JORDAN'S JOURNAL: December 19
12/20/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 20, 2010
Editor's Note: Senior co-captain Jordan Gafford will provide insight on Miami's trip to the GoDaddy.com Bowl in Mobile through a series of journals on MURedHawks.com. While the team is in Oxford, entries will be posted at various intervals, but will appear daily from Mobile.
This week brought about some major changes for the program. A team meeting was called at 10 p.m. on Wednesday night. At the meeting, Coach Haywood announced that he had accepted the coaching job at Pitt. In all honesty, I think a majority of the guys are happy for Coach Haywood and the staff. I know personally, I am thankful for the way coach turned the program around and has helped to get Miami Football back on track and atop the MAC. All in all, the guys took the news well. The team has an unwavering focus on winning on January 6th and I don't see anything getting in the way of our preparation.
Dr. Bates was present at the meeting and spoke to the team as well. I am very thankful for Dr. Bates and his leadership. He assured us that they would begin the coaching search immediately and that the new head coach of Miami Football will be a first-class coach. I believe him and am excited to see how the coaching search goes. Miami is a great job that I am sure will attract a lot of talented coaches. Whoever the new coach is will inherit a very disciplined and experienced team that is returning a huge amount of talent...and is the defending MAC champion!
In terms of the bowl game, my defensive backs coach, Lance "The Cajun" Guidry will be the interim head coach. I was hyped to hear this news. Coach Guidry is one of the most competitive individuals I have ever met. He has a refuse to lose mentality that he comes to work with everyday. When speaking with a reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer I told him, "it doesn't matter if Coach Guidry is playing badminton in the side yard, he is playing to win." This type of attitude and excitement is contagious and is one of the qualities I most admired about Coach Guidry.
There is no doubt in my mind the the team will follow Coach Guidry and be more than ready to play on January 6th. This will be a fun Miami team to watch. It will be a team that plays fearless and has a lot of fun. I know guys are excited to get back to practicing and preparing to play lights-out on the 6th.
I truly wish Coach Haywood and the staff the best and confidently look to the future for a new great leader of Miami Football to arise.
Love and Honor, JG