Miami football in Cleveland

1

I went to the NIL/Coach Martin event. It was nicely attended both from Miami people and Cleveland alumni. It was a neat event - I hope those in Chicago and Cincinnati can attend

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2

I know Chuck was the featured speaker, but was the event exclusively about football or were other teams/sports present?

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There was a pic on instagram of a slide along the lines of the Road to the CFP… anything noteworthy?

4

It was 95% about football- but with some talk about how good basketball would be important for moving to a new conference

It was similar to a zoom call I attended

It was mostly about where Miami stacks up vs. other G5 schools in the NIL- amenities- food-housing etc.

Compared to the G5 - Bottom line our indoor facility and football weight room is top notch. Our gear and food options are lacking and our NIL $$$ are significantly behind the top G5 but we have been doing better. We dont have enough strength and conditioning coaches. Coach thinks that kids want to stay at Miami so if we could offer even half of what they get at P4 we may have a chance at retention

The other thing is Coach doesnt know if the MAC will even exist as is in 5-10 years and Miami wants to position to be ready when an ACC lite is looking for members (Wake-BC-Syracuse-Duke) after Florida State-Miami- Clemson leave.

The only thing I heard that I disagree with is I think Coach Martin would play all G5 schools if he could to try and juice the overall record. I love the P4 non conference games. He thinks Liberty got into the BCS game because of a light schedule but I think they were very lucky that no other AAC team had a good case and remember then they got blown out as a fraud in the game itself- I am not sure it really helped them as much as Boise and Tulane

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5

I’m sorry, WHAT?

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6

Yep, WHAT!

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7

So, once Miami FL, Florida St and Clemson leave the ACC, Miami OH wants to be in a position to join what remains of the ACC, which would have us competing against Duke and UNC in men’s basketball? Seems a bit far fetched.

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8

Also we arent sure rthe MaC will exist as a football conference in 5-10 years so need to move forward or backward

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9

Why wouldn’t the MAC exist?
Assume EMU, Akron and Kent fold football because of costs. Maybe you’d just replace them?

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I admire the ambition, but if the MAC collapses I feel like an NIU-esq combo like the Horizon all sports/MWC football is wayyyy more likely to be our destination than a watered down ACC. We probably would have already been on the short list for one of the AAC backfill spots if we were.

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Dare to dream, but a good Miami hoops team could be like a Butler or St Mary’s College.

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12

I’ve been saying this for years as if you really look objectively in the area we are, the mid majors are all major now in hoops. UD, X, Butler. Even UC. We can fill that void. I like the valley just fine but half those schools used to lose to Miami back in the day and now they are mid major icons. Some of that is the media not respecting the top 5 in the MAC and some of that is the MAC putting out some real weak squads for too long. I think the MAC will be remarkably better in men’s hoops across the conference and they are already there in ladies hoops.

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13

NIU ended up in the position they’re in for several reasons, and most of them aren’t issues Miami deals with:

So if they can’t fund NIL well, can’t compete from a facilities perspective, and don’t bring academics, their value is limited to eyes. And they’ll always be at least the second best FBS team in the Chicago area. They can’t say that for basketball, so there’s zero value there for them.

Flip that to Miami who just announced crossing $750MM raised in their $1B campaign, while announcing a new basketball arena and hotel. At the same time, the College of Engineering and Computing is pushing to increase their research, add PhD programs, and just announced the first quantum computing degree in North America.

This is the most the academic and athletic sides of the university have been in lock-step over the course of my lifetime.

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14

Well written. Well said.

15

I moved back to Chicago a few years back, and have heard that NIU’s accounting and nursing programs are fairly well respected, and COA is dirt cheap compared to DePaul, UIC and Loyola. NIU also beat Notre Dame, which is impressive.

Just wondering. what is Miami’s reputation inside of Ohio? Well respected? College non-alums love to hate? Non-factor?

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Nursing is #314, but they don’t show accounting: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/northern-illinois-university-1737/overall-rankings

17

Comparing NIU/Miami is apples to oranges to your point, but imo our athletic department is a lot closer to them than the lesser ACC programs. Crawford and Sayler are clearly planning for a future college sports world where non-elite programs may be on the outside looking in to the OSUs of the world, but I’m not sure how we break into a tier up when we’re far behind today and demographics aren’t in Ohio’s favor.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong and the upshot is that we’re looking to spend a lot of effort and cash getting to a place that will almost certainly improve Miami athletics in the short term, but color me skeptical that we’ll wind up in a conference that has a lot of other major programs like UConn or Memphis available for backfills.

18

I also attended the Coach Martin event in Cleveland.
Perhaps I was too busy packing and returning to Cleveland (we arrived the night before), and didn’t pay attention to the format, but I was pretty surprised as to the detail covered by Martin on NIL, the transfer portal, and the need to adapt.
While Coach Martin clearly noted his personal disdain with where college sports is headed, he acknowledged it’s the sports’ world we live in.
Given that, Martin believes there’s a unique opportunity for Miami to make an upward move in this new space.
I’m not quite sure Miami can be a player in this arena.
But, it’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds, not to mention how and if the NCAA (or whoever) puts some boundaries on the current chaos that is unfolding.
A couple other points…

  • Martin was very direct, even blunt, in some of his remarks about other programs and leagues (including the future of the MAC).
  • From what he said, and speaking to him beforehand, I was impressed with his dedication to Miami.
  • The event itself struck me as a bit odd; a few in attendance, myself included, thought this was going to be a typical chapter event to meet the coach, and talk about recent successes and the outlook for 2025. Sure, touch on NIL. Rather, it felt like this kind of event should have been targeted to high-end donors. Ultimately, serious money was the ask. Even the 5 or 6 silent auction items available had minimum bids of $1500. When I last looked before leaving, no bids had been placed.
  • Wherever Miami heads in this new world, my firm hope is that it does not in anyway harm our academic standards. We all love college sports (otherwise, we wouldn’t be on this site), but I for one am unwilling to sacrifice our soul to improve our play on the field. That’s why it’s called extra-curricular. If the college sports’ world evolves to a super-conference (or two), and we’re relegated to the second-tier, so be it.
  • Lastly, interesting that Martin, throughout his ‘evolve or die’ presentation, admitted that the powers in Oxford were not necessarily fully on board yet.
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19

Well, if FSU, Clemson, U of M etc…move on from the ACC, who knows how the dominos fall. And it might not be a strictly Miami move to the ACC, but if the MAC cannnot sustain itself as well, it could be a case where Miami with say Ohio and a Toledo align themselves with Wake Forest, Boston College and Virginia.
The smart thing to do in this current landscape is to have multiple contingency plans and what if scenarios with goals. Staying stagnant or staying the course will only put you further behind.

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UNC would be leaving, too - probably for the Big 10.