Lost in all of the drowning of sorrows late Saturday night after the University of Miami suffered one of the more embarrassing defeats in it’s history was the hollowness of the stadium during this dark moment in time.\u00a0 Once again,\u00a0 the team was on the field trying to do it’s best to restore the legacy while precious few people were in the stands witnessing it.\u00a0 I was once a guy who blamed the fans,\u00a0 I am not that guy anymore.<\/p>\n
When you are in Gainesville, or Lexington or Lincoln,\u00a0 Nebraska,\u00a0 you might get pumped up to watch the local college football team go battle the Middle Tennessee St. What’s Their Names on a Saturday afternoon in the heat.\u00a0 In those towns,\u00a0 the local tractor pull,\u00a0 rodeo or ax throwing contests can be pushed to a later date to watch the home team get it in vs. a team they had to pay to show up.\u00a0 I don’t know if you’ve been down here to Miami before or not (judging by the skyrocketing home prices,\u00a0 you’re lying if you say you haven’t) but there’s a lot to do on a Saturday in September.\u00a0 You folks in Po-dunk can say all you want about loyalty but your overalls tell me your loyalty was not an option.<\/p>\n
For some odd reason,\u00a0 the powers to be at the University of Miami thought it a grand idea to feed their fanbase this glorious trio of home soup for the first three games of the season:\u00a0 Bethune Cookman,\u00a0 Southern Mississippi and Middle Tennessee St.\u00a0 You should not be surprised when the customer says take that back to the kitchen.\u00a0 I’m going to lay this at the feet of the admin.\u00a0 For three weeks now,\u00a0 the players have had to come through the smoke and clear their eyes to see a handful of people in the stands.\u00a0 Football is an emotional game and a robust home crowd can feed the energy needed even against a team without a name like Middle Tennessee St.<\/p>\n
How long can you keep playing opponents like this before you start becoming a team like them?\u00a0 This scheduling phenomenon has been going on for quite some time and it kind of falls in line with the collapse of the dynasty.\u00a0 It wasn’t always this way through.\u00a0 It has been 21 years since the University of Miami has stood atop the college football World.\u00a0 For those of you old enough to remember when this thing started back in 1983,\u00a0 that would be thinking back to 1962 when this dynasty run started.\u00a0 Think about that.\u00a0 That is black and white TV’s,\u00a0 rotary phones, full meals on an airplane and everyone going to church on Sunday.\u00a0 Back then,\u00a0 Miami was an Independent and could schedule anyone.\u00a0 Fans back then would get treated to visits from Penn St., Notre Dame and Florida in the Orange Bowl.\u00a0 Prior to 1983,\u00a0 Miami was looking to get themselves on the map by scheduling these titans to try get their location services powered up.\u00a0 Now we schedule games like we have something to protect?\u00a0 Well,\u00a0 like the rotary phones and $.25 per gallon gas prices,\u00a0 our championship aura is gone.\u00a0 What are we protecting?\u00a0 We are very much the program that we were in 1980.\u00a0 A has been with the potential to be once more.\u00a0 We won’t get there scheduling like we have been.<\/p>\n
No longer can we be afraid to take an L because a real opponent might show up on our home turf.\u00a0 We are the underdog.\u00a0 We can’t be the ones climbing on top of the car to get away from the savage canine.\u00a0 We have to go bite people!\u00a0 Players did not sign up to come duke it out with borderline division II football programs.\u00a0 I was extremely disappointed when we joined the Big East in 1991.\u00a0 I thought back then we should be in the SEC so we can face top shelf opponents more often.\u00a0 Look at what the SEC has blossomed into.\u00a0 For reasons I am not privy to,\u00a0 we did the Big East thing and then pivoted to the ACC.\u00a0 \u00a0If joining the ACC meant we had to ink up these corny deals to play opponents more motivated than us,\u00a0 I would have gathered the bottles and rocks up myself to throw in protest.<\/p>\n
The Atlantic Coast Conference is not a juggernaut.\u00a0 Furthermore,\u00a0 it does not provide many, if it all,\u00a0 matchups that would excite the South Florida locals.\u00a0 Few of the born and raised or transplants have a connection to Duke, Virginia, V-Tech, North Carolina, Georgia Tech or even Pittsburgh.\u00a0 People from those areas don’t move down here.\u00a0 They think South Floridians are nuts.\u00a0 Unless Clemson or Florida St. show up at Hard Rock Stadium,\u00a0 you have no shot at getting to 75% capacity in the stands.\u00a0 That means on most Saturdays,\u00a0 there is no energy for the players to feed off of in their stadium.\u00a0 Literally,\u00a0 everything they get is off the muscle.<\/p>\n
I remember Notre Dame coming to town in 2017.\u00a0 I can’t blame any fan who was in attendance that night for thinking the U was back.\u00a0 The emotion,\u00a0 the atmosphere and the energy was enough to take anyone back.\u00a0 It was like that 20 year retired NBA vet hitting a jumper and wanting to call up the Laker’s GM.\u00a0 I swear the crowd pushed the team to the 41-8 blowout that night.\u00a0 That was the last time the University of Miami has had a marquee non-conference opponent grace the Hard Rock turf.<\/p>\n
How bad has the scheduling been?\u00a0 There have only been three ranked opponents to play the University of Miami in Hard Rock Stadium in the last four plus seasons.\u00a0 Zero of those three teams were outside of the ACC.\u00a0 \u00a0This is the worst such run on ranked opponents since 1980.\u00a0 Here are the non-conference home opponents since the beginning of the 2018 season:<\/p>\n
Savannah St.
\nFIU
\nBethune Cookman
\nCentral Michigan
\nUAB
\nApp. St.
\nMichigan St.
\nCentral Connecticut
\nBethune Cookman
\nSouthern Mississippi
\nMiddle Tenneesee St.<\/p>\n
Somebody pass me a puke emoji.\u00a0 These teams will not get fans to the games.\u00a0 It won’t happen in this town where the sun is always shining,\u00a0 the liquor is always flowing and the ocean is always blue.<\/p>\n
Memo to the University athletic department:\u00a0 You’ve hired the right coach and you’ve started spending the right amount of money.\u00a0 It’s time to add the last piece.\u00a0 Start scheduling the right opponents.\u00a0 The ACC Conference is not that.\u00a0 It’s not tough enough to say you must go soft on non-conference opponents.\u00a0 We,\u00a0 the University of Miami,\u00a0 currently are not that.\u00a0 We have to go get people.\u00a0 We must revert back to our pre on the map days by bringing the best to town and try to a) make a run at knocking them off and b) see where we are at.<\/p>\n
In closing,\u00a0 schedules these days are made well in advance.\u00a0 Here’s a peek at what the non-conference slate looks like going forward<\/p>\n
’23<\/strong><\/p>\n Miami of Ohio ’24<\/strong><\/p>\n FAMU ’25<\/strong><\/p>\n USF ’26<\/strong><\/p>\n FAMU It’s a little better than what we are getting this year but still not where we need to be.\u00a0 If the opportunity presents itself,\u00a0 I suggest we get FAMU out of there.\u00a0 We definitely don’t need to see them twice in a three year period.\u00a0 One of those MAC opponents gotta go.\u00a0 At most,\u00a0 we should be playing only one sub Power 5 opponent non conference each year.\u00a0 Yes,\u00a0 load up and take on the challenges.\u00a0 Be willing to lose and unafraid to knuckle up to best college football has to offer.\u00a0 That will get us the attention we want and deserve instead of the type we are wallowing in this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lost in all of the drowning of sorrows late Saturday night after the University of Miami suffered one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":4455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1207,1208,877,61],"class_list":["post-4454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-mario-cristobal","tag-middle-tennessee-st","tag-notre-dame","tag-university-of-miami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTexas A&M<\/p>\n
\nBall St.<\/p>\n
\nNotre Dame<\/p>\n
\nBYU
\nCentral Michigan<\/p>\n