His friends told him to go to law school.

Mark Whipple preferred X's and O's to torts and trusts.

``I liked football a lot better than I liked class,'' said Whipple, the University of Miami's new offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach and assistant head coach. ``My grades were good. They were real good. But they weren't quite Ivy League material. For me, it has been athletics -- football, really -- that has had everything to do with my life.''

Whipple, 52, a former Ivy League quarterback at Brown, has been a winner at every program he touched -- from his all-state quarterbacking days for the Phoenix Camelback High School 1974 state champions to his head-coaching days for Massachusetts, the national champion of Division I-AA, to his NFL days in Pittsburgh grooming quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

Whipple didn't need to go to law school. His mind, as much as his athletic prowess, has served him well with what he loves most. In 27 years of coaching, he has championships at every level, including the 2005 Super Bowl, to prove it. But at 8 a.m. Saturday, Whipple's past glories will give way to a more pressing matter: ``Finding a way to get one more point than Florida State,'' he said.

Fall camp begins for the unranked Hurricanes on Saturday, and it's Whipple's intention to make the 2009 UM team, which opens the season Labor Day night at Florida State, good enough to score more points than the top-20 Seminoles.

``We play Florida State on a Monday night,'' Whipple said. ``Honestly, there's nothing else. You can't get to the second game unless you get to the first.'' That's it. Opponent by opponent. One down, then another. Whipple said he has no broad goals other than to defeat his next opponent, week by week.

``Mark Whipple is one of the smartest offensive minds I've ever met,'' said Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas High School coach George Smith, whose Raiders are the consensus reigning national champions and ranked No. 1 this preseason. Smith and Whipple have known each other for several years, introduced through recruiting. Whipple's youngest of two sons, 15-year-old Austin, is expected to be the Raiders' junior varsity quarterback.

Spencer Whipple, 20, will be a third-year sophomore quarterback at dad's former UMass. Austin will be a sophomore at St. Thomas.

`HIGH-CLASS GUY'

``He's going to be very good,'' Smith said of Austin. ``He's smart and he's nice, which you'd expect. Mark Whipple is a high-class guy.

``We had seven guys play at UMass when Mark was head coach there. The kids loved him. They felt he was fair, but tough. And from what I hear from [UM receiver] Leonard Hankerson, who worked with him through the spring, he feels exactly the same way.''

Whipple's last coaching stint in 2008 was as an offensive assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles. He replaced former UM offensive coordinator Patrick Nix in late January. Nix served two seasons and was fired after UM's Emerald Bowl loss to California capped a 7-6 season. UM finished 89th overall in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision -- 78th in rushing, 77th in passing and 50th in scoring.

Whipple's offenses have been anything but ho-hum. He is known for being creative, for using lots of receivers in lots of formations, for doing the unexpected -- and doing it well.

``It's a game,'' Whipple said, ``and you've got to have some fun, some laughs. I don't think anyone likes boring. I don't. In life, when you do the unexpected it's great, whether it's in a relationship or anything else. Timing is critical in offensive football, when you call a play and how you do it.''