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My thoughts of the program after a tough week

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JCL73 said:
You said my point in 20 words better than I did in a few thousand.
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I think your OP was strong and glad you shared it. My general negativity is not at all with you, but as you can see from many other threads there has been a lot of CIS hype proven faulty recently - by posters much more football savvy than I.

Keep it going dude. There was some fun this year. But we lost a lot of that momentum.
 
Angry Ibis said:
Georgia and Clemson have nothing to do with the discussion in this thread as you move the goalposts.

But - Georgia won the game, and Clemson for multiple years now has been said to be imploding -- yet they are sitting at 9 wins now with a chance for more, 9 last year, 11, 10, 10, 14. -- So yes, the grand demise is at least slightly overstated
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I guess my point is more that college football is random. Haynes King doesn't fumble, Restrepo doesn't fumble, Jahfari Harvey doesn't block a 30-yard field goal for SMU against Duke, Clemson plays an ACC schedule with even a hint of competition. etc.

Miami benefitted from this plenty as well. The defense stunk and I definitely don't trust Mario completely. But we went undefeated at home this season, Clemson got their *** kicked at home to the same Louisville team we beat on the road. So I don't think you can feel good about Clemson today if you don't also feel good about Miami.
 
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Angry Ibis said:
I think your OP was strong and glad you shared it. My general negativity is not at all with you, but as you can see from many other threads there has been a lot of CIS hype proven faulty recently - by posters much more football savvy than I.

Keep it going dude. There was some fun this year. But we lost a lot of that momentum.
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I get it. You don’t post over 21,000 times on this site unless you truly love the Canes. You want them to be what they were and everyone in the program needs to be accountable to get us there.

We lost momentum. That can’t be denied. Saturday hurt. But it didn’t hurt like Penn State in 87, ND in ‘88 or OSU in ‘02. Those were all time great teams that were denied National Championships due to unexpected incompetence (Testeverde’s 5 ints) or the refs. This was a fun team to watch that I hoped to watch at least 2 or 3 more games. But in my heart of hearts - I wan not expecting a ring this year despite Cam’s brilliance. As Canes fans, we know what greatness looks like and it wasn’t this team with this defense.

12 months from now we will know whether this was a 1 year aberration like 2017 or this is the baseline we can expect going forward. I see enough to be hopeful this is the minimum we can hope for each year.
 
I can’t see how anything can be assumed for any teams following season. For fans of the game it’s a cluster****. 20 million dollar budgets for kids coming out of high school who don’t know **** demanding and getting well paid and then bye I’m in the portal. To me recruiting has also lost its luster and really does it mean anything today? Pay for play and the portal is the new norm for collegiate athletics. Me personally, the game has passed me bye. Coaches getting millions for their frustrations doesn’t concern me, its the fans and alumni who pay for their frustrations.
 
JCL73 said:
Like many of you – it has been a rough week to be a Canes fan. I needed to step away from this site and all podcasts for the 48 hours after the Cuse game and am still gathering my thoughts as NSD passed without the hoped for success. While many of my thoughts have been stated on the site already, I felt the need to write this to organize my own thoughts. I apologize in advance for length, but writing this down is cheaper than therapy:
  • I went to my first Canes game as a 5 year old in 1978. I was able to attend every home game from 1982 until I graduated from high school in 1991 – so I was lucky enough to have a front row seat to the greatest and most fun dynasty in college football history. I was there in 84 when Kenny Calhoun deflects the 2-point conversion and was also in Arizona celebrating a National Championship for 15 seconds before Terry Porter threw his flag. I say this as a first-time poster so no one questions my bona fides as a true life-long Canes fan.
  • The last two decades have been tough. Having spent the first 30 years of my life expecting Miami to compete for National Championships, watching the team lose almost as much as they won was painful. Even more painful during that time was watching the team roll over and get blown out a few times each season. Where was the pride? What happened? Each new coaching hire brougth hope – but limited success. With the exception of 2017 and any win against FSU, there has been very little to be positive about during this period.
  • When Mario was hired, I felt that this was truly the last chance for Miami to ever be relevant again. Not so much that Mario was a great game coach, but he has shown he was a program builder, understood what Canes football at its best was and had the resources for the first time to put together a competitive team. My thoughts were the best case scenario was he would be like Butch in amassing so much talent that it would not matter how average an X’s ad O’s coach he was. As you know, year 1 could not have gone worse. Embarrassing blow-out losses to MSTU, Duke, FSU, Clemson and Pitt. Changing the culture and the talent would take time – and while concerned, still believed Mario could be the one to lead the program back to relevance.
  • Interesting fact – do you know the last game Miami played in which the other team outgained them in yards? It was North Carolina (by 26 yards). 19 games ago. It was the only game in the last 2 seasons where we were outgained. I look at the last 2 seasons and see a team that has been competitive in every game they played. Even when they fell behind – they fought till the end. That they have lost 6 of those games (5 by 1 score) does show some of the limitations of Mario as a game day coach, but can you think of a 2-year period in the last 20 years where Miami played hard and competitive every game of the season? That is a huge change in culture and one of the most important changes that needed to be made to make this program relevant again. I remember back in the 80s after an FSU game – one of their players said something along the line that by the 4th quarter, both teams knew FSU was the better team and both teams knew Miami was going to win. When we get back to having that killer instinct to win close games, even against superior teams, only then can we say the “The U is back”
  • I get the concern that with Cam Ward and this schedule – we should have been in the ACCGC. But no one expected Duke, Syracuse or GTech to be as good as they were this year. We can’t argue on one hand that close road losses to GTech and Cuse better position us for the last CFP spot vs the SEC teams and at the same time argue that these losses were inexcusable. Should we have won both games? Yes. But they were close games to good football teams.
  • I can’t remember a season where the top 40 teams were as balanced and competitive and those at the top of the rankings are there because of how few of those top 40 teams they need to play (I am talking about you Indiana, Penn State, Oregon, Texas). As an ACC school, as we saw this week, we have a smaller room for error.
  • The TVD to Cam improvement was huge – but I could argue that every other position group (other than TE) was about the same or worse this year vs last year. In particular – the drop off in safety play almost outweighed that improvement in QB play. I say this to highlight if we can fix the defensive backfield this off season and have a QB that that does not throw 2-3 red zone interceptions each game, we should be competing for CFP again next year.
  • Yesterday, I would have loved to have had more success on the defensive side of the ball. Yes – that does put more pressure on us needing the portal. But even if we signed Pickens and Hanks – for next year we would still need 2 top end safeties and a CB#1. We do need to stack classes, particularly at DT and DB, but our immediate needs for next year are unchanged.
  • As I get to the end of my missive, this turned out more optimistic than I have felt for the last week. I got to watch a full season of relevant, competitive UM football – something I have only been able to say 1 time in the last 2 decades. I believe that as long as we can be competitive in the NIL game (I know – a big if), we are going to have more seasons like this one. Most will end in tears – but they will be fun to watch.
GO CANES!!!
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Great Post - cant decide if it is harder to be someone that saw the glory years or never experienced any of the great times...... i was blessed and lucky enough to be at every one of the 58 home game wins during the streak --- first game I missed ? Washington !!!!
 
More Columbus Mafia talk and blind justification toward forcible acceptance.

Fact is, GT and Cuse beat no one until Miami. What does that say? Last minute win against a below average VT team. A miracle comeback against a below average Cal team. A three Qtr struggle against Dook…this was 8-4 team. And to think, Cristobal had the #1 QB in the land with the #1 offense. Hard to match that go forward!

Cristobal is average at best as a HC and needs above average talent on staff and on the playing field. No denying it as the record of his HC accomplishments proves it. UM better put up big money for a top level staff first, then second, buy elite transfers to give Cristobal a chance.

Onward to 2025.
 
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Appreciate the post

Tough when it all comes crashing down at once especially since even the most optimistic fans probably knew deep down that at some point it would catch up with us

I will say even though I did not want Mario to be our coach at the time, I also know that as much as we all care about this team (we’ve been talking daily during the worst stretch of UM football in my lifetime) we don’t care as much about it as Mario does

But caring about it only takes you so far. I also think while he’s limited in a lot of ways, he has a lot of strengths

One other thing that gives me a lot of optimism is the last year or two Mario changed a lot of narratives about him which was big

Sometimes we’ve been at the mercy of coaches either too stubborn, or too reactive. He seems to steer things like the titanic at times but also a switch say from Gattis to Dawson and operating the #1 offense in the country…that’s noteworthy even if you wanna give the credit to Cam

The portal can feel like an excuse but every year the offseason college football seems to shift the last few years. We’ve done a pretty good job all things considered of weathering these changes

We will see when we take the field against Notre Dame how this offseason goes but I feel pretty good about the program even if I have questions about where he can ultimately take us
 
We are a top flight home grown QB and a couple more classes at the HS level away. Until we can stop over paying for a QB in the portal we can’t address top flight needs elsewhere where

If Nickel is who we hope he is maybe we make a run his last two years. We have to stack classes, and then be able to out spend for difference makers in the portal

Random question……Oregon wins it this year, does Phil knight stop pouring money in lol?
 
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