When not trying to salvage the remnants of an already hopeless recruiting class, Al Golden has spent the first two months of his tenure as Miami's head coach talking about his plans to "change the culture" after four years under the impenetrable stoicism of Randy Shannon. You know, the usual: Faster tempo, better conditioning, more accountability for players, etc. The Hurricanes insist they're already working harder and will inevitably emerge a tougher, smarter, more mature, more disciplined, funnier, better groomed, more patient, better dressed, better rested, more cultured outfit than the one whose underachieving ways bought its last coach a pink slip last year.At least one aspect of the Golden Plan is specific beyond the typical "new sheriff in town" platitudes: Keeping more local products from one of the hottest recruiting hotbeds in the country at home after two years of total failure with South Florida prospects, despite his complete lack of ties in Miami, Florida or the Southeast in general. So far, it sounds like he's managed to at least get a foot in the door:
[Golden] has established an open-door policy with high school coaches in the area. He has dramatically lowered the price of admission to the school's football camp. He has scheduled informal gatherings with high school coaches in each of the three counties. He has offered area high school coaches unlimited access to Miami's spring practice.
"He's doing a tremendous job," says Miami Central coach Telly Lockette, whose team won the Class 6A state title and finished 14th nationally in the RivalsHigh 100 last season. "He's letting it be known he's trying to win in his backyard. I think the coaches previous [to him] got away from that.
"He's trying to do the Howard Schnellenberger tri-county thing -- Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. You look at Howard Schnellenberger and how he built the University of Miami. The blueprint's already there."
Recruiting under Shannon veered well off of that map over the last two years. Of 21 four or five-star prospects in the greater Miami area in the 2011 class, Miami signed zero. Of 22 four or five-star locals in the 2010 class, the Hurricanes signed two, running back Eduardo Clements and offensive lineman Brandon Linden. In the same span, Florida has signed nine four or five-star star guys from the 'Canes' backyard, and Florida State has inked eight; in FSU's case, its nine Miami-area signees earlier this month was than the 'Noles had signed from 2007-10 combined.
That's a snapshot of a particularly bleak moment in time. But it's not like the 'Canes have been running around with a bunch of clunky imports in the meantime – in fact, before falling out of favor with the locals over the last two years, Shannon was widely regarded as the Pied Piper of South Beach his own self. His best class, lauded as a top-five haul by every major recruiting service in 2008, was a hyper-local affair, composed of a whopping 19 players from the nine Southern-most counties in the state, eight of them culled from the local Northwestern High squad that had just cruised to the mythical high school national championship in 2007. You won't find a more perfect embodiment of a "local pipeline" in the last decade.
Thanks largely to that effort, last year's two-deep – the first composed entirely of Shannon recruits – was absolutely loaded with kids from the Dade-Broward-Palm Beach triangle: The starting quarterback, the top backup quarterback, the top two running backs, three of the top four receivers, three starting offensive linemen, four of the top six defensive linemen, two of three starting linebackers, three regulars in the secondary and the kicker – fully half the week-to-week lineup. If you calculated it in terms of square miles traveled by players who actually saw the field, it may have been the most local lineup in Division I.
Where did all that local flavor get Shannon? To 7-5 and the unemployment line. (An unusually lucrative unemployment line, but the point remains.) Recruiting remains primarily about location, and Miami remains arguably the best location in America – for quantity, anyway. The trick Shannon failed to pull was turning the numbers into quality. If Golden gets that part down, nobody's going to care about that zip codes.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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