It’s always depressing when Miami baseball ends its season somewhere other than Omaha. It’s even more depressing when that place is Gainesville … again.
Make no mistake about it, the Gators are a really good team. Maybe even a great team. On the other hand, Miami just wasn’t good enough.
If you take a step out of our orange and green pants, on paper, UM wasn’t supposed to beat UF. The reasons why that was the truth is really the more pressing thing.
A few nanoseconds after 11-4 was in the books the “Fire 3” chants began appearing on various UM message boards, which I personally find amusing. Jim Morris has won two titles, has twice been named Coach of the Year and has brought the Canes to eighteen straight post-seasons, playing his part in the streak of 39 straight – yet people want him gone.
Fans are quick to mention that Miami hasn’t been to the College World Series for three straight years; the first time the Canes have experienced a three-year Omaha drought since the mid-seventies.
There are only eight teams that make it to Omaha every season and at times it seems like this fan base has been spoiled by what The Wizard of College Baseball started and what Coach Morris continued.
Regarding these current struggles, when did they start? You can trace it back to when Miami joined the Atlantic Coast Conference.
I remember covering Hurricanes baseball before UM joined the ACC, listening to Coach Morris and his staff in the clubhouse, talking about other teams across the nation and constantly coming back to the ACC being as good as it gets.
When Miami was an Independent, there’d be the annual series with Florida State, Florida and maybe another ACC squad (usually Georgia Tech), but the rest of the schedule was loaded with teams like Lipscomb, New York Tech, Rutgers, Maine, Northeastern and the season would wrap with someone like Long Beach State or some other west coast power. In other words there were a lot of gimmies mixed in with the handful of tough series played each year.
These days when Miami hits conference season, just about every team on the schedule has a shot at making it to the NCAA Tournament.
I realize some don’t want to buy the ‘joining a tougher conference’ argument, so let’s move to the next point; scholarships. As I mentioned weeks back, you only get 11.7 scholarships to cover a roster of 35 to 40 players. That means most guys get about a quarter of a scholarship.
At UM, despite reports to the contrary, not one player has gotten a full baseball scholarship. That includes Pat Burrell, Yonder Alonzo or even Kiki Bengochea.
For those who don’t feel this is a big deal, it’s important because it means families have to pay big money for their sons to play baseball at Miami. It costs $18,380 to attend Florida annually, $19,354 to go to Florida State and under $10,000 to go to South Florida. Attending the University of Miami is over $50,000 per year.
If you’re Coach Morris or J.D. Arteaga and you’re going down your list of prospects, you now have to ask yourselves if a kid’s family can afford to send him here. Can we get them a loan? Is he bright enough to earn an academic scholarship? The lack of a great walk-on program hurts UM in football, but it absolutely kills the Canes in baseball.
The cost of admission has gone up about $20,000 the past decade or so and that increase is more than the cost to attend any public in-state institution.
If the “cost of tuition” argument doesn’t hold any water, then let’s discuss the fact that the best high school players have the option of going pro and bypassing college. Talented baseball players from Coral Reef, Pace or Westminster Christian have that option.
What do you do if you have a list of the top fifty players in South Florida and you know half of them will be drafted in the first half dozen rounds of the baseball draft? Do you ignore them thinking they’ll sign and never play college ball? Do you recruit them, get them to sign and then sweat profusely as they negotiate with the team that drafted them over the summer, hoping they step foot into a college classroom, guaranteeing at least a three-year college career? Coach Morris is plagued by this predicament every year.
Some years only a few kids show up for the first day of meetings, only to sign a contract and leave UM before the start of classes. Other years, college baseball remains the lone sport that gets killed by the draft on both ends. Killed before kids get on campus and killed when they decide to leave early.
A few decades ago, when money for a rookie contract was much less than it is today, the decision to leave wasn’t as hard. Coach Morris is dealing with something that Ron Fraser didn’t have to worry about as much.
A lot of you don’t want to hear excuses – or facts, for that matter – and I understand that. You just want another College World Series championship. Regardless of all the things I laid out, there’s obviously room for improvement in several areas. This team didn’t hit well this year and while there were new bats to contend with, these issues went beyond the bats.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind Coach Morris bringing in a veteran hitting coach. He has a pretty young staff around him with J.D., Roger Tomas and Joe Mercandante. Of course there’s a limit to what can be done with the money that’s available, but it might not be a bad idea for this staff upgrade.
As much as they might not have gotten along off the field, Morris’ best staff was the Lazer Collazo, Turtle Thomas and Gino DiMare era. I trust 3, though. I’ve seen him adapt in the past. He’ll continue to do it and this team will get back to Omaha.
This was just a weird year from the start. The new bats, the quirky injuries, Coach Morris sidelined with gall bladder surgery, not to mention the NCAA selection committee ignoring common sense and sending the 17th best team to a regional against the nation’s number two seed.
We’re all depressed right now, but thankfully Labor Day isn’t too far off … and speaking of football. I had a great a opportunity to tag along with Mr. allCanes, Harry Rothwell for another recent allCanes road show. We trekked to Orlando days back for the Hurricane Club Spring Tour Stop at the Vineyard Wine Company in Lake Mary. It was a sold out crowd for head football coach Al Golden and another great gathering of Canes fans.
It really seems Coach Golden is hitting his stride when it comes to these types of gatherings and from afar I watched as he went table to table, glad-handing and interacting with fans on a personal level.
Golden was captivating as he answered the audience’ questions – even the most bizarre ones. A waitress even came up to me asking if Miami’s coach was married. I asked why and according to this lady, she felt Coach Golden was “reeeeaally hootttttttt”. In some ways, that sums it up right now. Coach Golden is a hot commodity and let’s home that carries over come fall.
Lastly, we’d like to thank the Jones family – owners of the Vineyard Wine Company – for inviting us to their great restaurant and wine bar for this event. If you’re every up in the Orland area, make sure to check them out. Trust us when we say that Tom and his family are great Canes fans.
Big thanks to Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs, Blake James, Assistant Athletic Director for Development, Amy Ferguson and Jesse Marks for all their efforts in putting together another amazing event.
Good hypotheses, but what's really the root cause? Interesting that if you run a regression model on shalala's tenure at Miami, losses would be highly correlated to her tenure. Shalala's focus on academics has helped Miami climb the academic rankings, so now we're top 100 in both academics and sports. Big deal. Why not focus on where you're good, where you bring attention to the program, vs trying to be "the harvard ofthe south"? It all comes down to strategy, resources, and focus. Miami opened doors for me not because it was an "ok" school, but because everyone knows the canes, loved or hated, but never ignored. That's a fact.
I agree everyone focuses on the coaches, and maybe it's time to look higher. Can you imagine what would happen to a government's president if a country known for being a powerhouse starts losing battle after battle? Too bad we can't vote for a new UM president every few years. Wrong strategy leads to mediocre results. Pretty obvious to me.
for those of you calling for 3's head he aint going no where. he is one of the greatest coaches of all time. it was a boyhood dream of mine to play for him that i never got to realize. Now after that heart breaker loss to florida in the first game of the regional you could tell the boys souls just weren't there. they had to battle a game but less skilled dolphin squad to actually win. Then a bogus homerun call that was clearly foul and the wind was gone. Ya they put up four runs but it was after florida was in cruise control.
Baseball gets the shaft worse than any other sport in the nation. They have to deal with the draft and all the money a good kid can make out of high school. baseball has to deal with not nearly even close to enough scholarships for players. that number needs to raise to atleast 20 to 25 and keep rising.
I personally would like to see the ability to jump from high school to the pros gone away with in all sports. These kids jump to the pros as the next big thing and then fizzle out with nothing to fall back on, and the ones who go to college are the ones making to the bigs at a faster rate and their staying power is greater.
Now my message to the canes baseball team. not one junior should leave early or sophomore who is 21 should leave early. stay in school and come back and get revenge on the gayturds and get back to the cws. If i was one of our guys who got drafted i would feel like a coward leaving early after the way the season went and the post season ended.
idahocane
Beast: Thank you for the article and continued coverage. You suggest that "A lot of fans do not want to hear excuses – or facts …" suggesting that we are nothing but fickle fans ready to toss Coach Morris overboard at the first chance. While I have been critical of the program, I have said that I do not believe that Coach Morris should be let go right now. He deserves a chance to turn things around. But quite honestly, the baseball program is in the same state as the football program circa 2004-2005. It is clearly in decline and if the CEO does not make significant changes, it will no longer be relevant on the national stage, to paraphrase our former AD.
You pin Miami's recent woes on several factors:
1. The ACC is hard.
2. Miami costs too much.
3. Young coaching staff.
4. Recruits opting to go pro.
Allow me to address them in turn.
1. Yes, the ACC is hard. But that does not explain Miami's performance against largely weak NON-conference opponents. Miami is 38-23 this year, and 19-10 in the ACC. That means that 13 of its 23 losses came against NON-CONFERENCE opponents. Even taking away the 3 against Florida during the regular season, that is still 10 losses against the likes of Rutgers, Appalachian State and Illinois State. Also, Miami has been prevented from advancing to the CWS by NON-CONFERENCE opponents like Florida and Louisville in recent years.
Yes, the ACC is a hard conference. That has not prevented UNC from making trips to the CWS 2 of the last 3 years, or FSU.
2. Miami costs too much. This is a canard I (and others) addressed in my comment on June 5. Miami costs no more than Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice or even UVA (for out of state students). While Miami no doubt loses out on the occasional player due to the cost, the fact is that Miami has ALWAYS been expensive, and I'm fairly certain that adjusted for inflation, it costs no more today than in the 1980's, 1990's or the early part of the 2000's win the Canes were regular participants in the CWS.
3. Young coaching staff. A CEO is judged by his hirings, among other things. I agree that his best staff was Lazer and Gino. The success or failure of his current staff is a reflection on Coach Morris.
4. Recruits opting to go pro. This is another red herring. Are we supposed to believe that recruits ONLY TO MIAMI go pro while no other school has this problem? I find that hard to believe. Again, I'm sure UM loses out on a couple kids, but this seems more like a recruiting issue. A good recruiter probably has a good feel for the student athlete he's recruiting and should be able to identify those kids who are more likely to go pro than come to Miami. Florida, Stanford, Rice and other schools seem to have figured this out.
With all due respect, the problems in the UM baseball program are systemic and only getting worse. We wanted to shut our eyes when the football program started inching downward in 2004-2005. It's time we open our eyes to the serious issues with one of the legendary college baseball programs of all time. Otherwise, we'll end up like the Notre Dame football program, living on the laurels of decades past.
Stanford, Vanderbilt, UVA….all great academic schools, and very costly….and all are better than us at the moment in baseball. Enough with that argument.