CANES BLOWN AWAY;Too many miscues for Miami in loss' {HEADLINE2} Jimbo Fisher gets his first

Published Oct. 12, 2010 10:05 a.m. ET

foxsports

One way or another, the Florida State Seminoles look better without Bobby.

It's on the other sideline where things get sticky, for Saturday's lopsided 45-17 loss to the Seminoles can't help but get Miami fans jabbering about whether they might be better without Randy Shannon.

Never mind that this rivalry is famous for upside-down results, with the home team losing for five consecutive years.

Miami isn't the kind of program where rising all the way to No. 13 in the AP poll is particularly lucky for a head coach. It gets the juices flowing for more, the way it was when the Hurricanes were the talk of college football for ripping off five national championships between 1983 and 2001.

Now America will be talking instead about the way the Hurricanes allowed FSU running backs to go in standing up for a pair of touchdown runs right up the middle of the Miami defense.

There were plenty more scoring plays for the 5-1 Seminoles, of course, but those were the most startling because they came so easily.

That's not the way Miami football is supposed to look or feel, not on a raucous Saturday night that featured a rare Hurricanes sellout and was going along just fine until Jupiter's Matt Bosher, a solid senior kicker, yanked a 32-yard field-goal try wide left on the game's opening drive.

Wide left is the old curse that, in tandem with Wide Right, cost Bobby Bowden some of the best seasons of his life. Now the old coach is gone, however, pushed out of his job for winning two national titles but failing to hatch a guaranteed plan for No. 3.

Shannon, in his fourth season as Miami coach, has it even tougher. His Hurricanes, according to long-established tradition, are to win it all every year or die trying.

That is the expectation of fans, and one that Randy, a Miami native, a starting linebacker on the Hurricanes' 1987 national title team and the defensive coordinator for Miami's 2001 national championship squad, must at some level accept himself.

Something's not quite right here, though. The Hurricanes are getting better, but the progress is spotty and unreliable.

The amazing Class of 2008, the root of every Shannon dream, is better than halfway done here, too.

These are the players, including eight from mighty Miami Northwestern High School, who agreed long ago to stick together rather than dispersing to major programs all over the country. They agreed that, with quarterback Jacory Harris as their leader, a national championship would come naturally enough to them and to Miami.

With this loss to No. 23 FSU, however, that dream must be deferred to 2011, when all those stars will be seniors and almost out of eligibility.

Come to think of it, you can say the same thing about trying to win the ACC, a basketball league that Miami's never gotten a handle on in football.

Shannon sees all this happening but he can't stop it.

He wants to trust Jacory but worries too much about interceptions ruining every game plan. He wants to believe that the Hurricanes defense finally has hit its stride, but then comes a game like this one, with FSU jumping out to a 21-0 lead and doing it without anything particularly amazing from quarterback Christian Ponder.

Nothing for a coach to do at a point like that but push the only button he's got left. The panic button.

That's what happened halfway through Saturday's second quarter, when the Hurricanes went for it on fourth-and-1 on their own 29-yard line.

First-year FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher called a time out prior to the snap, giving Shannon a chance to think it over, to recognize that failure to convert at that point on the field probably would lead to another quick Seminoles touchdown and open the trap door beneath Randy's feet.

Shannon stuck with his instincts, though, and the Hurricanes kept the charge up the gut by Damien Berry and his blocking party. That could have been a magic moment, sparking an 80-yard touchdown drive as it did, but all the hooting and hollering eventually came to nothing.

The Seminoles, with only a loss to unbeaten Oklahoma to slow their climb to the top, are making Jimbo look better every week.

The Hurricanes, 3-2 and suddenly stalled, will have to go like gangbusters to win the ACC's Coastal Division.

A sad goal that is, and a sad sight to see the sellout Miami throng draining out of Sun Life Stadium with 7:39 to play, sold out no more and willing to wait around to watch replays of Ponder's second touchdown pass.

Randy's got another game next week at Duke. He'll work like crazy to win it, but he's in survival mode now.

That frantic and promising push to get Miami back into the top 10 is over for another year. Now it's up to Shannon to keep his kids together for one more try in 2011.

The way things are going, it may just be his last try, too.

~dave_george@pbpost.com