ESPN reports on Coker and do recruiting services get it all wrong?

ESPN's Joe Schad who spent part of this week in Coral Gables reporting on the collapse of the University of Miami Football program reports that a highly placed source on the Board of Trustees told him that Coker needs to win the ACC title this season to keep his job. The source stated that reaching the ACC title game would not be enough to save Coker.

On another subject, I was reviewing some old recruiting rankings and Miami's 2004 class (which now makes up the core of the underperforming squad) was ranked #2 in the nation by Rivals.com. Top 100 signees that year included Willie Williams, Charlie Jones, Lance Leggett, Andrew Johnson, Kirby Freeman, Dwayne Hendricks, James Bryant, Rhyan Andreson and Calais Campbell. That's nine top 100 signees for 2004 compared with just two in 2006 (Sam Shields and Ryan Hill).

Of the 2004 class, only Calais Campbell has turned into a consistent starter and thus far this season only Lance Leggett (who has been a bust his first two years) looks to be improving on his previous form. Andrew Johnson who was ranked as one of the top running backs in the nation is 5th on the UM depth chart, and UM is near the bottom in running the football against D1 opposition this season.

You could argue that the two top 100 players in Miami's 2006 recruiting class in addition to some other freshmen(which was ranked 14th by Rivals) have already shown more potential than the blue chippers from 2004. Sam Shields has integrated nicely into Miami's offense already and Javarris James who was not even ranked in Top 100 this year is already proving to be more useful to the Miami attack then the two blue RBs signed in 2004. Graig Cooper who was a 2 star recruit according to rivals and did not qualify academically for Miami this year is the nationa's top prep player according to the new rankings. Ryan Hill, the other top 100 signee besides Sam Shields has moved to WR despite being recruited as a corner. Hill played some WR at Rickards HS in Tallahassee, but preferred playing corner. Yet the Miami coaches smartly moved him to the offense and he appears to be ready to make an impact for a squad desperate for playmakers.

In other words, Coker has missed on several top tier recruits. Is that his fault or the fault of the recruiting services? Florida State has a similar problem looking at their 2003 and 2004 classes. Perhaps Coker does better mining non blue chip talent much like Jimmy Johnson did from 1985 thru about 1988-89. Miami's recruiting classes in those periods were never ranked in the national top 10, but Miami won more games than any other school during the time when those classes were playing.