Just caught wind of this through my $9.95 monthly spies. ESPN asked Cocaine Cowboys auteur Barry Corben and Alfred Spellman to produce a documentary for ESPN’s 30 year anniversary. The news itself is pretty old, but if I didn’t hear it, it’s new to me! Really, I just want to post a link to the stills from the Jimmy Johnson interview, from his house in the Keys. What a life. 

Doc to air in September of this year.

Will Work 4 Big Ten

I love me some good rumors. Why? Because, no matter what most people are led to believe, rumors are usually true. One of the better ones involving Miami of the past 10 years is Butch Davis lying about coming back after the 2000 season, to make sure Greg Schiano didn’t get Butch’s gold mine of a program he built from near scratch. Butch announces his return, Schiano bolts, Butch retracts, Coker takes over, and Schiano is left holding his nuts in North Jersey for seven years until he gets the program on track. 

Of course, if he is still at Rutgers in 2018, when Miami agreed to travel to Piscataway to play the first of a home and home, he will have the barrell of a Spencer rifle so far down his throat he won’t have to pull the trigger, because he’ll choke on it. Even Schiano knows JoePa isn’t leaving Penn State until 2051.

Oh, and one more thing….Kirby Hocutt is on fucking fire! First the possibility of playing Penn State yesterday, and Rutgers officially happening today. Nice! Lets consider the most likely realistic scenario: Rutgers continues to finish in the top 3 of the lacking Big East, maybe even wins a conference crown, Schiano’s in game skills be damned. He leaves, as we all know he will, sometime around 2015, because he ruined his only chance to really capitalize on his one (and only) great year when turning down Michigan last year. Voila. Rutgers floats their head above water for a few seasons with his mediocre replacement, because no one will ever go there to keep building that program up. Miami gets yet another semi-Big Name, No Game (thanks g8rh8r!) out of conference opponent to kill in successive seasons. We need to give this Kirby guy a bottle of Brinley Vanilla Rum and some Cutco knives!

We just may be getting as close to the independent 80’s scheduling days as any program can get.

We have another old school match-up in the works! Despite it’s near limitless brevity, clocking in at a mere two sentences, this tidbit in the Herald today can only bring me and other Canes fans joy:

UM and Penn State, who haven’t met since 2001, are in talks about booking a home-and-home football series. There’s mutual interest.

Hey Herald-who needs facts or sources? We all can just put up “Chatter” every day to fill the space, right? Next time, just say: UM and Penn State. There’s mutual interest. Leave us hanging. Let us decide if it means football, what we hope, or basketball, and we have to go Google search if the hoops team coincidentally played them the same year Miami last destroyed JoePa.

I will never get enough of Miami getting back to playing all the Midwest teams, especially the Big Ten. (I suppose Penn State is a borderline Northeast team, and they should be in the Big East, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant.) Why let the SEC have all the fun running around those (not really) ridiculously slow, never heard of the forward pass (first conference to widely use the passing spread), gets destroyed in EVERY SINGLE BCS GAME WOOO SEC! WE IS DA BEST WOOO Big Ten teams? Ok, that last part is correct, as long as it’s against USC, or Ohio State playing anyone. As usual, anything to get Miami back on the national stage. We have to find these teams who have name clout but are not really all that great. Can’t go wrong with a coach going on fumes of fumes, whose only job saver is there is actually an even more incompetent grandpa still working.

Here’s a nice trip down Memory Cane Lane on the 2001 game. 

We’ve discussed this here previously, but now that the NFL draft is around the corner, it is getting national headlines. I despise redundancy, and was not going to post about this, but after reading a quote from non other than the man who made this streak about to end, I couldn’t resist.

“The overall talent in South Florida wasn’t as good as it has been as far as really great talent,” said (Larry) Coker, the coach for the new football program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “The key for Miami is always the talent level in South Florida. When I left, I think there was good talent. Were there six first-round draft choices? Obviously not, but the talent was good.”

The man just won’t stop sticking the knife in….further….just hit an artery already so we can die.

Nice excuse, Senior Okie. I am too lazy to look up all the South Florida recruits from 2003 onward, but I think we can all assume there were plenty that got away, while Coker instructed his staff to focus nationally.

Coach Yokel will no doubt be saying the same thing of the talent level in Texas in 5 years, after two winless seasons at UTSA. “Well, uh, you know (insert name of new San Antonio college beat writer best friend), guys, the uh, talent level here in Texas, uh, it’s just not the same as back when, uh, I played Junior Varsity level.” Yokel, yokel.

Think interference was called on this one too?

The fire bolt of the entire Hurricane War Revolution has just got his war time pay. The Tampa Bay Bucs just signed Kellen Winslow to a fantastic extension, a record for an NFL Tight End. Six years, $36.1 million, $20 million in guarantees (seriously?), means that this Soldier #1 is set for life, future motorcycles accidents be damned. 

I shouldn’t make fun. We forget how young Winslow is, and at 25, he has many, many years left. He carried the Hurricanes offense through the entire 2003 season, when Brock the Cock couldn’t find one single open person, so he would just throw it to a triple-covered Winslow every play. Of course, Kellen would come down with most of them, making Brock look great. One of my top 3 games at the OB was the 2003 West Virginia game, when Winslow snagged the most unbelievable, twisting, jumping, “No fucking way in hell did Brock just overthrow Winslow on 4th down how could he not put it where he could catch it OMG Holy shit he caught it!” Of course the Canes went on to win. Keeping Rich Rod down for one last Big East year. 

You knew this was coming.

Who is next? Who on this year’s team, full of supposedly great freshman and sophomores, will emerge as the next Reggie Wayne? The next Dan Morgan? Ed Reed? Who would have ever thought Miami’s greatest quarterback was a third string, string bean, baby-faced kid from Northern California? 

And that is what makes this off-season so exciting. I don’t really expect Miami to compete for an ACC title this year, let alone a national title. But, I now know how fans back in 1998 felt after the UCLA shocker. After the 9-4 promising 1999 season, where they closed the gap on the powerhouse FSU team to 10 points, a team that had shut them out 47-0 two years prior. All the blocks were being built up, the depth was filling in, you could start to see the speed and agility return to every position. 

What year are we in right now? Unfortunately, it’s still closer to 1999 than 2000. There is maybe a big upset in this year’s team, who knows, maybe against OU (doubt it), but then they will drop one or two against inferior ACC opponents, or, Jebus forbid, Robert Marve’s new destination this week. In ‘99, they almost beat #2 ranked Penn State, and the Kevin Thompson throw down the sideline, one of only 9 he completed all day, killed the Canes chances for their huge upset to truly create some national buzz. 

What I am saying here should be obvious; be patient. Calm the eff down you psychos. There won’t be a title trophy this year, and probably not even next year. So what. I’d rather Randy create a slow burn build, than the crash and burn Urban Meyer has made. Randy will keep recruiting the perfect, hungry South Florida talent, who will come to Coral Gables with something to prove. Just wait and see what happens to Florida once Timmy leaves town (with Urban soon to follow, no doubt). They will fall apart. Now, I’m not talking sub .500 seasons here. I’m merely talking the simple, late 90’s, Spurrier style 2 and 3 loss seasons. Once Tebow is gone they will cease to have leadership on the field, a la Dorsey. Just wait. 

Back to the program building in general. People fail to realize that Randy inherited a much worse situation that Butch Davis. Oh, but Anton, Butch was placed on probation! Balls, to the wall, here’s a staple gun buddy. Cause you’re wrong, and I want retribution for listening to your elementary argument. Butch inherited a team just off a title game appearance in 1994. He had numerous NFL talent to hold him over the first year, and enough to fill out the one deep starters, to as where they only suffered one truly disastrous season (1997) when the lack of depth caught up with them. The Big East in the 90s was a joke. Syracuse and Va Tech, and that’s it. The SEC, who routinely scours South Florida for the best recruits, and can get them because their coaches are now top notch, was full of lack luster hacks leading nearly every program. Danny Ford? Mike DuBose? Hal Mumme?  Gerry DiNardo was so awesome at Vanderbilt (overall 18-26 record) he parlayed that awesomeness into an LSU gig, where he was even more awesome (.570 winning percentage)! It’s no wonder looking back how Spurrier and even Fat Fulmer trashed and owned the conference for 10 years.

Larry Coker truly created a horrific depth chart before his two years too late departure. Lazy recruiting of even lazier recruits. Go take a look at the Hurricanes recruiting classes from 2002-06. It’s disgusting to see the Rivals ratings of those players. The only reason we remember them is due to their superb ratings coming in. 

Everyone take a step back, and start looking big picture. Miami opens this year 1-3, or shit kickers we’re fucked 0-4? Fuggedaboutit! You can’t scorn the Scheduling Gods. It is what it is. Everything is everything. One more 7-6 season, followed by an 8-4 campaign, does not merit any program cleansing. Do you not realize this is the only chance the Hurricanes will ever have at creating a true dynasty? Randy is about the only coach I can think of who considers Coral Gables a terminal job. If Randy was fired after the aforementioned 8-4 2010 season, the next guy would mooch off his recruits, probably even win a title within 5 years, and the coaching carousel would start its churning once more. It truly is unprecedented what Randy can accomplish if given the time. He has already learned from his first mistake(s), of hiring either non-experienced coordinators, or completely inept ones. I liken the ceiling for the Miami program under Randy as me playing NCAA 2004 in Dynasty Simulation mode. I could take any team, any conference, and by year three have them in the national title game. By year seven I had an entire two deep full of 4 and 5 star recruits. I used to have to fucking cut 5 star players! Obviously, that is a video game, and this is reality. But Randy can accomplish an abbreviated version of this. He can create a good 10-15 years worth of seasons just like 2000-2003, with perhaps three national titles to boot. If we only give him the time.