Restoring ‘The U’ will take money, imagination

There is no aura surrounding the Miami team that arrives in Durham on Saturday. The program that invented swagger lacks it entirely. It is a pale imitation of the powerful teams that made “The U” the most feared brand in college football.

Miami’s fall has been a long time coming, the product of complacency among the school and its football alumni, the result of hiring a good coach for the wrong job. It’s no longer the powerhouse it once was, but both Miami and the ACC need the Hurricanes to rediscover at least some semblance of what once made Miami great.

Firing Al Golden was difficult but necessary, imperative after last Saturday’s 58-0 drubbing by Clemson that underlined just how far the Hurricanes have fallen. Miami used to do that to teams. In the first half.

Golden is an excellent coach – turning Temple into a winner remains one of the most impressive and underrated accomplishments in college football – but was never a good fit at Miami. He was a bricks-and-mortar guy in a stucco-and-neon town. He’ll go back to the Northeast (Syracuse?) and do very well, but it was never going to happen at Miami for a man in a necktie, the antithesis of everything The U once represented.

Golden was the latest in a string of ineffective coaches since Butch Davis left for the NFL. Larry Coker won with Davis’ players, but struggled without them. Randy Shannon was a mess. Golden labored under the NCAA sanctions he inherited and could never turn the corner.

Finances are the biggest hurdle to hiring a name-brand coach, so it’s time for Miami’s NFL alumni who were so critical of Golden and the state of the program to stop blasting their alma mater on Twitter and start signing checks. With enough money, anyone is a candidate.

Two wild-card names to consider: Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly. Carroll is an expert at staying one step ahead of disaster, and the Seattle Seahawks are sliding into salary-cap hell. Carroll has his ring, and he has the resume to resurrect Miami and the ego to take on the challenge. The latter is certainly true of Kelly, whose program at Oregon was a modern Miami, from the Nike-fueled uniform insanity to the way his offense spit out Heisman candidates the way Miami’s quarterback academy once did. Both have the experience to recruit in the South Florida morass.

It’s going to take even more money to solve Miami’s biggest problem, the lack of an on-campus stadium. That may never be resolved in Coral Gables, but the current situation is untenable. Sun Life Stadium is a parking lot with a bland, boring stadium attached. Even Dolphins fans don’t like going there. It’s incumbent upon Miami to explore playing home games at Marlins Park, a half-hour closer to campus than Sun Life, built on the site of the old Orange Bowl. The atmosphere would be unique, cozy, different. It’s not the Orange Bowl, but it’s the best option available.

It’s important that Miami pursue every option, because the school’s under-performance since joining the ACC has been a major negative for the conference as it battles for position with the other Power 5 leagues. The entire division system was set up to create a Miami-Florida State championship game, a rematch of the 2004 Orange Bowl, and the Hurricanes have yet to appear.

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech has represented the Coastal Division five times, Georgia Tech four and Duke once. The Hurricanes haven’t had a 10-win season since joining the ACC, and they have won a basketball title before they even played for a football title. Go figure that one out.

Expansion was supposed to bolster the ACC as a football conference, and Miami was a big part of that. The Hurricanes haven’t lived up to their end of the bargain. Golden’s firing opens the door to the rebirth of Miami football, the rebirth of The U, but it’s going to take imagination and money. Probably more of the latter.

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 10:51 PM with the headline "Restoring ‘The U’ will take money, imagination."