Predictable Pre-Season Talk

As sure as the sun rises and the sun sets, every team in the college football landscape claims to have made some pivotal and earth-shattering changes that will lead inexorably to their holding up the crystal football trophy at the end of the season. The 2008 Miami Hurricanes are no exception. Today's article in the Herald highlights their "new attitude," which as you can effortlessly surmise - involves more discipline, more toughness, and more justifiable excitement over next season's prospects.

This Canes fan is not buying it. Even under the horrific Larry Coker regime, it was the same ol' song and dance, and it is now the stuff of legend how disturbingly undisciplined and uninspired those teams were. There is a new seven-player council (full of veteran Coker recruits) enforcing a rigid new code of on and off-the-field behavior cultivating the habits and practices of champions. That is nice, but what ultimately matters - and I think the players in this group, including Eric Moncur, Jason Fox, Colin McCarthy, and Glenn Cook know this - is that this team gets back to championship contention by winning and winning often.

Of course, you don't turn a 5-7 team around overnight, and baby steps like this one may help. But it sounds too much like July 2006 and July 2007 to be taken seriously at this point. Let's start with a season of more "W's" than "L's" before we talk of reviving the slumbering giant.