What Happened to My Football Program?

OXFORD, Ohio -- As is the custom around here, new buildings are smothered with red brick and molded into a Georgian style. Just like that, they stand as gracefully ancient as Miami University, celebrating its 200th year.

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I mention this, because such is the case for the decades-old-looking psychology school at the corner of Patterson and High streets, where they used to play football during my days on campus in the 1970s. Speaking of changes, they've switched the nickname of the sports teams from Redskins to RedHawks. Even more striking, the dominant sport for Miami these days is hockey. In fact, despite choking away a two-goal lead at the end of last season's NCAA championship game, Miami is ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today entering this hockey season.

That said, there is a bigger difference between Miami now and Miami during the time of the miracle I've been telling you about for three weeks -- you know, the miracle that was the collection of folks in my dormitory called Hepburn Hall. It eventually produced a slew of prominent college and pro coaches, players in the NFL, NBA and major league baseball and doctors, lawyers, CEOs and even journalists.

The bigger difference is football.

What happened to Miami football?

This doesn't resemble that 13-1 team of six years ago during Ben Roethlisberger's senior year. This doesn't resemble the team that shocked No. 8 LSU in Death Valley in 1986. Or the one that gave Rose Bowl-bound Northwestern its only loss nine years later. Or the one that upset No. 12-ranked opponents (Virginia Tech and North Carolina) in consecutive seasons through 1998.

This doesn't resemble those teams that had Miami earning its moniker as The Cradle of Coaches by spawning the likes of Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler.

This also doesn't resemble those teams during my Hepburn Hall days that had a 32-1-1 record with victories in bowl games over Florida, and South Carolina to finish 15th, 10th and 12th during those three seasons in the AP poll.

On this Saturday afternoon, with a pretty sky over the new place on the edge of campus called Yager Stadium, Miami continued the oldest rivalry west of the Alleghenies before a stuffed house against the University of Cincinnati. While most college football polls had the Bearcats entering the game ranked 10th in the country, ESPN had Miami ranked third -- as in the nation's third-worst team with an 0-4 record this season, a nine-game losing streak overall and no hope against Cincinnati.

So this wasn't surprising: courtesy of Tony Pike, Cincinnati's passing machine at quarterback, and a relentless pass rush (10 sacks), the Bearcats stormed to a 37-13 victory over Miami in the 114th Battle of the Victory Bell.

Then again, such things happen when you're a new guy inheriting a program whose predecessor gave you a ridiculous talent deficit. Smallish players. Young ones, too, and the word "physical" wasn't in Miami's football vocabulary when Mike Haywood left his alma mater of Notre Dame as offensive coordinator to take over Miami this season.

Haywood gets it, by the way. He knows that, not only does the Miami football program need players, but it needs a psychologist -- literally. The university has given Haywood permission to hire one to help examine the psyche of his players who have seen the program's glorious past become a ghastly present.

"I'd say 90 percent of their minds are not where they need to be, because when something bad happens, they anticipate something else bad happening, instead of going out and saying, 'I'm going to be the one to make the play,' " said Haywood, 45, a strong disciplinarian who demands that his players are into details -- on the field, in the classroom and during their lives.

In contrast, Shane Montgomery, Haywood's Miami predecessor, was into mellow, which led to three losing seasons out of his four as head coach.

Thus the need for a shrink. He'll be arriving to Miami soon from Michigan State as an accomplished team psychologist. Said Haywood, "When you believe you're going to be the one, and you believe in your teammate, there is slim and none of an opportunity of not having success. And right now, we're hoping. We got to start believing."

Which means, what? "From where (the Roethlisberger years) were, I think we're two years away, because it's all about recruiting," said Haywood, sitting in his Yager Stadium office, with reminders of Miami's storied football history everywhere. Pictures showing the who's who of former head coaches line the hallway walls. In the large plaza (featuring red brick, of course) beyond the south end zone, they are constructing bronze statues of Earl "Red" Blaik, Paul Dietzel, Carmen Cozza, Ewbank, Brown, Parseghian and Schembechler. They all are among the 21 Miami graduates who have been recognized in some form as national collegiate or professional coaches of the year or have been inducted in the college football Hall of Fame.


This Cradle of Coaches thing isn't just a football coaching thing -- well, as you can tell by those from my Hepburn Hall days.

Even beyond those days, Miami produced Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston of the Los Angeles Dodgers, along with Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Angelo and San Diego Chargers vice president Jim Steeg.

What caused all of this?

Ara Parseghian chuckled over the phone from his home in South Bend, Ind., where he helped make Notre Dame famous, and then he said, "You know, it's a question that people have tried to answer for decades about why Miami has produced all this talent, and no one has been able to come up with the perfect answer. But I think Miami may attract a certain type of person. It's a beautiful campus. It's a beautiful environment, and then you go back to the idea that success breeds success. That may be part of it."

Then Parseghian thought about that stretch from 1949 through 1977, when he followed Woody Hayes as head coach and then was succeeded by John Pont, Schembechler, Bill Mallory and Dick Crum.

As a group, they collectively coached for 148 seasons at Miami and other places and won 67 percent of the time.

"Back then, you had one or two guys going out who may have been successful, and they'd been in school with classmates, and then they decided to hire them as their assistants, and the tentacles sort of spread out that way," said Parseghian, before jumping to the present. He remembered the call he received last winter from Haywood when Haywood still was a Notre Dame assistant.

Haywood wanted Parseghian to make a few calls to Miami on his behalf. "When I phoned Brad Bates, the athletics director, he said he already had Mike on his list," said Parseghian, who eventually saw history reverse itself. While Parseghian went from Miami to Notre Dame as head coach (with a pit stop at Northwestern), well, you know the rest, and get this: like Parseghian, Haywood feels a heavy dose of magic on the campuses of Notre Dame and Miami.

It's different magic, though.

"When you walk around the campus of Notre Dame, you feel a certain spirit, and the spirit that you feel is a holy spirit, which makes the place special," said Haywood, a running back for the Fighting Irish in the mid-1980s. "At Notre Dame, you feel like everywhere you go that God is present."

As for Miami, Haywood smiled, saying, "Once again, you still get that safe feeling that you have at Notre Dame. But it's also that people are extremely friendly. It's a warm and welcoming feeling that you get here. And as you walk around, sometimes you walk around in awe. That's because it's unbelievable that, when you drive through cornfields to get here, it's such an unbelievably gorgeous place -- from the cobblestone streets (downtown) to walking down the center of campus with all the trees.

"Sometimes, I say it's like Mayberry R.F.D."

Good description. It's true now, and it was true during my days at Hepburn Hall, still on the north side of campus with its three stories and 270 or so residents. The closer I got to the old dormitory, the more it was the 1970s again, with Ron Zook, Randy Walker, Sherman Smith, Charlie Leibrandt and all the rest.

"Who?" said Philip Dodd after I walked through the front door of Hepburn Hall, where the native of Paris, Texas is a resident assistant.

When I told Dodd that Zook and Walker were former national coaches of the year in college football, and that Smith is the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins, and that Leibrandt once was a prominent pitcher in the major leagues, Dodd apologized, saying, "To tell you the truth, I'm not much of a sports fan. Hey, let me introduce you to somebody in the dorm who really is."

So Dodd took me to Dan Nickels, a junior from Knoxville, Tenn., who recognized at least some of Hepburn Hall's noted residents from my day. Nickels even responded with a few "wows" here and there.

Who will be the stars of this Hepburn Hall?

"Oh, boy. Well, we've got a couple of figure skaters who have done very well, and that's really cool," said Nickels, pausing. "As for what this dorm will produce in the future, I know about me. I know I'll be a highly successful attorney in court and procedural law, and I'll deal with malpractice defense. I also want to be a lobbyist."

Not quite my Hepburn Hall, but it's a start.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.