Canes Need To Let Action Speak, Not Words

It was a short little throwaway piece in the Sun-Sentinel the Tuesday, leading up to  Saturday’s kickoff at Boston College.

Beat writer Michael Casagrande got a few minutes with wideout Rashawn Scott and the focus was Miami losing it’s mojo, being pegged as the fifth-best team, not in the ACC, but in the Coastal Division.

Scott’s reaction, “I feel like it’s going to be shocking,” Scott said. “They think, because we lost everyone, that we’re not going to be a good team. I feel like we’re going to come out and shock everybody. It’s going to look like we’re an experienced team.”

Teammate and fellow receiver Allen Hurns also chimed in.

“I grade our offense real high right now,” Hurns said. “There’s a lot of people doing a lot of good things. With [offensive coordinator Jedd] Fisch, he lets a lot of people touch the ball and things like that so we can spread it around and our quarterbacks can get us the ball. So I’m really excited about our offense this season.”

From there, standard talk about silencing the ‘haters’, using the disrespect as motivation and proving everyone wrong.

Yawn.

Seriously. Double yawn.

On one hand, you realize these are kids with a microphone in their face and when asked the question, something has to give. It’s 2012. Social media dominates. Hell, Southern Cal even started promoting their players’ Twitter handles on depth charts and bio pages.

Still, even with technology taking over and today’s college athletes living in the spotlight in a way that NFLers didn’t sniff a few decades back, you wish that someone with a secret could do a better job keeping it.

There’s nothing wrong with Scott or Hurns believing this team could do something special. As fans, it’s refreshing to know that these starters have higher aspirations than the ones the media has predicted. That said, why “go there”, though?

What happened to walking softly and carrying a big stick? Brush off the media’s rankings. Why do football players care what guys behind a desk or with a notepad think? Opinions don’t matter; facts do.

By season’s end, the Canes will have had twelve to fourteen chances to ‘silence the haters’ – with their actions, not opinions.

If players really want to ‘shock’ everyone, blow off questions of this nature. Smile wryly, like they know something no one else does and come December feel free to play the I-told-you-so game.

Every years there’s a lot of big talk coming out of Coral Gables, and other major programs, as well. Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words.

Miami flew in under the radar in 2009 and opened the season with unexpected wins over Florida State and Georgia Tech and from there Miami was quickly on the map. A loss to Virginia Tech ensued, forcing many off the bandwagon, but soon thereafter UM took out eighth-ranked Oklahoma and was a hot topic again.

Winning is the only cure-all and way to earn respect. Miami is 13-12 the past two seasons so the low ACC prediction isn’t ‘disrespect’, nor are outsiders ‘hating’. They simply won’t believe it until they see it.

Worry about winning games, Hurricanes – not meaningless, fabricated media debates.

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