For those who argue that Coker isn’t to blame…

… hopefully you folks caught a recent episode of ESPN’s College Football Live where Todd McShay talked about this year’s NFL combine and the lack of presence regarding the Miami Hurricanes. Cornerback Bruce Johnson is the only Cane invited to Indy and he’s expected to at best, be a late Sunday pick. At worst, he’s not expected to be drafted at all.

When pressed for an answer regarding what happened to the Miami program and dropoff in overall talent, McShay said the following:

“It’s been building the last few years. You look at Larry Coker when he took over as head coach and this program as a whole got lazy recruiting. They thought that they’d be able to just pluck every player they wanted from the South Florida area and it just hasn’t been the case.

You’ve seen the Florida Gators get some of their players. Teams from outside the state, Rutgers for instance, coming down to South Florida and taking out very good players.

Right now you’re seeing Randy Shannon do a really good job of putting a fence around that area, getting some of the top guys and really, it comes down to speed and athleticism and they’re starting to get those young players back in the program.

I expect two to three years from now we’ll be looking at that year’s combine and saying ‘you know what, they’re back to being Miami with four, five or six guys in the first day that are prospects right now.”

Again people, it’s not just Coker bashers here and the former Hurricanes coach was hardly a scapegoat for what went wrong. Miami’s bread and butter players simply didn’g get on board between 2003-2006, when the program head simply got lazy recruiting Miami-caliber players and let too many good ones get away.

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