Randy Shannon's Story

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Johnny Olson

Johnny Olson

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If nothing else, he has an unbelievable story of rising from adversity. What an inspiration.

At age three, Shannon's father was murdered. At 10, his older twin brothers became addicted to crack cocaine. His brothers and older sister died of AIDS.[2] Shannon studied at Miami's Norland High School and earned all-state and honorable mention All-America recognition from Street & Smith's as a senior linebacker at Norland. Shannon also competed in basketball, averaging 19 points a game, and competed in the triple jump on the track and field team.[3]
Shannon is a graduate of Miami Norland High School in Miami Gardens, Florida. He played college football for the University of Miami, starting at outside linebacker for the 1987 national championship team.
After graduating in 1988, Shannon played briefly as a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys.

per Wikipedia
 

That's all fine and good, but the point is to hire someone who can win football games. Shannon failed at a helmet school. How do you expect him to succeed at Minnesota?
 

I think that Shannon can be a great coach but didn't fit the type of coach Miami needs right now. Miami needs a salesman to sell the program to boosters and fans and needs to fill seats, which is why they are targeting Gruden at this point.
 

goldengophers said:
I think that Shannon can be a great coach but didn't fit the type of coach Miami needs right now. Miami needs a salesman to sell the program to boosters and fans and needs to fill seats, which is why they are targeting Gruden at this point.
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Brewster? LOL
 

Overcoming adversity is great, but the coach is hired to win games, I don't care if he was weaned on caviar.
 


Monty519 said:
Brewster? LOL
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Miami's best coaches, Howard and Jimmy, have been the eccentric types which is what I believe they are going for in Gruden. I think Shannon can be a very successful head-coach but that Miami wasn't the best fit for his personality.
 

I am not advocating that he should be hired. He under coached his program.

I do believe that he shows a lot of hope for kids that have to over come long odds.
 

Highly sought after coaches, coaches that are successful, wouldn't be expressing interest in any jobs like Shannon is doing. Take any successful coach, and they know they can get a job most anywhere they want, and they aren't going to try to use the media to express interest.

I'm really hoping they don't seriously consider Shannon, much rather have the "pretty girl in school" that has a much better track record and is playing hard to get
 

I'm on the Shannon Bandwagon, he's not my first choice, but he is far from the epic disaster people are making him out to be.
 



Randy Shannon got fired at 5-3 in ACC play.
He was rebuilding a broken program (it was very broken)
He was starting a True Freshman QB due to the fact J. Harris (who was admittedly mediocre) was injured.
The administration was not patient because they didn't think it was a complete rebuilding job.

Going 5-3 in a BCS conference on a team with major QB problems indicates that maybe he can coach a little bit.



Randy Shannon at 5-3 in Conference play would have been Mason's best season in Big Ten play.
While I am not gonna call him my favorite candidate, he would not be a bad hire.
 


Rosemountian said:
Randy Shannon got fired at 5-3 in ACC play.
He was rebuilding a broken program (it was very broken)
He was starting a True Freshman QB due to the fact J. Harris (who was admittedly mediocre) was injured.
The administration was not patient because they didn't think it was a complete rebuilding job.

Going 5-3 in a BCS conference on a team with major QB problems indicates that maybe he can coach a little bit.



Randy Shannon at 5-3 in Conference play would have been Mason's best season in Big Ten play.
While I am not gonna call him my favorite candidate, he would not be a bad hire.
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+1

He's my fallback guy. Not the best, but far from the worst.
 

The disconnect for most is that Miami, since 2007, has had recruiting classes ranked in the top 20 of the country every year, as high as #5. They play in the ACC, a weaker conference. And he could never do better than 5-3 - how can we expect him to do better than 5-3 in a tougher conference, with less talent on the roster to begin with, and less of a natural advantage (i.e. being in a city with more D-I recruits coming out of one school than come out of the entire state of Minnesota)?

I'd be willing to give Shannon a chance - it could be that the situation just didn't fit him there - but there are those questions that will loom until proven otherwise.
 



Gopher07 said:
The disconnect for most is that Miami, since 2007, has had recruiting classes ranked in the top 20 of the country every year, as high as #5. They play in the ACC, a weaker conference. And he could never do better than 5-3 - how can we expect him to do better than 5-3 in a tougher conference, with less talent on the roster to begin with, and less of a natural advantage (i.e. being in a city with more D-I recruits coming out of one school than come out of the entire state of Minnesota)?

QUOTE]

The 2007 recruiting class is currently redshirt juniors, they are still a young team.
He didn't have a QB.

I think Shannons biggest problem at Miami was failure to ever recruit an elite QB.
It was Jacory harris or Robert Marve, and they both ended up being pretty average. The rest of the team played pretty well.
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Gopher07 said:
They play in the ACC, a weaker conference. And he could never do better than 5-3 - how can we expect him to do better than 5-3 in a tougher conference, with less talent on the roster to begin with, and less of a natural advantage (i.e. being in a city with more D-I recruits coming out of one school than come out of the entire state of Minnesota)?
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Exactly. You can't look at Miami's record and expect it to be the same at Minnesota. The job is infinitely tougher here.
 

Shannon wouldn't be at the top of my list, but I tend to agree with what Holtz said refering to Shannon: You make a lot of mistakes in your first head coaching job. That's why I think what he did or didn't do at Miami may not tell the whole story, just like how well Hoke did in his first years at Ball State may not mean much. Won-loss records are just a piece to the puzzle.
 

During Shannon's six years as UM's defensive coordinator, his defenses ranked as follows in total defense nationally:

2001 - 6th
2002 - 7th
2003 - 2nd
2004 - 28th
2005 - 4th
2006 - 7th
 

josh087 said:
Exactly. You can't look at Miami's record and expect it to be the same at Minnesota. The job is infinitely tougher here.
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Tougher? Yes. Infintely tougher? No. Recruiting will be tougher, no doubt. And the ACC is generally easier then the Big 10, but not by leaps and bounds. And this year, for example, Miami played Ohio State, Pitt and South Florida in non-conference, which is far tougher then anything Minnesota has done in decades, even with USC on the schedule. There's no way they lose to UVa if Harris doesn't get hurt, and they likely don't lose to USF if he's healthy either. At 9-3 he probably doesn't get fired.

There's certainly risk to Shannon, but the idea that he was some sort of epic failure at Miami is misguided. Coker did not leave the program in a position where they could just send out offers and wait for them to roll in. The #1 complaint I hear is 'he had top 10 recruiting classes, but only won X games.' So is he to be punished for having the highly ranked recruiting classes? Would you feel better if they had been ranked at the same level as Minnesota and he had the same record?

The bottom-line is that, with effort, I think he would recruit the local era as well as anyone else, and he'd also be able to steal some kids from FL, at least for a time. As for his game-day coaching, it was probably medicore, but certainly far better then Brew. If he comes here, I would want it to be with a new OC, as Mark Whipple has not impressed me.
 

Gold Vision said:
During Shannon's six years as UM's defensive coordinator, his defenses ranked as follows in total defense nationally:

2001 - 6th
2002 - 7th
2003 - 2nd
2004 - 28th
2005 - 4th
2006 - 7th
Click to expand...

Now that's something we can mark in favor of hiring him.
 

After the ESPN 30 for 30 feature on Miami football unless the cocaine money starts flowing back into Miami and the $100 bills start getting handed out the way they were back then, Miami isn't going to challenge Florida and Florida State for supremacy again.
 


A no nonsense butt kicker of a coach that could recruit locally would be great. Perhaps Shannon is the guy.
 

goldengophers said:
I think that Shannon can be a great coach but didn't fit the type of coach Miami needs right now. Miami needs a salesman to sell the program to boosters and fans and needs to fill seats, which is why they are targeting Gruden at this point.
Click to expand...


The talk of hiring Shannon is completely INSANE. Have we stooped so low that we accept the scraps that Miami has discarded, but unwilling, because of 'Minnesota nice', to talk about the candidate, Leach, that Miami will probably hire?!?!
 

Helped clean up Miami, graduates his players, has head coaching experience. Having been the head coach at Miami would drum up some interest, I'm sure that includes some potential recruits.
 

He had many successful years as a coordinator also. The guy seems like he knows how to run a successful defense. I'm sure he learned quite a bit with his experience at Miami. I wouldn't necessarily call him a "great" hire but I'd be fine with it.
 

If you want a great read on Randy Shannon, find the SI cover story they did on him. I'm sure google can help you find it. It's legit.

As for him coaching here - fine. Perfect. The guy knows the game in and out, relates well to college kids and has a great relationship with most high school coaches in the Miami area.

People would love him here. He's an absolute no nonsense guy. He would win and he would win the right way. His teams got progressively better every year since he got there (yeah I know this year's team had a worse record than last year's, but they were in a good spot before Jacory Harris got hurt), but he never won the ACC championship. Big deal. When was our last Big Ten Championship.

Remember folks, all those other coaches that had success at Miami did so in THE BIG EAST. Plus, the programs they run were shady as f*ck.

Call me crazy, but I'd be all about Randy Shannon. Or Troy Calhoun.
 

Gopher07 said:
The disconnect for most is that Miami, since 2007, has had recruiting classes ranked in the top 20 of the country every year, as high as #5. They play in the ACC, a weaker conference. And he could never do better than 5-3 - how can we expect him to do better than 5-3 in a tougher conference, with less talent on the roster to begin with, and less of a natural advantage (i.e. being in a city with more D-I recruits coming out of one school than come out of the entire state of Minnesota)?

I'd be willing to give Shannon a chance - it could be that the situation just didn't fit him there - but there are those questions that will loom until proven otherwise.
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Exactly.

I'll support whomever is chosen to lead our Golden Gophers, very much like I did Brew (unlike most, who hated him from the start). But the bolded nailed it.
 


I would prefer Mullen and Leach, but I can't help but think Randy Shannon is the best of the rest (Edsall, Calhoun, Golden, Fedora, Hoke). In fact, the only other coach I would even compare to Shannon would be Jerry Kill and we never hear about him being a candidate.

-We wanted a defensive minded coach. Well, there probably isn't a D-Coordinator who did a better job in the country than Shannon at Miami. All of his defenses but 1 finished in the top 10 of the country except 1 (28th). He will obviously be a solid recruiter. He is a stand up guy, no nonsense and really cleaned up the Miami program. He walked into a bad situation that Coker left for him and had Miami going in the right direction. It's hard to say, but he probably wouldn't be without a job if Harris had not gotten hurt.
 

I think Shannon is probably a better coach than people give him credit for. Miami is and has been since the Jimmy Johnson days, a football team with unlimited football team and low on discipline. Even those National Championship teams were incredibly undisciplined but they were just something that college football had never seen before. I feel like Shannon is probably a better coach than people give him credit for but he just did not fit the type of players that Miami seems to inevitably get. You can have 100 guys running 4.3s, but if they are all undisciplined idiots; you do not have much of a football team. I would take him.
 

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