Storm brewing

Berlin, Crudup become Coker's first big problem at Miami

So you thought Larry Coker had it made in the shade his first two seasons as Miami’s head coach?

Look at the mess he has to deal with now.

Quarterback Derrick Crudup, who is black, says race was a factor in his competition with Brock Berlin, who is white and who last week was named the starter going into fall.

No point getting into Crudup’s specific allegations against position coach Dan Werner, since we don’t know if they’re true. All you have to do is look at Florida State the past couple years to know how potentially divisive such a situation can be.

It was no secret in Tallahassee that many black players resented Chris Rix for getting the quarterback job over Adrian McPherson, who is black, and that they publicly turned on Rix last season when things didn’t go well. Almost out of necessity, Bobby Bowden later switched to McPherson, who has since been dismissed from the team in the wake of gambling and other charges.

Miami’s situation has the potential to be even worse seeing as Crudup has already been with his teammates for three years whereas Berlin, the ex-Gator, could be viewed as an outsider and carries a perceived "golden boy" mystique from his days as a high school phenom.

Even before Crudup’s statements, something felt fishy about Miami's announcement last week.

All throughout spring, Coker insisted the quarterback race was too close to call, that nothing would be decided until August. Then, on a random Thursday afternoon, he suddenly has an epiphany that requires a news conference?

Kind of reminds me of a similar situation three years ago at Kentucky, when out of the clear blue, coach Hal Mumme declared freshman Jared Lorenzen his starter over incumbent Dusty Bonner, who subsequently transferred to Valdosta State.

Like Coker, Mumme said he'd seen something on videotape that helped clinch his decision. And like Berlin, Lorenzen was the hot-shot recruit with the considerable pedigree.

Could it be that Miami has known all along it would go with Berlin (really, how can you make the former all-everything recruit sit after convincing him to transfer there in the first place?) and didn't want to string along Crudup any further? Give Crudup the option of transferring? ("Hell, no! I'm a Cane," Crudup said when asked of the possibility).

Or was that tape just that revealing?

Perhaps Berlin will blow everybody away this fall and all will be forgotten. If not, Coker may soon learn a lesson about quarterbacks that Mack Brown knows all too well by now: Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.

On to the 'Bag, where, after just one edition, I've already managed to generate at least one mini-backlash. Some Auburn people took an exception to my assertion that their grandiose aspirations for this season hinge the play of "heretofore inconsistent" quarterback Jason Campbell.

Small correction: Jason Campbell had the fifth-highest QB rating in the country, at 149.2, and the highest completion percentage in school history, at 63 percent. That doesn't sound very inconsistent to me. I would suggest that you be at least a little informed the next time you run your mouth about something. It will earn you much more credibility with your readers.
-- Brooks Johnson, Auburn, Ala.

I wanna believe in your Tigers, Brooks, I really do, but it's kind of odd the revisionist history being exercised by you and some of your comrades. Am I the only one who remembers a time before the second half of last season when quarterback situation was a mess, the team was struggling (4-3) and many of y'all were ready to fire Tommy Tuberville?

Yes, starting with the LSU game Campbell put together an impressive end to the season, both statistically (though technically he didn't have enough attempts to be ranked nationally) and in the win-loss column. Some of the e-mails, though, made it seem like he was Carson Palmer -- let's not get carried away. You can’t simply ignore the year-and-a-half it took to earn Tuberville's confidence enough to start full-time, during which there were plenty of folks holding their breath every time he took the snap. With another year of maturity under his belt, though, Campbell may very well be an excellent player this season, but it’s no guarantee.

Which newly hired head coach will have the most success with his new team?
-- Andrew Haff, Boston

Good question. The possibilities aren’t as numerous as in recent years (which means this year there will probably be a flood of turnover). I’m going to have to go with Dennis Franchione, both because he inherits a program that isn’t exactly down in the dumps, beating No. 1 Oklahoma last year, and because he’s proven to be a pretty darn good coach. Runner-up: John L. Smith at Michigan State, though his success might not come as quickly.

If you could have any collegiate WR on your team, who would it be? Also, how do you compare Reggie and Roy Williams?
-- Thaddeus Garlatz, Bellingham, Wash.

Now that is a question, and a darn tough one at that. So many choices. The three most distinguished are obviously Texas’ Roy Williams, Washington’s Reggie Williams and Oklahoma State’s Rashaun Woods, though USC’s Mike Williams and Pittsburgh’s Larry Fitzgerald showed as freshmen they could soon join that class.

While Woods was the most productive last season, I think Roy and Reggie are in a class of their own as athletes, and I’ll take Reggie because he’s been more consistent and less injury-prone. A close Husky follower recently told me he was flat-out dominant this spring, and that if he weren’t concentrating on football, he could easily be a world-class sprinter. Should have a huge year.

I enjoy your column ... and congrats on getting your own mailbag. Did Lee Evans make a mistake going back for another year with the Badgers? I had Evans as a top 10 WR in this year’s draft. If Jim Sorgi, an adequate QB at best, has a bad year, will Lee's stock in next year's draft drop below this year's?
-- Rich Mach, Gainesville, Fla.

Well, I don’t think he really had a choice. Only a rare athlete like Willis McGahee can tear his ACL in January, become a first-round draft pick in April and, we’re told, be ready by September. Evans has missed an entire year, still wasn’t healthy enough to go through spring drills and probably would have scared off most teams in this draft. He may come back and have another big year but the knee will always be a question. So his stock probably fell for good not the day he decided to return but, unfortunately, the day of that fateful spring game a year ago.

A few years back, I watched an interview with Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson, regarding Allen Iverson leaving for the NBA at such an early age. He basically said that he didn't approve of sports overshadowing education, and that at the rate we are going, we will see athletes leaving high school early. Well, here we have it. The newest USC QB recruit, John David Booty, will skip his senior season to get a jump start at Southern Cal. I am interested in your opinion on this matter.
-- Clint Jones, Genoa, Neb.

Thompson makes a valid point, but I don’t think it necessarily applies in this case. Presumably, he was talking about a player leaving high school early to turn pro, which, if you recall, LeBron James actually contemplated. To play college football, you still have to be admitted to college, which means you still have to graduate high school. Booty was in a unique situation where he had been held back a grade at an earlier age and needed only one more summer-school class to get his diploma. Maybe he’ll set a precedent for future blue-chippers to take such a fast track, but I’ve got to believe it’s pretty difficult to pull off.

As a graduate of the University of Central Florida, I have always rooted for the non-BCS teams to come out of nowhere and make their case for a BCS bid. What team or teams will make that statement in 2003 and will they earn that bid?
-- Dana Parrish, Winter Park, Fla.

Like Dana, I think most of us would like to see an outsider crash the BCS for once, but after five years, it’s looking pretty grim. A couple have come close, like Fresno State and BYU two years ago, but they haven’t been able to finish the job. And it’s been shown time and again that while a good "mid-major" can beat a mediocre BCS team (Bowling Green over Missouri last year, Toledo over Penn State in 2000), they still can’t hold a candle to the upper-echelon foes (Virginia Tech routing Marshall or Arkansas clobbering Boise State).

That said, there are a couple intriguing possibilities for this season: Hawaii, with June Jones' powerful offense now in its third year under record-setting QB Timmy Chang; and Bowling Green, where there’s a new coach, Gregg Brandon, but the same exciting star under center in Josh Harris.

Random Gregg Brandon trivia note: His high school coach was Colorado’s Gary Barnett.

Since you cover both college basketball and college football, I was wondering which school or schools do you think have balance of being top at both sports?
-- Allen, Toronto

I’d say the models right now have to be Oklahoma, which within a 15-month span won the football national championship and reached the men’s and women’s Final Fours, and Texas, which if not for Oklahoma might have played for the past couple national titles and just pulled off its own Final Four double-double. Florida and Wisconsin aren’t far behind. And Michigan probably will be again one day.

Greetings from Down Under! I play rugby for the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and I'm also a huge U.S. college football fan. Tell me, why aren't laterals used more often in your game? I see dozens of plays per game where a couple of shrewd laterals would almost certainly achieve a touchdown or, at least, a first down.
-- James Cain, Sydney, Australia

Look at this, the 'Bag has gone global, baby. We’ll get to the question in a second, but first I have a few for James. How much college football are you able to watch there? Do you get ABC and ESPN, or do you have your own networks that show nothing but Big Ten games? And are college rugby players there afforded the same luxuries as college football players here -- gourmet training tables, dumbed-down majors and an endless supply of fawning co-eds?

I think the reason laterals are generally discouraged is the perception that more can go wrong than right. One drop and a defender could pick it up and head the other way, which would be disastrous. Coaches would much rather end the play safely and continue the drive. However, it’s worked at least once -- the infamous Stanford-Cal band game. Maybe it would be different, though, if teams actually incorporated them into a couple plays and practiced them. You could be on to something.

So what's the best remedy for the nearly nine-month layoff that we have for college football?
-- Eric Krust, New Orleans

I ask myself the same thing every day. So why don’t we open it up for suggestions from readers who are obviously dealing with same dilemma and post the best ones next week?

Be creative, people. I don’t want to hear "study depth charts" or "watch ESPN Classic." The man obviously needs your help.

And with that …

Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com.

To send a question or comment for Stewart's Mailbag, click here.

 

Related information

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video