forums

It occurred to me while watching the game Saturday..

Advertisement
Good post, but I have one question for you.

If that coach for AppState can get his team up to play like that and put them in a position to win like he did, what could he do here?

A dud is a dud and we seem to keep hiring them. Richt is by any standard a good coach. You couldn't find someone that wanted to win here as much as him and he cares for this university and his players. He didn't suddenly forget how to coach, so what was the problem?

I don't know what the solution is, but it would be nice to figure it out.
 
Advertisement
SayWhat said:
Good post, but I have one question for you.

If that coach for AppState can get his team up to play like that and put them in a position to win like he did, what could he do here?

A dud is a dud and we seem to keep hiring them. Richt is by any standard a good coach. You couldn't find someone that wanted to win here as much as him and he cares for this university and his players. He didn't suddenly forget how to coach, so what was the problem?

I don't know what the solution is, but it would be nice to figure it out.
Click to expand...
Much worse, he declined at it for a while until UGA fired him, and then basically told us he didn't even want to do the program building job -- he wanted to get back to his roots as a coordinator, apparently to prove that UGA was wrong to let him go (and in their demands of him over the years). In retrospect, his illness was likely also impacting his ability to coach. But anyhow, the idea that it was a surprise that he wasn't what kool aid drinkers hoped is just false. Plenty of fans identified risks and shortcomings with him from the outset. The problem is that there are still people who can't process that the NARRATIVE may be false. That's always the issue when you have collective cognitive bias and distortion. Are we in a bubble, or will tulips become more and more valuable forever? Hard to know, when you're in the bubble. Maybe this time is different. Maybe UGA was wrong. Maybe we should hire a HC who would rather be an OC because he played at UM decades ago.

Or maybe he didn't want to do the job we needed done, he was more focused on mentoring his son than on having a QB coach who could coach QBs, he was more focused on calling plays that worked when he was young than on studying what is going on in offensive football today. Maybe he was never the coach we think (UGA's resources are very different than ours, and the SEC has changed a lot since the few years he was best there). Maybe he was but got tired of it. Maybe it didn't map to UM and our needs. Maybe his illness intervened.

It's the job of an AD to deeply understand our needs and resources, and then to deeply assess candidates. If you don't understand what you nereds are, all hires sound good. (CHECK). If you don't deeply assess candidates, cover story narratives sound good. (CHECK). It's not particularly hard to go through an exercise of doing these things -- you'd think that's what the job requires. Doesn't mean you'll get all hires right, or anywhere near that level of outcome. But hopefully it means that you'll at least avoid serially making terrible decisions for the wrong reasons.

JMHO.
 
Miami has an athletic department that likes to act small (and thereby thinks small.)

For the last decade plus, and especially under Beta Blake James, they've had an inferiority complex. They wear the fact that they can't be 'like the big schools' on their sleeves.

Convenient excuse for underperformance, eh?
 
Last edited:
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...
Do you think Lashlee didn't know what we had (didn't assess well despite all the time here)? Or he did know we have a bad OL but for some reasons decided to pound the line instead of trying to call plays that might be more effective in the face of that weakness?
 
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...
You hit culture right on the head. We have no consequences, because no leader. And it shows.
 
Advertisement
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...
Post of the Decade
 
I think it's a culture problem inside the program and it started with Coker. Once the guys that were around that last championship team were gone complacency and entitlement set it. It's been since then our guys seem to think that because they have the U on the side of their helmet the other team should just roll over and accept defeat.

Coker let the inmates run the asylum. Randy was in over his head, played favorites, and when someone was in the doghouse they never seemed to get out. Golden tried to be a hard *** but nobody respected him. Everyone of those guys had major flaws.

Richt got softer every year he was here. That first year he said this was the softest team he ever coached. And after the Notre Dame in 17 it felt like we had finally after years of suffering become a major player again. Then Pitt happened. Then Richt made one of the most beta moves I've ever seen running the fg team out in the final minutes just to avoid a shutout. After that Richt lost his edge maybe due to illness I don't know but now....Manny.

I thought it when he was hired that it was a huge mistake. He should have gotten his seasoning at Temple and prove to be a up and coming head coach. Blake fvcked us after Richt gave us a gift. It feels like we are back to the same spot we were under Randy.

Maybe it starts with a new AD a new coach and a commitment to the football program. There is a slim to none chance any of those happen. So it looks like this is the pattern we should get used to year in and year out.
 
firstandcanes said:
I think it's a culture problem inside the program and it started with Coker. Once the guys that were around that last championship team were gone complacency and entitlement set it. It's been since then our guys seem to think that because they have the U on the side of their helmet the other team should just roll over and accept defeat.

Coker let the inmates run the asylum. Randy was in over his head, played favorites, and when someone was in the doghouse they never seemed to get out. Golden tried to be a hard *** but nobody respected him. Everyone of those guys had major flaws.

Richt got softer every year he was here. That first year he said this was the softest team he ever coached. And after the Notre Dame in 17 it felt like we had finally after years of suffering become a major player again. Then Pitt happened. Then Richt made one of the most beta moves I've ever seen running the fg team out in the final minutes just to avoid a shutout. After that Richt lost his edge maybe due to illness I don't know but now....Manny.

I thought it when he was hired that it was a huge mistake. He should have gotten his seasoning at Temple and prove to be a up and coming head coach. Blake fvcked us after Richt gave us a gift. It feels like we are back to the same spot we were under Randy.

Maybe it starts with a new AD a new coach and a commitment to the football program. There is a slim to none chance any of those happen. So it looks like this is the pattern we should get used to year in and year out.
Click to expand...
Coker proved he wasn’t the right guy, game 1. Up 30-0 at the half at Penn State, he hits the cruise control button and finishes 33-7. Yes, 24-1 with a NC and a stolen one, cannot take away from him. But twice in 2001 complacently almost cost the NC, at BC and at VT. 2001 Miami would have been the best #2 team since 2000 Miami.

2002 and near repeats against FSU and VT. Finally caught up in the Fiesta Bowl. OSU was good, but not that good. A motivated and focused Miami team wins by 14, an angry Miami team wins by 21.

Talent won a lot of games, for sure, but you could sense on-the-field leadership slip as players like Ed Reed left.

Coker hit cruise too often, and the players got the message.
 
Last edited:
Ethnicsands said:
Do you think Lashlee didn't know what we had (didn't assess well despite all the time here)? Or he did know we have a bad OL but for some reasons decided to pound the line instead of trying to call plays that might be more effective in the face of that weakness?
Click to expand...
It is perplexing.

I think I think, that he is concerned too many slants/sweep/flats passes in a row will lead to a pick six.

For some reason, he continues to try and soften the middle with an OL that couldn't push around girl scouts at a cookie sale.

FFS... if Iowa and Iowa State can field competitive teams with 2**, why can't our Canes?
 
Advertisement
rok said:
Great observations. I know the decline began before it happened, but tearing down the OB has at least something to do with it.
Click to expand...
It had zero to do with it. Do we really need to watch the big OB send off game again? Or the Kernobyl game that same year? Or us crapping away the ACC title to a mediocre GT team in '05? Or the listless losses to VT and FSU in '06? I was there for each and every one and the OB couldn't provide any magic. The magic was from the teams, not the building.
 
Ethnicsands said:
You hit culture right on the head. We have no consequences, because no leader. And it shows.
Click to expand...
I'll agree the admin is inept but it makes zero sense to me they actively don't want a premier football program and all the $$ that goes along with that.
 
Advertisement
k9cane said:
A soft culture, with easy practices(by relative standards of big-time programs), that really doesn't hold players accountable, will produce soft football players and teams.

Football isn't an easy game, that's why I truly respect anyone that plays at a high level. It's not always fun and it can be brutal on the body and mind

But this is what these guys signed up for. Somewhere along the way UM became a bit soft with its players (well, having Coker in charge is where it started).

This used to be a place where after bad practices Jimmy Johnson would threaten guys scholarships at the end of the semester. Bubba McDowell, when I interviewed him for Canestime way back when, flat out said it was frightening and the guys were running back to their dorm rooms to , as Jimmy said -- ''read the fine print''. He laughed when he told the story, as did Michael Irvin who said the greatest and toughest football in his life was on Greentree after Johnson's threats. But it had an impact on those guys as young men.

Now, we have a guy who does the slip-n-slide after defeating Virginia by 5 points at home.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

Folks, listen to my boy. Our problem isn’t talent, our problem is more culture than anything. When we were referred to as “Suntan U”, our FB program was chit. Yeah, we produced some would be future NFL HOFers, but those were so far, few in between vs. the program itself.

Players ALWAYS said practices at Greentree was so much like game time, when Jimmy was here; that when game time came around, it was easy. Somewhere around Coker’s tenure, despite all the 4 & 5 stars on the roster, that work ethic changed. I heard Shannon tried to re-install it, and I recall one game, he had the names taken off the back of the jerseys so players could refocus on what playing for Miami really meant, but he was way in over his head, plus dealing w/ an admin, that by all accounts, wasn’t really supportive.

Golden brought in, what, cheeseburgers, ice cream trucks, bicycles, scavenger hunts, and Wefense?? Soft af!

The Richt/Diaz regime has carried that tradition, coddling egos, soft practice. So when we hear reports about how fast or how big we look, well, of course; it’s not iron sharpening iron, it’s lead dulling lead. That’s y a team like App St can be faster than us, more physical than us, even though they are smaller & less talented.

Diaz cheers like a kid off simple plays, and I don’t think it’s genuine. I think it’s artificial enthusiasm to try to spark a fire in a lack luster program. No one is being talked to, no one is being benched for dumb penalty after dumb penalty. It’s going through the motions, and we’ve been going through the motions for a while. If we lose, no big deal. If we win, that’s a plus.
 
Last edited:
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?
Click to expand...
This is pretty much what I said in my post. It's something bigger than Manny. He's the reason we suck right now but it's so much deeper than him. It's going to take a special kind of coach to right this ship.
 
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...

It ain’t just being a hard ***.

It’s displaying GENUINE self confidence.

Randy was never secure or comfortable as UM head coach. Players in the doghouse. Schools on the blacklist. Behind the times in training and nutrition. He had many flaws that don’t generally lead to success as head coach.

Handlers ain’t keeping no coaches away. Miami’s frugal spending habits are. That is just something that makes it not worth taking less money to come. If Miami was paying $7-10million for the head coach and competitive for top assistants, there would be no shortage of top guys willing to sign up.

Miami can EASILY be a top 10 program with the RIGHT GUY. I believe there are several out there who can do it. All hires after Butch had fatal, glaring flaws. We have discussed them ad nauseum. We need a guy with the right personality.

Becoming top 5 is where the **** gets real. That probably won’t happen.

Cristobal is the surest bet of realistic options, but that ship has likely sailed. The other guys have unknowns that make them risky, but every hire is risky until it isn’t. We need to focus on traits as much, if not more , than resume.

Ohio State got back on top taking Tressel from the lower levels. Those are the types of moves we should be considering. FCS, G5, middle of the pack but historically overachieving P5. The problem is we don’t have an administration to carry out such a process.
 
It starts at the top. UM's President doesn't give a crap about being elite. Until UM hires a President that wants us to be dominant again and will spare no expense (see USC), we will be stuck as a barely top 25 program 100% thanks to our high school backyard talent.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top