Over the weekend, I got around to listening to the episode of Andy Staples’s podcast where he interviewed the Athletic’s Miami beat writer Manny Navarro about the state of the Hurricanes’ program. I skip a lot of these kinds of episodes because I don’t really need a deep dive on, say, Michigan State. As UM is in the state and a rival program, I went ahead and gave it a shot.
I learned a lot from it, and you might too if you give it a listen. For instance, I didn’t know that Miami just let their then-AD make the hire to replace Mark Richt with almost no administrative oversight, and that AD not taking the time to shake down boosters for money meant they more or less went with the cheap hire of Manny Diaz. Diaz had been Temple head coach for about a month or so, but it essentially was an internal hire.
I also didn’t realize that new AD Dan Radakovich was one of the top associate ADs at LSU for most of Nick Saban’s time there. He saw what can happen when a top coach gets whatever resources he wants. His first full-time AD job at Georgia Tech had, well, we’ll say mixed results. However, he did get to Clemson in 2012 a few years after Dabo Swinney got the job and things really took off. Clemson hasn’t been a power in everything, but it’s been one in the sport that matters most.
Radakovich is a Miami alum, but he wouldn’t have taken that job if he wasn’t going to get every bit of the support he did from Clemson. Or, at least, a big bump at first with a plausible path to get there. At 64, Radakovich is probably more looking for a career capstone than a grueling long-term build.
In short, Miami is finally spending the money to try to be a consistent winner in the current age. It’s doing with with a pair of Saban-connected people too in Radakovich and Mario Cristobal. It’s also bringing in as many high profile football alums as it can to create buzz. It more or less is checking off everything anyone would suggest they do to become competitive again.
It sounds a lot like what Florida is doing, honestly. I am more bullish on UF in general since I think the program never fell as far behind from a resource standpoint as Miami did, and the much larger Gator fan base is a better foundation to build on. Florida may lack a booster/NIL bagman as flamboyant as John Ruiz, but Hugh Hathcock is out there too and will probably end up recruiting more high dollar people than UM could ever muster.
Reflecting on all this, I can’t help but think about the third member of the state’s Big Three: Florida State.
FSU is somewhere between UF and Miami in terms of raw financial potential. It has a larger alumni base than the Hurricanes do, but the Seminoles are not as numerous as Gator Nation is.
What FSU doesn’t have is the kind of maximalist commitment to football as Florida and Miami now do. The latter two are all in, pouring enormous funds into enormous staffs and the like. They’re following the Alabama blueprint off the field and not just on it, which is something that many former Saban assistants (e.g., Muschamp, McElwain, Derek Dooley, Jeremy Pruitt, and so on) largely did not do. As Georgia has shown, it takes both phases to get similar results.
FSU is instead trying to make things work with Mike Norvell leading the way. His background is from the much less impressive Todd Graham coaching tree, and his prior experience was taking the Memphis program that Justin Fuente rebuilt and continuing the preexisting momentum.
When the latest round of administrative shuffling emptied the FSU AD chair, the school hired the president of Seminole Boosters Mike Alford to become AD. While Alford did serve as AD at Central Michigan for a few years, most of his college athletics experience is in fundraising organizations. That’s good for them as far as it goes, as they do need to raise more money to keep up with the likes of Florida, Georgia, and Clemson in the region. And, as of 2022, Miami as well.
It’s not exactly an inspiring combination. Norvell at least has manage to eke out some gains thanks to heavy transfer portal use and the fact that it’d be hard for things to get lower than they were after Jimbo wrecked the place and Willie Taggart’s short-lived tenure was marked by dysfunction.
Vegas is projecting the Seminoles to get to a bowl with an over/under of 6.5 total wins on the year. If they do make it to the postseason, it’ll be their first bowl since they had to scramble to reschedule a previously hurricane-canceled game against UL-Monroe to get to 6-6 in 2017.
As bad as things got periodically during UF’s post-Meyer walk through the wilderness, the Gators never came close to going four straight years without a bowl game. Heck, Miami has only missed three bowl games this century, and two of them were when the school disallowed otherwise bowl-eligible teams from competing during the NCAA’s Nevin Shapiro investigation.
So, if we’re taking a look from right now, FSU is in the worst shape of the Big Three. It has the worst recent results, and it lacks the clear vision for how it’s going to compete on the highest level that the other two have.
The troubles in Tallahassee began manifesting in mediocre results in 2017. Unless Norvell, Alford, or their successors really level up soon, a true lost decade is on the table for the School Out West.