Some of the biggest college football programs in the country are looking for new head coaches and the search for the best available one is a mad dash to get the right name, the right system or the right staff in order to restore a winning heritage. USC filled its vacancy with no real search, instead just removing the interim tag from Clay Helton’s title. Virginia Tech waited for the retiring Frank Beamer to be carried off the field on his players’ shoulders before formally announcing Justin Fuente, formerly of Memphis, as the new Hokies head man. Tom Herman, who has been a hot name for those looking for a coach, has reached a new agreement to remain at Houston, but anyone who watched his press conference felt no more than a tepid level of excitement from him.
The biggest name available now is Mark Richt who has only been on the job market for less than a week, having been fired from Georgia on Sunday. All indicators have Richt returning to his alma mater, the University of Miami. It sounds like a great marriage. Richt is a winner by any measure, and Miami has made consecutive bad head coaching choices and needs the instant shot of credibility. But before we go penciling Miami into future college football playoffs, it is worth noting that while this may be one of the more high profile jobs on the open market, it is also one of the most troubled and once you get the past the bliss of the new hire, Richt has his work more than cut out for him.
Mark Richt Will Be Swimming Against the Tide at Miami
The Miami Hurricanes: There is a yearning from alums to return to the glory days of the ‘80s and ‘90s when they were national contenders every year on the field as well as one of the more notoriously undisciplined programs when it came to following the rules. But the current challenges are so significant that it is not even clear those making this decision can even agree on what they are.
The program abandoned much of its identity after school officials tried to bluff their way into forcing the city to make stadium renovations at the Orange Bowl in 2006. The ploy failed and the Canes manipulated their way right into a horrible move into what is now Sun Life Stadium in 2008, an hour away from campus, where they are a distant second in priority to the Dolphins. Former school president Donna Shalala, who lost the political gambit, now says Sun Life is too cavernous for a school of Miami’s size. The excuse seems more like an effort to exonerate herself from any responsibility for the current state of the program. During the heyday of the Canes, the Orange Bowl held 74,000 and Sun Life currently holds just over 76,000 and is undergoing a renovation that will drop the capacity to 65,000. The capacity differential or “cavernous feel” that Shalala refers to in fact doesn’t exist. To make it worse, Miami is only in year eight of a 25 year lease agreement for Sun Life Stadium with little say in any development decisions. Everyone from city officials to school administrators involved in the process all find themselves seeking political cover.
The bigger hurdle for the program is that when the NCAA dropped the hammer for repeated violations in the football program, the financial well began to dry up. The school garnered a significant image problem and as a partial result, going with hat in hand for money has not been easy. Shalala managed to build an image of a fundraising wizard, but the reality is the money is not flowing anywhere near the way it used to. While tuition at Miami is upwards of $40,000 per year, the undergraduate enrollment is just over 11,000, making it the ninth smallest school in the Power Five conferences. Discretionary finances are always an issue. It has taken Miami two years just to develop a $7 million project for a lighted practice field, athlete dining area and four cold water recovery pools for the Summer workouts. Florida Atlantic, Central Florida and Florida State all have indoor practice facilities for when the Summer storm season hits the region. Miami does not. The school recently used $25 million in donor money to get a new video board for the basketball arena and create upgrades to the soccer and football practice fields. Miami also just signed a 12-year deal with Adidas, but it is only worth $90 million total, which pales by comparison to other Power Five schools.
Miami fired Al Golden more than a month ago. The replacement names have been flying around ever since. Rap music mogul Luther Campbell said he knew of a couple of big name coaches who want the job. Of course, Campbell was also the source of some of the NCAA violations in decades past and in 1995 threatened to go public with more infractions if a friend of his wasn’t named the starting quarterback under then-coach Butch Davis, so Campbell’s proclamations have limited shelf life. The details of Richt’s agreement are not yet available, as he actually hasn’t been hired officially. Golden, who was in over his head from day one, was paid a base compensation package of $2.25 million with additional incentives, which he rarely met. That made him the 42nd highest paid coach in the country, while running a football program that demands a return to the glory years. The university is going to need a way to ramp up those figures for Richt or anyone else at his level.
Richt was a quarterback at Miami from 1979-1982, and he has 12 years of coaching experience in the state of Florida, so once he was fired in Athens, this became too easy to pair the two sides. Davis had expressed interest in the job while Golden still had it, saying if the job ever opened up he would like to return to the job he once abandoned for the bright lights of the NFL. Many of Miami’s notable alums who went on to the NFL have been opining about who can lead the Canes back to glory. What Miami needs more than their opinion is their open checkbook. While Richt is an undeniably good coach, the tide in south Miami has been working against the school for so long that this will not be an easy reclamation project.
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