[damaniac]

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I think you're right about running a clean program, but what does that mean - no NCAA violations? No player arrests? No Miami-FIU brawls? No strippers on recruiting trips?

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Of course it can't mean no arrests. It means no violations or brawls, and reasonable discipline when arrests do occur. Anyway, if there aren't decent disciplinary measures taken, then things will likely get out of hand eventually. Some of this also means that occasionally taking a flyer on a kid with a record is necessary.

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Is it enough that the coach's integrity is unquestionable, even if some of the players go astray, kids being kids?

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Of course.

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And how much weight, if any do you give to the whispers? I mean, Miles hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) ever been sanctioned or even investigated by the NCAA, but you read crazy stuff on the internet that says he's a bit shady.

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Not really sure. The main rumor I've heard is telling recruits (specifically Jai Eugene) things about Carr's health that weren't true. That's a bit of a problem; I expect negative recruiting but I'd at least like to pretend it is legitimate. Plus he's at LSU; in Louisiana, breaking the rules is mandatory. But I hope that the institutional control and expectation ensure that he or whoever the coach is doesn't do anything wrong.

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I don't expect you or anyone to have answers, but Martin's going to have to think about that stuff before committing millions.

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I'm sure he will. Not that I ever expect academics to overpower athletics here, but if we had a "renegade" program the faculty would be a lot louder and they would get more attention when bitching about athletics. The powers that be are very sensitive to maintaining good athletics but are even more concerned with the academic reputation, and I'd suspect that running a renegade program would be seen as tarnishing that somehow. Plus Ed Marten isn't cold in his grave as far as the Athletic Department is concerned; they are very sensitive to this.

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And on the subject of special teams, I'd be happy if the new guy just put a little emphasis on it. Maybe had a special teams assistant. You can only do so much as the head guy, so I don't care if he's got experience as long as he makes it a priority.

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We had one for awhile, it's only the last 2 years that we haven't. The weird thing is that we've had good special teams at various times: Breaston was a great kick returner, we blocked a ton of punts in 2001 (and none since; baffling), and periods of consistent solid kickers interspersed with awful ones (2001, this year until KC came in).