ItsAUThing.com
Following 'The U' since '80—covering it since '96.
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2017
- Messages
- 2,825
Ahh, it's bigger than that.
What Butch pulled off was the perfect storm, in an era before college football became big money, competition across the board was lesser and the SEC wasn't fully poaching South Florida's best talent.
Larry Coker going 24-0 out the gate was a blessing and a curse, as it bought the man more time to stick around than he truly deserved; a swell guy, but a sub-par head coach who only got the job because the Canes were so close to contending for a title and the players rallied for his *** (despite his last head coaching gig being at an Oklahoma high school in the late seventies.)
Miami as a program slowly bled out over Coker's six years at the helm—and it took rock bottom for him to officially be let go.
The program whiffed as it should've re-hired Davis after Miami tanked in 2005—a year the Canes should've easily won the Coastal, competed for an ACC title and played in a BCS game. (Instead, a late loss to Georgia Tech sent the Canes to the Peach Bowl, where they were curb-stomped 40-3 by LSU.)
Davis would up getting hired by North Carolina in mid-November 2006—days after Bryan Pata was murdered and Miami lost a heartbreaker at Maryland, 14-13—a three-game losing streak (GT and VT before that) and a month after that embarrassing FIU brawl. Coker got punted after the Boston College home finale and a 6-6 regular season (but coached the bowl win over Nevada)—which set off a garbage run for Miami; four years of Randy Shannon and five years of Al Golden—a complete waste of a decade for UM, as the program wasn't a desirable landing spot for any quality coach, outside of Davis, who would've gladly returned.
The big whiff was the end of 2005; retaining Coker—but making him punt on Kehoe, Soldinger, Werner and forcing him to take on that re-tread Rich Olson to run the offense (while bringing on his guy Todd Berry in some co-OC, quarterback coach type role). The entire staff should've gotten canned after that 40-3 beat down—bringing back Davis to resurrect the program a mere half decade after he bailed in the first place. Instead, he took his talents to Chapel Hill and made the Heels a mini-contender loaded with talent that should've been Miami's in that era.
Hard to "invest" in a program when most fans are non-alum that don't write checks, for a smaller private school with 10,000 undergrads. Miami has been living off of adidas and ACC rev-share money as it simply doesn't have the financial backing other major programs have—like Georgia, who just pumped $200M into their program, most coming from fan- and alumni-donated dollars. This is a business. To expect the university to pump money into the program, without the financial backing other football powerhouse state schools have—that's not how this works.
As always, Miami will have to rely on a strong brand and to find a way to win with what it has, in standard, unorthodox fashion. Can't compare what UM is doing to how other programs roll, as that's as unrealistic as the fact UM gamed the system all those years ago and won its first four national titles over a nine-year span—while leaving a few more on the table.
