The Hurricanes are eligible for bowl participation.
They got there Saturday afternoon with their sixth win of the college football season — a monotonous 40-9 decision against South Florida in Sun Life Stadium — and now should decline any consideration for bowl activity.
They should make the announcement immediately, and render moot the possibility of involvement in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game as potential Coastal Division champions.
They should punish themselves in the hope that by doing so the NCAA might not be as harsh as it could be when it comes time to hand out penalties resulting from the cesspool that was the Nevin Shapiro booster scandal.
There’s no guarantee that a second consecutive self-imposed bowl ban would influence the NCAA, but it’d be difficult to argue that the University of Miami wasn’t doing all it could to show genuine contrition.
And that should be worth something.
The ’Canes are as mediocre as their records — 6-5 overall, 4-3 in the ACC — indicate. They’re probably headed for a minor bowl if they don’t eliminate themselves from the selection process (assuming no upset of Florida State in a conference title game), so the actual sacrifice of postseason participation wouldn’t be overwhelmingly punitive save for the loss of extra practice time valuable to a young team.
But the important element in the process would be the program’s willingness to hold itself accountable for past transgressions, again, even before the NCAA passes its judgment.
Why haven’t school administrators made a statement regarding UM’s intentions on the matter?
Maybe they’ve been waiting for the Hurricanes to actually become bowl eligible (it’s what they did last year), which would make Sunday the proper time for a declaration.
“I’m out of the loop,” coach Al Golden said. “I just stay focused on moving the team forward.”
UM President Donna Shalala should do her part.
Golden, citing Shalala’s past high-level government work as a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, said, “I think she can handle this one.”
There’s no reason to wait.
The Hurricanes should remove themselves from the ACC title game picture — where another beating by Florida State, already a 33-20 winner against Miami this season — likely would await. They should swallow the no-bowl pill of their own accord.
It can’t possibly hurt UM’s chances for some NCAA leniency.
Shalala needs to step up to a microphone and say the Hurricanes will try to do what’s best for themselves in the long term by doing what’s most difficult for themselves in the short term. She has seen athletic directors, plural, come and go in recent years. She has seen Golden deal with the shadow of the Shapiro mess, which didn’t occur on his watch, for the entirety of his two seasons on the job.
Golden made it a point to say how much he respects those players who have remained Hurricanes when they could have left and appreciates those players who chose to become Hurricanes in the face of impending sanctions.
He’s tired of them having to respond to the “nonsense” of the situation.
He’s tired, too.
“I’ve never been in a recruit’s home where I didn’t have to answer those questions,” Golden said.
There’s an opportunity for Miami to get ahead of the game to whatever extent it can.
The NCAA is scheduled to notify the ’Canes of allegations stemming from the Shapiro episode in the next few weeks, and the university would have three months to respond. There’s a long road ahead, in other words, but the ’Canes now need to take an aggressive and meaningful step down it.
The best thing the Hurricanes can do for themselves is to ask for mercy by showing themselves none. They’ll almost certainly be slapped with significant penalties involving the loss of scholarships and/or a ban on television and bowl appearances.
The call here is for UM to be the opposite of self-serving.
The call here is for the ’Canes to do everything in their power to begin healing by absorbing self-inflicted pain.
An NCAA charge of a lack of institutional control regarding the Shapiro shenanigans is all but a certainty, which is all the more reason UM should demonstrate some right now.
