The past few years the Miami Hurricanes have not had that killer instinct, and dominated teams where the Hurricanes clearly had more talent. That is the case this week as Miami is deeper than USF at almost every postion other than Defensive Line. Yesterday I gave you 5 reasons why USF must beat Miami this weekend, now let me venture on to the Miami side and give you 5 reasons the Hurricanes must win this game.
1. The Miami Hurricanes are supposed to win this game, they have more talent, the tradition, more speed, and a higher ranking. All of those are true facts they should go into Raymond James stadium and take care of the upstart Bulls without much of a problem. That’s what dominant college football programs do they go out and dismantle the teams they have the edge over. The game should be close early,but after half time if Miami wants to continue being called “The U” and have it mean something they need to pull away and dominate the Bulls in the second half.
2. State Pride is another big reason they need to win this game, Miami has spent decades building and solidifying this as one of the top programs in college football. USF is an upstart program and their desire is to have the traditional Big 3 turned into the Big 4, and if Miami loses to the Bulls it will be a step in that direction.
3. A loss has the potential to hurt recruiting efforts, and not because USF will all of a sudden have recruits flocking to them rather than Miami (after all it’s just one game). But Miami has already taken hits to its National recruiting ability as of late, and an out of conference loss to a middle tier Big East team which resides in the same state is going to be another big blow. Recruits won’t stop considering Miami to consider USF instead when Miami comes calling and USC, Ohio State, and Texas are in the mix Miami may be the 4th choice depending on those circumstances.
4. Since Miami has joined the ACC the goal was to have a Miami vs. Florida State ACC title game as much as possible. Well that has as of yet to materialize and both those teams have not been as strong as they were in the 90′ and late 2000′s, so the ACC’s grand plan to become more respectable on the College Football landscape has largely failed so far. If Miami (who the ACC wants to be one of their flagship teams) loses to USF who has never won the Big East (the conference Miami left) it will do even more damage to the already tarnished reputation of the ACC. The reason why the conference needs more respect is that it’s much easier to play for a National Championship if your conference is well respected.
5. Big Bowl implications are at stake as well this is Miami’s last game of the season and the BCS came out last week and said Miami was still in the mix for an at large BCS bid. Even with Miami’s disappointing losses this season their tradition and status in college football still allows them the opportunity to get into big time bowl games over other programs. If the ACC can get two teams into the BCS with Miami being one of the at-large teams it would be huge for the conference as well as Miami, plus provide needed momentum into the recruiting season.
Miami needs to take care of business on Saturday, because they are favored and in their history have made a point to dominate these upstart programs before giving them any hope of competing on the same level. Miami won’t gain as much from a win as USF will, but they will lose a lot more if they do not win. So USF comes into this game with really nothing to lose, so they can afford to play lose and take more chances, Miami on the other hand has all of the pressure and expectations coming in. If they don’t do a good job of managing all of that or they take USF for granted they could very easily lose.
