People here seem to be mixing up 2 different concepts. The program is NOT dead. "Miami Football" is dead. " Miami football" that brash, in your face, aggressive, swagger, bad ***, bad boys that dominated everyone and everything, THAT "Miami Football" is dead.
We are in a different era.
UM is now a top 50 rated academic institution. Its administration is VERY sensitive to the schools reputation and appearance. UM is now in the ACC with programs like Wake Forest, UNC, UVA, which are highly thought of academic schools, with large, but not "super big time" athletic programs. We are also in a different era of college football.
This is the era of BIG money football. Even mid tier teams are paying coaches 3+ million a year. UM does not have the alumni base, fan support or boosters to compete with that kind of money.
UM DOES have some advantages, most notably being in the most fertile recruiting ground in the nation. HOWEVER, those advantages are not as big as they were 20+ years ago. Every program in the country knows So Fla very well, and recruits the **** out of it now. Thanks to the internet, coaches from every corner of the nation can scout and evaluate any So Fla player they want from thousands of miles away, so the "home advantage" we once had, is not nearly as strong. Moreover, UM's academic status, and the SORRY state of So Fla public education, has created a bigger and bigger disparity in the ability of these local players to get into UM, vs other big state programs that can take anyone with a pulse, and whose primary priority in the world is winning football games.
The bottom line is, the program itself is NOT dead. It CAN be successful with the right staff, but it will very likely require time and patience by a very inpatient fanbase. UM is not going to drop 4-5 million a year on some hot shot super HC that can come in here and turn this thing around overnight.
But as far as the day of "Miami Football" and what we all associate with that, those days are gone, and people need to face that reality. People complaining about our players acting like "choir boys" and all that, get used to it. This administration is not going to have us go back to the days of players getting in massive brawls on the field, and trash talking, and making a bunch of personal fouls and unsportsmanlike penalties. THAT is as likely to get an HC fired at UM, as losing is.
UM can still have success, and I believe can still be an MNC contender, but people expecting total domination year in and year out, and that old school SWAG from the 80s, are kidding themselves. Those days are gone.