What is Miami football? Not the idea of it, not the history of it. What is it now?
Here's what it is: It's a private, academically elite school that plays football in a way-too-big stadium almost an hour from campus that has grown tired of having its national reputation sullied by scandal. It has a solid, unspectacular program that operates with fewer resources than its rivals in the Atlantic Coast Conference and a coach who cares about playing by the rules and making sure his players act like they're part of a college campus, not the South Beach nightclub circuit. Every so often, because of its location and its brand name, Miami has a chance to win something significant.
But that's all it is.
It's not Alabama. It's not Florida State. And it's most definitely not the Miami of old.
And if Miami keeps Al Golden after a 6-6 season, it will be a message to all the whiny NFL alums and Internet fans who don't bother to show up at the games: Deal with it or do something to change it.
No, there's no excuse for Miami collapsing at the end of this season with ugly losses to Virginia and Pittsburgh after a tremendous effort on Nov. 15 that came up just short against Florida State. Even at its worst, Miami is better than a 6-6 program, and if you want to argue that Golden has done nothing in four seasons to indicate he's an elite coach, have at it.
But it's also true that nobody has been more handicapped by his circumstances than Golden, who spent his first three years on the job trying to manage a massive cloud of NCAA sanctions hanging overhead that killed Miami's ability to recruit on anything close to a level playing field.
Despite the chaos of an NCAA investigation and administrative turmoil in the athletic department, Golden was a stabilizing force. He kept recruiting, kept selling and convinced players who had other options to stick with the program even though nobody could say for certain when the Hurricanes would be eligible for a bowl game again. That was no easy task.
Meanwhile, Miami's facilities have just now been improved to the point where people in the athletic department aren't embarrassed to show them to people from the outside. And the only time Miami can legitimately brag to recruits about its home game atmosphere at Sun Life Stadium is when there are enough fans of visiting teams to fill it up.
But all Miami fans see are the 1980s and the Butch Davis/Larry Coker era, even though the climate that produced those championships has now been turned on its head.
1.Miami: There's enough tension here that Golden, even if he isn't fired, could end up looking to bounce elsewhere for a fresh start. If he stays, though, he should legitimately look at some staff changes — particularly on the defensive side of the ball. Coordinator Mark D'Onofrio has been a punching bag for the fan base, and looking for a new direction there would certainly go a long way toward building some credibility. Golden has some pieces to work with next season, and in theory the seasoning quarterback Brad Kaaya got should help him improve as a sophomore. But the big unknown is whether the negativity around the program will simply swallow it whole, particularly in recruiting. Miami fans, and particularly its former players in the NFL, are ticked. That's one thing. But disgruntled alums willing to foot the bill for Golden's buyout and a big-name replacement are something totally different — and Miami doesn't seem to have too many of those. Either way, 2015 will be a big one in a lot of ways toward defining what this program is and whether it really wants to be a player on the national scale.
