Pain Heals, Chicks Dig Scars, Glory Lasts Forever

Hello All,

Every summer, I write up a preview of what to expect from the roster the next season. This is my fourth year doing it. Which means the fourth year in a row I will be giving a ceiling and floor for the Northwestern Crew. Weird.

WARNING: There are a lot of parenthetical asides here…not really sure how this happened but it did. I’m like the Larry King of the ‘Canes world. I can’t figure out if I should be proud of it or not.

QB

Last season started with Jacory as a fringe Heisman Candidate and ended with me being thoroughly convinced that the skinny true freshman who was supposed to redshirt and be a career backup was the best option for the team. Combined, the ‘Canes QBs lead the nation in interceptions thrown, which, it turns out, means you lose a lot of games. The battle is ongoing for who will start. Smart money is on Jacory to win the job, but both have a lot of work to do.

Jacory Harris, Sr.

One final season - this time, it’s for keeps.

(Sorry, I was just trying to figure out what the tag line would be if they made “Transformers 4” about Jacory’s senior year)

I can remember two other times coming into a QB’s senior year just having no clue what I was going to get:

Brock Berlin, 2004

I always thought he was ill-served by Dan Werner, who insisted on keeping him under center. In the middle of the season he was benched, which ignited a small race war in the community as folks debated the “merits” of Berlin and his backup, the immortal Derrick Crudup.

(I think that list looked something like this: Brock Berlin- awesome out of shotgun, which we only run when we are losing in the final 5 minutes, and is white; Derrick Crudup- can run really fast, but unfortunately isn’t so great with the “forward pass”, and is a black guy)

Berlin eventually ended up having an All-ACC type of year (which really speaks to the strength of the ACC more than anything else) and is the answer to the question “When was the last time the Miami Hurricanes had a solid, consistent starting quarterback?” If Jacory has that season this year I will be a very happy man.

Kyle Wright, 2007

I made so many excuses for this guy it wasn’t even funny. I thought he could be Carson Palmer (talented “bust” for 3.5 seasons who finally gets it halfway through his senior year and steals a Heisman trophy) if his o-line would block (sacked 9 times in his first career start), his receivers would catch (Lance Leggett? Ryan Moore? Aikeem Jolla?), he would have the same offensive coordinator for consecutive years (he had 4 in 5 years), he would stop falling asleep behind me in Econ (not that we all didn't, the teacher really sucked- damn it, another excuse)…etc.

I still think some of those excuses have merit.

Bottom line, however, is this: the guy got spooked during his first year as a starter, when he was sacked roughly 749 times, and never recovered from the Happy Feet. Like Footsteps Falco in The Replacements. Except he never got to play as a replacement player, do the Electric Slide in jail as a bonding experience with this teammates, take the city on a feel-good run to the playoffs, improve relations with the deaf or slay the hot cheerleader. I think he is selling pharmaceuticals in the Bay Area. Sigh…

Anyway, back to Jacory.

If you give me “First 6 games Sophomore Year” Jacory Harris, I am happier than my brother when the girl doesn't throw her drink in his face.

If you give me “I Am So Beaten Up From Being Sacked and Playing Hurt / Pissed Off At My Receivers For Dropping Passes That I am Just Going To Go Into a Weirder Place Than Mike Tyson After He Bit Off Evander Holyfield’s Ear and Start Throwing Bad Interceptions That Would Make Brett Favre Blush and Just Go To the Sideline and Stare Straight Ahead” Jacory Harris then…ya know what, just keep him.

Ceiling: Plays with swag, gets the ball to his guys in the right places, does not LEAD THE NATION IN INTERCEPTIONS.
Floor: Have you watched his last, I don’t know, 15 STARTS!?!?!?!?!? THAT is his floor.

Stephen Morris, Sophomore

Very raw (cliché alert!) but has a strong arm, can move around and played with heart. Was the only kid on offense that seemed to be pissed off during the Notre Dame game, and that left a mark on me (not literally). He played with swag (cliché alert!) and lead two memorable late game comebacks, one in a game he really had no shot at (Virginia…thank you Spencer Whipple) and one which he won (Maryland).

(Wow, I can’t believe I just said that we had “memorable comebacks” against Virginia and Maryland. One of which was a futile comeback…meaning we didn’t even win the effing game and it sticks out to me as a highlight of the season. Excuse me for a second while I take a run through morning traffic.)

If everything is equal, I say start him this season and begin moving the transition forward.

Ceiling: Willie Beamen after he throws up
Floor: Willie Beamen before he throws up

Spencer Whipple, ??

Does anyone know how many years this kid has left? Anyone?!?!?!?!

I’m too lazy to look it up because I just assume he is gone after this year anyway. He’s on his third college…somewhere along the line he had to have accrued enough credits to be on major number 7 by now. And hey, maybe he can one day become an offensive coordinator like his dad and call for a strict diet of downfield passing plays even though his quarterbacks clearly operate best out of a run-heavy, play action offense. Not that I’m bitter.

Anyway, if he is playing than the following probably has happened:

Scenario 1: Jacory and Morris were in a tandem bicycling accident (watch out!).

Scenario 2: Jacory slept in because he was up late watching Spongebob and Morris got hurt (hey now!).

Scenario 3: Jacory and Morris BOTH get hurt. At halftime Golden snags the chick that throws the football into the net at halftime during the Maroone halftime contest and SHE gets hurt. Golden tries to sneak Gino Torretta back onto the field from the press box and HE gets hurt. Then, and only then, Golden looks down the bench to Whipple and says “just…go…whatever” as he breathes an exhausted sigh of disbelief.

(In this third scenario, Golden then goes home and calls a hit man while he updates his resume for the Penn State opening)

Ceiling: Looks fantastic in a backwards hat holding the clipboard and signaling in play calls, making Jake Byrne proud.
Floor: Gets on the field and looks like Stein on the Sidelines-too small, too slow, about to soil himself.

Ladies and gentlemen, YOUR Miami Hurricanes quarterbacks!

Also, my next post will be my 100th since I left college. If anyone of my 7 readers has anything they want me to write about in it I would love suggestions. Or I could just post the same non-sense as usual. Either way.

Happy Father's Day

Hello All,

My brother called me the other day with the following message:

“Hey man I am on the can with a real shy s*** right now, talk me through it. Dad didn’t pick up.”

My natural reaction, before hanging up, was to ask why I was the second choice to dad.

“I always call dad when I’m on the crapper. It’s our designated talk time. I like it because he helps me kill some time and he likes it because that means we talk like three times a day.”

I said "does he know this?"

To which my brother replied "would that ever not be the first thing I announced when on the phone with anyone?"

And then I hung up.

This is my family.

My brother and I are lucky enough to be able to say that our dad is our friend. Our mother has her own relationship with us, and it is equally great (I know, I know, if this were a Twitter feed it would be “white person problems” or something like that). But since it is Father’s Day coming up, that is what I am writing about.

I was a quirky kid.

Some might call it OCD. Whatever it was (is?), it manifested itself in sports.

Exhibit A: my dad bought a case of Budweiser and it came with a small brochure previewing the 1994 football season. It had the full schedule for every pro and college team, as well as their colors, head coach, mascot, etc. I memorized the entire thing in about a week. I could tell you who Dartmouth was playing in Week 6 and who Louisiana- Lafayette’s head coach was. I was 7.

Exhibit B: I at one point had roughly 56419845132198451 baseball cards. My dad told me one time that he kept his rubber banded by team when he was a kid. So I decided I would do the same. However, I did not sort them by the team they were on in the picture…I sorted them by actual, current roster. Every morning I woke up and scanned the transactions for every major league and minor league team before retreating upstairs to make the changes necessary to my shoe box. And they were in batting order. It went past fun and turned into labor fairly quickly.

Exhibit C: I was given a set of pencils as a gift once, one for every NFL team. Did I do what normal kids do and use them at school? Nope. Instead, I kept them together as a set and every Tuesday would rearrange them so that teams that were playing each other that weekend were lined up.

Some people might have their kid go see a shrink or join the Boy Scouts. Not my dad. He LOVED it. He would ask me for random statistics at odd times. He started calling me “The Book”. He indulged me, and by doing so, created a monster.

My dad taught me a lot over the years.

He taught me what it meant to be a ‘Cane and is the reason some of my first memories are of watching early 90’s college football games.

On the flip side, he also taught me to root for the Orioles and the Dolphins. Thank God I had my mother to teach me that we root for Duke in basketball.

He taught me that there was a time when pitchers intimidated hitters. He taught me to throw the high and inside fastball if some kid showed you up…and then laughed his ass off when I beaned the only girl in Little League after her teammate stared me down.

He played countless hours of Little Tikes basketball with us, which I am sure was not good on the big man’s surgically repaired knee.

He spent long summer nights hitting us endless games of pepper in the backyard; in the fall we switched to driveway basketball, where I learned that the arm extended scoop shot is literally impossible to block.

He taught me about the Baltimore Chop and the “Air Gait” goal and Unitas to Berry and “Wide Right”.

(that link never gets old)

He sat with me for Warren Fucking Morris and Willis McGahee's knee.

We went to his last game at the Orange Bowl together, a thoroughly unimpressive victory over FIU (which he will admit only at gunpoint is his Alma Mater).

He taught us to love beer (even though I think that was more a genetic thing) and love Buffett and The Stones and love to grill a mean steak.

(Smirnoff on the rocks hasn't quite caught on, partly because my brother and I haven't really started to hate the whiskey hangover yet and mostly because Smirnoff tastes like lighter fluid)

Sure, there is plenty off the sports field he taught us. But sports were the once constant for my family as we moved in and out of state after state after state.

In addition to the moving, every summer our family piled into the car and took a long road trip. One year it was across Canada. Another it was to California. Another it was a Midwest Swing through Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago.

During those car trips, my dad would reach a point every day when he grew sick of me asking if he thought Craig Biggio was a Hall of Famer or not or “Who would you name the starter if you could have any quarterback from any season in ‘Canes history?”

(The answers, of course, are “no” and 2001 Ken Dorsey, narrowly edging ’87 Steve Walsh and ’84 Bernie Kosar…’07 Kirby Freeman is not on the list)

(Also, my brother was usually listening to "New York Groove" on repeat and was not contributing)

(Felt like I would put in another parenthetical paragraph...why the hell not?)

He would throw his hands up after a couple of hours and say that these were arguments with no end and no right answer. The conversation would die down, because I knew not to push the man having to stop the car every 30 miles so my mother could use the ladies’ room.

And then the next day we would wake up, get back in the car and start driving again. And after a couple of hours, I would start up again, this time subbing in Fred McGriff (absolutely and resoundingly "yes") and whether or not Ed Reed was the greatest ‘Cane of all time (Top 3, with Michael Irvin and Alonzo Highsmith).

And sure enough, the conversation would start up all over again.

As much as he had created a monster, it was his monster. And he knew better than to stifle it.

Happy Father’s Day dad.

Another Open Letter

Dear Coach Morris,

My cell phone had a rough weekend.

This weekend saw the end of yet another 'Canes baseball season.

And for the third straight season, the 'Canes fell short of Omaha.

Mostly, my phone should be mad at me. Ever since I moved out here to LA every chance I get to see a Canes baseball game takes on extra importance. So I get a little more riled up than I usually might. It is almost like football. I only get 12 football games a year, and therefore one poor performance stings like a million hornets. Now I get even fewer baseball games, and the same feeling has taken over. And therefore I throw my phone often. It is always close at hand and during these games of late has been the bearer of much bad news. Most of the time it hits the couch. Most of the time.

And I am truly surprised it is still working after this weekend.

There is something to be said for a program which reaches the postseason for a 39th consecutive season and considers the year to be a total waste. Everyone is familiar with the story of Jim Morris' job interview, when he asked to use the men's room only to find it being propped open with a Super Regional championship trophy.

The expectation at Miami is not just to make the postseason, but to do damage once you get there. Regional victories are not supposed to be "ifs". Super Regional victories are expected. It is only a trip to Omaha that validates a season. And sometimes, even making it there isn't enough. Perhaps the two most talented teams in the history of this elite program, 1996 and 2008, don't even qualify for the debate of "best ever" because they didn't win a championship.

It is a lot to live up to.

And perhaps you said it best yourself, coach, about this year's team: they "embarassed themselves".

It is one thing to lose games. It is completely different to lose in the fashion we did.

Walked batters. Errors upon errors. Bad at-bats.

No fire.

The 'Canes baseball teams I grew accustomed to, starting really with that 1996 team and last seen in 2008, were fundamentally sound and played the game hard.

They had a hell of a lot of talent, no doubt.

But it says something that maybe the least talented teams (on paper) we ever had was my favorite of them all: the 2001 National Champions. No first round picks. No Golden Spikes candidates. Just a roster full of ballplayers that got after it EVERY SINGLE GAME.

This is the third year in a row where the team has seemingly come apart at the seams when pressure was applied.

Two years ago it was in the Gainesville Regional. Last year it was in the Gainesville Super Regional (and was one of the great meltdowns we have ever seen, fueled by multiple erros in the final frame to blow the game). This year it was in yet another Gainesville Regional (another late inning collapse, this time the result of an error on a routine ground ball, a balk and a wild pitch...and then a complete and total slaughter).

Three years. Three eliminations at the hands of the Gators.

Before the Regional Final commenced, I was buoyant. These were the 'Canes I knew. They dropped a close one the night before and had to wake up early for a fesity Jacksonville club. The bats came alive late in the game and snuffed the life out of the Dolphins. 45 minutes later was a chance at revenge against the Gators to set up a winner-take-all monday night matchup.

The 'Canes I knew would have come out hot. They would not have given two squirts of piss about all the talent on the Gators squad.

Instead the 'Canes responed with a leadoff single, a walk, and a three run homer.

And just like that the route was on and the season was over.

I hate to say it, but it reminded me of our football team.

And I am sick of it.

Coach Morris, you are a sacred cow, barring something ridiculous. But it is time to clean out your assistant coaches, most specifically Joe Mercandante.

J.D. Arteaga at least put together a good staff this year, a staff with enough returning talent to be one of the nation's best next season...assuming he doesn't chase off/hurt the talent. Which he usually does. Sadly, this Hurricane great's body of work at large has been mediocre at best.

Worse is Mercandante, however. I have never seen more bad swings and a bigger lack of situational hitting. And it falls on him just as much as the players.

Winning means coaches and players on the same page. This season, there was either a disconnect between the two or they were on the same page and that page just happened to be the worst one ever printed. Neither is acceptable.

Much as the football program needed fresh blood, so does the baseball program.

For those saying it is impossible to win at a private school anymore, I say 'bullshit'. I point to the 2008 team, only 3 years ago, which some labeled the most talented team in college baseball history. And then I point to Rice, Stanford, and Vanderbilt. All private. All winners.

It is impossible to win when you can not develop pitchers or play defense. Add that to an anemic offense and a group of upperclassmen who just didn't seem to care and you have the recipe for disaster.

And at Miami, that means more than a year in between trips to Omaha.

So this is my plea to Coach Morris. I know you are loyal. I know you have forgotten more about this sport than I can ever hope to learn. But changes are needed.

Baseball never gets the hype I feel it deserves at a school known for football; however, there are a lot of us who care. 39 straight tournament appearances is a nice feather in the cap. But it has been 10 years since a title. It is time for another. And what we have seen lately just ain't gonna hack it.

You once autographed a baseball for me that says "Always be your best". Simple words. I keep that baseball on my desk and look at it every day when I wake up.

This program has not been its best for a number of years now. Whether it is bad coaching or spoiled kids or limits placed by the NCAA or just bad luck, I do not know. But something has to change. The team owes it to you to be better. They owe you the decency of taking that advice.

They owe my cell phone.

And they owe it to us diehards.