Miami Needs to Move Beyond the JJ Coaching Tree

The Hurricane Nation Needs to Stop Revising History and Wake Up to Reality

To coach at Alabama you have to be connected to Bear Bryant. To coach Basketball at North Carolina you have to be connected to Dean Smith. Lesser known is the unwritten rule that to coach Football at Miami, even as an assistant, a connection to Jimmy Johnson (JJ) is almost a prerequisite of employment. I believe a big reason Larry Coker is out today as Miami Football coach is that despite being a Jimmy Johnson protege' himself, he fired three JJ lifers last year, Don Soldinger, Greg Mark and Art Kehoe. While Coker's record itself was a problem the last few years, the vulchers did not really begin circling him until he turned over his coaching staff.

One of the least reported stories by the national media is that despite the head coaching turnover at UM, for years a certain core of assistants who either played for Jimmy Johnson or coached with him were retained by every Head Coach. Names like Randy Shannon, Don Soldinger, Rob Chudzinski, Art Kehoe, Greg Mark, Ed Oregron, Tony Wise and Mario Cristobal. Miami fans have an unhealthy obsession with JJ, even though he inherited a national championship team from Howard Schnellenberger and was later shown to be an inferior gameday coach to his successor, Dennis Erickson. Butch Davis was given the Head Coaching job in 1995 because he met UM's only requirement: He had coached with Jimmy Johnson, including a stint at UM, for 15 years. The fact that he had never been a Head Coach didn't dissuade the U, who probably would have been better off actually conducting a national search.

Butch Davis made the cult of JJ more real than ever at the "U." He brought back Don Soldinger who had been shown the door by previous coach Dennis Erickson and made him an assistant again. He promoted Art Kehoe, and hired former players Randy Shannon, Rod Chudzinski, Mario Cristobal and Greg Mark to key staff positions. When Dave Wannstadt, JJ's ultimate lakhi and sideman was fired as Chicago Bears coach, Davis fired Defensive Coordinator Bill Miller (who resurfaced as Ron Zook's right hand man at UF and now Illinois) and brought in Greg Schiano who had served as a Bear assistant and was recommended personally by Wanny himself. When Schiano went to Rutgers he took Cristobal with him and the two embarked on a campaign where they raided potential UM recruits from Dade and Broward Counties to the state University of NJ. (Cristobal has since returned to Miami but is now a leading candidate for the FIU head coaching job.....However rumor has it that Donna Shalala has stated in no uncertain terms that any staff that defects to FIU is never welcome back at the U following the Pete Garcia situation and the ugly brawl.)

Butch Davis, despite the revisionist view of UM fans was a far worse gameday coach than Larry Coker was. Greg Schiano is also the Assistant who cost Miami an upset over then #2 Penn State in 1999 by leaving Mike Rumph in single coverage on Choppy Fields on 3rd and long, with Miami about to win the game inside of two minutes remaining. Schiano didn't learn from his mistake when he blitzed everyone on Chris Weinke on a third down a year later and Weinke threw what could have been the game winning TD to a wide open Atrews Bell with 1:37 remaining. (Miami came back and won, but that is not the point....Schiano almost lost them the biggest game of the year) Dave Wannstedt, JJ's closest associate and confidante in coaching is a failure everywhere he's been. Just ask Tyler Palko who went from a can't miss first round pick to a marginal second day draft pick thanks to Wanny's counsel. Yet to UM fans who seem to blame Larry Coker for everything from 9/11 to the Stock Market crash of 1929, these facts do not matter.

Larry Coker tried something different and given time and one less player murder maybe it would have worked. He actually mined the country for the best assistant coaches available. Imagine that! In came John Palermo, former FSU player and longtime Barry Alvarez assistant at Wisconsin. Also longtime NFL assistant Rich Olsen, Former Army Head Man Kevin Berry and Marquis Mosely were hired. This staff was never given time to gel because Miami's fans wanted Butch Davis back as Head Coach, and Coker began coaching scared after a loss to Louisville in September.

Today, the clamoring throughout the Cane nation is to not even have a coaching search but to put as much money on the table to lure Greg Schiano, as detailed above a member of the JJ tree back to the U. Schiano if not for an accident of timing would have been UM's coach in 2001, and was actually offered the job when Coker was hired but since he had just accepted the Rutgers job he couldn't go back on his word. Had Schaino been the coach in 2001, Miami likely would not have won the National title. Schiano was too green as coach to have properly managed the tough task of winning @ FSU, @ VT, and vs Washington in the same season. Perhaps Miami would be better now with Schiano but to trade the 2001 title and possibly the 2002 title to teach a coach on the job (as was done with Butch Davis who required four years of on the job training, lest the Miami fan base forgets those sorry years) would have been disasterous. Without the 2001 title and near miss in 2002, Miami's luster would be gone and the program would be seen in the same light as Houston and UCLA: An urban has been program living off the glory of the distant past. Thank goodness for Larry Coker. Thanks to Larry Coker, Miami had a second bite at the apple of national glory, a run of dominance between 2001 and 2003 equaled by very few in the history of this game. With Greg Schiano as Head Coach, Miami would have been just another program in the period as he was trained to be a Head Coach.

If Miami continues to cow tow to a dellusional fan base that has romantic and wrong view of Jimmy Johnson and his associates, Miami will continue to enjoy also ran status in the ACC. If Miami hired Greg Schiano without a proper search and he flops, the programs days as the "U" will be effectively done, and the fans that are driving this train can effectively be blamed.