Football versus Basketball: Can they co-exist at Miami?

With the recent struggles of UM Football, much like the late 1990s, UM Basketball seems to be clicking. Why Basketball and Football can't be successful at the same time is beyond me: Ohio State struggled in Basketball throughout the mid to late 1990s and yet when the Football program began competing for titles again, so did the Basketball program. Wisconsin was poor at both sports, when Donna Shalala made hiring splashes with Barry Alvarez and Stu Jackson. Since Wisconsin has been a power at both sports. Florida's emergence as a Basketball powerhouse was thanks to Football success and Florida State's great Basketball recruiting class of the late 1980s and early 1990s was thanks in large measure to the national prominence of FSU Football.

For Miami, a small urban private school that has been blessed with major conference status it just doesn't seem to work this way. Miami's only period of strong nationally ranked Basketball teams coincided with Miami's probation years in Football. When Football re-emerged as a powerhouse Basketball stagnated and then totally collapsed becoming a laughingstock of the very Big East conference Miami had won just a few short years earlier. When Miami moved to the ACC Football and Basketball went from opposite extremes to mediocrity. Despite a poor season last year, Miami Basketball still recorded some classic wins against top notch teams, the type of wins Miami used to record in its best Big East days.

Miami fans seem terribly disinterested in Basketball. A few die hards try their best to make the Bank United Center a tough place to play but the reality is many UM fans focus on College Baseball as a second sport (perhaps Miami is the only school in the nation where Baseball eclipses Men's Basketball in importance to some fans) or even worse on Spring Football as a second sport. Going forward it will be most interesting to see if any of the Football fans that have paid little or no attention to Basketball, partly because Miami doesn't win every game (nobody wins every game in Basketball) will tune in this year with the chance to get revenge in Basketball for Miami's mounting losses to ACC rivals in Football.

The question must be asked though is whether Miami's true fan base (not bandwagon Miami Football fans from other parts of the country who simply picked UM to support because they have won so much in the past) is so small and too big city to really focus on multiple sports at one time? Does this potential reality so profoundly affect the players and coaches around the programs that performance is based on how active and interested the fan base is? I think that theory maybe a stretch but clearly some explanation for the inability of both big time sports to successfully co-exist.