Not taking into account Miami getting rid of Golden, I think it's reasonable to say that both schools got what was needed. Obviously when you take into account who the coach is that is being replaced, Miami is going to win in a landslide, but that's not really the discussion here.
Georgia had run its course with Mark Richt, fair or not. He brought them from good SEC school to great SEC school, but in the past 7 seasons, the success level had mixed results. The expectation level, due to his own success, was that this was a program that should have had a national championship by now, and at the very least, been dominating an SEC East without Urban Meyer. That did not happen, save for 2012, which was his best team in the past decade. This year, even without a QB, the schedule was set-up and fell in a way that should have seen Georgia walk away with the division, but that loss to Florida was an extremely bad loss in retrospect. It's fair to say that it was time to move on for Georgia.
The coaching hire was an interesting choice, but Kirby Smart has long been known to be a future head coach. It's easy to say Tom Herman would have been a better choice, but a large part of that opinion is based on the success Herman had at Houston/struggles Ohio State had in 2015. I'm a huge Herman fan, but had he stayed at OSU this year with success, would we have said Georgia should have hired him? Had Kirby Smart gone to Houston and replicated the results of Herman but with a focus more on defense as opposed to offense, would that have made him a homerun hire? Georgia got a well-respected alumnus who will come into the program and sell the **** out of it, which is what many Georgia fans want. Will it work out? That remains to be seen - but it's a great program (no, not on the level of many others) and it's hard to see Kirby Smart failing in the job. Even if it's a step back for a few years, in the long run, it could wind up being more beneficial to Georgia.
As for Miami, we needed someone with name brand recognition and a resume to back it up. We're also going to benefit from Georgia having fired Mark Richt, as opposed to him just walking away. Additionally, Miami does not require the same type of time commitments that you see at the big SEC schools. Quite frankly, we don't have enough big money boosters that need to be massaged on a regular basis, so really, it's going to allow Mark Richt to get back to coaching football. And while I am always a fan of hiring people that want to "use" you to advance their careers (they succeed, you succeed), Richt knows he can cement a legacy as one of the game's all-time best coaches if he can duplicate his Georgia success at Miami, but adding in a couple of national titles along the way.
Only a handful of other coaches right now have a reasonable shot at 300 career wins: Saban if he coaches into his 70s; Bob Stoops (seems like a lock); Urban Meyer (will likely go to professional ranks, but still young enough); and Richt. Richt would have to average 11 wins per season until he's 68 (another 14 years) in order to achieve 300 wins, but with the expansion of conference championships and playoffs, it's not out of the realm of possibilities. And while that one may be tough, ALL these guys know where they stack up on the all-time list, and I would expect Richt to be gung-ho for a championship and 250 wins before hanging it up.
