https://twitter.com/MARTIN_MIAMI_HC/status/81963421247520...

So....anyone care to heed my warning that they're going to rise up again? It shouldn't be a mystery why an 18 year old in-state looks at Miami before us. On that note, does anyone care to wager that Miami goes gunning for at least 5 MAC Championship appearances in the next decade with at least 3 wins in them?

And we are all shook up about hanging scoreboards

This place looks stunning for a MAC program.

Wow that place is nice!

Yeah I'm not sure this arms race that major college football facilities have turned to is a race Ohio can keep up in, or maybe even should try. Like a few others on this board, I still think football's golden days have passed (see Bo Jackson's recent comments) and trying to vastly improve Ohio's football facilities is just throwing good money away. We'll see.

LOL!!! Best response to this that you can have. Time to shut it down!

There's something about Miami that has always driven me nuts. While I am a sucker for history and tradition a la "The Cradle of Coaches," the whole mystique over their academics and alumni marriages, "Miami Merger" is more than a bit much. They have everyone believing they are some kind of elite state school. I believe I recently shared on another thread that at a Christmas party a fellow alumnus and a guy from Ohio State were raving about their new hire. I asked what was so special about this guy and the first thing they told me was that he went to Miami. When I reminded them that it is a state school, just like our school and they have their pluses and minuses just like us, they looked at me as if I was telling them I had just seen the Tooth Fairy.

I suppose this workout facility/players lounge will be billed as "the French Riviera West,' and sadly it will probably work!

Den of Lies.

Miami sucks.

If they win even 1 MAC title Martin will be gone and they will drop back to the basement.

Miami will not sleep permanently. I don't claim to know all the reasons, but in every conference there are teams that tend to be near the top, and ones that tend to be near the bottom. Why do teams like Michigan (42) and Ohio State (35) win the Big Ten so often, and teams like Northwestern (8) and Indiana (2) so rarely?

The only factor that really jumps out at me is to have a strong natural recruiting area. Thus it isn't surprising to me that over a very long period, schools like Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Florida, USC, Alabama, and Georgia tend to be historically strong. Similarly it isn't surprising that schools that have historically been #2 in their home state tend to be historically weaker, such as Iowa State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Michigan State.

In the context of the MAC, SW Ohio seems to be an excellent recruiting area, so it isn't surprising that Miami and UC are historically strong. Similarly NW Ohio is good, which explains the historic strength of Toledo, BG, and WMU, all of whom are close to that area. Meanwhile SE Ohio is clearly the weak corner of the state when it comes to recruiting, which explains the historic weakness of Ohio.

In recent years Ohio has recruited fairly well in SW Ohio and Central Ohio, well enough to be competitive, anyway. Judging from this year's class, that is getting more difficult, so Ohio is returning to what they did in the 2005-9 time period, and going after recruits from out of state. I don't question the need for that, but it's going to be difficult to stay competitive year after year without a natural recruiting area.

Meanwhile, what Martin has done for Miami is to re-capture their natural recruiting area. By recruiting strongly in his own backyard, he has had Miami near the top of MAC recruiting the last few years. That alone will make them one of the prime competitors for the MAC East in the next few years.

Nice facility. I think it'll surely help recruiting.

There is more than one way to be successful. If you catch lightning in a bottle and get a coach like PJ Fleck, I'm not sure how much "extra" stuff you need. That said, it certainly doesn't hurt and infrastructure improvements like that are a bit more sustainable.

As for sleeping giant, you don't need to leave SE AHIA for that.

A lot of it is built on nothing more than their own self-sustaining myth. For example, they actually tell their incoming students that they're "The Mother of Ohio Governors." FACT: their alumni have won the Governorship exactly twice in Ohio's history, and the last one left office before WWI. They were no different than Ohio before OSU's founding; otherwise the state would have given them the land grant designation and money. They actually had to shut their doors for the better part of a decade once for a lack of students. Up until the early 60s, they were just another "4 Corners" school with Ohio, BG and KSU.

Miami's myth is based on two things. They've always been something of a "finishing school" for upper-middle class kids who couldn't get into actual prestigious universities, and those types of students are psychologically prone to go out in the world and puff up their school's reputation to ridiculous levels. And second is the Jim Rhodes era when they were the only state school allowed to have selective admissions. And even though that ended in the 80s, there still is a lingering mythology (particularly among older Ohioans) that they are separate from the rest of the system.

As for the "liberal arts" college myth; it's pure nonsense. Yes, Miami is undergraduate focused, but something like 2/3 of their students major in either business or education. That hardly makes them Kenyon. In fact, actual liberal arts majors are a much higher percentage of the student body at both OSU and Ohio.

So what they are is a moderately selective (2nd most selective state college in their own state) school with an overly vocational student body that's still trying to milk the last bit of glory out of an era when they were grossly favored by the state but which ended 30 years ago because it's all they have that keeps them from just being viewed as BG with better ACT scores. You see it in the way that, to this very day, they're still pounding that Public Ivy book like it came out last week. It's all over their website. Does anyone think that Michigan, or Cal or Texas still make any mention of it? I doubt it, but Miami does because it was the zenith of their reputation as a university, and it's all they have to cling on to.

As for Miami "rising up;" meh. They built a new building. Great, but their athletic department is still as big of a fiscal dumpster fire as any other Ohio MAC school. In fact, it's a bit worse, as they take the second largest subsidy in Ohio after UC. They seem to have (finally) hired a solid coach, but if he turns out to be the real deal, he's gone. At best, they'll be the next iteration of Ball St, Toledo, WMU etc and have a few good years and come crashing back after their coach leaves.

And I don't believe their academics (which as I've noted are comically overestimated by them) count for all that much with recruiting. Looked at their press guide, and it seems that Sports Management is the overwhelmingly most popular major among their football players, so I don't see them recruiting any differently than any other MAC school. The only true, systemic advantage they have is being close to the fertile Cincinnati metro area, which might dry up if UC goes back to taking the best of the leftovers with Fickell.

Bet they're the new jet dry type. Everyone here is now jealous.