Many Miami fans want to think they are just a year or two away from the big dance. The program's history, however, suggests it could take twice that long.
The recent history of Miami football suggests its fortunes are of a highly cyclical nature. Every ten years or so, the program rapidly declines, undergoes some soul searching, then surges back to the top. At least that’s the way it has been since the late 1970s.
Let’s hope Miami has clearly bottomed out. The 48-0 beat down in the very last game at the Orange Bowl felt a lot like 1979’s embarrassing loss to Division II Florida A&M and the 47-0 disaster up in Tallahassee in 1997. But after suffering through brutal seasons in 1979 and 1997, Miami was back on top of the college football world exactly four years later, winning national championships in both1983 and 2001.
Looking ahead to 2008, I hope Miami fans keep those two years in mind, particularly 1979. Miami fans, probably more than any other team’s supporters, are obsessed with history. The youngest generation of Canes, not surprisingly, came of age with the 2001 team, which, incredibly, led 34-0 in the second quarter of the national championship game. With that season at the forefront of its collective consciousness, it isn’t hard for us to understand the urgency in which these Canes hope the U will reclaim the #1 ranking. How close are we to 2001, we keep hearing in South Florida.
The 2008 Canes are nowhere near 2001 (or 2000 or 1998 or 1998). What happened way back in 1979 to make me think that’s where the Canes are right now? The most obvious comparison is a new quarterback. It took Jim Kelly until game #8 to become the starter, replacing Mike Rodrique just three hours before Miami’s eventual upset against 19th ranked Penn State up in Happy Valley. It won’t take that many games this season, with leading candidate RS frosh Robert Marve expected to get the nod over true freshman Jacory Harris; either way, Miami will be quarterbacked by a teenager whose never thrown a pass in a college game.
Even though Miami beat Penn State in 1979, the team still finished 5-6. I expect much of the same this year, with non-conference games road games against Florida and Texas A&M and its last four games—three on the road—against opponents that all pushed the Canes around last year. But in 1979, with nothing to lose, Miami took chances and experimented, ultimately cultivating a new brand of football that would compete with and surpass first its in-state rivals (FSU and UF) and second, the powerhouses from that era: Alabama, Nebraska, and USC.
Miami needs to think outside the box. One assistant at another ACC school noted this off-season that Miami’s defensive schemes had become predictable. Head coach Shannon did the right thing, not only by not hiring within, but looking outside the conference, with his hiring of former Kansas defensive coordinator, Bill Young. Young, unlike Miami’s offensive coordinator Patrick Nix (formerly of Georgia Tech), will be throwing things at conference foes that they’ve never seen before.
Let’s also reconsider one other move from the late 1970s/early 1980s that’s missing from a lot of the forward-thinking conversation about rebuilding the Canes: the hiring of a new athletic director. With Paul Dee’s retirement and fresh-faced, 35-year old Kirby Hocutt now in charge, the program will be under new management, much like Sam Jankovich ushered in a new, very successful era in the early 1980s at the U. What’s more, Miami now has a chance to raise some real money (Hocutt raked in $100 million for Ohio University) and finally make Miami’s facilities something to brag about. While I don’t think facilities really matter that much to what a team can do on the field, their reputation in the media probably matters to some high school coaches and their players that could help turn things around in Coral Gables.
But not everything will look different this year and the tough years ahead. Miami’s history has always been about bringing in kids from Dade and Broward counties with something to prove. Shannon knows this and that’s why Urban Meyer and Bobby Bowden are telling reporters that they aren’t having much luck landing the top recruits from the Miami area. So here’s hoping Miami finds the right balance of the Old and the New in 2008. But be patient. In 1979 (and 1997), things couldn’t get much worse. Implementing change takes time. I hope it won’t take us another four years to crack open a bottle of the good stuff but as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.”
