Note the question mark here. It is a matter of when at this point, not if. The end date could be today, it could be when the NCAA revels its sanctions years from now, it could be any number of other days, but the Yahoo Sports report revelations about what has been occurring in the Miami football program over the last 10 years mean it's the end.
Why is it over for the Hurricanes?
Since program patriarch Howard Schnellenberger left after winning his national title in 1983, no Miami coach other than Butch Davis has exited the program scandal free and Davis has his own issues considering his recent firing from the North Carolina job. With that as a backdrop, the question must be asked: Can anyone win at Miami cleanly?
There is a lack of stability – All of the other major programs (except Notre Dame and they have always had some other built in advantages) have had some sort of long term coach to establish things on their way to national power status. Ohio St. had Hayes. Florida St. had Bowden. USC had McKay. Florida had Spurrier. The list goes on. Every single major powerhouse has had at least one iconic coach and most have had two or even three. Heck even the non-BCS powers, TCU and Boise St., appear to have their coaches to build to this level in place. Miami is the outlier. No one coach built it. It was the 'U' and it was bigger than one coach. Of course, some of that was attitude and some, as we know from the excellent ESPN documentary “The U” about Miami's late 80s and early 90s teams was NCAA violation based. Now, the violation part will have to be brought to a total heel and the attitude is long gone, dead and buried when the team started to fade in the mid-2000s.
There is a lack of commitment – In both recent coaching searches at Miami, there has been a perception that Miami has settled for a lesser man than their standing (that is certainly true with Randy Shannon who was promoted internally from a failed staff). The reason is a lack of funding and a lack of commitment to spend the money needed even when the funding is there. Big-time college football takes a lot of money to run now and Miami doesn't have it. They are a college team not playing on campus in a fair weather sports town that notoriously doesn't support its teams even when they win. The combination of all this means the Hurricanes will never have the money to recover from massive NCAA sanctions the way USC will do and the way Alabama, Oklahoma, Auburn, and Washington did over the last 20 years.
The penalties will be steep, and uncertainty will reign – First of all, the uncertainty could last years. At this point, if I'm a recruit, I avoid Miami like the plague. At any time, the NCAA could finish its investigation and ban the team from bowl games. In addition, this time looks like the two really big fish in the NCAA arsenal that have not been used in the BCS era are on the table. The TV ban (horrifying for recruits who want to be seen) and the death penalty (why go to a school if a forced transfer because of things that happened well before you got there might make you leave). At this point, recruiting just became nearly impossible.
The most important reason why Miami is toast:
They are in position to be left out.
Super conferences are coming. Everyone acknowledges this. It's just a matter of time. The landscape is shifting and Miami just lost their one big bargaining chip: the historic strength of the football team. My belief (shared by many others) is that we are eventually headed to four 16-team conferences with Notre Dame and Texas independent. If that is indeed the case and BYU is included somewhere as expected, a few teams are being left out of the picture that are currently in. Number one is obviously Iowa St., a school that nobody wants and has no legislature leverage with Iowa in a different league. We still have to parse two more teams out of the way though. Considering that many believe the remains of the ACC and Big East will merge when the SEC and Big Ten pick their preferred schools, Miami has a big problem if the Big East wins out there. A Miami with no football program of value, no basketball program of value, a tainted name because of this scandal, no discernible fanbase to draw from and no large alumni base (remember the school is not very large and is private) brings no monetary value and therefore could be eliminated from the picture and in fact, I believe, will be eliminated from the BCS picture eventually.
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