End of A....Golden....Era

“The football program, it’s time we put it all together. We’ve had great success in the community, great success academically the past couple of years…there’s a tremendous tradition here. A tradition of winning championships. There is no other standard.”

Those were the words of Al Golden during his introductory press conference in December of 2010.

If Al needs any proof of exactly why he was fired, he needs merely to look at the quotation above as justification.

Let’s start from the beginning. For those, like me, who were skeptical of hiring the head coach of Temple for one of the most potentially lucrative jobs in college football and yet so desperate for hope following the Larry Coker and Randy Shannon regimes, Al Golden’s introductory press conference was one for the ages.

Here was a young guy, a well spoken guy, who just GOT IT.

He talked of players, not plays. He talked of inviting the alumni back to be a larger presence within the program. He talked about re-invigorating the strength and conditioning program. He talked about the end of entitlement. He had 200 pages of blueprint and “pillars”.

Jesus, I would make that guy the GOP nominee for president.

He won the hell out of press conferences.

He opened the program back up to the fans through the Raising Canes video series, which was a breath of fresh air after the media-averse Shannon.

This was the beginning of a Golden Era.

Sure, there was the fact that he never beat anyone good at Temple. And the fact that he came from the boring coaching tradition of Penn State and Joe Paterno…the type of program that Miami OPENLY rejected during the glory days. Listening to that press conference was enough to make us all forget that.

We wanted him to win.

Golden was barely on campus for half a year when the program got slammed with an NCAA Investigation he had nothing to do with---a scandal the university knew was coming before they hired him and did not disclose.

And while I am past the point of this being used as an excuse for poor on-field performance, it is easy to forget the uncertainty of those two years. After all, this was the NCAA, and we are Miami, and in a world that has no real rules one has to assume the worst.

If nothing else, Al deserves credit for weathering a storm that he stumbled into with class and dignity.

Al did indeed revamp the strength program...there is no doubt our guys look the part. Al re-strengthened a lot of ties in the local community that Shannon messed up.

He recruited pretty well; sure, he missed on a lot of guys, but he also re-stocked the roster to the point that it is now a turnkey operation for the right coach. We are one of 15 programs that has finished with a Top 25 recruiting class in each of the past 4 years. Most coaches spend years trying to find a QB and defensive line; whoever takes this team over next has an NFL level QB and a young and talented stable of defensive linemen from the very beginning.

But here’s the thing…after a while, it comes back to the winning.

Al was ultimately undone by an inability to adapt. He stubbornly hung on to his system which did not fit the players he had on the roster, nor the local recruiting base.

His system required too much thinking, even for advanced South Florida kids. It is frustrating as a fan; I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to be a player struggling to pick up a system in your third year running it, while watching your buddies from high school dominate elsewhere.

In the end, he was more beholden to his pillars and his plays than to the players; the words of his press conference rang hollow. And so it became time to move on. In fact, the university gave him a bonus 10 months out of loyalty or guilt over the NCAA mess.

And those are the types of things that get you fired.

If Al Golden has followed through on the promises he made during that inspiring first press conference, we might not be here today. We might not have gone 0-5 against FSU, or failed to beat a Top 25 team---we certainly would not have lost 58-0 to Clemson on Saturday.

But you can’t hide from results, and eventually everyone gets judged on their resume.

When I remember the Al Golden Error, I will not remember the early days of hope.

I will remember him consistently putting a slow, boring, horrible product on the field. They call this a 2-gap defense, similar to what the Cowboys run, except even the shitty Cowboys make plays every now and then. Our guys just stand around confused and then get too caught up in overthinking it to make a play on the ball. How anti-Miami is that?

I will remember him running off legends.

 I will remember him throwing players under the bus and calling them “me guys” like a coward trying to cover his own ass.

 I will remember his unintentionally hilarious catch phrases, like “be a McDonald’s hamburger” and “don’t rise to the occasion”.

I will remember him going dark for a week as he tried to bail on us for the open Penn State job, and then how distraught he was when he realized he was stuck at Miami, the best recruiting ground in the country.

Most of all I will remember the losing. So. Much. Losing. For scale, our basketball team has more wins against Duke than our football team since Al took over. Excuse me while I wade into traffic.

Later Al. Hope you catch on somewhere. And I hope we schedule whatever team you catch on with, because guaranteed wins are hard to come by.

-----

And now, since everyone is making their coaching candidate list, here’s the dozen candidates I want to see interviewed to be the next Miami Hurricanes head coach, in no particular order.

Note: This list assumes that pie-in-the-sky candidates like Jim Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, Mark Danotnio, David Shaw and Gary Patterson say no.

1.       Steve Spurrier – Spurrier is like Ahab if Ahab had not only caught Moby Dick but beat the ever loving piss out of him repeatedly, and then made a mockery of him in the national media.

2.       Butch Davis – Dude is literally in the parking lot waiting on a phone call; he might work for Keystone Light and grilled cheese.

3.       Mark Richt – What can I say, the man rocks a nice pair of church Dockers.

4.       Justin Fuente – Most accomplished thing out of Memphis since 36 Mafia.

5.       Tom Herman – Won a national championship with a 3^rd string QB.

6.       Rob Chudzinski – I imagine he would tell at least one local reporter to “fuck off” during a press conference.

7.       Uncle Luke – Trick Daddy as defensive coordinator, Pitbull as offensive coordinator, Ricky Rozay coaching O-Line---we need Miami Guys, right? DALE!

8.       Dana Hologram – Miami needs---nay, DEMANDS--- a 4Loko bootlegger.

9.       Winston Moss – “I ain’t scared of you, bitch”.

10.   Mike Gundy – He’s a MAN!

11.   Dan Campbell – “Listen men, you want to win? Look at the guy next to you and RIP HIS HEART OUT OF HIS CHEST!!!! Losses are punishable by water boarding.”

12.   Dwayne Johnson – FINALLY….THE ROCK HAS COME BACCCCCCCCK TO CORAL GABLES. 

Daddy's gotta go to work.

FSU Hate Week

What can I say about Tallahassee that hasn’t already been said about Downtown Baghdad?

Look, we get to a certain point with these things where all the hatred starts to blur together. I get it.

I could keep going on and on about how FSU players beat the hell out of women and get caught on videotape, or beat the hell out of women and don’t get caught on videotape, or shoot up apartment complexes with BB guns, or flee the scene of a car accident, or steal crab legs from a Publix, or sexually assault a woman and then get covering fire from the university and the local police department, or….ya know what, like I said, you guys get it.

We’ve done that.

To get mad about FSU players getting away with crimes is like getting mad at Donald Trump for making finger guns when talking about a school shooting. Sure, it is THE WORST, but who can we really blame except for ourselves? Stuff happens, ya know?

(Sidenote: you know who probably loves Donald Trump? #FSUTwitter)

I really hate that Al Golden is such a dipshit, and our team is so constantly mediocre, that FSU…the Fox News of fan-bases (humorless, self-important, delusional, artificially enhanced)…actually has out-funnied us with this in their on-campus bookstore:

 Gotta hand it to them. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Anytime college football’s equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy makes an objectively funny joke at your expense, it might be time to reconsider your program’s future.

But not Al Golden.

At this point, this dude seemingly wants to get fired.

Per the Miami Herald’s Manny Navarro, the players have been flat at practice this week and seem “unbothered” by last week’s loss to Cincy. Effing Cincy. The team that was being quarterbacked by a freshman making his first career start, coming off a loss to Memphis.

Then, per Matt Porter of the Palm Beach Post, came news that the staff isn’t playing the War Chant at practice this week.

In years past, coaches would play FSU’s horrific fight song all week long. It got the players ready for the noise that 50,000 mouth-breathers can create when the team that represents everything they hate ---urban intelligence, people that aren’t white, etc.---comes to town.

It ALSO got them pissed off, because anyone forced to listen to that crap for 7 days would be ready to gnaw their own leg off to make it stop. Honestly I think this was on the Gitmo playlist.

But, not Al Golden! Not this year!

This year is about everyone being, and I quote, a “McDonald’s Hamburger”.

Consistent. Predictable. Filled with poisonous preservatives that will kill you over time.

You can almost hear Al’s excuse cannon getting fired up now: “Well, it was a hostile environment on the road, really louder than any place we’ve played this year Joe. Had a lot of adversity and we just couldn’t overcome all of it.”

Someone posted a video on my message board this week of our old strength coach from the 90s, Tommy Moffitt (currently at LSU), putting the players through a summer workout.

A few things stood out to me.

One, Tommy was a crazy person. Like, actually crazy.

Two, our players were really big and really fast. No wonder Leonard Fournette is the second coming of Herschel Walker.

Three, at one point he said “the pride and tradition of the University of Miami Hurricanes will not be entrusted to the timid or weak.”

Now, aside from the fact that this is Meathead 101 and sounds like the type of thing that the douchebag on your high school’s football team--the one that shouldered people into lockers and made gay jokes-- would have said, it is pretty interesting to contrast it with Al Golden’s pre-game speech from last week against Cincy, which essentially consisted of “don’t rise to the occasion”.

Al Golden thinks you win big games by telling players NOT to rise to the occasion.

The last time we played a team with Everett Golson at quarterback was in 2012 against Notre Dame, and we lost that game 41-3 and gave up 561 yards of offense. Last thing we would want is someone stepping up on defense.

You can tell this team has already effectively given up hope.

Safety Rayshawn Jenkins is lashing out at high school sophomores on Instagram.

Linebacker Tyriq McCord is threatening fans in Facebook comments. Knowing Facebook it was probably someone’s uncle that has some * interesting* views on gun control, but still, that isn’t what you want during rivalry week.

Cornerback Tracy Howard, the first big recruiting win of Al Golden’s tenure, actually was quoted in a newspaper this week with the following:

“At the end of the day, it is what it is. That’s life. People are going to criticize you. When you’re doing good, people are going to love you. When you’re doing bad, people are going to be down on you. At the end of the day, you have to stay levelheaded, be the same person. It is what it is. It’s life,” corner Tracy Howard said. “I’m sure my coaches, I’m sure they’re tough. They can handle it. And we can handle it. I know everybody doesn’t like our coaches, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. We still have to go out there and perform and they still have to go out there and call plays. We still have to play for them, so, I mean…we can’t do much about it.”

That reads like a ransom note sent by the hostage.

At the beginning of the season, players talked about the FSU game playing too central a role in the team’s psyche and thus creating the post-loss collapses we witnessed the past 2 years.

They said that they were intent on net letting the game define their season this year.

The thing is, absent of larger goals, all your fans can hope for is a win against the rival.

And for a guy like Al Golden, whose response to that is to try to eliminate the idea of a rivalry at all, that win is just never going to happen.

Cincy Hate Week

Note from the editor: I am only going to refer to Cincinnati as “Cincy” from this point forward in this post, because truth be told I have never really figured out how to spell Cincinnati and I get sick of having to right click on the word every time Word tells me I screwed up again. As if anyone ever needed MORE reason to hate this Meth den.

Let’s start off with a quick recap of things I hated 2 weekends ago  (and that you should hate too!).

I hated, of course, that we blew a 23 point lead with 8 minutes left…but more than that I hated how PREDICTABLE it was.

‘How predictable was it, Dan?’

So predictable that in the 3^rdQuarter I turned to my girlfriend and said “this is going to overtime”.

Guys, I am NOT that smart and even I saw this trainwreck coming.

I hate that Al Golden has turned this into such a crap program that in any game I am unable to celebrate the good stuff that happens because I KNOW the other shoe will inevitably fall.

Dominating FSU through 3 quarters? 

Doesn’t matter, as soon as we go 3 and out one time the panic sets in.

Put up 17 in the first quarter against Nebraska?

Doesn’t matter, we all know we are going to go soft and surrender the lead.

I hate it. It has literally sucked the joy out of this team. We could be up by 70 against FSU in the 4^th Quarter and I wouldn’t be happy until the game was over. It’s gotten to the point that I’d be happy going up 10-0 and then fast forwarding through the rest of the game. Thanks, Al.

I also hate that Deon Bush is going to be out the first half of this game because of a bad targeting call. Know what I hate even worse? A.) He is so important to the defense that as soon as he was ejected against Nebraska we gave up 23 points in 8 minutes and B.) That he is CLEARLY our best player on defense and Al Golden insists on rotating him with this year’s SOTS whipping boy, Dallas Crawford, AKA the worst safety to play here since, like, Willie Cooper.

I also hate that afterward the team celebrated like they just won the Super Bowl, because as Al Golden said, Nebraska had won 9 games every year for the past decade.

First of all that was false.

Second of all, you know who 9 wins isn't good enough for? NEBRASKA. They just fired their coach despite winning 9 games 5 years in a row.

So, to sum up, at Nebraska 9 wins gets you fired.

At Al Golden's Miami, 9 wins gets you a dance party.

Awesome stuff.

Now that we’ve got that off our chest…

Why should you hate the Cincy Bearcats?

Good question.

On the surface, the football program seems to have everything I would like.

Cool all black uniforms.

A weird nickname; no one knows what a Bearcat is but it sounds badass. Kind of like a Jackelope. Or one of those crazy whales with the big unicorn horn. 

Spread offense. History of upsets. Tommy Tuberville.

Check, check, check.

I felt bad last week when Gunner Kiel almost died on the field against Memphis.

Truth be told…and this might be me going soft with age… I can’t muster up any hate for this team.

This is a team playing three straight non-Saturday games. That’s literally the most interesting thing I could find about them.

They’re co-favorites, along with Memphis, in something called the AAC, which is what I think you get relegated to if you finish last in the ACC.

(Just kidding, we know that doesn’t happen, because Miami is still in the ACC after last season)

The Bearcats are essentially the college football knockoff of the Cincy Bengals, the NFL team that shares both a color scheme and an overall sense of “who gives a shit?”

They both fall in to the realm of “good enough for me” which is fitting in this city.

Also, I can never say this enough, but Skyline Chili sucks. A lot.

The reason I think everything has settled in at “mediocre” in this hellscape is that the city has a huge sense of identity crisis. You see, most of the residents feel a sense of commonality with all the worst parts of the Deep South and yet geographically this place features all the worst parts of the north.

It’s not often that you find this combo, but when you do, boy is it nasty. And that is how you get a place like Cincinnati, full of awful people but an admittedly awesome airport (which is technically across the river in Kentucky).

Now, all of this doesn’t take away from the fact that this perfectly mediocre team from this crap town is going to drive us all crazy on Thursday night.

For starters, winning on the road against a home underdog on Thursday night is never easy.  Thursday night football was designed specifically to create chaos, and often succeeds.

Second of all, Mark D’Onofrio and Al Golden will be facing their worst nightmare now the Gunner Kiel, potential NFL draft pick, is out: a second string, mobile QB.

Get ready for a lot of cursing on converted 3^rd and Longs. Heaven only help us if they have a tight end on the roster. Not a “good” tight end even…just someone that plays the position. That’s just too many wrinkles for the former Temple staff to handle.

I honestly don’t think we win this one. Everyone is talking about an undefeated matchup in primetime against FSU in two weekends…and I just can’t help but remind everyone that this NEVER works out for us. This is a total trap, similar to the trip to UNC a couple of years ago, and you can bet these acne-ridden, Keystone swilling, couch burning, intelligence-hating hillbillies will be out in full force.

The best case scenario is that D’Onofrio manages to take away something that this backup QB likes to do, force him to be one dimensional, and that our offense actually has some form of consistency and indentity for the entire game.

While you wipe the tears of laughter out of your eyes, I will wrap this up.

Cincy is an awful city with an awful name filled with a lot of awful people.

Let the hate coarse through your veins.