Miami “slashes” ticket prices

Kirby Hocutt, fresh off his botch job in prying more money from President Shalala, announced plans to cut the ticket prices for some sections for the 2009 season. Of course, my section, Alumni, will see none of those benefits. Kirb-dawg, you do realize the Alumni section is full of all the recent grads, right? The ones who can’t afford season tickets, but get them anyways? And most importantly, the ones who will potentially be big donors in 10 years, for the next 20? (Hell, I only went to Miami for a year, and I want to go all Alex Rodriguez when I’m rich and convince those territorial fucks in the Gables to build an on-campus stadium! They would never let me, even for a $5 million straight donation to the city, but still.) And he couldn’t cut the $75 donation fee? Come on, Kirbs. The donation fee is a 21% premium to the actual season ticket cost. This is like a NFL seat license. Killing us.

On the plus side, all the unemployed, South end zone at the OB Canes fans will see some real discounts. Cuts reach upwards of $151 in the upper levels, with two mid-level club sections (206 and 212) seeing a decrease as well.

In reality, the all-in Alumni ticket price is actually a great deal. $345 for six games (most seasons you get seven),  a state of the art stadium, great parking, easy enter and exiting, and it serves all kinds of liquor. And that was for 20 rows up from the field.

Randy is being proactive in this budget crisis. He has offered (and has been accepted) for Miami to bus to games at UCF and USF next season. Not too shabby. Will save the Athletic Department $140K. I feel those should be bus trips every year really. Only 4 hours max to either location. On a personal level, anything under 8 hours on Google Maps is an automatic drive over flying. And when Google Maps tracks estimated time using 65 mph average, you can always chip away at that time, with your 85 mph clip.

For all this money being saved, I can only hope they paint the end zones this year. As much as I love the slanted parallel lines, a la Notre Dame, it reminds me of…Notre Dame. Enough!

Miami to hire John Lovett as DC

The Miami Herald is reporting that the Canes will hire UNC Defensive Assistant John Lovett as their next Defensive Coordinator. Lovett came to UNC with Butch Davis, and was also the Special Teams Coordinator.

This is definitely a suprise hire by Randy, one not many saw coming. Perhaps he liked what he had with Bill Young. The well-traveled assistant, someone not looking to go anywhere, with loads of experience to teach young players. At the same time, Lovett is 58, was not the DC under Butch Davis, and has not been a coordinator since 2006 with Bowling Green. He does have 18 years experience running a defense, however, including stints in the SEC with Auburn and Mississippi. This guy isn’t green.

I’m actually more excited about what he can bring to the Special Teams play. If Miami can start consistently putting kickoffs past the 15 yard line (please?), block some kicks, and increase their return average by even 10 net yards, it will do wonders for the still growing offense. A defense with studs all over can run itself. Unless you’re Patrick Nix.

Miami Hurricanes DC search continues on

(whispers) Kirby, go talk to Donna, get me some money for a DC!

Lost in all the Mark Whipple and National Signing Day hoopla is that fact Miami is still without a Defensive Coordinator. Rumors are that the vault is empty, Randy will have to handle the duties, all because there is no more money to get a big name DC.  Some might think us Canes fans are in a desperate situation. Not one to let any restrictions hinder his search, Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt has decided to bring in a consultant, one who has experienced more than his share of money troubles with an owner (or president), and is not afraid to say what others may not.

Lou Brown: Hocutt! Gimme all your requirements goddamit! I need to know what I’m looking for.

Kirby: Well, Lou, we want someone who runs the Cover 2 Base defense, blitzes rarely, utilizing the front four to put all the pressure, and can pin their ears back once we get a two touchdown lead.

LB: Well, shit. I know a great guy. Knew him back in my days in Cleveland. You might of heard of him, Bob Stoops? He wasn’t much of a career climber. He’s probably still washing cars in the off-season up there in Youngstown, earn a couple extra bucks.

KH: Uh, Lou, Bob Stoops is the head coach of Oklahoma. Has been for over 10 years.

LB: Well, shit. I knew I shouldn’t have moved to London once Taylor took my job. I was doing that sack of shit catcher a favor!

KH: And Lou, we sort of have a budget concern with our Defensive Coordinator hire. We broke the bank on Mark Whipple, and need to keep this one on the lower end of the scale.

LB: No problem Hocutt. I have a great idea. Check out this sketch I just made to scrap together some funds.

Don't Hire a DC without it!

LB: You like it Hocutt? Randy hocking AMEX! You’re sitting on a goldmine here!

KH: Uh, Lou, I don’t think Randy will be OK with this idea. Maybe we can just re-direct some funds from the tennis and diving teams. They run a surplus every few years. President Shalala has been very adamant about not overspending on the coordinators.

LB: Forget about the curve ball Hocutt, give Shalala the heater!

KH: Well, I don’t know Lou. She can be pretty intimidating.

LB: Come on Hocutt, get in front of the damn woman! Don’t give me this “olé” bullshit! Go in there, walk right past her lady secretary, and tell her you are bringing in whoever you damn please! And you’re gonna wine and dine ‘em! Show ‘em the town! Automatic Slims! Mango’s! Monty’s Raw Bar in the Grove!

KH: Lou, I can’t do that. President Shalala insisted no overspending. I can’t take someone out to South Beach, let alone Monty’s. Maybe we can do Chicken Kitchen, but only if I pay.

LB: Chicken Kitchen?! I’ve had it with this nickel and dime shit! I want that bitch on the phone!

KH: Lou, this isn’t a good idea-

LB: Hocutt. Look here. Try this. Throw this in front of your boosters. It worked for me before.

KH: Lou, that is sick. You are a dirty old man. President Shalala has been nothing but supportive to the football team.

(pause)

KH: Lou, this might have been a bad idea bringing you in, maybe we should just leave it at that, go our separate ways…

LB: You don’t wise up and listen to me Hocutt, and guess who’ll be bagging groceries in a couple of weeks! You’re from Ohio, right? I hear the other Miami is hiring. You ever think of going back there for a few? I have connections up there. You and Dorn can tag team some third rate hookers out on Lake Erie for all I care!

(pause)

KH: I’ll get back to you on this Lou. Thanks for your advice.

LB: (sighs) Oh, no problem Kirby. (pause) But hey, I figure we ought to hang out together for a while today and see if we can give all those stuck up Coral Gables people a nice big shitburger to eat! Whaddaya say Kirb?”

KH: Uh…I have to go now Lou…I’ll have our secretary get you your check.

LB: Well, alright Hocutt! Now you’re talking. I love this Coral Gables shit! I just might move here!

National Signing Day is upon us

Look at me. Look at me, okay? Technically, I shouldn’t be getting laid with all these recruits, but I do. And do you know why? Because when I’m hanging out with a recruit, that’s all I’m doing is hanging out, talking, listening. I’m not sitting there thinking about how to get in bed with them. And this completely confuses them because they’re saying “Wait a minute. I’m so much better looking than this guy. I’m on ESPN’s Top 150. Isn’t he attracted to me?” The basic principle: We pursue that which retreats from us.

It’s like Butch Davis on the Titanic. He kept saying, “More people, more people.” But Randy was, like, “No.”

Don’t fret Canes fans. Randy has this all under control. Be a Steve, not a Stu.

Sam Barrington (OLB) commits to Miami…wait, he actually doesn’t

(This post was set to run if Barrington picked Miami, but I spend so much time on it, I decided to run it anyways.)

Sam Barrington decided to beat the oversaturation of tomorrow’s hat fest and announce his college decision tonight. Staking out a club in his hometown of Jacksonville, Barrington announced mere minutes ago he will be attending Miami to play football.

Barrington listed his final three as UM, South Florida, and Illinois. Damn Zooker. Overreaching again into this great commodity ripe state of Florida. He just makes the rest of them work harder. Barrington even said he didn’t like the cold. Another hit to the Midwest! Hold out for those playoff home games Big Ten!

Barrington is listed as 6′3” 215. Great starting off point for an OLB. He is #37 LB prospect in the nation; not too shabby. I see him as someone who will predominantly play special teams next year, with Spence manning the LB group, McCarthy back from injury, and Arthur Brown stepping into a starting role. Barrington can slide right in once McCarthy graduates, and run amok his sophomore year, a la the majority of the 2002 defense.

His senior year stats are pretty good: 1,118 yards rushing, 17 TD, 109 tackles, 4 TFL, 3 sacks. However, I can’t find out anything on his competition up there in Jax.

Barrington is listed as a 3 star by Rivals. Depth! Depth! Depth!

(Update: Barrington picked South Florida. You suck Barrington! You’re just a crappy 3 star! Who needs depth anyways! I wasted ten minutes of my life!)

2009 National Signing Day Eve

These are for you Randy.

On this NSD eve, the XMas for all those affiliated with any team across the college football world, I share this fantastic article I saw over on Bleed Scarlet, a Rutgers blog, via MGoBlog, who linked to it first.

Man, that sentence was long. PTA worthy. I should probably cut it up. Yes, I’m being lazy. Close ‘em up Randy!

Speed Kills, but only if you’re poor

If you grew up here, you must be fast. House caves in at 4am on a Thursday morning? You better have 4.4 speed to escape!

As we all await the inevitable drama from Bryce Brown on Wednesday, I thought this would be a good time to settle an ongoing argument. Where does the best high school football talent come from? (Not Kansas!) We will all agree that the top 3 states for mining players are Florida, Texas, and California. And in the end, it always comes back to Florida and Texas.

This debate has raged on and on for years, especially when places like ESPN put up a poll for fans to vote upon. Does anyone really think Texas wasn’t going to get the most votes? We know how dem Texans are. They never back down on anything. They will tell you there is a movie theater with 87 screens right outside their doorstep in Arlington, it’s called the Dallas 87 Grand, and when you go online, find the truth, call them out on it (only 24 screens!), they will simply move on to telling you Kyle from Real World Chicago will come out as gay by the last episode, he knows this as fact, because his sister knows someone at MTV in Manhattan, you guys should go online and bet on this. You following the trend here? If they know they lost one argument, they will just fixate you onto a new one, which most likely you cannot disprove.

Then, in a gift from a former Cane god, the answer arrived. Butch Davis, when describing the potential pitfalls of recruiting, threw out this gem:

“You may be buying the finished product,” Davis said. “There’s a little bit of that in Texas. Those schools have got more money than God. They have a strength coach, 15 high school coaches. The players have been in the same program since sixth or seventh grade. You get them and four years later they are the exact same player.

“You go to Pahokee, Fla., where a kid eats once a day, his parents may not be around,” Davis said. “You get him in a weightlifting program. Two years later, he’s three times better than the kid from Texas.”

Dammit. I knew I should’ve emancipated myself, moved to downtown Detroit, and ate breadsticks for lunch as my sole government-assisted meal for the day.

Ray Ray Armstrong (S) to visit this weekend

Where are all the 5-stars Balki! Larry ain't gonna be happy when he sees this mess!

Last weekend was the big one for recruits, with half a dozen or so on campus, checking out Coral Gables and Coconut Grove’s finest. This weekend, the last before National Signing Day, is a more subdued affair. Notable on the list is Ray Ray Armstrong, who, if he lives up to his high school hype, will no doubt become my new favorite, rotating Cane. He plays my favorite position, and is being compared in some circles to my favorite Cane of all time, Sean Taylor.

“Miami coaches just tell me to be ready when I get there, work hard,” Armstrong said. “I see myself playing right away, making a big impact.”

“They say I have a nose for the ball like him (Sean Taylor),” Armstrong said.

Up until this off-season, I actually abhored recruiting. Felt it was an unnecessary exurberance, a gluttonous affair, something for the unemployed or wanting to be unemployed males to argue about on message boards. Last year, after Randy signed the incredible class, I was, at best, ho hum. “I’ll pay attention when they see the field,” I said. “Call me when they show some game results,” I responded to excited friends.

After last season, I am a changed man.

Watching Sean Spence wreak havoc, Aldarius Johnson make spectacular catches, Travis Benjamin near Hester-esque returns, Laron Byrd’s coming out party in the Emerald Bowl, I now am a believer. Sure, recruiting is still a hit and miss game. Always will be when you are choosing a commodity that is not fully grown. I’ve said this before, but since most of you are fresh readers, I’ll say it again. In the words of one of my heroes, Clarence Worley, “I’d rather have a gun and not need it, than need a gun and not have it.” No matter what anyone says, the results speak for themselves.

Malcolm Bunche (OL) commits to Miami

Step back kracka!

With all this craziness regarding the new OC hire, we can’t forget the most important part of the off-season, getting fresh Miami Thugs ®. Miami signed another OL this past week in Malcolm Bunche, a 3 star recruit on Rivals.

Bunche is #39 at his position, and is a whopping 6′5” 315. Miami definitely can’t sign enough O-linemen, and I hope they bring in some corn-fed Iowa boys as walk-ons, just to get beat up every day and called Krackers for their overalls and haircuts.

Bunche’s other finalists were Rutgers and Maryland. Always good to steal someone Schiano wanted. (Recruit your own state buddy! Learn to manage a game! Joe Pa is never retiring!) Anyways. Manny Navarro has some more details on Bunche, and speaks the truth when he says most recruiting posts are Height/Weight/40 time/Star Ranking/Next!, of which I also fall victim. But that’s why they get paid! To feed us information, of which we just throw a great, fantastic opinion on, no doubt hilarious in its efforts.

Men at Work is a great movie.

Todd Bankhead interview on Mark Whipple

When one comes, they all start rolling in-

Our second interview with a former Coach Whipple player today is with his D-1AA national title winning QB, Todd Bankhead.

Bankhead came to UMass the same year as Coach Whipple (1998), from Palomar Junior College in San Marcos, CA. And just like our previous interviewee Jason Peebler, Bankhead set all kinds of passing records while at UMass. Lets do this!

Todd, being a Miami Hurricane fan, and having to endure two years of Patrick Nix led offensive play calling, I’m sure you can imagine our excitement level right now with this Mark Whipple hire.

You both came in to UMass in 1998. How did he help change the team offensive dynamic? I realize you were coming from a JUCO, but how did other players on the team react to his style?

(Note: All bold emphasis in Todd’s answers is mine.)

Hey Tony,
I’m happy to answer your questions about Coach Whipple, I still keep in touch with him and just recently saw him at our 1998 National Championship reunion back in October. I think you guys will like what he brings to the table.

Before Whip and I got to UMass they were 2-9 the previous year. They were running the option which is night and day compared to what Whip likes to do. I don’t think it was quite the same situation with the Canes because of the winning tradition and expectations there, but at UMass the players immediately bought into what Whip was trying to do because we were hungry. I think it is quite remarkable what he was able to accomplish offensively because he was bringing in a whole new system with players who were accustomed to something totally different. One of the cool things that I think personifies his style and system was that he was ultra confident more towards being brash about establishing what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it (what I mean by that is he told us from the start we were going to be potent and hard to stop and kind of instilled that into us).

The stats for your Junior and Senior seasons speak for themselves. You broke all kinds of school records in passing. What kind of scheme does Whipple run? We Miami fans really have nothing to look at in terms of his style of play calling.

I can only imagine that since coaching in the NFL he has become all the more innovative, but in terms of what he was doing at UMass, he was wide open.  That isn’t to say he just wanted to air it out every game, because we had a great running back who played in the NFL for 7 years (Marcel Shipp), but he was innovative in that he knew how to expose other teams and how to utilize mismatches.  As far as a scheme goes, we ran everything from off-set I formations to 5 wide empty sets (Yes!).  It was definitely more of a pro scheme and not all this spread option Vince Young stuff you see. (However, if he had a Vince Young he would definitely utilize those talents and work that stuff in).  I think what you guys will like is that he is not predictable, and he is kind of fearless when it comes to play calling.  The only difference is he is not the head coach and he might be reigned in a little bit, but we went for it on 4th a lot and he was willing to take chances like throwing out of the end zone when most coaches would try to pound it and give themselves some space.  One thing is for sure, you wouldn’t classify Whipple as being conservative.  Definitely fun to play for and fun to watch.  The thing I liked most about his offense, it wasn’t overly complicated for the players to pick up (his plays weren’t a paragraph long with hundreds of variables for each player to read on the fly), but it was very tough for defenses to defend against.

What kind of coach is Whipple? Players coach? Disciplinarian? Does he demand a lot?

That is a tough question to answer because at UMass he was as fiery as they come.  I’m sure coaching in the NFL is a lot different because you can’t really get into guys like he did, because that probably wouldn’t work. As the Head Coach/OC, he would light into me like nobody’s business, but would also coach me and congratulate me for doing something good.  I’d say we had a great relationship but he was not hesitant to unleash his wrath when I or someone else screwed up. He also knew who he could do that with and who wouldn’t respond to that type of coaching. I’m very interested to see how he is at Miami because they are college kids but are also high profile recruits who have egos. He will know how to manage whatever situation he is in because he knows how to deal with people. You need to get a microphone on that guy because he says some funny stuff when he goes off. I don’t think you get that impression from interviews and stuff like that, but as a coach, he is as fiery as they come.

I see you had some experience in the professional ranks after UMass. Can you give us a brief rundown? And also, how did Whipple prepare you for the next level, especially being a QB?

After college I ended up in the CFL and Arena League for 4 years.  I would say Whip helped me tremendously with being able to recognize things and take advantage of mismatches.  He definitely instills toughness in his players and expects a lot from them, which gets you prepared for just about anything.

For all my UMass readers, what are you up to right now? How is life treating you? Was it hard giving up the game?

Right now I’m a Police Officer in San Diego. I work for an agency that is different from most because we do a lot of different stuff from traditional agencies. For instance, I’m a scuba-diver and do a lot of work on the water with boats as well as marine firefighting, along with traditional police work in a patrol car. After playing football, I thought I would get into coaching but I was sick of the job instability thing and tried some of the 9 to 5 jobs, but didn’t care much for that.  I never thought I would be a cop but I love it and have a blast.  Life is great, I’m married and have a 10 month old boy who hopefully takes after his mother (she was a college volleyball player who is much more athletic than me).

Last question. Here is the situation: 4th and 3, on the opponent’s 40 yard line, up by 2 points, 2:00 minutes to go, opponent has 1 time out left. Conference title on the line. What would you guys do?

Honestly, we were in that type of situation plenty of times. I would have to say Coach Whip would want to put it away and go for it kinda like Pete Carroll does it at SC.  In 1998, we were huge underdogs early in the year to the #5 D1-AA team that year.  It was the 4th quarter and we were down by 1 or 2 points.  We drove inside their 20 with about 8 seconds left and called timeout. All we had to do was play it conservative and we would have a good shot at winning on a field goal. On the previous play I completed a ball for a 6 or 7 yard gain and Whip saw something that I didn’t and wanted me to throw it in the end zone to a different receiver. When I came to the sideline he Mother F’d me like you’ve never heard….just going off. When he settled down, he called a play and told me if we got a certain look the backside receiver would be open on a post route. We go out after the timeout and line up to run the play and the defense calls a timeout.  During the timeout, Whip walks out on the field and starts screaming at their defense, “Give us a f****** look” as if they were a scout team defense or something.  I was like, this dude is crazy. I’ll tell you what, it got our guys jacked up and probably dumbfounded their team’s defense.  On the next play, sure enough, we got the look we wanted and we hit the backside receiver for a touchdown to win the game.  It was awesome and really I think it propelled us that year to go on and win the National Championship.

I think you guys will really love Coach Whipple. He is as good of a coach as there is out there.

Todd

Ok Canes fans. That officially does it. I have to go buy some extra kleenex because I just made an excitement pee in my pants. And I believe we can also officially start a new calling card, a new catch phrase….. “GIVE US A FUCKING LOOK!”