The Orange Bowl: a place filled with the glorious memories of a historic football past. Some of the famous games played there include the AFL New York Jets victory over the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, the overtime playoff game between the Dolphins and Chargers (that many have deemed the greatest game ever played) and the unbelievable Boston College Hail Mary pass against the Miami Hurricanes that assured Doug Flutie of the Heisman Trophy. The Miami Hurricanes won 58 straight games at the Orange Bowl while the Miami Dolphins became the only team to ever achieve a perfect season while playing there in 1972.

Since the Dolphins moved to Joe Robbie Stadium, the Orange Bowl has been synonymous with the Miami Hurricanes. Numerous future NFL All-Pros and college stars played for the Hurricanes in that stadium. Now that the Hurricanes have decided to pick up and change venues (also to Joe Robbie Stadium/Dolphin Stadium) the reminiscing and fond farewells have begun. At least that might have been the case had it not been for one important factor. The 2007 Miami Hurricanes are stinking up the joint!

Randy Shannon came in and promised to instill a new attitude to the Canes. He took the player’s names off the jerseys, demanded players maintain a 2.5 GPS, decreed that players must wait two years before moving off-campus and instituted a zero tolerance policy on firearms. Everything about Shannon screamed change and discipline. It was as tackle Chris Barney stated during spring practice, “You do it right or you run.” All I can say is… holy crap! Based on what we’ve seen on the football field thus far this must be the team of marathon runners by now. They may not be able to win many football games but I’m thinking they could REALLY improve the Miami track team!

Shannon has managed to prove a couple of things so far this year. One of his confirmed discoveries is that decent quarterbacking is essential to a successful offense. By utilizing two mediocre quarterbacks behind an inferior offensive line combined with slow and unathletic wide receivers, Shannon has implemented a dead zone offense which shows no signs of life whatsoever. Pairing this with a cleverly conceived “Break but don’t bend” defense, the Hurricanes are on the verge of a losing season or, should they manage an upset in one of their remaining contests, a return trip to the Big Blue Rug of balmy Boise, Idaho. Outstanding, Coach Shannon!

It doesn’t surprise people when Miami gets manhandled by Oklahoma or loses to Georgia Tech by 3 at home. Those are not humiliating defeats by any means. However, when you lose 4 out of your last 5 games (2 of which to perennial also-rans UNC and NCSU) and then close out the Orange Bowl by losing 48-0 to Virginia it becomes painfully obvious that this team has decided not to play for this coaching staff. When you can’t get your team to play their last game in the Orange Bowl with a single ounce of pride or emotion… what does that say? Coaches can’t make plays and aren’t able to equip their players with talent beyond what they arrive on campus with but when moderately talented players get worse as the season progresses, when they stop caring about what happens, when they lay down and quit in a nationally televised ESPN game… something is wrong, folks.

Virginia is a good team. They have 8 wins and have beaten several quality squads. Of course before Miami their average margin of victory was 7 points, and they had previously won 5 games by 2 points or less. After playing the magnanimous Hurricanes, Virginia’s average margin of victory has skyrocketed to over 11 points per game. This same team lost to Wyoming and North Carolina State. Excuse me, does Miami not have the same caliber athletes as the Cowboys or the Wolfpack?

Hmmm… Miami had played NCSU the previous week and lost by 3 thanks in part to a mind boggling 1 for 14 passing performance. Yet a team like Virginia — who, granted, has better coaching, more heart and apparently cares about what happens on the football field — can come in with roughly equivalent personnel, on an emotional night in front of a raucous home crowd (by Miami standards of course) and make the good ole “U” look like the new F-I-”U”.I’m sorry folks, but there is only one explanation for this. The team has flat out quit on this coaching staff.

Was all the talk of challenging for an ACC crown simply fantastic speculation on Shannon’s part? Randy knows the kind of talent he has on this team. He has coached a number of teams in dozens of games. Perhaps Randy Shannon wasn’t being outrageous when he set the goals of this team high. Maybe the talent was there but the coaching was not. Miami doesn’t have Top 25 talent anymore but there is enough talent on the roster to at least challenge for an ACC division title. Hurricane fans will blame this season on Larry Coker much the same way those same fans will blame the Dolphins’ collapse on Nick Saban. Why? Because the truth is too outrageously frightening to admit and the consequences too incredibly disastrous to acknowledge.

Not only is this team bad, but it’s getting worse by the week. There is no sign of improvement, no sign that the team is buying into the coaches’ philosophy, no sign that the basic tenets and fundamentals of the game are being taught to any of the players on the field. While coaches like Tom O’Brien and Butch Davis have taken bad teams and shown a glimmer of positive things to come by improving as the season moves along, the Miami coaching staff has opened a window on the stark reality of their program’s future. And it’s a glimpse of a crumbling, unstable program that needed the leadership of an experienced and proven coach to right the ship. Instead they hired Randy Shannon, a man who finds himself in way over his head. If this is what we can see on the exterior of the program, imagine the kinds of huge cracks and rotten foundation that must lie hidden from public view.

Just as the Orange Bowl continued to be used long after it should have been demolished, a decaying symbol of what was once a great venue; the Miami Hurricanes are also a shell of what they once were. By leaving the Orange Bowl, the Hurricanes admit that a new coat of paint and some superficial improvements could not salvage the legendary stadium as a functional entity. The irony in this is that all the declining football program received at the end of last year was a new coat of paint and some superficial improvements in the form of Randy Shannon. The Orange Bowl went out with a whimper rather than a bang. It looks like the team leaving it behind is destined to do the same.