Know your weaknesses.
While we are all sitting here bemoaning Miami's inability to take any action, don't forget why we are in this situation. It wasn't until late September, with the football program already floundering, that Frenk first decided to appoint Fernandez and Echevarria to look more closely into UM athletics. This is a move by a guy who doesn't care about UM athletics, and clearly isn't knowledgeable about how to run a successful athletics program.
I actually have no issues with the UM President having limited knowledge of athletics, but if that's the case, you absolutely need to appoint/retain an Athletic Director that you trust AND you need to have others who know athletics constantly evaluating the AD, regardless of how much you may trust the AD. Instead, Frenk put blind faith in Blake despite knowing he had no ability to evaluate Blake's performance. Here's what happened as a result:
While we are all sitting here bemoaning Miami's inability to take any action, don't forget why we are in this situation. It wasn't until late September, with the football program already floundering, that Frenk first decided to appoint Fernandez and Echevarria to look more closely into UM athletics. This is a move by a guy who doesn't care about UM athletics, and clearly isn't knowledgeable about how to run a successful athletics program.
I actually have no issues with the UM President having limited knowledge of athletics, but if that's the case, you absolutely need to appoint/retain an Athletic Director that you trust AND you need to have others who know athletics constantly evaluating the AD, regardless of how much you may trust the AD. Instead, Frenk put blind faith in Blake despite knowing he had no ability to evaluate Blake's performance. Here's what happened as a result:
- Blake isn't evaluated until October/November and isn't fired until November 15th, delaying UM's actions significantly (as demonstrated over the past few weeks);
- When he is fired, Blake has already put Miami in a terrible position, on several fronts, such as:
- The unnecessarily rushed signing of Diaz, after being handed a gift by CMR (as discussed many times)
- The execution of an agreement in 2018 with Diaz that doesn't reduce Diaz's buyout until 12-1 -- knowing that the Early Signing Period had switched to December 15th beginning in 2017
- So, Blake essentially prevented a conservative university from taking any action on Diaz until only 2 weeks before signing day
- Given the absence of a new AD, UM is forced to begin the coaching search and evaluation with no leadership structure in place to choose the next coach (witness the infighting by the BOT)
- Switching to the next potential disaster, in 2018 Blake extended Larranaga's contract expiration from 2022 to 2024. Now, I have no problem with that if Blake reduced the buyout significantly during those last two years (so that the extension was merely to show recruits that Miami intended to retain Coach L.), but I highly doubt that is the case. I suspect that we will soon see.
