UM receivers coach Kevin Beard channels championship past to prepare players
Gather around and listen to his latest discourse. It’s his most poignant yet.
“You don’t got to,” Kevin Beard said, wired headphones hanging from his shoulders and dancing atop the lowest bleacher step with each animated gesture, “you get to.”
For Miami’s receivers coach, this — UM’s College Football Playoff national championship against No. 1 Indiana (15-0) on Monday night — called for no change in messaging. So, as media day unfolded Saturday, the coach offered a flow of cliches and sayings. The sermon’s premise was simple: our latest game is no different than any other. So why not bask in it rather than fear it?
His players, even as they fielded questions, seemed to listen. He’s captivating, and never has he been more integral to Miami’s quest for its sixth championship, and first in more than two decades.
“You don’t have to turn up or get let down,” Beard said. “When guys understand it from that perspective, they can be even-keeled and not be consumed with the moment, and understand that in life, you’re going to fail. So if you’re in the moment, and you find yourself failing, just move forward.”
Beard knows the two ways this can go. He has lived them — a player on both the 2001 Hurricanes, who capped an 11-0 campaign at the Rose Bowl with a national title in tow, and the 2002 Hurricanes, who faced Ohio State for a second consecutive title, and, well … you know how that went.
With No. 10 Miami (13-2) on the precipice of redemption for the first time since that double-overtime collapse out in the Fiesta Bowl, he’s a sort of guiding light for how to approach Monday in a balanced mental space. Making “glass pots into pressure cookers,” he calls it, or in a more graspable form: making players that won’t sweat under college football’s most blinding light.
Truthfully, in his eyes, the runway to facing Indiana shouldn’t require any different lessons than he’s already taught. During the offseason, he encouraged players to find consistency in their training. In response, receiver CJ Daniels started a group chat without Beard where he regularly texts the other pass catchers to come to the practice facility in off hours. Then Beard started seeing them there at 4 a.m. Then the confidence came, and the message reverberated from upperclassmen to freshmen. Then Notre Dame didn’t scare a set of three new starters. Then a CFP road game wasn’t too grand a task. Then the reigning national champions weren’t too much. Then the SEC’s final contender wasn’t, either.
Then Indiana will be no different, he says.
“He experienced everything,” Daniels said. “It’s a lot of the same things that we went through. … So he just helps us make sure we’re ready to enter games like these, and he’s constantly teaching us.”
No better place than to resume his class on discipline than on media day during the lead-up to the championship.
“I listen to everything he says because he knows, man,” UM star freshman Malachi Toney said. “He’s got a contagious spirit, very loving and caring. … I trust him.”
If we’re speaking purely about what’s noticeable on the field, Toney is the greatest example of Beard’s work. In his first college season, Tony has 1,089 yards and nine scores. The 99 receptions? That’s fourth best in the country. If he happens to add 10 grabs against Indiana, he will lead the nation. (For those looking for odds, he has already done it twice this year.)
Ask Beard about Toney, he will tell you he works hard, but, more than anything else, “he’s consistent.” UM coach Mario Cristobal and offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson credited Beard on Saturday for getting a true freshman to that state. He likes to think his preachings are sinking in.
Even then, against a bona fide juggernaut like No. 1 Indiana, what one thought they learned can dissipate. It would be easy to get consumed in the moment. But, Beard just points back to his first message of the morning: You don’t got to, you get to.
“You’re walking around here like somebody’s forcing you to do this. If that’s the case, then just leave,” Beard says. “You get blessed to be able to do this at this level. … Take advantage of it.”
Twenty-three years and two weeks removed from Miami’s last opportunity at national glory, Beard expects his guys to do what he’s taught.