Hurricanes a force again with hardworking coach
9-0 Hurricanes back in limelight
With Mark Richt on the sideline, Miami is 9-0 and back in the title conversation,
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Over all those years at Georgia, especially the tough ones where he became the subject of intense criticism and ultimately a victim of his own success, the most admirable and often frustrating thing about Mark Richt was his serenity.
Here he was, surviving a decade and a half in a job and a league that is designed to grind people up, and it was hard to figure out what was still driving him. He didn’t need the money, having already made more than he could ever spend. He wanted to win a national championship, but he wasn’t obsessed with it. And he certainly had no interest in proving his critics wrong, having long since reached an inner peace about who he was, what he had accomplished and what kind of program he ran.
Even on the day Georgia fired him after 15 seasons, two Southeastern Conference titles and having won 74% of his games, he showed up at the news conference, smiling and commanding the moment while athletics director Greg McGarity awkwardly sipped a bottle of water.
At that moment, there was never a guarantee Richt would coach the next year or ever again. Even before he was fired, many who knew him speculated he’d be perfectly content walking away from football and spending the rest of his life doing some type of Christian missionary work.
But on Nov. 11, as Richt cele- brated a 41-8 victory against Notre Dame with 65,000 fans, he practically glowed.
The placid, unruffled Richt has been upgraded in the second act of his career, trading the stuffy Georgia Way for flashy turnover chains and a year-round tan. With the Hurricanes now at 9-0 and No. 2 in the Amway Coaches Poll, nobody is having a better time than Richt.
“When I decided to continue to coach, I really did want to enjoy it. I really did want to have fun. And what better place than Miami can you have some fun? Gosh, it’s just been a blast.”
Sure, it’s easy to have fun when you’re on a 14-game winning streak dating to last season, chasing a College Football Playoff spot deep into November and bringing back echoes of the 1980s era dominance back to Miami, which hasn’t really felt like a relevant power for the last 15 years.
But there’s a lesson here, too.
As content and peaceful as Richt seemed in his final years at Georgia, even as the criticism over his record in big games or lack of a national title mounted, it had all become too stale, too routine, too comfortable.
Coaching tenures aren’t built to last these days as long as Richt’s run in the SEC, and what you’re seeing now at Miami is the direct result of a very good coach getting exactly the shot of adrenaline his career needed at precisely the time the Miami administration was ready to stop fooling around and invest in its football program.
But none of this happens without a lesson learned in his final years at Georgia. Under some administrative pressure to shake things up, Richt tried to Sabanize his coaching staff. The gambit ultimately didn’t work, as Richt went 10-3 and 9-3 in those two seasons but lost the games he needed most. Moreover, there was constant drama inside the football building, as people separated into camps over how things should be done and never developed any chemistry as a staff.
It was a lesson learned for Richt, who was far more cleareyed and uncompromising when putting together his staff at Miami, which has turned out to be dynamite. When you see the difference in Miami from two years ago to now and Richt from two years ago to now, there’s no doubt that’s the foundation for why it looks so rejuvenated and so different.
“Because of the way that Mark Richt runs everything in this program and the way that he picked the staff on both sides of the ball, there’s great alignment,” defensive coordinator Manny Diaz said. “There’s great chemistry. ... You’ve got the same thing on offense. ... The players sense it. They know that there’s a structure, and I think of all the great things Mark has brought here, I think to me that’s the greatest.”
When Richt decided to come back to his alma mater, he never envisioned how quickly the sense that Miami is “back” would return to its fans and alumni.
But here the Hurricanes are, all but certain to be playing Clemson on Dec. 2 for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
“All I’ve done is put my head down and worked,” Richt said. “Just everything that’s got to get done, from whether it’s academics, strength and conditioning, nutrition, facilities, hiring people, putting your philosophy in, offense, defense, special teams, all those things. There’s so many things you’ve got to do. Recruiting, you just go. You just put your head down and go.
“You don’t make predictions. You predict that if you work hard enough good things will happen.”
And now they’re happening again for Richt, in a bigger, bolder, looser way than they did before. The elusive championship might not come his way this year, but there’s no doubt he’ll be the same person whether or not it does because that’s just how Richt rolls.
But something new and decidedly unserene has been sparked in him as Miami piles up win after win, dance after dance, turnover chain ceremony after turnover chain ceremony. And as Richt has figured out, doing it this way is a whole lot more fun.