There's a New Sheriff in Town at Miami

Unless you were under a rock last week, you couldn't help but notice the rash of player suspensions that the University of Miami football team incurred last week. Coach Butch Davis suspended five players in several different incidents, ranging from Jammi German's arrest for burglary and assault to Derrick Ham's suspension for allegedly beating his girlfriend. Twice. In once week.

Now before you Hokies get all high and mighty, let's look at this thing in detail. I watched the stories unfold last week, and I was surprised by how quickly Davis dropped the hammer in every case. He didn't sit around and wait for any court hearings or trials, he just suspended players, BOOM. In Davis's system, if you're suspected of doing something that reeks, you're off the team, period. He waits until the court case or hearings or whatever occur, and THEN he decides whether or not to reinstate the player. In other systems, most notably Tom Osborne's at Nebraska, the coach waits until the outcome of the court case before he decides whether or not to suspend the player. Davis shoots first and asks questions later.

And let me also point something else out. When Tech QB Jim Druckenmiller was arrested for malicious wounding a few months back (a trumped-up charge if I've ever heard of one - since when does a fistfight qualify as malicious wounding? The charges were later dropped), he was not even suspended from the Tech team. He was "disciplined in the context of the team," as Frank Beamer put it. If he had been on Butch Davis's team, he would have been OFF Butch Davis's team, know what I mean?

It's not fun to admit that, is it? Maybe Butch Davis, coach of the outlaw Hurricanes, would have been more ruthless than Frank Beamer in Druck's case.

But the obvious point here is that Davis is probably being so ruthless because his team can't afford any slip-ups. Anymore behavior that the NCAA objects to will probably bring the death penalty, so Davis is not taking chances with players of suspicious moral character. Not to mention that he's still coaching a team full of Dennis Erickson's players. The way things are taking shape, it appears that the only thing Erickson was interested in was pumping up his resume and moving on to the NFL. The Miami program could have done without him.

So far, Davis earns high marks from Miami alumni and fans for his efforts to clean up the program, and the buzz from South Florida is that recruiting is picking back up. Miami will probably be back in full force, either this year or soon. And like it or not, Big East fans, the league needs them. U of M is still the marquee team here, and they're the reason that the Big East is in the Bowl Coalition to begin with.

Turkey Bites

• In a suprising announcement, 11-year Hokie Huddler veteran Chris Colston is leaving. Colston, who is a 1980 graduate of Virginia Tech, has been with the Huddler since 1985, and most recently held the position of editor. Under Colston's guidance, the Huddler doubled in circulation and brought in record revenues the past year (of course, the NIT and Sugar Bowl champion teams might have a little to do with that). Colston is leaving to take an editorial position with Baseball Weekly and will continue to write a weekly column for the Huddler.
• In Hokie hoops news, my sources have told me that Shawn Good "has heard from" a team in Italy and the Orlando Magic. Meanwhile, Damon Watlington has been invited by the Grizzlies to try out at their free agent camp north of the border.
• Nobody answered my question about why the Stanley advertisement referred to their thermos as a "steel bottle" instead of a thermos (see "All Things Athlon" below). The answer, of course, is that "Thermos" is a brand name, not a generic name for those little glass-lined things we used to carry in our lunch boxes.

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