Randy Shannon Has Been Through a Lot

As I noted in the last Miami post I did, it’s been easy to dislike Miami for a while. When they were good, they were obnoxiously good and seen as outlaws. When they declined, they were still equally obnoxious, but it was an unwarranted swagger. Randy Shannon has done his part to do what just about every coach sets out to do, which is change some of the “culture” around a program perceived to have a bit of an attitude problem.↵↵What drives Shannon to this end? Does he just want to be the man who cleaned up The U’s rep? No, it runs a little deeper than that. In a must-read bit from Sports Illustrated, you get the following about Shannon’s childhood:↵

↵↵-- At age 3, Shannon’s father was murdered. (This drives Shannon’s zero tolerance gun policy.)↵
↵-- At age 10, his older twin brothers became addicted to crack cocaine. Both brothers died of AIDS.↵
↵-- At age 16, he had his daughter come into the world.↵

↵↵Shannon is kind of anonymous to the average college football fan, largely because his two years at The U have really produced pretty middling records by the school’s own lofty standards. If they keep pulling off big, national TV wins, he’ll be anonymous for about another 10 seconds.↵

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