Just today on CFB live (ESPN), the analysts were discussing weather or not Steve Spurrier reached his pinnacle and was now on the decline, due to his age. One of the analysts, defending Spurrier, said he had three 11 win seasons in a row and his 'bad' year was still in plus territory as the team still finished with a winning record. To which Paul Finenbaum responded (paraphrasing), "He won 7 games because he beat Miami at the end of the year, does that even count in College Football anymore?"
We're jokes. Mediocre, disrespected, and treated as an inconsequential football team. Obviously we already know that but I want to go further. My question is, are we done for good? And what I mean to say by that is not some absolute statement claiming that we can never be good or elite again. Sure we could be a contender again, but from what point do we have to begin our ascent? Coker comes in, wins a championship, and then has some awful years. Shannon and even Golden come in as new Head coaches and benefit from our tradition, prestige, and history. They say to recruits and the media something to the effect of "that wasn't Miami football. That was just a bump in the road. We're still NFLU. We're still a powerhouse team and come play for Miami because overall we're winners and we've always won." Our brand was recognized and it sold.
Essentially, talented football prospects thought of Miami as a prestigious and powerhouse program. When they thought of Miami they thought of our 5 NC's, the 00-02 boys, our previous dominance, and our plethora of top caliber NFL talent. So whenever this question of "are we done for good" is asked many respond saying the question is nonsense. They're retort always goes something like this, "We've never had a lot of resources and our budget has always been small. Yea we suck now but we'll always be good and we'll rebound because we live in the most talent-rich area in the country. We just need an above average Head coach who can lock up that talent, coach them up, and we'll be back in contention." But that line of thinking misses the point. Our small budget hires worked and had the potential to work because our brand compensated for the low 'status' hire in reaching out to recruits. Our coach was able to acquire the athletes because of our brand and then once our coach got the horses and proved he could coach (Johnson, Butch, etc.) status and brand complemented each other. Our relatively unknown coach had a leg up.
My point is, we're not Michigan. We can't (or won't) go out and hire a popular and high status figure to fix our problems. Harbaugh will restore the brand, the brand won't lift up Harbaugh. He can sell to recruits that he is a proven NFL coach. We have a small budget, and it seems for the foreseeable future we'll continue to be a small-budget school, so we'll never rebound our program and brand with a "Harbaugh" type of fix. FIU and FAU are from South Florida and are located in the most talent-rich area in terms of football prospects, why haven't they ever been good? Why can't they lure in top prospects? Obviously because they have no brand, they're not seen as 'football' schools. We're dangerously close to a point in which our brand (or maybe we're already there) will no longer ensure or sustain our present or future competitiveness.
I believe that our next low-status hire after Golden is fired this year (Cristobal, Stitt, etc.) won't benefit or will barely benefit from our brand. It will be tougher for him to recruit down here and tougher for him to recruit around the country. Future college players no longer think of Miami as that dominant and prestigious program. It's been 15 years since we've won anything and in just a few short years college prospects will have been born in an era in which Miami was consistently mediocre. They grew up watching Florida, Florida St., Alabama, and a whole host of others dominate the college landscape. Our coach can no longer say we've hit a few bumps in the road because our brand has fallen of a cliff. Our next hire needs to be a coach not a corch (someone along the lines of Briles, Patterson, Dantonio) because relying on the Miami of old will no longer work. We'll have to reinvent ourselves, which is extremely, extremely hard. We can't rely on an average or above-average coach to win us games because he won't have access to the caliber of athlete that we're accustomed to signing. We'll be starting closer to the bottom then we've ever started. Another 5 to 10 years of mediocrity and at what point is our brand distinguishable from the brands of UCF, FIU, or FAU?
