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Lengthy Post
There’s a lot of myths that’s plagued our society: The Lockness Monster, Big Foot, Kim Kardashian’s *** being real; but, no myth has divided the CIS society into factions none other than the debate of Miami not having enough talent vs. coaching. This subject is as divisive as if Miami should have its own stadium, Miami is broke, & if Miller Lite is truly less filling or if it indeed taste great.
I wanted to examine this notion from several angles, looking at polar opposite ends of the spectrum regarding top tier programs who are flushed w/ talent (e.g Bama) and successful programs without the same caliber of talent (e.g Baylor) to see where we fall. I will also look at how we’ve faired when it comes to blue chip success, and finally I will take a look at how we compare to our contemporaries in the woeful ACC Coastal.
The starting point I’ll use is 2007; why? B/c in 2007, two seismic hires took place that changed two historic programs’ fate, Miami & Alabama.
BLUE CHIP ACQUISITION-
Let’s first examine 6 programs in regards to blue chip acquisition since 2007 - present: Alabama, UGA, Clemson, Utah, Baylor, & TCU. (Please note: I did not take into account player attrition for any program since it all washes it out, but I did take in consideration transfer-in from The Transfer Portal).
-Alabama: 342 blue chip players (71 Five-Stars)
-UGA: 268 blue chip players (54 Five-Stars)
-Clemson: 188 blue chip players (28 Five-Stars)
-TCU: 58 blue chip players (1 Five-Star)
-Baylor: 41 blue chip players (2 Five-Stars)
-Utah: 37 blue chip players
How does Miami compare? 179 blue chip players (12 Five-Stars).
Conclusion on talent acquisition: While we have not hoarded the same amount of blue chip talent as three of the most dominant programs since 2007, it was interesting to see how we’ve been fairly on par w/ Clemson in regards to acquiring total blue chips during this time frame.
With that being said, let’s see what we’ve done with such acquisitions, comparably, with the draft (to gage why we may struggle to get high end blue chips to consistently consider us).
THE DRAFT (I’ll only focus on the top 3 teams compared to Miami in this exercise, since we love to blame bags for everything as an excuse)-
*The classes of 2007-2020 are the only ones that have been drafted or draft eligible since 2010-2023.*
-Bama had 259 blue chips (50 Five-Stars)
-UGA had 202 blue chips (40 Five-Stars)
-Clemson had 142 blue chips (22 Five-Stars)
-Miami had 132 blue chips (7 Five-Stars)
-Bama:
38% of Bama’s total blue chips were drafted (99)
68% of their 5* were drafted
72% of Bama’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds
-UGA:
33.6% of UGA’s total blue chips were drafted (68)
67.5% of their 5* were drafted
48.5% of UGA’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds
-Clemson:
31.6% of Clemson’s total blue chips were drafted (45)
77% of their 5* were drafted
60% of Clemson’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds
Miami:
28% of Miami’s blue chips drafted (27)
86% of our 5* were drafted
32% of our drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds
Conclusion on The NFL Drafts: This could explain why high end players are not beating down our doors with consistency; the blue chip players we’ve acquired, we’ve done far less in not only getting them drafted, but the draft position for our blue chips have been well below sub-par.
RECORDS SINCE 2007 (Let’s deep dive in the notion of talent vs. coaching)-
-Bama: 194-27
-Clemson: 173-46
-UGA: 166-49
-TCU: 142-63
-Utah: 138-64
-Baylor: 114-88
Miami? 116-84
In this example, Miami has the 6th worst record out of two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. We can reason why Miami would have a worst record than Bama, UGA, & Clemson due to a talent discrepancy, but Utah, and TCU??
-We’ve acquired 300% more blue chips than TCU
-We’ve acquired almost 500% more blue chips than Utah
-We’ve acquired about 430% more blue chips than Baylor;
Yet, since 2007:
-TCU has won 10+ games 8x (including 4 Conference Titles, 9 bowl games {3 NY6 bowls}).
-Utah has won 10+ games 7x, (including 3 Conference Titles, 10 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})
-Baylor has won 10+ games 5x (including 3 Conference Titles, 6 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})
Miami? One 10 win season, and one bowl victory since 2007.
Utah, TCU, & Baylor are also doing this as under dogs, having far less talent than the likes of USC, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma or equal talent as the likes of UCLA, Washington, Iowa St, & OK St. Which brings me to
THE ACC COASTAL AND HOW WE COMPARE-
Unlike TCU, Utah, & Baylor, we’ve out recruited every single team in our division since 2007.
Blue Chip Acquisition during that time:
-UNC: 107 (6 Five-Stars)
-VT: 69 (2 Five-Stars)
-UVA: 35 (2 Five-Stars)
-GT: 33
-Pitt: 25 (since joining the ACC in 2013)
-Duke: 11
Yet, here’s our record against said opponents:
UNC: 6-10
VT: 9-7
UVA: 9-7
GT: 10-5
Pitt: 7-3
Duke: 12-4
So is this a talent issue, or have something else been going on?
Final Conclusion: Yes, we have experienced a plethora of attrition; however, if u compare our attrition and stack the remaining roster talent/season to the majority of the teams we’ve faced annually, on paper, we’ve still had more than enough talent.
The NFL draft agrees with that assessment:
Since 2007-
-Miami: 57 Players Drafted (19 in first 3 rounds)
-UNC: 43 Players Drafted (20 in first 3 rounds)
-VT: 34 Players Drafted (11 in first 3 rounds)
-Pitt: 29 Players Drafted (7 in the first 3 rounds)
-GT: 19 Players Drafted (4 in the first 3 rounds)
-Duke: 9 Players Drafted (2 in the first 3 rounds)
Imo, the fate of Miami’s program is all cumulative. It’s not a coincidence that programs like Baylor, Utah, & TCU have thrived in a CFB world filled w/ handlers, w/ big fish choosing bigger programs; that’s coaching. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that programs like Bama, UGA, & Clemson are thriving w/ the shear amount of 5 stars & blue chips they’ve acquired; we can say that’s talent.
With Miami, we’re neither Bama-esque nor Utah-esque when it comes to talent or coaching. We should have enough talent to be a perennial 10 win team + winning the division (which is no longer an option), but the coaching has been putrid.
Every top program I’ve studied all have one thing in common: dedication and commitment from the top-down. With Miami, we’ve seen apathy from the admin, lazy hires filled with cronyism and nepotism, and a lack of semblance both at the AD and coaching levels. To constantly hide behind the theory of “Miami doesn’t have talent or enough talent” is foolish and disingenuous. Once upon a time, I believed that, but when I see other programs filled w/ non blue chip caliber rosters, taking down much tougher opponents, it puts things into perspective.
The hardest thing for anyone to do is face truth b/c it hurts. The NFL draft is a reminder that the program has some work to do, but with this renewed dedication, it shouldn’t take 5 yrs. There’s too many past and current examples showing that a turn around can be done in two yrs. Hopefully moving forwards, we’ll have a definitive answer vs. a theory of talent vs. coaching; I’m of the opinion we’ll have both, but this season will give me an even more definitive answer one way or another.
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