The start of something big: with unassuming coach Larry Coker at the controls, the Miami machine is back on top and ready to day there

Sporting News, The, Jan 14, 2002 by Matt Hayes

Sheer terror, that's what it should have been. But Larry Coker wasn't walking from this precarious perch, this freezing jolt to his senses. This couldn't be too tough. Shoot, he'd seen just about everything in less than a year, anyway.

He wasn't the first choice as the new coach of the Miami Hurricanes, a prime job but one burdened by emotional baggage and BCS disappointment. It was his first head coaching job after more than 20 years as a college assistant, and he was handed a ready-made championship team with don't-screw-up instructions. He was, you might say, set up to fail.

Yet this looming liquid hell was more intimidating. It was also a microcosm of Coker's grand plan: the rebirth of a dynasty. A family, a bond, a quest. So he jumped into a huge barrel of icecold--wait, let's not underestimate this, arcticcold--water with a bunch of 300-pound linemen. It was their weekly post-practice ritual, a way to soothe and soak the pain and pressure of playing for it all. He laughed and joked while his heart pounded in his chest and his extremities lost all feeling--a 53-year-old coach who looks like he's 63, surrounded by blocks of ice, water and hulking, happy lugs. And you better believe it was worth every damn second.

"He is one of us," Bryant McKinnie, Miami's mammoth offensive tackle, says of Coker. "You have no idea what that means."

It's beginning to come into focus. The Miami administration threw the keys to Coker last January and told him to keep the engine revving. After last week's Rose Bowl, the Ferrari is purring on premium. Nearly 20 years after the first Miami dynasty strutted and sauntered into the college football limelight with a stunning victory over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl, the second coming debuted with a 37-14 cakewalk over Big Red in last week's national championship game. Who says the sequel isn't as good as the original?

"These guys have something special here, something more than what we had," says Cortez Kennedy, a former Miami AU-American defensive tackle and a founding member of the first dynasty. "It's only going to get better."

It's better because the only similar characteristics with this group and the original dynasty that won four national titles from 1983-91 are talent on the field and the ability to wield the hammer in big games. The old 'Canes had speed and playmakers and attitude. So do the new 'Canes. But that's where the similarities end.

The first dynasty had vagabond coaches--Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson have had seven jobs between them since leaving Miami--always looking for greener pastures. Now the 'Canes have a coach who drives a 1979 Mercedes with a patchy interior and a crackling AM radio, and who couldn't even fathom leaving his dream job. The first dynasty had players firing weapons from dorm windows and playing for slush funds from a rap star. The second coming has players such as tailback Frank Gore, one of the nation's most dynamic freshmen, who chose Miami because Coker promised him the university would institute the necessary programs to help Gore develop academically despite his learning disability.

The first dynasty had a mentality of selfishness that trickled down from coaches to players. They were as bad as they were good, and they weren't afraid to show it. A prime example: It took Schnellenberger all of one offseason to realize he wanted out after winning the first national title following the '83 season. He bolted Coral Gables for the--ahem--USFL franchise in Miami (it never materialized), and finally admitted this past offseason that leaving Miami was "a horse-- decision."

The second coming has Coker, a bald, bland Oklahoman who looks more like your grandfather than the glue and gumption of a burgeoning monster. Hell, he was turned down for the Tulsa job twice. And when Butch Davis left Miami less than a week before national signing day last-year, the administration didn't want any part of Coker, either, initially looking to Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez and Miami Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt, offering the latter a 10-year, $20 million deal. The 'Canes eventually settled for Coker, the players' choice, for a scant $500,000. Coker hasn't made a wrong decision since.

"They're at the point now where you know winning the whole thing means you're going to have to beat them, just like it used to be" says Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, whose team took over as college football's kingpin when the first Miami dynasty ran dry because of NCAA problems in the early 1990s. "What Larry has accomplished in such a short time is very impressive."

Here's a coach who made self-deprecating jokes all season about your grandmother having the ability to step into his job and not screw it up. He shrugged off any notion of his importance to the machine, when in reality he made it go. Coker began his tenure, and Miami's drive to its first national title since 1991, by making the most important decision of his coaching career. Instead of going outside the program to find coordinators, he hired 30-something newbies Rob Chudzinski (offense) and Randy Shannon (defense) to steer the ship. Neither had coordinator experience, which fit nicely with Coker, who had no head coaching experience. Somehow, it all fit and blossomed beyond even Miami's high expectations.