Why this minor bowl and small opponent should be of major importance to Miami Hurricanes | Opinion
Manny Diaz has set out on one of the greatest challenges of his college football coaching career: Trying to pretend how happy he is that his Miami Hurricanes are headed to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Excuse me. Make that the Walk-On’s Independence Bowl. The title sponsor is a badly named southern chain of Cajun-themed bistro/bars. Except they spell bistro “bistreaux.” Of course they do.
Previous Independence Bowl name sponsors have included the Poulan Weed-Eater, Rubbermaid and Duck Commander, so consider this an upgrade of sorts.
The aspiring-to-second-tier bowl has been around 44 years and last hosted a ranked team in 1997.
If you are a five-time national championship program that finds itself playing in the Independence Bowl, you would just as soon it not be televised or publicized in any way.
Interesting to note that Diaz has not tweeted a word about how thrilled he is to be bringing his 6-6 team to face smaller-conference Louisiana Tech on Dec. 26.
(His only tweet since Sunday’s announcement: a shoutout to a local salad place and pizza joint for providing a Saturday lunch for his team and for supporting his football camps).
Be honest. As high honors go, the Canes facing the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in the Independence Bowl is closer to an indignity.
I asked Diaz on a Monday teleconference call how he motivates his guys for this game when Miami obviously had much bigger bowls in mind before laying down to end the season with losses to FIU and Duke.
Quick aside: FIU beat UM 31-24 (and it wasn’t that close). FIU lost this season to Louisiana Tech 43-31.
“It should have to do with our standard,” Diaz answered. “Your habits, the way that you work, getting to define what our consistency of performance is — being the same team week in, week out. When we begin to realize the opponent is always ourselves, that’s a big step forward in this program.”
Diaz and his staff are deep into recruiting these days — clearly and smartly a bigger priority than this bowl game. Early signing day is December 18. UM’s 2020 class, Diaz’s first as head coach, is ranked No. 15 by ESPN as of Monday.
Diaz calls it “a really strong” incoming class, and says, “They want to be a part of the solution, and they want that to be right away.”
Diaz said he wants “low-maintenance, high-output” players, admitting that, “High maintenance, low output is something we’ve been fighting for a while.”
A recruiting win next week will outweigh a bowl win the week after, and yet, for a few very real reasons, beating Louisiana Tech is important — with every ounce of the pressure on Diaz and Miami to do so.
UM is an early (and modest) 7 1/2-point favorite, but it hardly feels like that. ESPN already has forecast a 35-24 La-Tech win.
It will be all but a home game for the 9-3 Bulldogs, who are based an hour’s drive from Shreveport. The Conference USA team will be jacked up to face the bigger ACC team with the five-rings pedigree.
“That’ll focus our attention for this game,” said Diaz.
But will it? Will Miami be fired up? At all? Those are fair questions.
Five UM losses came this year to opponents who were big underdogs, including FIU. Three losses came when Diaz and staff had extra time to prepare their team.
Matching the opponent’s intensity, and not playing down the opponent’s level, have been real issues that this bowl matchup brings to the fore again.
Miami also happens to have lost eight of its past nine bowl games.
The difference between finishing 7-6 and 6-7 isn’t much, but UM rather desperately could use a convincing win to step into the offseason feeling a little bit good about itself.
Since being 10-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country in mid-November 2017, UM has gone 13-15. That’s a fairly elongated cascade into abject ordinariness.
“We’re excited about finishing the season on a good note, the way it needs to be finished,” Diaz said. “We look at this as a bridge to 2020. A springboard affect.”
Does Diaz have staff changes in mind? Is there a solution to what was an underperforming offense? Will a strong finish make next week a recruiting bounty?
Answers to come. But don’t discount this bowl game providing a telling answer as well for better or worse.
The Hurricanes have been digging new lows for themselves ever since November 2017. This year those new lows included the ignominy of losing to cross-county FIU and winding up in the low-watt Independence Bowl.
Losing to Louisiana Tech would be yet another new low. Diaz talks about this bowl as “a bridge to 2020.”
He would rather that bridge not be burning.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 1:19 PM.
