Serious Question about Blake James

[Consigliere]

That's the point; Miami will always be a stepping stone job for an athletic director. Period.

I stopped here. Two points:

1. Although this is not true. Who cares if this is true? Isn't it a good thing that other employers want your employees? Why would you want to employ people nobody wants to consider hiring?

2. These are not lifetime positions. We just need to bring in someone who is passionate, competent and with autonomy. If we need to repeat the process every 3 years, so be it. Would you rather employ a Potato who shouldn't be running the Banana Stand simply because they won't go anywhere?

 

[Consigliere]

And we're bringing money into the argument. Is that the reason we struggle in the coastal? The same chit is continually thrown against the tangent wall.

 

[nycane]

The university of Afghanistan would hire him

well he blew up a football program haha

 

[nycane]

@caneinorlando i love when people say manny turned a defense around. Golden left him a ton of talent and his defense has fallen apart since those kids left. I cant stand golden but his program was scheme. he got kids to the league better than the last staff.
People think butch and/or schiano couldnt coach up corn elder, carter, jenkins, jj, redwine, rj, norton, chad, trent, etc?lol

 

[soddyCane]

Money WASN'T an issue when Richt left. Richt was essentially pushed out. Money was there for Mario's buyout and blake ran and hired manny. Blake OWNS the manny hire.

I agree with this more than anything else in this post. If the Manny hire goes bad, Blake has to go with him. I think Blake has made some good decisions. Adidas was something that was incredibly unpopular when he did it, but was a fantastic decision in hindsight. Pushing the chips in and helping make the IPF happen was great. But you live and die by coaching hires and it was a ballsy move to make someone a first time head coach at Miami.

 

[SWFLHurricane]

@caneinorlando i love when people say manny turned a defense around. Golden left him a ton of talent and his defense has fallen apart since those kids left. I cant stand golden but his program was scheme. he got kids to the league better than the last staff.
People think butch and/or schiano couldnt coach up corn elder, carter, jenkins, jj, redwine, rj, norton, chad, trent, etc?lol

I won't even comment on their Lunacy....
My Cuz was offered the UM HC Job before Richt....he wants nothing to do with UMs administration...Nothing....

 

[DTP]

The AD's job is to maximize the athletic department's profits.

 

[RightSaidFred]

Y'all said the same nonsense about Kirby Hocutt and the dude goes to Texas Tech and they have one of the best athletic departments in the country. Quit crying about literally everything.

Texas Tech is garbage. They went 5-7 last year and failed to make a bowl game.

Kirby Hocutt was just another in a long line of garbage hires by this clown show of a BOT we have running the school

 

[Fluffhead]

Blake James hired Mark Richt and Manny Diaz. One was one of the hottest coaches on the market at the time and the other had proven he could quickly turnaround one of the worse defenses in college football.

I mean who the **** did you expect him to hire? With our pay, who were we supposed to hire? We don't have the money to hire a proven P5 winner. Our only two routes are successful coordinators or successful G5 coaches.

The second part is fair, but at some point every head coach was either a successful coordinator or G5 coach. Before Urban Meyer was this version of Urban Meyer, he was doing it at Utah and Bowling Green before that. It is not like back in the day we plucked any of Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson, or Butch Davis from Texas. His job as AD is to pick the right one from the realistic applicant pool available to him.

I got the Richt hire at the time, and still question what could have been if he just relinquished control of the offense and brought in a real QB coach. If nothing else, he brought the program's facilities and back room operations to something resembling the modern day.

The Diaz hire was a joke. How did he know what else was out there or what someone's vision was for the program when he hired Diaz in six hours and didn't interview anyone else. I understand he probably used the search firm to back channel and gauge interest, but there was literally not one other person in America that he thought he should maybe interview? At a minimum, Josh Heupel 4 hours up the road was probably worth interviewing.

He did just about the same thing with the baseball program. The guy is a Muppet and should do like George Costanza and do the opposite of whatever his gut is telling him to do.

 

[kryptonite]

I agree with this more than anything else in this post. If the Manny hire goes bad, Blake has to go with him. I think Blake has made some good decisions. Adidas was something that was incredibly unpopular when he did it, but was a fantastic decision in hindsight. Pushing the chips in and helping make the IPF happen was great. But you live and die by coaching hires and it was a ballsy move to make someone a first time head coach at Miami.

I don't think it was a ballsy move, I think it was the easy move. Manny was popular in Miami at the time, it was going to be an easy sell.

But I think the thing people are missing is that we're kinda limited. We take a first time HC, a HC from a minor program looking to move up, or a G5 who's had questionable success thus far. There's a career arc successful guys follow, and we aren't near the top of it. Were Strong or Herman going to take a Miami offer over Texas? Sht no, because even though Texas hasn't won anything in ages it's a better job than Miami. What about Urban? Nope, if he wants to coach again he'll wait for ND to open up.

The thing about Richt was that even in his situation, a coach who's had his level of success wouldn't take the Miami job unless he already had ties to the program. Bash Richt all you want, but he's the biggest name we're likely to see at Miami unless we luck into a guy who goes on to greatness at a bigger program.

 

[OrangeBowlMagic]

Texas Tech is garbage. They went 5-7 last year and failed to make a bowl game.

Kirby Hocutt was just another in a long line of garbage hires by this clown show of a BOT we have running the school

They have a Top 15 athletic department in the country. Their baseball team has been to Omaha several times recently. Their basketball team just went to the Final Four.

I personally don't give a rat's *** about Texas Tech or Kirby Hocutt, but I'm just pointing out the crybabies who do nothing but cry about everything said he was useless and would never get another job and sucked and was a typical Miami budget hire etc etc etc and he went to Texas Tech and is running a very successful athletic department.

It may shock you, but message board Miami fans who as a majority have, at best, a high school diploma might not be the most qualified judges of athletic directors in the world.

 

[RightSaidFred]

They have a Top 15 athletic department in the country. Their baseball team has been to Omaha several times recently. Their basketball team just went to the Final Four.

I personally don't give a rat's *** about Texas Tech or Kirby Hocutt, but I'm just pointing out the crybabies who do nothing but cry about everything said he was useless and would never get another job and sucked and was a typical Miami budget hire etc etc etc and he went to Texas Tech and is running a very successful athletic department.

It may shock you, but message board Miami fans who as a majority have, at best, a high school diploma might not be the most qualified judges of athletic directors in the world.

I think the fans are exactly right. UM football has been trash for over 15 years, so obviously something isn’t working with the way the program is run.

Fans are right to want to hold management accountable.

 

[nycane]

No one even cared when we hired manny. At least when Richt was hired it dominated espn

 

[Mnhurricane]

The no money shtick is BS we have PLENTY of money to hire whoever the **** we want but they much prefer the money in their pockets. That’s the issue

 

[nycane]

The no money shtick is BS we have PLENTY of money to hire whoever the **** we want but they much prefer the money in their pockets. That’s the issue

Money wasn’t an option last two times.

 

[Mnhurricane]

Money wasn’t an option last two times.

Just the people saying he’s handcuffed by money so can’t make good hires. MR hire was a good try can’t fault him for that it just didn’t work out. His early extensions though...

 

[EL U]

The reason we hired Manny so quickly is because he had all the leverage with the timing. He told the AD and BOT that if he was going to be hired as HC, it had to be next to immediate because he was mere days away from taking a one-way ticket to Philly and Temple. Had we not hired Diaz that evening or soon after, there's no chance at all he even considers coming back.

 

[TheEye]

Blake James hired Mark Richt and Manny Diaz. One was one of the hottest coaches on the market at the time and the other had proven he could quickly turnaround one of the worse defenses in college football.

I mean who the **** did you expect him to hire? With our pay, who were we supposed to hire? We don't have the money to hire a proven P5 winner. Our only two routes are successful coordinators or successful G5 coaches.

No one understands this. They think the scool neglects to ask good coaches.

 

[NVA CANE]

1) Exactly we hired the best coach we could for 4M. It takes more than that to win, especially with the players we recruit of south Florida.

2) Many quickly turned around the defense. It wasn't perfect, but he clearly was the driver of that. If are not going to spend mega-money for a coach then you got to find the right coordinator. (UGA)

3) The perception at the time from our fans was that Richt would perform better at Miami because of the talent difference.

4) Are you talking about Al Golden? I mean, he did a pretty good job at Temple.

Lots of revisionist history here. When Richt’s name came up a majority felt it was a bad hire because he was burnt out and significantly underachieved at UGA.
At that point in time, yes dan Mullen was the much better hire and any intelligent person that watches college football knew it.

Manny Diaz was the next up and coming coach for a non major program. That’s specifically why he was set to go to temple. We paid temple $4 million to take manny back from them. The idea that we didn’t have the money to hire a legit coach is bull****.

coaches that we could have hired
Dino Babers
Mike Leach
Mike Norvell

that’s just off the top of my head. Sorry but this is bull**** revisionist history and is excusing some of the worst program management I’ve seen from an athletic director.

 

[Sun_Life_Sellout]

Flake is essentially Frenk's fluffer, and the BOT (who give absolutely zero *****) love the status quo ($ from the conference, network etc...)