Applewhite emerging as target for Miami OC job By Christy Cabrera Chirinos

When he was introduced as Miami’s new head coach on Wednesday, Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz promised he would move quickly to try to find the right person to help lead Miami’s offense moving forward.

And while neither Diaz nor Miami have made any official announcement as to who the Hurricanes’ new offensive coordinator will be, by Thursday evening, it had become clear former Houston coach Major Applewhite was one of Miami’s top targets for the job — if he hadn’t been hired already.

The website CanesInsight.com reported Thursday citing anonymous sources that Applewhite — who was fired by Houston on Sunday — had been hired as Miami’s new offensive coordinator.

FootballScoop.com, however, reported that was not the case and that while Applewhite was a candidate for the job, no offer had been extended to him.

A Miami spokesman did not comment on either of the reports, but two Hurricanes — receiver Mike Harley and former receiver Ahmmon Richards — had a little social media fun with the rumors, with Harley tweeting an emoji of an apple and Richards jumping on Harley’s tweet and writing “Apples are good for your teeth, I heard!”

If the Hurricanes were to have Applewhite join their staff, Miami would get a coach whose offense was certainly able to put up points, something the Hurricanes struggled to do during their 7-6 run last season.

In 2018, Houston averaged 43.9 points per game, which ranked fifth in the nation among Football Bowl Subdivison programs. The Cougars averaged 512.5 yards per game, which ranked seventh in the nation. And Houston passed for an average of 295.5 yards per game, which ranked 16th in the nation.

The Hurricanes, by contrast, averaged 28.8 points per game — a number that ranked 66th in the nation and was largely helped by a 77-0 win over FCS opponent Savannah State. Miami managed an average of 358.8 yards per game, which ranked 105th in the nation and passing-wise, the Hurricanes averaged 167.3 yards per game, which ranked 113th in the nation.

None of that, Diaz indicated, was acceptable and earlier this week, he fired all of Miami’s offensive coaches, on Wednesday saying that move was “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

But he made it clear Miami’s offense must be productive, the way the Hurricanes defense had been when he served as UM’s defensive coordinator for three years under former coach Mark Richt.

“The word I want to be is cutting edge,” Diaz said this week when asked to describe the kind of offense he’d like to see his Hurricanes run. “The word I want to be is modern. The idea I want to be is an offense that creates problems for the defense, that puts [the] defense in conflict, that presents issues before the snap, during the snap [and] that forces mistakes.”

Whether Applewhite can give the Hurricanes that is still unclear, but there is something his potential hire could give Diaz, specifically — experience.

While Diaz — a firsttime head coach — said it’s not essential that any of his coaches have previous experience as a head coach at the college level, Applewhite has two years experience heading a program. A former quarterback at Texas, he’s also worked at Syracuse, Rice and Alabama.

Applewhite also served as an assistant at Texas from 2008-2013 and between 2011 and 2013, Diaz served as the Longhorns’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.

Tickets up for grabs

Qualifying for the college football championship game never has been harder for teams other than Alabama and Clemson.

Getting into the stadium to watch the Crimson Tide and Tigers play for the title for the third time in four years has perhaps never been cheaper.

With the College Football Playoff final located thousands of miles away from the two campuses, possible fatigue for fan bases of teams that have become annual participants in the playoff and a game site in an expensive market lacking college football die-hards, prices for tickets for Monday night’s championship in Santa Clara have been plummeting the past few days.

“It’s sort of a perfect storm of factors at play this year,” said Jesse Lawrence, the founder of TicketIQ, a secondary ticket market. “It’s a big ask for fans to come and that’s why we’re seeing the prices the way they are.”

Tickets for the championship game are now available for just $135 on the secondary market , according to TicketIQ, less than half of what the price was before the semifinals and well below the face value price of $475.

StubHub had even cheaper tickets available Wednesday night, with seats priced at $115 — less than double the cost of a parking pass on the ticket resale site.

The CFP picked Santa Clara as its site for this year in part out of hope of broadening college football’s fan base. The Bay Area is much more of a pro sports region and it appears that not enough locals want to brave rushhour traffic to attend the game Monday night. Games at California and Stanford struggle to draw big crowds and the annual Pac-12 championship game needs tarps to cover unused sections at Levi’s Stadium.

Tickets for the championship game are considerably cheaper than those for the SEC championship game last month in Atlanta between Alabama and Georgia and both CFP semifinal games.

With both schools still having tickets available and the secondary market filled with relatively cheap seats, there’s a distinct possibility of empty seats for college football’s biggest game.

“It’s actually not surprising,” Lawrence said. “I think it’s predictable or expected based on two factors.”

The main factor is the location of the game. The two schools are an average of 2,428 miles away from the game site, the longest distance since TicketIQ first began tracking the distance in 2011.

Flights from South Carolina and Alabama were running around $1,000 round trip and hotels in the Bay Area are notoriously expensive, making the trip costly even if the tickets aren’t.

With the two schools having been to this game so often so recently, demand for tickets is very soft.