With Jacory Harris back in the lineup for the Miami Hurricanes, an upset could be brewing in Coral Gables.  The Ohio State Buckeyes and Miami Hurricanes have both had a lot of internal problems involving NCAA investigations and suspensions over the past year, which certainly puts a damper on this game.

This game should have pitted two Top 20 potential BCS teams against each other, but instead it features two teams that will need a miracle to reach a BCS game.

The Buckeyes will be without DL Solomon Thomas, OL Mike Adams, RB Dan Herron, and WR DeVier Posey in part due to the suspensions handed down by the NCAA last year, while WR Aldarius Johnson, DE Dyron Dye, SS Ray Ray Armstrong and DE Olivier Vernon are all suspended for the Hurricanes.

DE Nathan WIlliams willl also miss the game for Ohio State with a knee injury.  Jacory Harris sat out the team’s opener against Maryland, but he returns to the starting lineup for the game with Ohio State, which should drastically improve the Hurricanes offense.

Without Dan Herron leading the rushing attack for the Buckeyes, they are going to have to rely on Carlos Hyde to carry the team’s ground attack. Hyde is only a sophomore and has struggled a bit so far this year. He rushed for only 70 yards on 20 carries in the team’s game against Toledo, and cannot afford to do that against Miami.

Not having a strong ground attack is really going to slow the Buckeyes’ attack, especially with Joe Bauserman leading the way for the Buckeyes. He was extremely inconsistent last week against Toledo and if he puts up a similar performance this week, Ohio State will have no chance.

Harris struggled at quarterback for the Hurricanes last year against Ohio State and is bound to use that as motivation for this year’s game.

Harris is extremely talented, as he can make plays with both his legs and his arms. They will need the defense to step up, especially the secondary without Ray-Ray Armstrong, but the suspensions for Ohio State are more devastating than the suspensions for the Hurricanes.

The Miami Hurricanes and Maryland Terrapins are both trying to refocus the attention for this game onto the actual football being played and not the Nevin Shapiro scandal.  As you are abundantly aware by now, Miami will be without eight of its best players including Jacory Harris, Sean Spence and Ray-Ray Armstrong.

Both teams will be showcasing their new head coaches in this Labor Day battle, Randy Edsall for Maryland and Al Golden for Miami.  Running back Lamar Miller looks to establish himself as one of the best in the ACC and will be a leader for the Hurricanes in this game.  Quarterback Danny O’Brien won the ACC Rookie of the Year award last season and hopes to continue that success in 2011.

The game will be broadcast on ESPN tonight at 8 p.m. and promises to be a closely contested match between two underrated teams that could sneak into the Top 25 with a dominating performance.  Danny O’Brien was the ACC’s best kept secret last season. As a freshman, he led the Terps to a 9-4 record and over 32 points per game while throwing for just under 2500 yards.  His top receiver, Torrey Smith, is gone to the NFL but four of five offensive linemen return and they averaged 1.69 sacks allowed per game in 2010.

Randy Edsall employs a pro-based offense that, much like Michigan, could damper O’Brien’s results. But don’t count on it. “We’re passing the ball a lot more,” said senior wide receiver Quintin McCree.  There may not be a receiver quite like Smith but the Terrapins are now apparently three-deep at that position which is even better.  And if it isn’t, Danny is always up for a challenge. He had to battle a severe case of poison ivy and mono before winning the starting job and without Da’Rel Scott, the pressure will be squarely on his shoulders to guide his team to victory at home.

His job will be easier without Ray-Ray Armstrong in the secondary but may not matter much considering how much he impressed in the offseason.  The ACC is debuting more quarterbacks than any other BCS league this year. The offense may look different but don’t expect Danny O’Brien’s results to change much from his Rookie of the Year campaign last season.  Forget Jacory Harris. The biggest losses Miami has to overcome are on defense.

Ray-Ray Armstrong and Sean Spence were both voted first team All-ACC this preseason at safety and linebacker, respectively. Add to that a defensive line that will only be returning one starter from last season against a veteran offensive line and you have a very serious problem.  Before the suspensions, Miami’s defense figured to be one of the best in the conference but now they are squarely the underdogs against Maryland.  Once all of the players come back, expect the Hurricanes to dominate opponents defensively but for this game, Maryland has the definite advantage.

That’s not to say the players replacing them don’t have experience but they simply aren’t as talented, especially when talking about Spence and Armstrong who are projected as early-round draft picks. They also haven’t had as much time to practice with the rest of the defense.

Expect Miami to have a couple of blown assignments this game based on a lack of communication.  Al Golden worked a lot of magic while he was at Temple but he will need a lot more in order for his defense to keep up with Danny O’Brien and the Maryland offense.

Al Golden says this second depth chart is a result of off-season dedication, so apparently Jacory Harris has been putting in work in the off season to recover from an abysmal season.  That should be nothing new if you look at the body of work Jacory Harris always wins the job or impresses in the off season and practices, even after Randy Shannon was fired Jacory won the starting nod for the Sun Bowl.  How did that work out for the Hurricanes?  What this story says is Harris probably has a great grasp of the offense and is confident in practice, but when the game rolls around he looks impatient and confused in the pocket.  The interceptions are somehow being blamed on Randy Shannon’s coaching staff, who openly took the blame for Harri’s interception woes.

From the fan perspective large majorities are ready to see the Jacory Harris era at quarterback come to an end, and were looking to Stephen Morris to mature and take over the reins at quarterback.  The question remains will Jacory Harris start and finish the season as the Miami Hurricanes starting quarterback?  If the 2009 Jacory Harris shows up then that is a strong possibility, people forget that Harris was in the running for the Heisman trophy his first year starting and showed flashes of being the next great Miami quarterback.  The 2010 season he seemed to regress and started to let things distract him from football, everyone should be familiar with the Twitter incident the week of the Ohio State game and subsequent banning of Twitter for all Hurricanes players.  Then the Oakland Raiders overall’s incident among other odd things Harris was known for other than performance on the field.

If you look at Harris’ stats from 2009 (13 Games):

242/406 (59.6 comp %)

3352 Yards

24 Touchdowns

17 Interceptions

140.10 QB Rating

Now if you compare those stats to his 2010 numbers (9 Games):

148/270 (54.8 comp %)

1793 Yards

14 Touchdowns

15 Interceptions

116.60 QB Rating

It is very easy to see that there was a clear decline, but the truth is Stephen Morris’s numbers were not better than Harris even in a down year.  Morris had a lower completion percentage, lower QB rating, and nine interceptions in six games worth of action.  In Morris’s defense he did play against the tougher competition on the schedule than Harris did.

With a clear decline in Harris’s production, fans clamoring for someone other than him to start, and his interception issues it does not seem that this change by Al Golden will be a permanent one.  Even if Harris makes it to the beginning of the season as the starter it just does not seem likely that he is going to be able to shake all of his old issues and keep the starting job for the full season.  All Golden will probably have a very short leash with Harris and will not put up with excessive interceptions if he shows no improvement over last season.

Even in the a “down” era for Miami several Hurricanes still managed to get on the leader board in terms of performance, but there were also some disappointing statistics as well.  While Demarcus Van Dyke was the fastest player at the combine posting a 4.28 40-yard dash time, he was also the weakest by posting only five repetitions on the bench press (225 lbs.) which was a combine low.  The combine only measures tangible things, and overall the Hurricanes players that were there looked about average, but with major upside.  Here are all the statistics put up by the players for the workouts they participated in.

Quarterback:

The Miami Hurricanes Quarterback play has been one of the weaknesses of this team over the last two years.  In games against average opponents they have played decent football, but the games against the tougher opponents on the Hurricanes schedule their quarterbacks have not played very well.  The Miami Hurricanes new offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch has stated that the slate is wiped clean for Jacory Harris, and that he and Stephen Morris will compete for the starting quarterback spot.  Stephen Morris showed signs of being the quarterback of the future, and played big in a lot of games for the Hurricanes.

The truth is Morris and Harris are remnants from the old regime, and realistically Morris has the best chance to make this team a winner.  Hurricane fans have seen enough of Jacory Harris to make the conclusion that he is not the guy to put Miami back on top.  This recruiting class Miami currently has no quarterbacks committed, but are fiercely going after Kevin Sousa and Jacoby Brissett at the last minute to see if they can land a commitment.  On the second tier they have Marcus McDade and Stephen Weatherford waiting for that phone call that the Hurricanes will offer them scholarships.  If Miami is can land Brissett or Sousa then the Hurricanes will be deep at the quarterback position for the next three or four years.

Departing Players

None

Current Targets

Kevin Sousa

Jacoby Brissett

Marcus McDade

Stephen Weatherford

Offensive Line:

The Offensive line for the Miami Hurricanes started off shaky last season, but the unit started to come together as the season moved along.  They still suffered from too many mental mistakes in big games, as the Hurricanes were the most penalized team in the ACC.  Most of these penalties came from false start or holding which seemed to kill drives all season.

Orlando Franklin and Joel Figueroa were two of the biggest offenders when it came to racking up penalties on the offensive line, and Figueroa was eventually replaced by freshman star Seantrel Henderson.  Those were the only two seniors on the roster at offensive line which showed the Hurricanes had a bit of an issue with leadership on the offensive line.

You can never have too much depth on the offensive line, and the Hurricanes already have 14 offensive linemen on the roster even with Franklin and Figueroa leaving.  This class will be light on offensive lineman, but if they can land another top level commitment then they will have enough depth and versatility to be one of the best offensive lines in the country.

Departing Players

Orlando Franklin

Joel Figueroa

Current Targets

Taylor Gadbois (Committed 1/07/2011)

Antonio Richardson

Cyrus Kouandjio

Wide Receiver:

Coming into the season the wide receiving corps was thought to be the strength of this team coming into the season, but over 60 dropped passes indicated that it was not.  The only consistent player the entire season was Leonard Hankerson, who is going to be moving on to the NFL.  Travis Benjamin, Laron Byrd, Aldarius Johnson, and Tommy Streeter all had relatively subpar seasons, and none look like they are going to be the dominant force that Hankerson was next season.

The wide receiving corps need an upgrade because they will need to get separation from defensive backs in order to reduce the amount of interceptions thrown by Morris or Harris.  Al Golden and staff have picked up where Randy Shannon left off by going after top receiving talent.  The receivers in this class will upgrade the quality of that position especially if the Hurricanes can get Patrick Onwuasor and Devin Lucien to commit to them.  If you add that to the commitments of Phillip Dorsett and Rashawn Scott, and the returning receivers will have competition this year.

Departing Players

Leonard Hankerson

Current Targets

Devin Lucien

Phillip Dorsett (Committed 6/19/1010)

Rashawn Scott (Committed 1/25/2011)

Patrick Onwuasor

Shane Wynn

Defensive End:

Allen Bailey is leaving the University of Miami for the NFL, and that will be a big blow to this Hurricanes football team.  Even with Bailey here the Hurricanes have lacked a consistent pass rush for the last few years, and that needs to be resolved because pressure on the quarterback will take this defense to the next level.

Anthony Chickillo is the prized recruit of this class, and if you watched the Under Armor All-star game you saw him getting constant pressure on the quarterback and making plays.  Chickillo even had a better game than the #1 recruit in the nation Jadeveon Clowney who was playing across from him, and if Ricardo Williams can put some size on him he can be an effective speed rusher for Miami.  Olivier Vernon, Adewale Ojomo, and David Perry will be pushed for time at defensive end by Chickillo.

Departing Players

Allen Bailey

Current Targets

Anthony Chickillo (Committed 09/09/2010)

Ricardo Williams (Committed 1/09/2011)

Jadeveon Clowney

Bryant Dubose

Special Teams:

The Hurricanes need to replace one of the best kickers in their history in Matt Bosher, they have Jake Wieclaw on the roster, but need other options in case Wieclaw is not good at certain aspects of the special teams game.  They Hurricanes have already signed two kickers in this class, so that need should be filled.  The Hurricanes also needed to find someone to return punts and kicks with Travis Benjamin and Lamar Miller, and this class is going to address that need by the signing of Roscoe Parrish clone Kevin Grooms.

Departing Players

Matt Bosher (K & P)

Brandon Harris (KR)

Current Targets

Dalton Botts (Committed 12/29/2010)

Matt Goudis (Committed 01/16/2011)

Linebackers:

One of the biggest weaknesses on this Hurricanes football team has been the linebacker play.  They shuffled linebackers around trying to find a good person to play in the middle, and they settled on Colin McCarthy by moving him from his Outside Linebacker spot.  Sean Spence and McCarthy were the two constants at the linebacker position, but gave up big runs up the middle on several occasions this season.

The University of Miami has always been known for it’s strong linebacker player, and is looking to return to that with the signings in this class.  Gionni Paul, Antonio Kinard, and Denzel Perryman all look like solid prospects, and the type of players that can really solidify this linebacking corps for years to come.  If the Hurricanes are able to land Curtis Grant and/or Tony Steward they would be getting some of the top recruits in the nation, but they are unlikely to sign with Miami.  The current commitments we already have are enough, if any more sign this season they will just be a bonus.

Departing Players

Kylan Robinson

Colin McCarthy

Current Targets

Gionni Paul (Committed 1/28/2011)

Antonio Kinard (Committed 1/17/2011)

Denzel Perryman (Committed 1/21/2011)

Curtis Grant

Tony Steward

Stephone Anthony

Curt Maggitt

The Miami Hurricanes displayed a lot of potential and hope during the conference tournament last year, grabbing two upset wins and getting out to an impressive first half start against Duke before eventually going down to the Blue Devils. Miami only lost two starters from last year, and have quite a few new players that look to be sound contributors for the team this year.

The key for the Canes this season is to win more match ups against ACC opponents, as they finished with an ACC-worst 4-12 record in conference play last season. While the ACC is one of the toughest conferences in college basketball, Miami has the potential to finish high enough in the league to make a trip to the NCAA tournament this season.

Miami only plays one non-ACC game versus a foe that is ranked in the preseason, and that game comes early in the schedule on Nov. 16 at 19th-ranked Memphis. The Hurricanes could definitely use a victory in this game, but the most important thing for them is to not slip up against their other non-conference opponents. The ‘Canes finished last season with a 16-1 record in non-conference play, but most of those wins came against weak teams and led to them getting beat up in conference action.

Coach Frank Haith will look to Durand Scott and Malcolm Grant to help lead his inexperienced team in an effort to improve from last year. While they may not be in contention to win the ACC this season, they should play some fairly exciting basketball, as they have some of the most athletic players in the conference.

Front Court: Julian Gamble and Reggie Johnson will be depended upon pretty heavily this season when it comes to defense and rebounding, as they look to fill the void that was left with the departure of Dewayne Collins when he left for the NBA after last year. At 6’9″ and 6’10″, respectively, the duo is tall enough to match-up favorably against most of their opponents at the five. Both players need to make more of their shots this season, however, as Johnson shot 52% from the field last season, while Gamble only made 48% on his attempts.

DeQuan Jones is an extremely explosive forward with remarkable speed and athletic ability. He is best known for his ability to finish and his dunking skills, but he will need to improve on his outside shooting this season. He shot a horrid 23% from beyond the arc last season, making only 6 of his 26 attempts from long range.

Miami has Eric Swoope and Raphael Akpejiori joining their team this season. Swoope is another highly athletic small forward that will be competing with Jones for minutes all season at the three. Akpejiori, at 6’9″, should be a strong contributor when it comes to hitting the glass, and at 230 lbs, should be a fairly sound force down low against smaller interior players.

Donnovan Kirk will also be coming back to the ‘Canes after being receiving a medical red-shirt last year when he only played in four contests. He will need to help pick up some of the slack with rebounding on both sides of the court this season.

Back Court: Miami’s success this year largely depends on their back court, which is headlined by Durand Scott and Malcolm Grant. Both players are coming off brilliant performances in the ACC tournament, and the hopes are fairly high for them this year as they will be looked upon as leaders on the court.

Scott, a very impressive guard who is extremely athletic and very good at finding open shooters, will be the floor leader for Miami. Averaging 10.3 points per game last season, and scoring in double figures in eight of their final nine contests, Scott should raise his scoring average this year. Their success will not only ride on his scoring abilities, but also on how well he distributes the ball and his effectiveness at getting his team involved.

While Grant is smaller and shorter than Scott, he plays most of his minutes at the two. Although he was tops on the team with 3.5 dimes per game last season, he will need to concentrate more on scoring this season after putting up just under 10 points per night last season. If he can be a consistent point producer this season, the ‘Canes definitely could be one of the surprise teams to over-achieve their expectations.

Rion Brown will also play a key role in the Hurricanes back court. The freshman shooting guard from Georgia is a Top 100 prospect and should be extremely productive for the Canes if he can get on the court enough this season.

Predictions: The ‘Canes have some extremely talented players on their roster, but unfortunately for them they play in a very deep conference that features last year’s national champions, the Duke Blue Devils, who they go up against twice this year.

If they can get strong contributions from all of their players, they could move up the standings a position or two. However, I can’t picture Miami being able to make a jump into the top level of the ACC and finishing ahead of any of the four teams currently ranked in the Top 25 . While Miami could potentially be a bubble team late in the year if they have an impressive run during conference play, it is unlikely they will actually land a spot in the tournament when all of the smoke settles.

For your chance to beat the NCAA basketball lines this year be sure to visit our site often for the top college basketball picks from our expert handicappers.

The Miami Hurricanes have a new leader at the helm named Al Golden, he comes in with a 27–34 record as a head coach, which has many fans skeptical as to whether this was really an upgrade over Randy Shannon.  Golden can tout that he has taken one of the worst football programs in the country from 1–11 to records of 9–4 and 8–4 respectively over the five years he has been at Temple.  There are a lot of positives with Golden coming into Miami as the new head coach, but many will consider it hardly the “home run” hire they were looking for.  Golden delivered a passionate, confident, and strong press conference on Monday to kick off his tenure as the Hurricanes head coach.

What does the hiring of Golden say about the attractiveness of the job at the University of Miami?  The last few coaching searches turned up Coker, Shannon and now Golden—hardly the murderer’s row of coaching hires that would make people take notice.

The truth is Miami made the hard press at a lot of coaches over the past 10 years, and this time they went after Jon Gruden and struck out.  Then allegedly offered Boise State’s Chris Petersen the job and he backed out of it as well.  Miami never seemed to be in the running for Harbaugh or Petrino, and the entire song and dance with Dan Mullen seemed like he was never really interested in coming to coach the Hurricanes.

It took Miami several weeks to find a coach and close the deal, and Florida lost Urban Meyer and hired Will Muschamp from Texas within a few days after allegedly being rejected by the likes of Bob Stoops and Bobby Petrino.  Florida claims that Muschamp was their guy all along, and Muschamp says he would not have left for any other job, those statements are nice and politically correct.  We know that Muschamp would have left for a lot of jobs if the price and situation were right.  Miami wanted someone with head-coaching experience as stated from the beginning, and it seems Florida was rejected just as many times as the Hurricanes were.

What this says about the Miami job is that it’s not necessarily undesirable, but it is a very unique job like no other in college football.  There are positives and negatives to that, and in reality Miami has never went and hired big-name coaches in the past.  The University of Miami has always made coaches into legends and vaulted them into their next job because of the success they found in Coral Gables.  It would seem that this hire is right in line with what Miami did in the past when it was winning national and conference titles.

Being that Golden does not have a big name and Miami has what are considered good facilities, but not ones that can stack up with some of the other power programs in college football, it will be interesting to see how Golden is able to recruit and compete against the best in the country.  The program’s history and success of sending players to the NFL are where the advantages are.  If it comes down to fan support or facilities those are issues that have to be resolved at some point, but will take time to fix.  Some believe the issue of fan support will never be fixed due to the history of Southern Florida sports fans, and there are others who say, “Just win and it will take care of itself.”

Miami is a good job, but not a great one.  It’s not as bad as Mark May made it out to be a few weeks ago when he was discussing the job on ESPN.  There is sporadic fan support, and it’s a hot seat almost the minute you take the job.  The ink from Golden’s signature is hardly dry on the contract and you already have a subset of the fan base discussing renting planes and not being happy with the hire.  Many fans think Miami deserves to pluck coaches from schools like Georgia, Arkansas and even Oklahoma and are upset that the coaching search was narrowed to coaches from Temple, UConn and the CFL.

The truth is some of those coaches have been at those schools for over six years, and although they may get on the hot seat at times, they manage to keep their job.  Miami has jettisoned coaches two times during the same period some of these coaches were employed in their current jobs, so why would they leave stability for the unknown?  For instance, coach Randy Edsall would have been a significant upgrade, but he is now a god at UConn and the expectations are low.

Taking the job at Miami is not something everyone can do, and the fact that Golden is willing to come in and take a shot at it means the fans should give him the benefit of the doubt before passing judgment.  During his press conference Golden said that the standard at Miami is winning championships and that is the only standard he will be judged by.  There were a lot of politically correct statements in Golden’s press conference which is to be expected, but he gave the impression that he knows what he is getting into and what is going to be expecting of him from the fans and administration.  The fact that he understands that concept will serve him well as he will have a limited amount of time to get things going in the right direction.

Peyton Manning took a small step back to normalcy with a win over the Tennessee Titans on Thursday night. Manning and the Colts looked like they were going to blow out the Titans in the first half, but Tennessee fought back to make it a respectable game in the end.  This put a final death blow in Tennessee’s season, and the fact that Randy Moss only played about six plays the entire game seems to signal that they won’t re-sign him next year.  The Titans have a lot of questions, who is going to play quarterback there next year since it seems that Vince Young may not be back as well, as for the Colts they are fighting with Jacksonville for their playoff lives and the teams square off next Sunday.

The Miami Hurricanes have a new head coach hiring away Temple’s Al Golden to come in and resurrect a program that was on it’s way back already under Randy Shannon.  It hardly looks like an upgrade over Shannon although Golden has done an amazing job rebuilding a Temple football program that was one of the worst in college football.  Golden seems like a fiery, young, and disciplined coach who may have the tools to lead the Hurricanes back to glory, but you have to wonder if this hire was more of who was left rather than who they wanted.  The fan base at Miami will give Golden a short honeymoon period then if he does not win, it will be the same thing all over again as the feeding frenzy will get bigger if he does not win the ACC in his first two years.

If you watched the most recent season of Spike’s The Ultimate Fighter, you saw Josh Koscheck and George St. Pierre going back and forth with mind games and verbal barbs before their showdown at UFC 124.  Well they met on Saturday, and st. Pierre pummeled Koscheck with overhand rights and lefts hooks all night.  Koscheck was decimated and reduced to a one eyed man as St. Pierre reddened and swelled his right eye to the point were it was mostly closed.  Koscheck (15-5) was battered and befuddled for the full 25 minutes, but at least he went the distance.

The Brett Favre and Jenn Sterger situation has been fairly quiet, and it seems that nothing is going to be done to Favre by the NFL.  After months filled mainly with silence and one denial of the existence of settlement talks, Brett Favre’s camp has made its first substantive communication regarding the NFL’s ongoing investigation into the question of whether Favre violated the league’s Personal Conduct Policy in 2008 via his interactions with former Jets in-house sideline reporter Jenn Sterger. With the Favre camp now convinced that litigation is inevitable, their message is simple: “Give us a lawsuit.”

The Miami Hurricanes are coming off a bad loss at Virginia, 24-19, where anything that could go wrong, did go wrong for the Hurricanes.  The Hurricanes started off slow on offense, which has been a common theme for them recently, and on defense, they shut Virginia out in the first quarter.  The second quarter is where things started to go south, as the Hurricanes gave up a touchdown after Virginia converted a fourth down.

After that, Miami started pressing a bit on offense, and Jacory Harris threw the ball deep to Travis Benjamin, only to see his pass picked off.  What makes matters worse is that Harris was hammered on the play and knocked out of the game after lying on the field for about 10 minutes.

In comes the unproven Spencer Whipple, and after a few series that saw two interceptions and probably the worst arm strength in college football, he was removed at halftime.

Freshman Stephen Morris came in and started slowly but caught up to game speed in the fourth quarter while leading the Hurricanes on a fierce rally that came up short in the end.  The aftermath of this is predictable, with droves of fans calling for Randy Shannon and Mark Whipple to be run out of town.

There are rumors that Miami’s president Donna Shalala has assured Shannon that his job is not in jeopardy, and Shalala is even calling angry fans that emailed her to talk about the situation.  It was allegedly revealed that she is somewhat content with eight- or nine-win seasons on a consistent basis, as long as the players are graduating, and there are no off-the-field issues.

Miami was recognized as having the second-highest graduation rate for its football program among the BCS Top 25 schools prior to last Saturday’s games, behind only Stanford. That only bolsters the direction Shalala wants to take the program.

While Hurricane fans continue to focus their ire on Shannon, they do not realize that Shannon is handcuffed and has to run the program the way Shalala directs him to.  I am sure Shannon would like to take some pages out of Jimmy Johnson’s book and run this program a little more like he did.

Shannon is in the same situation that coaches at schools like Stanford, Notre Dame and Duke are in, where the academic standards dictate the direction of the program. The University of Florida is not graduating players at a high national rate, but up until this year, they were winning tons of games on the field.  In the meantime, their football players had over 30 run-ins with law enforcement, and players were let back on the team after being arrested.

Shannon does not have that type of wide berth when it comes to his players or his program. He is not even allowed to recruit players who may have a questionable background or who might not graduate.  What that means is Shannon has to get the best athletes that will stay out of trouble, attend class and get it done in the classroom.

Then Shannon has to hope he gets enough of them to be able to win a national title. Stanford has never won a National Championship in football, and Notre Dame has not done so since 1988.  The balance between winning and having top-flight academics on a football team is hard to find, and that is why this is uncharted territory for Miami.

It’s interesting that Bob Stoops lost his quarterback in the first game last season, and Oklahoma lost to BYU when the backup came in.  Miami had the exact same situation happen, and the fans are all over him?  If fans think that things will be different by bringing in a new coach, they will be sorely mistaken as Shalala will impose the same strict guidelines on them as she has on Shannon.

Couple that with the fact that the administration does not want to pay big money for coaches, and you will not see a Gruden-, Stoops- or Spurrier-type coach come in here.

Stephen Morris sure looked like he was well-coached though, as he did very well considering he is a true freshman coming into a sticky situation.  Fans will continue to blast this team, potential recruits will see how the fans do not support their team and they may choose to go other places.

Recruits can read and see what fans are saying, and that attendance is always an issue with this program. The players will be turned off as much by the fans as anything else.

The Miami football program is at a crossroads right now, and while Shalala has realized the academic success she was hoping for, it remains to be seen if a National Championship can be won under her watch.