PHILADELPHIA
It doesn’t really matter what University of Miami administrators say or don’t say right now about the job status of football coach Larry Coker.
Coker’s gone. That was true even before Saturday’s spectacle against Florida International. Coker already had lost the support of many former Hurricanes stars and probably had lost some of his current players – and he almost lost to Houston.
His fate now is obvious. We’ll see what direction the school takes next, since the current `Canes image is suddenly out of control again, and the quote of the year in college football came Saturday from the Comcast SportsNet Southeast cable TV booth.
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” Hurricanes football analyst and former Miami player Lamar Thomas said as the brawl raged. “You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don’t come into the OB (Orange Bowl) playing that stuff. You’re across the ocean over there. You’re across the city. … I was about to go down the elevator to get in that thing.”The one-game punishments handed out for 12 of the 13 suspended Miami players – one got an indefinite suspension – are inadequate. It doesn’t help that the one game is against Duke, which has lost 17 straight Division I-A games. The outside world sees it like this: Miami itself isn’t punished at all by these suspensions.
“This university will be firm and punish people who do bad things,” Miami president Donna Shalala said. “But we will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation. I will not hang them in a public square. I will not eliminate their participation at the university. I will not take away their scholarships.”
Actually, she will, next time. Shalala announced on Tuesday that any athlete who fights during a game will be dismissed from the team. She called it a “new standard,” referring to a “zero tolerance” policy.
“It’s time for the feeding frenzy to stop,” Shalala said. “These young men made a stupid, terrible, horrible mistake, and they are being punished.”
There was plenty of room between one-game suspensions and getting rid of people. An NFL defensive lineman, Albert Haynesworth of the Tennessee Titans, was recently suspended for five games for stomping on another player’s head. Taking part in a near-riot must be worth a couple of games.
Coker said after the game that he had been concerned going in about the potential for trouble, given that many of the players on Florida International were local ones who hadn’t been recruited by nearby Miami. Since his concern made sense, why did Miami schedule the game in the first place?
Long before Saturday’s brawl, Coker had been trying to distance himself and the program from its chest-beating past. But if you want to break with tradition, you better win. Coker won a national title in 2001, and almost won another one in 2002, but those were with players inherited from the Butch Davis era.
One rumor had Butch Davis returning next year. But now Shalala and other decision-makers are in a real tight spot. A lot of fans wanted a return to the U vs. the World swagger the `Canes used to bring. That’s out, obviously. They need to find a coach who keeps his players out of brawls and out of jail, but doesn’t completely alienate former greats. He also needs to win.