For three consecutive years, the postseason rumor mill has churned regarding potential destinations for Miami Hurricanes head coach Al Golden.
In 2011, UCLA had Golden on its radar a second time before hiring Jim L. Mora. By 2012, Tennessee was sizing up the second-year Miami coach for a lighter shade of orange.
With legendary coach Mack Brown stepping down at Texas, it’s safe to assume Golden-to-Austin rumors will begin percolating in late 2013 when some pie-in-the-sky big names inevitably begin turning the Longhorns down. Dennis Dodd of CBS Sportshas already suggested that Golden would “make sense” at Texas.
Before the sports media gets ahead of itself with another episode of As the Coaching World Turns, let’s clear the air—Golden isn’t leaving the Hurricanes until his rebuild is complete and ultimate success has been achieved.
The third-year Miami leader signed on for what he knew was a high-risk, high-reward opportunity and will buckle down until the job is done. Maybe even longer, should the Hurricanes go on another stellar run like they did a decade ago.
Golden arrived at Miami three Decembers back, replacing Randy Shannon, who lasted four years and went 28-22 over that span. The New Jersey native made his way to Coral Gables via Philadelphia, where he spent five seasons rebuilding a Temple program recently thrown out of the Big East Conference for being that awful.
Golden became a hot coaching commodity, making his way onto several short lists after the miraculous Temple turnaround. The Owls went 1-11 in his first season and 9-4 in his fourth season, resulting in the program’s third bowl game ever and first in three decades.
Weeks before that historic 2009 postseason appearance, Cincinnati was in search of someone to replace Notre Dame-bound Brian Kelly. Golden declined, remaining in Philadelphia, as neither the timing nor the opportunity was in line with his long-term career path.
Two years prior, Golden turned down UCLA a first time—”flattered” to be a candidate, but staying put, telling the Los Angeles Times, “[W]e are on the brink of something truly special here at Temple.” His second-year Owls squad was 5-19 with him in charge at the time.
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Of course he’s not going to Texas or anywhere else at that this guy lost to duke and it’s a damn shame the canes got to deal with this crap…thank you Donna where never gonna be great again!!!
… wow. Let’s work on that grammar if we’re going to hurl insults.
Great, Miami lost to Duke—the same Blue Devils who beat enough other teams to win the ACC Coastal Division and earned a berth in the Chick-fil-A Bowl against Texas A&M. Get over it, already.
Golden has been on many short lists since he was at Temple. UCLA, Tennessee and other big programs came at him before Miami did.
Over-the-top fans are the only ones who feel that careers and seasons are made on ONE game. Miami’s offense posted up 565 yards in Durham and three times settled for red zone field goals. Score touchdowns in those situations and the Canes are up 42-31 entering the fourth quarter instead of down by one.
The defense has let this program down this year, but the offense hasn’t capitalized when it needed to.
Golden took over a shit-dump of a program that was 28-23 the four years before his arrival, endured a three-year NCAA investigation, lost tons of local talent as a result and saw 36 players leave (or asked to leave) the program between 2010 and 2012 … but hey, let’s keep bitching about the Duke loss. How logical. Pin it all on one game.
A lot of programs would kill to have Al Golden at the helm, yet this fan base thinks they’re doing him a favor by allowing him to stick around. Sad.
For $8M he,s gone.
No one is paying the next Texas head coach $8,000,000. Please. For that money Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer and Vince Lombardi’s corpse would all be Austin-bound.
Golden knows he has a beast at “The U” if and when he turns it around. Honestly, Miami is one of few big-time jobs that fits Golden’s personality. His career trajectory will go one of two ways, if successful.
He’ll either spend a LONG time at “The U” and work to build a dynasty, OR he will bide his time at Miami until the right NFL head coaching gig comes along. The LONE X-factor in the coaching world would be a return to Penn State, if and when it made sense to retreat back to Happy Valley.
Golden could take a extra couple of million to take over a Texas (if the opportunity presented itself) and it’d be ground zero. Making new recruiting in-roads, heightened expectations and an entirely different cultural ballgame glad-handling and winning over the Southern crowd.
The Golden family is very happy in South Florida. That is known fact as they are friends of allCanes and many other local friends of friends who know Al and Kelly. They’ve spent the past three years settling a young family into South Florida. Moving to Austin would be culture shock.