Miami football coach Mark Richt, during a full day scheduled in Bristol, Connecticut, for ESPN’s Car Wash, spoke with Mike & Mike (photo above tweeted by UM) in the morning. Here are most of the highlights:
You were there when all the legendary quarterbacks were there, who was best one of those?
When Jim [Kelly] and I were seniors you’ll have that first scrimmage of year. You get your ones and twos to scrimmage and then you get your three unit in there. You let your freshman quarterbacks take a drive, right? Vinny [Testaverde] might have been first and he was like bang-bang-bang – like 6 for 6, touchdown. Then Bernie [Kosar] goes in there. Bang-bang-bang-bang, 6 for 6 touchdown. Jim and I looked at each other, like, ‘It’s a good thing we’re getting out of here because those guys are going to take over.’
“Jim Kelly was one of the most fierce competitors and I hate it because he’s the guy who beat me out and lived my life so to speak when I had my dreams of playing at Miami. But he was phenomenal.”
How much of it was that you got to go to your alma mater?
“It was big, but when you coach, coaching is tough enough. If you don’t have a chance to win then it’s just not very much fun at all. I wanted to go a place where you can win… Miami can win for sure… To add to it, it was my alma mater and the timing of it was perfect…”
You look back on your experiences. What will you do differently if anything. What will you have learned from Georgia that you will do different here?
“Not a lot different. I think I was the fourth winningest coach in America when I left there. We did some good things. But I truly cherish every moment I was at Georgia. Fifteen years at a place like that – it was a wonderful experience.”
A lot of it is what have you done for me lately…To you, what’s the expectation of getting your team up where everybody talks about them like they’re talking about.. like it used to be in the day?
” …The big thing is recruiting. We’ve got very fertile recruiting ground in the Miami area, the tri-county area of Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County. Miami also traditionally has gotten great players from all over the nation and we’ll continue to do that. Do that, just put in a good, solid fundamental scheme and get after people, just don’t self destruct. Let’s see how great Miami can be if we just take care of business.’’
On the current discussion about the possibility of the elimination of the kickoff in college football, because there is a disproportionate amount of injury on that play vs. others:
” I’ll be honest with you. I’m OK without a kickoff… I’ll say this: For the first 15 years or so of my career, I’m an offensive coordinator. I’m up in the box. I see the game from the box. I’m getting ready to call plays, things of that nature. I go down the next 15 years on the sideline and you sit there and you witness what happens on a kickoff. It’s a violent play and guys are running full speed and you’ve got a bunch of guys that are young and strong and brave and no one is backing down. So, yeah, I think that’s a play I could live without. A lot of people probably are going crazy right now about it, but when you see it up close it makes sense to me.”
We are seeing so many changes in the game in the interest of player safety. Where would you put a line between how much you’re willing to change the game of football in the interest of safety and where you get to the point where you say, ‘Look, at the end of the day, this is the game and we’re going to either play it or not?’ How much has the game changed in the interest of keeping players safer?
“I think it has changed a good bit. …We’re teaching the rugby tackling they do at the Seattle Seahawks. We’ve bought into taking the helmet out of the tackle.. Manny Diaz, our defensive coordinator, is a believer of it. He’s been doing it for a few years now as a coach. And we think that’s a smart way to play football and we think it’s an effective way to play football.”
Regarding communication, in the NFL they use the headsets until 15 seconds in the play clock. In the CFL, they changed to it until now they can talk all the way to the snap and past the snap:
Richt on headsets: “As a QB I would hate that.”
And as a coordinator? “I would love it for the first 15 seconds or whatever it is — call the play and shut it off. But if you’re a quarterback and if you have a coach that’s in your head the whole time trying to tell you what to do as the play is being run you would be crazy. But the ability to get the play in quickly and for that matter a defensive coach could get his play in quickly, I’d be all for that.”
Looking ahead, what will you say will constitute a successful first year for you? What do you want to be able to say at the end of this season looking back and say, ‘This was a successful first year for me at the U?’
“I’m not going to put any limits on what we can do. I believe we can win the Coastal and play for the championship and get to that game and anything can happen. Obviously if you win that one, hopefully we’re in the four-team playoff. I’m not going to put a lid on what can happen this year.’’
SUSAN MILLER DEGNAN