch, cover, etc.? Also, even if that is the case, who recruited these poor players and again, who is responsible for hiring said coaches? I am not trying to be a ****, but legitimately trying to understand your position.
 
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McGahee2TheHouse said:
How is it an oversimplification? Kids dropping passes, blowing coverages, etc. is presumably because they aren't being coached properly, which leads directly back to the administration who has hired blanks going all the way back to Coker.

You aren't suggesting that we have literally missed on recruiting for over 15 straight years right? Are you suggesting that for 15+ years, we just have had immense bad luck and have recruited kids who can't catch, cover, etc.? Also, even if that is the case, who recruited these poor players and again, who is responsible for hiring said coaches? I am not trying to be a ****, but legitimately trying to understand your position.
Click to expand...
No my point is the opposite. We recruit enough talent but something happens when they get here. At least enough talent to win the coastal most years. There's a systemic problem that goes beyond coaching or administration.
 
k9cane said:
Trav, I dont disagree with you, times have changed, you cant do 'the Junction Boy's anymore like Bear Bryant. You have to evolve your coaching methods with the times. But I really do feel there is a sense of entitlement from our players. And the things Ive been told recently..... geez..

But I remember years ago I met Tino Dominguez, he was the equipment guy for years at USC, went through all sorts of staffs. He was the Yosemite Sam looking guy on the sidelines. If you ever want the scoop on players, go to the equipment staff -- they have the scoop on where all the bodies are buried

Anyways, Im talking to him and someone asked if Pete Carroll ever really got angry at players. His answer was, "No, he really is upbeat. and if someone ****es him off, say a CJ Gable (a running back) well, he'll just put in Stefon Johnson or Marc Tyler in is place and sit him. That gets the message across real fast."

Thats when USC had like 8 blue-chip running backs on the roster

Right now, my biggest frustration is that I dont think Manny does that, at all. It's why we keep seeing the same mediocre-to-bad upperclassmen. I know, were only 2 games into this season but I really think he needs to have a bit of a youth movement going on heading into ACC play (especially with the transfer portal).

I get it, you can't coach like you did in the past and go all Bobby Knight, but can we at least hold guys accountable through playing time?
Click to expand...
I mean there's some of that yea? 6 and 8 don't even see the field anymore on offense. And on the OL I don't think there's the luxury of sitting anyone. Same at LB. But overall I agree. I don't know this first hand, and I would love to hear more of what you've heard, but you do get the sense that Diaz's approach is to connect with these guys on a personal level. And I've always believed yeah you can do that, but it has to be once you've established fear and respect. Seems like he might have skipped that part. I think he saw a guy like Richt in a bit of an ivory tower, and went full opposite and said I'm going to dive in here with you guys and we'll all be boys.. well then the flip side of that is there's no real accountability.
 
Trav said:
I mean there's some of that yea? 6 and 8 don't even see the field anymore on offense. And on the OL I don't think there's the luxury of sitting anyone. Same at LB. But overall I agree. I don't know this first hand, and I would love to hear more of what you've heard, but you do get the sense that Diaz's approach is to connect with these guys on a personal level. And I've always believed yeah you can do that, but it has to be once you've established fear and respect. Seems like he might have skipped that part. I think he saw a guy like Richt in a bit of an ivory tower, and went full opposite and said I'm going to dive in here with you guys and we'll all be boys.. well then the flip side of that is there's no real accountability.
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Is that not a coaching issue? Doesn't seem like that is some "systemic problem" that goes beyond coaching or admin.
 
Trav said:
No my point is the opposite. We recruit enough talent but something happens when they get here. At least enough talent to win the coastal most years. There's a systemic problem that goes beyond coaching or administration.
Click to expand...
Gotcha.

So in some parallel universe, if Urban Meyer were to be fired tomorrow and hired at Miami, you are basically saying that you don't think he would turn the program around in a few years? There is some deeper issue that would prevent that, correct?
 
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Trav said:
No my point is the opposite. We recruit enough talent but something happens when they get here. At least enough talent to win the coastal most years. There's a systemic problem that goes beyond coaching or administration.
Click to expand...
The problems we have had winning the Coastal, has been wholly and totally on coaching. We have the easiest division in power 5. Nothing to do with bags, practice facility, none of that crap. Just garbage coaches who cant hire or develop players
 
supacane said:
The problems we have had winning the Coastal, has been wholly and totally on coaching. We have the easiest division in power 5. Nothing to do with bags, practice facility, none of that crap. Just garbage coaches who cant hire or develop players
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Can't really argue. Bags are absolutely a factor in trying to recruit some elite kids but there's been enough talent year in year out to win the coastal most years and it's been a rarity.
 
McGahee2TheHouse said:
Gotcha.

So in some parallel universe, if Urban Meyer were to be fired tomorrow and hired at Miami, you are basically saying that you don't think he would turn the program around in a few years? There is some deeper issue that would prevent that, correct?
Click to expand...
No not at all. But is Urban Meyer walking through that door?
 
Trav said:
...
Click to expand...
I hate to have to write this post, but I feel like pulling out my hair reading this. I appreciate your sense of confusion, but this mess has been staring us in the face since Coker was here. It's not complicated. The problem is, fans are generally delusional and in denial. That's the nature of the beast. Fan is short for fanatic. ADs, by contrast, are supposed to be managers. Have some intellect, experience, relationships, judgment, understand the situation and deal with it. Ultimately, cause outcomes, don't just play CYA.

It all begins with CULTURE. It always does, here and everywhere. Whose quote was it that politics is downstream of culture? If the entire government of the free world is downstream of culture (and it is), in what universe is UM somehow immune to this general rule?

So the simple question is where does culture come from. It comes from leadership, or at least it should. In the absence of leadership, it generally falls to the lowest common denominator. Maybe sometimes, here or there, there's some group of kids that hold themselves so accountable they can beat well coached teams with good cultures. But generally, that's so rare as to be irrelevant.

What culture is needed for football? You need things like toughness, physicality, competitiveness, focus, seriousness about the sport, seriousness about personal development. They're easy things to say but kids are much smarter at smoking out BS than people think. You can't fake your way to cultural strength. You can't half *** it or cut corners.

UM has intentionally destroyed the culture of the football program going back to Coker. They didn't call him 'Country Club Coker' for nothin. Shannon didn't know what to do to fix it. Golden had his ice cream socials. Richt ran a few kids off and probably came closest to improving the mess (and maybe that showed up in '17), but ultimately he didn't want to be head coach of a competitive big time program anymore so it didn't matter. (And I would contend he's not a serious culture guy in any case, but that's a different discussion.) Diaz is Mr. Anti-Culture. He's all talk and show and gold chains and wants to be liked. He even tells people we don't take ourselves too seriously. His words! Imagine Nick Saban saying that. It would be a dead-pan punch line. It's a business. They pay you $4 million dollars a year. Shouldn't you take this all seriously?

The UM Admin has intentionally avoided hiring people (or even searching for them) who might be real football culture people. Because it doesn't want a football culture. It wants mascots. A logo that represents tough guys from the past, painted on a defanged animal that can be tied to the lamp post on its front lawn. And makes it look like it's in the 'football business' just enough to scrape by with fans and boosters. When the lie becomes too visible, they act surprised and make a show of firing someone. A couple years after informed fans were laying out the issues for everyone to read about on message boards. I don't know this for sure but I suspect the institution pushed for less physical practices a looong time ago. Well intentioned maybe. Let's protect kids from CTE, be progressive, etc. But just watch us. Wonder why the games don't work like we expect? Maybe because we don't practice like we should!

This isn't actually that complicated. Winning is hard. Getting the foundation right shouldn't be. But not complicated doesn't mean easy. It takes work, sacrifices, commitment and tough decisions. It's doable. But we'd need a coach who is a leader, and an AD and Admin that are willing to support him. It would require running off a lot of kids. It would require increasing the demands on student athletes. It would require putting fangs back on the mascots. This institution just doesn't want to go there, IMO.

As far as the fan base goes, we get so distracted by hope we continuously avoid looking at the real issues. The whole 'we need a modern offensive minded type' coach / clever coordinator type (past coaching hire) was a great example. (I admin to getting caught up in that belief after Richt.) Being a head coach isn't about coordinating. It's about being a leader, setting a culture, recruiting a staff, managing (leading) them, setting up good processes, evaluating and recruiting players, teaching them, and developing them. Hire good coordinators, give them direction, and let them coordinate. If you can do the basics, you can have a good program. But being a 'clever' coordinator type doesn't mean dog poo if you can't get the foundation right. If we got the foundation right, by contrast, we'd have something to build on if we hired a new coach. In the absence of that, we're in constant rebuilding mode every time.

Every single time we have a new coach, allegedly smart insiders all run the same shell game on boards. All summed up with catch-phrase memes. Message board posters aren't qualified to criticize coaches. If you don't know football as well as the coaches how can you say they're wrong. You don't know what you don't know! Psssst, I heard so and so is killing it on Greentree. Etc. Then the excuses. Then when it all falls apart, you hear 'insiders say the culture was worse than we knew! ... good thing the new hero is focused on fixing it!'

I tell you what. You don't have to be a microbiologist in gut bacteria to recognize dog poo when you see it. And you don't have to be a D1 coach to recognize incompetence in others. Miami has continually hired incompetents to coach its football program. And there's no defense of the people involved in the non-processes involved in selecting them. Either they're smart but just don't care about football relative to other priorities, or they're idiots who just don't know what they're doing. (And by that I mean don't know how to run a hiring process, not just that they don't get the outcome right.) Either way, they're participating in a fraud on the kids we recruit and it's not right. Local kids with talent deserve the chance to be developed into the professionals they aspire to be. If UM doesn't want to take that seriously, it should probably stop pretending to them that it does.

Hiring is hard because even when you do it all right, the guy can fail. But when you don't do any of it right, you can be pretty sure he'll fail. We're in that camp.

Sorry, end rant.
 
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Trav said:
Somewhere in the second quarter I think, I was doing what I seemingly do most games, and most seasons over the past 15 years or so. I'm waiting for this team to wake up. I'm waiting for everything to click and the team to show that they're the ones with the superior athleticism, size, talent, and will. And then just sort of occurred to me, I'm waiting for something that's not coming.

There's just something deeply wrong with the entire program. And what I do, and we all do, as is our natural inclination, is to try to look for that one thing. Well it's Diaz, we just need a new head coach. Well it's the OC, it's the DC, it's our linebackers, it's our OL, our receivers still can't catch, our quarterback is short and coming off an injury. It's our tackling. It's our preparation. It's our S&C.

But, it's all those things, and it's so much more. I get accused of being a Diaz slurper, and I'm not. I think it was another really risky higher. Another guy with no experience, and some degree of success as a coordinator, but not a whole lot to indicate that he had some kind of great coaching pedigree. But what's funny is people acting like he's suddenly the problem. As if Coker, Shannon, Golden, and Richt never existed somehow. Yea I get how things imploded under Coker and Shannon, but Golden was what half this board is clamoring for again right now. A guy who turned around a fledgling program and made them respectable. And how did Richt forget to coach? Sure UGA had a ceiling but things never imploded on him like they did here in 2018. What happened?

And how is it Lashlee forgot everything? How is it he got a bunch of guys to put up massive #s at SMU with a bunch of guys Miami wouldn't even recruit. The comp isn't THAT dramatically better here. You certainly can't say that about an App St.

I'm watching the App St game and I'm seeing a bunch of kids that Miami wouldn't have even sent a letter to pushing around our big 4 star recruits with elite offer lists.. And then rub their faces in the dirt and tell them about it. And yes we made enough plays to find a way to win, but how did we get to this level when we're life and death with a decent G5 team... Again. Yea they have chips on their shoulders, but so do all the G5 kids on teams that get served up to P5 schools early in the season before the conference schedules. And unless you're FSU, the talent disparity takes care of itself, no matter how bad those kids want to prove their worth.

But not with us. There's almost this pervasive rot that never goes away since the 2005 Peach Bowl. Like it seems they're doing what they need to do in the off-season to train and prepare but once the lights come on there's not an extra gear to meet the challenge. Yea some weeks there are, but it's never consistent. The difference in the way a Tyrique Stevenson plays, with physical abandon and toughness every play, compared to everyone else is so jarring you almost feel like he doesn't belong on the field with these guys. And then you start to realize why guys like him choose to go other places. Because kids like that are watching us play, and turnover chains and TD rings and models on the beach and everything else is nice and fun but it's gilded and these guys are football players. They're watching what's happening on the field and that edge just isn't there. It's about WAY more than scheme.

They're seeing what we see and they're just not interested. Now I think we've started to get some of those type of guys. I think James and Avante are those type of dudes. But the rot is still there. And it can't be fixed with one recruiting class. Yea these kids want to win. They want to play for championships. But want to and making it happen are two different beasts. And the former greats like Michael a Irvin occasionally in their ear or Ed Reed on staff and in their ear EVERY DAY can't just flip a switch and make it happen.

I don't know the answer, and I don't know if there are any easy ones, or any at all. And my only defense of Manny is that he tires to address the obvious problems. But he's in over his head, just like the last 3 guys. If/when we move on from the Manny regime, it'll be another top to bottom cleanse, but the cleanse will have to go so much deeper than any of these guys realized. Who's up for that?
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Players and coaches get treated like little babies at Miami.. you dont show energy and passion at winning programs you dont play.. thats not our case.
Never seen many diaz yelling at a player or taking him out the game for a missed tackle.. no leaders

manny cant even get our uniforms right

Bubba bolden thought he was going to be in the rafters lmao.. players and coaches to soft to call each other out.. its not hard at all

our kids run more doing substitutions then the game.. diaz doesnt play the #1 dt in country lol Gaynor sucks no energy besides a few ..lashlee was good until he was around diaz over the year..our players get worse not better .. its sad
 
Ethnicsands said:
I hate to have to write this post, but I feel like pulling out my hair reading this. I appreciate your sense of confusion, but this mess has been staring us in the face since Coker was here. It's not complicated. The problem is, fans are generally delusional and in denial. That's the nature of the beast. Fan is short for fanatic. ADs, by contrast, are supposed to be managers. Have some intellect, experience, relationships, judgment, understand the situation and deal with it. Ultimately, cause outcomes, don't just play CYA.

It all begins with CULTURE. It always does, here and everywhere. Whose quote was it that politics is downstream of culture? If the entire government of the free world is downstream of culture (and it is), in what universe is UM somehow immune to this general rule?

So the simple question is where does culture come from. It comes from leadership, or at least it should. In the absence of leadership, it generally falls to the lowest common denominator. Maybe sometimes, here or there, there's some group of kids that hold themselves so accountable they can beat well coached teams with good cultures. But generally, that's so rare as to be irrelevant.

What culture is needed for football? You need things like toughness, physicality, competitiveness, focus, seriousness about the sport, seriousness about personal development. They're easy things to say but kids are much smarter at smoking out BS than people think. You can't fake your way to cultural strength. You can't half *** it or cut corners.

UM has intentionally destroyed the culture of the football program going back to Coker. They didn't call him 'Country Club Coker' for nothin. Shannon didn't know what to do to fix it. Golden had his ice cream socials. Richt ran a few kids off and probably came closest to improving the mess (and maybe that showed up in '17), but ultimately he didn't want to be head coach of a competitive big time program anymore so it didn't matter. (And I would contend he's not a serious culture guy in any case, but that's a different discussion.) Diaz is Mr. Anti-Culture. He's all talk and show and gold chains and wants to be liked. He even tells people we don't take ourselves too seriously. His words! Imagine Nick Saban saying that. It would be a dead-pan punch line. It's a business. They pay you $4 million dollars a year. Shouldn't you take this all seriously?

The UM Admin has intentionally avoided hiring people (or even searching for them) who might be real football culture people. Because it doesn't want a football culture. It wants mascots. A logo that represents tough guys from the past, painted on a defanged animal that can be tied to the lamp post on its front lawn. And makes it look like it's in the 'football business' just enough to scrape by with fans and boosters. When the lie becomes too visible, they act surprised and make a show of firing someone. A couple years after informed fans were laying out the issues for everyone to read about on message boards. I don't know this for sure but I suspect the institution pushed for less physical practices a looong time ago. Well intentioned maybe. Let's protect kids from CTE, be progressive, etc. But just watch us. Wonder why the games don't work like we expect? Maybe because we don't practice like we should!

This isn't actually that complicated. Winning is hard. Getting the foundation right shouldn't be. But not complicated doesn't mean easy. It takes work, sacrifices, commitment and tough decisions. It's doable. But we'd need a coach who is a leader, and an AD and Admin that are willing to support him. It would require running off a lot of kids. It would require increasing the demands on student athletes. It would require putting fangs back on the mascots. This institution just doesn't want to go there, IMO.

As far as the fan base goes, we get so distracted by hope we continuously avoid looking at the real issues. The whole 'we need a modern offensive minded type' coach / clever coordinator type (past coaching hire) was a great example. (I admin to getting caught up in that belief after Richt.) Being a head coach isn't about coordinating. It's about being a leader, setting a culture, recruiting a staff, managing (leading) them, setting up good processes, evaluating and recruiting players, teaching them, and developing them. Hire good coordinators, give them direction, and let them coordinate. If you can do the basics, you can have a good program. But being a 'clever' coordinator type doesn't mean dog poo if you can't get the foundation right. If we got the foundation right, by contrast, we'd have something to build on if we hired a new coach. In the absence of that, we're in constant rebuilding mode every time.

Every single time we have a new coach, allegedly smart insiders all run the same shell game on boards. All summed up with catch-phrase memes. Message board posters aren't qualified to criticize coaches. If you don't know football as well as the coaches how can you say they're wrong. You don't know what you don't know! Psssst, I heard so and so is killing it on Greentree. Etc. Then the excuses. Then when it all falls apart, you hear 'insiders say the culture was worse than we knew! ... good thing the new hero is focused on fixing it!'

I tell you what. You don't have to be a microbiologist in gut bacteria to recognize dog poo when you see it. And you don't have to be a D1 coach to recognize incompetence in others. Miami has continually hired incompetents to coach its football program. And there's no defense of the people involved in the non-processes involved in selecting them. Either they're smart but just don't care about football relative to other priorities, or they're idiots who just don't know what they're doing. (And by that I mean don't know how to run a hiring process, not just that they don't get the outcome right.) Either way, they're participating in a fraud on the kids we recruit and it's not right. Local kids with talent deserve the chance to be developed into the professionals they aspire to be. If UM doesn't want to take that seriously, it should probably stop pretending to them that it does.

Hiring is hard because even when you do it all right, the guy can fail. But when you don't do any of it right, you can be pretty sure he'll fail. We're in that camp.

Sorry, end rant.
Click to expand...

Cot ****, this flows like the Nile. I think you're spot on with every doggone word you typed out
 
Ethnicsands said:
I hate to have to write this post, but I feel like pulling out my hair reading this. I appreciate your sense of confusion, but this mess has been staring us in the face since Coker was here. It's not complicated. The problem is, fans are generally delusional and in denial. That's the nature of the beast. Fan is short for fanatic. ADs, by contrast, are supposed to be managers. Have some intellect, experience, relationships, judgment, understand the situation and deal with it. Ultimately, cause outcomes, don't just play CYA.

It all begins with CULTURE. It always does, here and everywhere. Whose quote was it that politics is downstream of culture? If the entire government of the free world is downstream of culture (and it is), in what universe is UM somehow immune to this general rule?

So the simple question is where does culture come from. It comes from leadership, or at least it should. In the absence of leadership, it generally falls to the lowest common denominator. Maybe sometimes, here or there, there's some group of kids that hold themselves so accountable they can beat well coached teams with good cultures. But generally, that's so rare as to be irrelevant.

What culture is needed for football? You need things like toughness, physicality, competitiveness, focus, seriousness about the sport, seriousness about personal development. They're easy things to say but kids are much smarter at smoking out BS than people think. You can't fake your way to cultural strength. You can't half *** it or cut corners.

UM has intentionally destroyed the culture of the football program going back to Coker. They didn't call him 'Country Club Coker' for nothin. Shannon didn't know what to do to fix it. Golden had his ice cream socials. Richt ran a few kids off and probably came closest to improving the mess (and maybe that showed up in '17), but ultimately he didn't want to be head coach of a competitive big time program anymore so it didn't matter. (And I would contend he's not a serious culture guy in any case, but that's a different discussion.) Diaz is Mr. Anti-Culture. He's all talk and show and gold chains and wants to be liked. He even tells people we don't take ourselves too seriously. His words! Imagine Nick Saban saying that. It would be a dead-pan punch line. It's a business. They pay you $4 million dollars a year. Shouldn't you take this all seriously?

The UM Admin has intentionally avoided hiring people (or even searching for them) who might be real football culture people. Because it doesn't want a football culture. It wants mascots. A logo that represents tough guys from the past, painted on a defanged animal that can be tied to the lamp post on its front lawn. And makes it look like it's in the 'football business' just enough to scrape by with fans and boosters. When the lie becomes too visible, they act surprised and make a show of firing someone. A couple years after informed fans were laying out the issues for everyone to read about on message boards. I don't know this for sure but I suspect the institution pushed for less physical practices a looong time ago. Well intentioned maybe. Let's protect kids from CTE, be progressive, etc. But just watch us. Wonder why the games don't work like we expect? Maybe because we don't practice like we should!

This isn't actually that complicated. Winning is hard. Getting the foundation right shouldn't be. But not complicated doesn't mean easy. It takes work, sacrifices, commitment and tough decisions. It's doable. But we'd need a coach who is a leader, and an AD and Admin that are willing to support him. It would require running off a lot of kids. It would require increasing the demands on student athletes. It would require putting fangs back on the mascots. This institution just doesn't want to go there, IMO.

As far as the fan base goes, we get so distracted by hope we continuously avoid looking at the real issues. The whole 'we need a modern offensive minded type' coach / clever coordinator type (past coaching hire) was a great example. (I admin to getting caught up in that belief after Richt.) Being a head coach isn't about coordinating. It's about being a leader, setting a culture, recruiting a staff, managing (leading) them, setting up good processes, evaluating and recruiting players, teaching them, and developing them. Hire good coordinators, give them direction, and let them coordinate. If you can do the basics, you can have a good program. But being a 'clever' coordinator type doesn't mean dog poo if you can't get the foundation right. If we got the foundation right, by contrast, we'd have something to build on if we hired a new coach. In the absence of that, we're in constant rebuilding mode every time.

Every single time we have a new coach, allegedly smart insiders all run the same shell game on boards. All summed up with catch-phrase memes. Message board posters aren't qualified to criticize coaches. If you don't know football as well as the coaches how can you say they're wrong. You don't know what you don't know! Psssst, I heard so and so is killing it on Greentree. Etc. Then the excuses. Then when it all falls apart, you hear 'insiders say the culture was worse than we knew! ... good thing the new hero is focused on fixing it!'

I tell you what. You don't have to be a microbiologist in gut bacteria to recognize dog poo when you see it. And you don't have to be a D1 coach to recognize incompetence in others. Miami has continually hired incompetents to coach its football program. And there's no defense of the people involved in the non-processes involved in selecting them. Either they're smart but just don't care about football relative to other priorities, or they're idiots who just don't know what they're doing. (And by that I mean don't know how to run a hiring process, not just that they don't get the outcome right.) Either way, they're participating in a fraud on the kids we recruit and it's not right. Local kids with talent deserve the chance to be developed into the professionals they aspire to be. If UM doesn't want to take that seriously, it should probably stop pretending to them that it does.

Hiring is hard because even when you do it all right, the guy can fail. But when you don't do any of it right, you can be pretty sure he'll fail. We're in that camp.

Sorry, end rant.
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Beautifully written Sands
 
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Trav said:
Somewhere in the second quarter I think, I was doing what I seemingly do most games, and most seasons over the past 15 years or so. I'm waiting for this team to wake up. I'm waiting for everything to click and the team to show that they're the ones with the superior athleticism, size, talent, and will. And then just sort of occurred to me, I'm waiting for something that's not coming.

There's just something deeply wrong with the entire program. And what I do, and we all do, as is our natural inclination, is to try to look for that one thing. Well it's Diaz, we just need a new head coach. Well it's the OC, it's the DC, it's our linebackers, it's our OL, our receivers still can't catch, our quarterback is short and coming off an injury. It's our tackling. It's our preparation. It's our S&C.

But, it's all those things, and it's so much more. I get accused of being a Diaz slurper, and I'm not. I think it was another really risky higher. Another guy with no experience, and some degree of success as a coordinator, but not a whole lot to indicate that he had some kind of great coaching pedigree. But what's funny is people acting like he's suddenly the problem. As if Coker, Shannon, Golden, and Richt never existed somehow. Yea I get how things imploded under Coker and Shannon, but Golden was what half this board is clamoring for again right now. A guy who turned around a fledgling program and made them respectable. And how did Richt forget to coach? Sure UGA had a ceiling but things never imploded on him like they did here in 2018. What happened?

And how is it Lashlee forgot everything? How is it he got a bunch of guys to put up massive #s at SMU with a bunch of guys Miami wouldn't even recruit. The comp isn't THAT dramatically better here. You certainly can't say that about an App St.

I'm watching the App St game and I'm seeing a bunch of kids that Miami wouldn't have even sent a letter to pushing around our big 4 star recruits with elite offer lists.. And then rub their faces in the dirt and tell them about it. And yes we made enough plays to find a way to win, but how did we get to this level when we're life and death with a decent G5 team... Again. Yea they have chips on their shoulders, but so do all the G5 kids on teams that get served up to P5 schools early in the season before the conference schedules. And unless you're FSU, the talent disparity takes care of itself, no matter how bad those kids want to prove their worth.

But not with us. There's almost this pervasive rot that never goes away since the 2005 Peach Bowl. Like it seems they're doing what they need to do in the off-season to train and prepare but once the lights come on there's not an extra gear to meet the challenge. Yea some weeks there are, but it's never consistent. The difference in the way a Tyrique Stevenson plays, with physical abandon and toughness every play, compared to everyone else is so jarring you almost feel like he doesn't belong on the field with these guys. And then you start to realize why guys like him choose to go other places. Because kids like that are watching us play, and turnover chains and TD rings and models on the beach and everything else is nice and fun but it's gilded and these guys are football players. They're watching what's happening on the field and that edge just isn't there. It's about WAY more than scheme.

They're seeing what we see and they're just not interested. Now I think we've started to get some of those type of guys. I think James and Avante are those type of dudes. But the rot is still there. And it can't be fixed with one recruiting class. Yea these kids want to win. They want to play for championships. But want to and making it happen are two different beasts. And the former greats like Michael a Irvin occasionally in their ear or Ed Reed on staff and in their ear EVERY DAY can't just flip a switch and make it happen.

I don't know the answer, and I don't know if there are any easy ones, or any at all. And my only defense of Manny is that he tires to address the obvious problems. But he's in over his head, just like the last 3 guys. If/when we move on from the Manny regime, it'll be another top to bottom cleanse, but the cleanse will have to go so much deeper than any of these guys realized. Who's up for that?
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Ahhhh, 12/30/2005... I always point to that game as the moment it all went south. I sat through this game as friends and family celebrated my B-day.
 
Mark Richt always said football isn't about scheme, it's about beating the man in front of you. We consistently get beat and show up flat. No scheme is going to change that. Your team takes on the attitude of it's head coach, our Coach is a big talker, like our team, all talk and fluff.

Systemically that's what our admin wants, they don't want a no nonsense guy like Butch, they want guys in ties or smooth talkers that make the program "look" good.
 
Has anyone ever seen a bad coach hire a new set of coordinators and have that save their career? Really think about this one
 
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