Wins show harshest critics not just wrong, but foolish
Contrary to what you heard on TV, the Miami Dolphins are not ‘morally reprehensible,’ ‘disgraceful,’ or ‘irresponsible’ as their rebuild shows progress.
Here is what should happen this week in a news conference on the University of Miami campus. It won’t. I am dreaming. But it should.
Director of athletics Blake James and head football coach Manny Diaz are standing side by side, a united front. Neither man is smiling. James clears his throat to speak first.
“After much consideration the past few days,” James would begin, “Manny and I are in agreement the football season just past did not meet the high expectations of the University of Miami, and therefore — although eligible to play in a postseason bowl — the Hurricanes will decline any and all invitations to do so.”
Diaz adds: “A bowl game should be a reward, and this season has not been one to earn such a thing. Neither myself, my staff, nor our players have proved worthy of the prize that is a bowl trip.”
Just less than a year ago, on Decem
The upstart Miami Dolphins have won three of five, including two against teams in the playoff conversation.
So this seems like the perfect time to appreciate just how poorly some of the national commentary from earlier in the season ago has aged.
Before the opener, Louis ●
Riddick, the former Redskins and Eagles director of pro personnel, said the Dolphins had gone too far in stripping down their roster and that “Brian Flores has been put in an impossible situation.”
Former NFL Players
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Association President Dominique Foxworth, the week after the Dolphins’ 43-0 loss to the Patriots, said the Dolphins’ teardown plan was “unethical and morally reprehensible as far as I’m concerned.”
Just five weeks ago,
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Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young said the following on ESPN: “What the Miami Dolphins have done this year is put people at risk physically and it’s not right. You can’t be so irresponsible to peoples’ health. It’s not right.”
ber 30, 2018, a shellshocked James announced that coach Mark Richt unexpectedly had resigned.
Exactly 11 months later, this past Saturday, James was digesting and trying to fathom a season that had ended 6-6 with consecutive losses — first the comeuppance of ignominy against cross-county rival FIU, then Saturday’s closing defeat at Duke.
UM of course will soon perfunctorily accept an invitation to some Grade D bowl game, almost as if it doesn’t have a choice and must. It might be the Independence,
the Music City, the Sun or some other lame pity prize the Canes should be embarrassed to attend.
Plainly, there is too much incentive (read: money) involved to turn down a bowl invite. The Atlantic Coast Conference, for example, gets $4 million for every one of its teams that goes bowling.
But, again, I am not talking about what will happen, but what should in an ideal world.
This UM football program should be licking its wounds and closing the sad ledger on this season now, not putting on display one last time one of the most disappointing teams in all of college football.
You know Canes players don’t care to play in some meaningless bowl whose only upside would be the hollowest of victories.
“There’s a lot of hurt,” Diaz admitted, of his team’s morale, post-FIU and Duke.
I would not risk injury in a throwaway bowl game if I were a Canes player. And the university should not ask that of its players. The money UM would get from playing in a minor bowl should not be a deciding factor. The exposure? That would be the negative kind, reminding all how badly UM had stumbled to be relegated to such a bowl.
You know with even more certainty that UM fans don’t give a [bleep] about a pointless, undeserved bowl trip and surely won’t spent hundreds of dollars or their time to travel and cheer on the team that has betrayed their hopes all season long.
Canes fans are too angry to cheer at the moment. Too let down.
Only two of Miami’s 39 previous bowl appearances have followed a 6-6 season, and this one was worse than either of those.
Miami lost five games this year as favorites, three as double-digit favorites and three as favorites with an extra week to prepare.
(That’s not to mention the win that felt like a loss, that 17-12 escape against Central Michigan).
An Orange Bowl bid still was implausibly in play before Miami humiliated itself against FIU.
Then came the closing defeat against a reeling Duke team that had lost its previous five games by a combined 194-71.
(And Jarren Williams’ struggles in those last two losses makes one wonder anew about the state of UM’s quarterbacking entering 2020).
Such a turn this weekend for Miami’s two big football teams! The Dolphins earn an exhilarating 37-31 home win over Philadelphia one day after UM’s regular season fizzles meekly to a close.
Some college football programs, lots of them, feel like celebrating a six-win season.
Has five-time national champion Miami stooped to become one of those?
Then the Hurricanes should make a statement and say no to a bowl game.
The NCAA might call them eligible, but UM’s standard for itself should be higher.
This Hurricanes season fell far short of honoring the past and living up to the heritage this program has built and earned.
But there is one last chance to still do that.
Decline a bowl game. Remind the rest of America that the Miami Hurricanes don’t celebrate 6-6.