Sunday, October 15, 2006

Fire. Coker. NOW.

Update: After I wrote this post I found a quote from Larry Coker that shows he has completely lost his mind. I defy you to make sense of this comment from Larry Coker about the fight: ``I think that it will affect the image of our program greatly, but in a positive way . . . I think that when they see the video and they see how it was handled they will be impressed with our players.'' Here’s the source

Watch any sports program in the next couple days and I’m sure you’ll see yet another reason why it’s time for Larry Coker’s tenure to end at the University of Miami. Miami got into what can only best be described as a street fight with FIU. There’s a lot to say about this so I’ll have to break up my thoughts a little bit.
- There are some player who should never be allowed to play at Miami again because of their actions during the fight. Getting to go to UM on a scholarship is a privilege not to be taken lightly, I know because I did it (although mine was academic, not athletic).
- Why are we fighting with FIU, they’re 0-6? Yeah, I know it’s got a lot to do with it being a cross town rivalry and the players on both teams have been playing each other since high school, but that’ s still no excuse. With a team that’s as bad as FIU once you score there’s no reason to bother with trash talk, just score on them and act like they aren’t even significant enough to evoke a response from you. Back in the day UM would win the fights before, during, and after the game, but these fights were against teams that were great, not some upstart team from across the street that hasn’t even won a game yet this year.
- Larry Coker’s has gotten too much credit for his skill as a coach for years, that for sure. Now, it’s clear that he’s gotten too much credit for running such a clean program also. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we’ve lost all discipline as a program, Coker’s suspensions for the FSU game show that, but it’s also really obvious that the character of the guys in the UM uniforms overall is not where it was 5 years ago. I could go on about this for hours, but this post from the allcanes.com blog explains in better detail what I’m talking about.
- I’ve said before on this blog that Miami might as well not even bother running such a squeaky clean program since any time a UM player does anything remotely wrong everyone in the program is branded a thug. So why does this fight bother me? Because we’re out of the top 25 and being thugs. When you’re dominating the nation and being thugs, ala the Canes of the 80s and 90s, it’s called swagger. When you’re out of the top 25 and getting into fights with meaningless opponents it’s called stupid and disgraceful.

1 comment:

Adam Samons said...

Usually I would be, but they have to at least get back into the top 25 to qualify for my pride. Hopefully the fight will be some kind of rallying point for the team over the rest of the year.