In our 3 major winter sports, hockey 0-2, men’s basketball 0-2, women’s basketball 0-3. Football is the only program that I can take any pride in now. Feel free to criticize the hockey or basketball programs, or the administration or board for not supporting those programs or not doing something about it, but please leave football alone. 3 straight winning seasons ( against tough schedules) and a MAC championship. It has been almost 20 years since we did that ( once) and then another 15 years before that since we had accomplished that ( once). Even Randy Walker never accomplished that.
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Randy Walker was 59-36-1 in eight seasons. Chuck is 39-52 in eight seasons. What are you saying?
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To paraphrase the popular TV segment: “Come on, man!”
Randy Walker also beat #25 Northwestern, #12 Virginia Tech and #12 North Carolina - all on the road. And his team finished 10-1 in his final year and got screwed out of a bowl by a team he had beaten. While I’ll admit our football program - mediocre even by G5 standards - is the only bright star in our currently dismal major sport athletics program, it pales in contrast to what Walker accomplished on the national stage.
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If we’re dealing in relativity, FB is the shining star in a dying galaxy. However, I prefer to deal in absolutes…and both BB teams plus hockey are dead stars while FB is a dim shadow of a once brighter star.
It would appear that we need better captains of some of our intergalactic space crafts to find our way back to a galaxy where there are more stars. To keep flying around in the same orbit while hoping for dead stars to re-illuminate themselves is wishful thinking…at best.
Time for HC changes in both men’s and women’s hoops when financially feasible for Miami.
As for hockey, no clue what has to be done…maybe dropping down to CCHA so we can win a bit more often (to generate more excitement and fun for the loyal fans), even if we aren’t all that good in the short term, and a “smaller mountain to climb” to challenge for a future NCAA tourney slot.
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Not to put words in Dick’s mouth, but I think he’s referring to the fact that we have a MAC title under Chuck and did not under Walker (and have managed three straight winning seasons for the first time since Hoeppner). And in the interest of accuracy, Walker was 59-36-5 in nine seasons per Wikipedia.
Interestingly enough their two MAC records over the first eight seasons aren’t too far apart (37-23-3 for Walker, 33-26 for Chuck), and I think most of us would trade a couple of MAC wins for a championship. That’s not to discount our success under Walker (especially in non-conference games), but is worth noting.
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I would go so far as to willingly trade a MAC win for a meaningful OOC win like Walker accomplished (on multiple occasions).
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Agree, Cincy. And we didn’t have divisions in the MAC until 1997. During most of Walker’s tenure the MAC champ was the regular season champ. You couldn’t get to the championship game by winning a division.
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Throw out Martin’s 1st 2 years. There were very few players good enough to play FBS football. The 5-19 should be his fault.
Oops first 2 year record should not be his fault, or at least not all his fault. Wasn’t he 5-25 after the 1st games of 2016?
OK, you want to go that direction: Walker also took over a dismal program and HC Tim Rose was fired. Rose’s 1988 team went 0-10-1 and his 1989 team went 2-8-1. Enter Randy Walker who went 5-5-1 his first year while inheriting a program in decline. Discuss…
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Not going in any direction Personally I don’t really count his 1st 2 seasons. That’s just me. Off the top of my head, didn’t Rose go 0-12 then 1-10-1 his last 2 seasons? Awful as well and got him fired.
To insinuate the current Miami football program is even close to where it was on a national stage in Walker’s final two or three seasons borders on delusional.
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I was referring to Rose’s last two years as a comparison of what Walker inherited as being somewhat similar to Martin after Treadwell …perhaps the cupboard wasn’t quite as bare for Walker but he had to start over and re-build the program just like Martin did.
Took Walker about four years to completely turn things around as well although after four years his overall record was one game over .500. After four years Martin was 16 games under .500…both Coaches seem to have turned the corner by the fifth year when they had their own recruits as upperclassmen…of course Walker’s teams were mostly much better.
I am NOT insinuating anything. In my mind Walker was better than Chuck is.
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I think Nescacdad just miss understood your post…as I interpreted it, you were just meaning to give Martin a bit of a pass on his first couple of years after the Treadwell debacle. Am I right?
It was Dick who seemed to be doing the insinuating.
Grumpy, I would agree that Randy was better and he had an unbelievable staff ( guys like Terry Hoeppner, Dan Dalrymple, Kevin Wilson, Sean Payton, and there were a few others that coached in the NFL, names escaping me right now. He never won a MAC championship though. Also, our other sports were strong and doing well. That tells me that the conditions were much more favorable than what our coaches have been working under the last 15 - 20 years. Only Chuck has actually been able to elevate a program to a point of success under the conditions which Miami coaches now labor. He might, with good support (that includes us), elevate it farther.
Actually, in looking back at what I just said, I did not think about Megan Duffy, who was not going to let any bad conditions or lack of great talent slow her down. She was a superstar coach, maybe the best we have had.
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Sounds like a lot of people here have Stockholm Syndrome with being held captive to Miami’s mediocre (at best) results.
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