Lets get this clear. While last season was a disaster, Mark Richt did not set out to intentionally make it so. He’s not an evil or selfish mastermind who was set on breaking the program.
He made bad calls, quite simply. He can be critiqued on that, but that is all. The simple fact is as well that Richt still left Miami in a better state as a program than Golden did, or Shannon did, or Coker. He got buyin from the university on additional spending to compete with other programs. He recruited better in 2016 and 2017 than Golden, and when faced with a damaged class in the fall of 2018 he did not rush to go out and sign a slew of marginal three and two star players like Shannon and Golden. Relations with high school coaches were improved. Depth was greatly improved. Bottom line, the next UM coach had far more at his disposal to work with because of Richt’s efforts.
Now he easily could have stayed another two or three years. Had he done so, most or all of those advantages that I’d listed above would have gone away as the program sustained .500 seasons due to offensive scheme woes finally coming home to roost. But he upheld his the tenants of his faith and put others before himself, and did the selfless thing. That to me - combined with the improvemnts he made at Miami - ultimately outweigh the one bad season.
