Miami Football: 5 reasons why the Hurricanes will win the title in 2017

2. Mark Richt is an elite coach

From 1978 to 1982 Mark Richt played quarterback at Miami. He saw limited action in his college football career, instead he held a clipboard for Hurricane star Jim Kelly. Shortly after his college career ended he began to climb the coaching ranks before settling in as the offensive coordinator at Florida State.

In 2001 he took over as the head coach at Georgia. Richt’s tenure at Georgia could be best described with the word “almost”. He took the Bulldogs to the brink of contending for national championships several times and only finished the season unranked four times in 16 seasons.

The biggest knock on Richt was his inability to win the big game. Bob Stoops’ detractors used similar arguments against him, but he had the one national title to fall back on. Richt doesn’t have that, not yet.

Regardless, Richt’s all time record as a head football coach currently sits at 154-55. That’s a .737 career winning percentage, most of that coming in the SEC during it’s hayday of what felt like endless championships. There are no awards for second place, yet the list of truly elite head football coaches is short.

Four active head coaches have won a national title: Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher and Dabo Swinney. Mark Richt is absolutely in the running for a top ten coach, if not higher. He’s going to put all the pieces together at some point. Why not 2017?