Paul Dee era coming to a close…

Miami athletic director Paul Dee announced his retirement this week. He will be stepping down from his perch in June 2008 and plans to teach law at The U.

Rumors of Dee’s pending retirement have been swirling for months now. I first caught wind back in December through a family friend who worked in Miami’s athletic department years ago and is currently an AD for another Division-I program. He mentioned that Dee’s health has been on the decline and that the retirement would be announced this spring after the Larry Coker to Randy Shannon transition was in the books and after some fundraising issues were up and running.

Dee has been Miami’s athletic director since 1993. Over the past fourteen years, he’s seen a lot of ups and downs and in the past few seasons, Dee has been under fire and a target for message board trash talking. We’re living in a “what have you done for me lately” type world and it’s much easier to focus on some of Dee’s more recent mistakes than to remember moves he made years ago which set the Canes up to become The U since the turn of the century.

Renewing Coker’s contract entering the 2005 football season was a definite blunder fans haven’t let go of. Fresh off a 9-3 season where the Canes underachieved their way through year one in the ACC, the fourth year head coach was rewarded with a new deal. Miami progressively got worse under Coker, recruiting took a step back and Miami’s offensive output was, well… offensive.

Toss in the fact that no other Division I programs were courting Coker and the fact that the NFL wasn’t beating down his door and Dee’s decision to renew Coker’s contract was a definite mistake.

That said, if not for some of Dee’s decisions in the mid nineties, 9-3 seasons might’ve been the norm for this program, if not worse. Miami was slapped with probation in late 1994 and felt the effects until the 1999 football season. Dee was behind the scenes and instrumental in helping right a lot of wrongs which took place on former athletic director Dave Maggard’s watch. Dee’s legal expertise helped this university overcome some incredible feats. Many fail to realize he’s been on staff at The U since 1981, where he served as a vice president and provided legal counsel.

Anyone ready to chastise Dee for Coker’s contract renewal must also praise him for what good he’s done. Most notably, the hirings of Jim Morris and Butch Davis. Morris kept the Canes’ great baseball tradition alive after the legendary Ron Fraser retired and Davis was the architect for Miami’s resurgence and negotiating the rocky probation terrain. Morris brought home the baseball title in 1999 and 2001 while Davis spent six years cleaning up the football program. His efforts directly impacted Miami’s four straight BCS berths, two title games, one title, a 34-game win streak and a few dozen first round NFL Draft picks.

With Dee making this life changing move, the question remains, what’s next for the University of Miami?

We’ll see. Rumors are swirling this week. Will president Donna Shalala finally convince friend and former coworker Barry Alvarez to leave his AD perch at Wisconsin and head south?

Do the Canes pursue former assistant athletic directors? Pete Garcia left for FIU last year and seems comfortable there, but could a return be in the cards? What about Patrick Nero, the former assistant who is currently the AD at Maine? Rumors have also swirled about former quarterback Bernie Kosar as the next AD. Kosar threw his name in the hat regarding the open head coaching position last December. He loves the Canes and is a financial whiz. Fundraising efforts would improve and there’s no mystery that football would be a priority to this “Ring of Honor” former quarterback.

Does Miami “keep it in the family” here – as they did with in house hirings of Coker and Shannon – or does The U open up a nationwide search and find the best available?

Personally, I hope we get someone youthful, energetic and an individual who not only understands the Miami culture, but also the fact that this football program is the life’s blood of this university. We need an athletic director who ‘get it’.

I want to see a guy like Tom Jurich, the AD at Louisville. Jurich has spent the past nine seasons making a contender out of this former pretender. Regarding coaches, he always gets his guy. He brought the great Rick Pitino to UL. Something Miami had a shot to do and failed years back. Regarding football he went from John L. Smith to Bobby Petrino to Steve Kragthorpe.

Kragthorpe, the recent Tulsa coach, is the guy former Miami AD Sam Jankovich dubbed the next Jimmy Johnson. He was a guy I hoped Miami would interview after Coker’s firing, but never did. Weeks later when Petrino accepted the head coaching gig with the Atlanta Falcons, Jurich had Kragthorpe locked down within a week. Jurich also had his hand in getting Louisville in the Big East, a conference they can be a force in for years to come. BCS dollars are now a reality for a program which that was a pipe dream for years ago.

Jurich’s resume and list of accomplishments of is impressive. I could go on, but that’s not the point. I bring this up to drive it home that The U needs a guy like a Tom Jurich. There has to be another ‘diamond in the rough’ type guy like that and I pray this administration has the wherewithal to find him (or her). Jurich was dubbed an up and comer twenty years ago at Northern Arizona University, did some good things at Colorado State before landing at Louisville.

We’ll see how this all plays out. Either way, this is a good time for The U. The hiring of Shannon and the Dee era coming to a close after the ship has been righted. Should coach Shannon turn out to be the success we expect, that’ll be another feather in Dee’s cap down the road. For now, he’ll ride out his final year and my only hope is that we bring in a mover and shaker after Mr. Dee has moved on.

.:Canes305:.

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