I've been saying it for at LEAST 5 years now that Miami's move to the ACC allowed them to be financially stable without having to field a football team that "embarrasses" them.
In our heyday, UM football HAD to be good to generate money for all sports. Now, it doesn't matter, we make money either way. The move to the ACC was the end of Miami football.
Great point. It removed all motivation for the administration.
The irony is that this "Duke of the South" stuff is a figment of the admin's imagination. There is no prestigious UM academic reputation outside of S. Fla. (to the extent it even exists in S. Fla.). UM is not in the conversation with the schools which actually have a national academic reputation: e.g. Ivy League, Stanford, Duke, UVA, Mich, USC, Chicago, Northwestern, Rice, Georgetown, Berkeley, Notre Dame, Cal Tech, Vanderbilt, UNC, Emory, etc...
Don't get me wrong, congratulations on becoming a US News top 50 school. But really, what tangible benefits are there? By contrast, when we dominated in the '80s, the UM applications skyrocketed, bc people wanted to be a part of the success the football team created.