5 Random (Yet Well Thought Out) Observations About Randy Shannon's Firing

1.  Randy Shannon was the right coach at the right time.
All you people who are quick to play the affirmative action card (read:  unqualified minority) can eat shit right now.  Larry Coker, for all his success on the field, left the program in tatters.  More players were getting press for criminal activity than for what they did on the field.  Practically nobody graduated.  Miami football was a black eye to all of college sports, and an insult to black academic and social progress.

Enter Randy Shannon.  He grew up in Miami, won championships there as a player, and another as an assistant coach.  He knew the school.  He knew the lineage of Canes football.  And, most importantly, he knew the pools of talent in the area.  As Donna Shalala stated at his hiring, he is Miami.  Not only was he arguably the best qualified man for the job, he was definitely the most uniquely qualified candidate for the position as well.

Yet past performance doesn't equal future success.  And for that reason...

2.  Miami was absolutely correct to part ways with him.
Shannon is an absolutely fabulous leader.  He reestablished an air of discipline and accountability.  His players graduated.  By virtually all accounts, he did everything right as a coach.

Except win enough games.

Somewhere down the line, Shannon seemed to forget that he wasn't coaching  Boy's Town, but at the U.  Consistent 7-5 seasons, with losses to seemingly inferior schools in your own state, will eventually get you fired anywhere.  But at Miami, where the expectations are winning conference titles and competing for BCS championships, 7-5 is beyond substandard.  Even when you are fielding teams that students and alumni can be proud of, you can't get by with mediocre seasons when you're stocked with 11-1 talent.

But in no way should that make his tenure a racial issue.  Shannon's firing is not an indictment of his intelligence, his coaching acumen, and damn sure not his color.  ESPN's Mark May, defending Shannon shortly after the initial reports, said "[Shannon] was brought in to change the culture of the program.  He did that."  And I agree; most people do.  But most of us could also see that Coach Shannon took the program as far as he could take it.  It was time for a change. 

Shannon got the job because he deserved it.  He got a contract extension because he deserved it.  And he got fired because he deserved it.  It's not that hard to understand.  Shannon is a tremendous coach and he will get another head coaching opportunity much sooner than later.  But just as there should be no debate on his hiring, this is not another Tyrone Willingham situation, either (and besides,Shannon walks away with a better record).  Randy Shannon may not have been given all the chances in the world (I could never really say that about a black coach), but he certainly had enough.

So, if you must bring up affirmative action (though you shouldn't), acknowledge that its intent is to create equal opportunities, not equal results.  A black man was given a chance to display his talents; he succeeded in some respects (and be honest---for a first-time coach he really didn't do a bad job), but ultimately things didn't pan out.  That's perfectly OK with me.  And I bet it's just fine with him, too.

They could have let him coach the bowl game, though.  Just sayin'.

3.  Love him or hate him, Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock is right.
Funny, when I saw the final score of that Central Florida game, I thought that Shannon was going to be on the hottest seat in the country next season.  When I saw the news that he'd been fired, I thought immediately of what Whitlock said in 2008 about Turner Gill.

Gill, currently the head coach at Kansas, was the front runner (?) for the job at Auburn.  I remember all the hoopla and bellyaching that came about because he got passed over for a guy who was like 1-70 (exaggerating here) at Iowa State.  And to be honest, with Gill coming fresh off a MAC title at Buffalo, I didn't get it, either.

But then I read Whitlock's column, and I realized that you can't just jump at any job because someone else tells you that it's the best opportunity.  You should choose that job (or stay where you are) because at the time, it's the right one.  Gill ended up at a place where he had close ties to the conference (he starred at rival Nebraska), and where it seems like there's isn't as much pressure to win now as it is to be competitive.  Should he had been given the chance to coach Cam Newton?  Don't know.  But I am sure that Gill would get to grow at Kansas in ways they'd never let him at Auburn.

I'm not going to contradict myself and tell you that Shannon shouldn't have taken the Miami job; he should have.  I'm hoping that next time, he considers where his strengths and weaknesses are, bounces them off the expectations of the program, and chooses a place that can not only utilize his leadership and talents to their fullest, but also can better afford to take the time necessary to build a consistent winner.

Shannon, if given the time and the financial commitment from whoever hires him, can build a championship team in short order.  But black, white or purple, schools like the University of Miami are not the places to be for a young coach to get his teeth cut.  Better to go to a lower-tier Big 6 or an up-and-coming mid-major first.

4.  Randy Shannon's successor won't do that much better, anyway.
First of all, Miami is one of the lowest-paying jobs available for a program with such lofty expectations.  And I promise you, nobody in broadcasting is going to take less money tor all the hassles that come with coaching.  Especially at a school like Miami.  So dreaming about a big name coach like Jon Gruden gets you nowhere.  Ditto for Mike Leach, unless you want to see the program go back to the bad ol'days of the Coker era.  Butch Davis isn't leaving Chapel Hill, either.

So, that leaves room for some young coach or seasoned coordinator who, like Shannon, will have his first head coaching opportunity.  Good luck with that.  Maybe they could get some retread a la Rick Neuheisel, or perhaps Dan Hawkins can get another shot at glory.  If it were me, I'd shoot for the latter.

Miami can't get the big names because it doesn't have the money (Yeah, I know...all that cheddar from licensing and apparel?  Really?).   A young coach won't survive because there's too much pressure to win, and win now.  And even with the best possible coach locked up, the team still plays in a way-too-large arena too far away from campus, suffers from poor training facilities, and is at least a step behind its in-state rivals when it comes to recruiting blue-chip prospects.

Sounds like a recipe for mediocrity to me.  Which tells me...

5.  Miami fans had better prepare for the new reality.
Contrary to what Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt wants you to believe, that "better days are ahead for Miami," what the firing of Shannon signals is not the beginning of the end of rough times, but rather the end of the beginning. 

Miami is not an elite team, and they haven't been the entire decade.  They've lost games to schools like Carolina and Georgia Tech, and they're losing ground in recruiting to schools like UCF and South Florida.  These schools have solid coaches and have either built or are building better facilities.  These are programs on the rise, with bright futures ahead of them. 

Better days are ahead for programs like Connecticut, not Miami.

While it's way too premature to equate the Hurricanes to a has-been program like, say, Holy Cross, I do think it's more than fair to look at the U next year and see Notre Dame.

Yes, that Notre Dame, where first-year coach Brian Kelly brought the Irish a 7-5 record and a bowl game---and they're happy about it.

See, just like Miami this season, ND was another big-name school spoiled by their history of success, and their heads in the sand about the changing landscape of college football.  They thought the name itself would carry the team to 10-2 seasons and the Orange Bowl.  They were wrong.  They held their standards way too high; they felt entitled to outstanding seasons.  They ended up with running out three so-so coaches (Bob Davie, Willingham, and Charlie Weis), shelling out lots of cash, enduring monumental embarrassments, and nearly causing irreparable damage to their credibility (as a football team and an academic institution)before they came to their senses and realized that they are what their record says they are:  a good team but not a championship one. 

And this is a school that's got buckets of  money and first class facilities.

So, don't think that you're going to hire the next Jimbo Fisher and tear up the ACC Coastal next year, or the next five years, or be in any position to compete for a BCS slot before the end of the coming decade.  It's not gonna happen.  Florida will just reload next year with a bangin' recruiting class.  FSU and Virginia Tech will be the only two teams that matter in the ACC (again), with Carolina, Maryland, NC State, and Ga. Tech continuing to build and get better.  The other Florida schools are ascending to prominence fast.  It's only gonna get worse before it gets better.

Every team at some point goes through a nadir of sorts.  Nebraska seems to have come out of theirs.  Notre Dame probably have turned the corner, but they're nothing close to where they were with Lou Holtz.  Tennessee will be good again, and Georgia will be back as well.  But until the Miami athletic department fixes the other things that's wrong with their program, you can only rightfully expect more mediocre seasons for years to come.

Miami is, at best, a middle-of-the-pack-team in a middle-of-the-pack conference.  Get used to it.

Come Fly the Fairer Skies: The TSA, Strip Searches, and You

SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FLY.

That's the message I'd like to send to all the people out there who have a problem with the methods the TSA is employing when searching passengers.  Just shut the hell up.

A common theme you'll find in this blog is my disdain for people and institutions that bitch and moan about 'rights' that do not exist, have little practical value, or are agitated for without any acknowledgement of their corresponding responsibilities.

The people still bellyaching about being searched at an airport are full of shit.  Just because some jackwad is chilling in first class doesn't mean that he isn't strapped with more than enough C4 to take out all the po' folks in coach.  You are not exempt just because you are in a hurry.  You should have planned ahead and walked out of your house with clean underwear.

None of these whiners gave a damn about Fatima's civil rights when she was getting strip-searched and finger-fucked in the terminal, with her two year-old watching in horror.  But some dude feels the need to yank off his little boy's T-shirt to prove he's not a Jr. Unibomber, and all of a sudden there's (yet another) call to arms to defend individual liberty?  Am I missing something here?  If little Mohammed can have a pipe bomb in his diaper bag, then why not little Timmy?

Last I checked, as with most things in America, the ability to use commercial aircraft to travel is a PRIVILEGE and not a right; it is an entity regulated by and at the discretion of the government.  When you buy an airline ticket, when you walk inside that terminal, you agree to their rules.  If you have a problem with any of those rules, then you are free to utilize any other form of transportation that suits your comfort.  Hell, you can motherfucking walk for all I care.  You don't have to fly.  But when you do, you have to play by the same rules as Fatima, Tyrone, El-Habib (hock, spit) Shabazz and everybody else you find suspect. 

Equal justice under the law.  What a concept.

You should know that it also pisses me off to see people misuse the Constitution in order to prop up their arguments.  Thus, for all you wannabe constitutional scholars out there, this is NOT a Fourth Amendment issue.  First, the amendment protects individuals against unreasonable search and seizures; that is correct.  However, in this day and age, it is not unreasonable anymore to assume that anybody can walk onboard a plane and light a fuse in his Florsheims. 

Second, the point of the amendment was that government can't stop you in the middle of the street and search you without cause (like in Arizona, if you look Hispanic enough), nor can they do so at your house.  But when you are in a public setting, where the safety of the majority outweighs the convenience of the few, probable cause is already inherent by precedent, so the provisions of the 4th don't apply.  It may apply if you were flying your own plane or driving your own car.  But when you're going Greyhound, not so much. 

And third, nothing in the Constitution precludes the government's prerogative to curtail the provisions of its amendments as it sees fit.  If you step inside a federal building, you can be searched.  Before you enter a military installation (without the proper credentials), you WILL be searched.  And they let you know from the jump that they couldn't care less about what you think your rights are (note those locked and loaded M-16 riles in your face) because, most likely, you don't have to be there.  And the people who aren't required to be there shouldn't feel entitled to less scrutiny than those who are.

Same thing with the airports.  National security trumps individual liberty every time.

So the way I see it, the people who cry the most about what the TSA is doing are the ones who think they're too good to be searched in the first place.  It's cool when someone who 'fits the description' goes through the ringer, but if an examiner 'touches my junk,' then there's hell to pay.  Boo fucking hoo, motherfucker.  Everybody who flies today and for the foreseeable future is a potential hijacker, terrorist, or assassin, and like it or not, we all fit the description.  You're not mad because your liberties are being trampled on; you're just pissed that you have to be lumped in with everybody else.   Grow up.  Better to endure a few moments of indignity than to have your family be told on the news that you got blown apart because someone missed that blue-haired grandma sitting next to you, as she took you and 200 others out by adjusting her pacemaker.

All the brouhaha about TSA searches is just another case of people calling some rule unfair simply because they don't like it.  Too bad.  Most of us are going to be inconvenienced at some point, and nobody wants to feel violated in any sense of the word.  But for the time being, we all have to live with these rules; not because the majority thinks they're fair, but because the people ultimately responsible for our collective safety believe those rules are RIGHT.  And if you're going to be among the thousands of people flying commercial aircraft everyday, then it stands to reason that at some point, you're gonna get poked and prodded. And be pissed off just like everyone else. 

And besides, it's only fair.

I.  Am.  So.  Stoked. 

As I'm writing this, Wheel of Fortune is on, and my cousin Rhonda is a contestant tonight.  Whoohoo!! 

And I'm happy to report that she's going home with a lot more than a lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni and bus fair home!!! :-)

While I'm not going to put out how she did (out of respect for her family's privacy), what I WILL say is that there is not a more worthy competitor (and yes, she kicks my backside at home), nor deserving a person.  Regardless of the outcome, she's always a winner.  Just ask her husband and kids.

Okay, I need to keep watching and rooting my cuz on, so I'm out.  Later.

Go Rhonda!!!  And lemme borroe fitty dollars?  LMAO

Affirmative Action is Never Going Away. Here's Why.

Today I was reminded of a Texas legislator who, some years back, tried to push a bill that eliminated racial preferences for athletes (football players, specifically) at state-supported schools like the University of Texas and Texas A&M.  Yeah, you know that thing didn't have a chance.  He probably did, too.  I'm wagering that its passage wasn't the point.  More importantly, I think what he was trying to do (and if I'm correct, he was truly ahead of his time) was to point out a dirty little secret whites will never cop to about Affirmative Action.

Remember the passage in Ellison's Invisible Man, where the protagonist was working at Liberty Paints?  Remember the irony that came out of the firm's whitest white paint?  (For the uninitiated, it took ten drops of black paint in order to create it.)  The genius of it was, though it alluded to the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, that same passage almost seamlessly fits into the Affirmative Action debate. 

It's funny how some people will fight heaven and hell to deny others something close to the same opportunities they had, except when it suits their selfish interests.  And too often, those interests lie in their pocketbooks and wallets.

Stop groaning.  You knew what this thread was about the minute you saw the title.  Yes, I know you're already tired of the debate, regardless of what side you're on.  But have you ever thought that maybe it's because each side keeps saying the same damn thing?  Have we lost the ability to take the opposing view and flip the script?  I mean, for me I can accept that some people feel that everything is a zero-sum equation, and that every break little Jamaal or Maria gets comes at the expense of their little snots.  But why do they seem to get away with the institutional racism that allows them to be seen as victims of a PC-crazy, meritless society while their oppressors are getting fat off undeserved entitlements? Why does it always appear that the biggest whiners of Affirmative Action seem to be amongst the most prosperous in this struggling economy?

Allow me to let you in on a little secret:  the war against Affirmative Action is a farce.  It's not going anywhere, and white people won't allow it to.  You read that right.  Minority-based preferences and set asides are here to stay, and all us black folks can thank Whitey for it.  Contrary to what you hear on Fox News or read from the Southern Heritage Newsletter, white people love Affirmative Action.  More accurately put, they need those preferences and set-asides to remain in place more than we do.

This deserves an explanation.  It's a well-known fact (should be, anyway) that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action policies are white women, who overwhelmingly marry white men, who in turn have white children (obviously, though many adopt interracially), about half of which are males.  And yet the biggest complainers of preference policies, the ones most likely to vehemently preach of reverse racism in the practice, are white men.  Ironic, no?  The demographic who collectively gains the most from race-based policies are the very ones who are most threatened by them.

At first blush, it is kinda hard to figure.  But if you look at it another way, it's certainly understandable. See, beneath all the vitriol and empty logic about preferences, there's a white noise (pun intended) speaking another unacknowledged truth.  You hear it at schools like FAMU and Bethune-Cookman (white baseball and golf teams), Fayetteville (NC) State (a model of an integrated university:  military, whites, out-of-staters) and the venerable Morehouse College (white valedictorian).  You hear it when applicants employ nepotism and alumni connections to pave a better path to the corner suite.  You hear it when Essence magazine defends its choice of a white fashion editor. That sound you hear is perhaps the dirtiest little secret of the debate:  white people get as much from preferences and set-asides as they feel they had taken away.  The institutional racism that perpetuates the intended beneficiaries as less-than-stellar, while those supposedly left out collectively profit exponentially, will not allow it.

See, the white middle class was built on preferences, preferences afforded to veterans (via the GI Bill), college students (affordable student loans), the indingent (WIC, AFDC, etc.), and, yes, preferences based on race (Jim Crow).  If  those set-asides were taken away from them tomorrow, if we all compete fairly, and thus are forced to compete equally, then it stands to reason that whites would be disproportionally affected; and with the increased competition and scarcity of resources from a more meritocratic union, the tiping point would be the largest transfer of wealth in this nation's history since the Manifest Destiny, far more than any teabagger's fearmongering misspelled on a placard would proclaim.

So the next time you hear some hack whine about Affirmative Action (or immigration, for that matter), remind yourself that the game still favors them; the more that's supposedly taken away, the more it's really given back.  In other words, don't be fooled by the rhetoric, and don't be ashamed to take advantage of something we as a people were long overdue, and that far too many were stepped on for us to have. 

Because like at Liberty Paints, its enemies of getting theirs, too.