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UM's Garcia looks hard to find hidden talent
By Omar Kelly
Staff Writer
Posted December 19 2005
CORAL GABLES · During his tenure as the Cleveland Browns' vice president of player personnel, Pete Garcia visited numerous college football programs annually, and the one thing he found troubling at just about every stop was that he could easily find recruiting magazines sprinkled around the coaching offices.
Garcia, who built his reputation as Butch Davis' right-hand man at both the University of Miami and in Cleveland, will be the first to tell you there is no science to talent evaluation.
He'll also admit he's far from perfect at it, which explains why under his watch the Browns drafted William Green instead of Clinton Portis, a Hurricane tailback he and Davis coached.
But now that he has returned to UM as an associate athletic director, Garcia plans to use the knowledge he has acquired in the pros to revolutionize how college teams evaluate and recruit prospects. And coach Larry Coker, who he meets with regularly, seems willing to let Garcia use the Hurricanes as his guinea pig.
"At most colleges, they feel they don't have the time or resources to turn over every rock searching for players," Garcia said. "Most colleges take the easy way out, going after the kids being recruited by the major powers. Everyone else wants them so you feel you have to go get them.
"Go look at any pro team's draft board and you'll be amazed at how many players are being selected in the first three rounds from small schools that were overlooked by the big powers."
Garcia has encouraged Miami's coaches to ignore recruiting lists and trust their own evaluations. The goal is to find more of the hidden gems that helped transform UM into a dynasty the past two decades.
By hidden gems, he's referring to players like Santana Moss, Ed Reed, Phillip Buchanon, Portis, Jeremy Shockey, Jerome McDougle and Jonathan Vilma. Each of those players Garcia helped bring to UM wasn't a highly touted high school player, but most of them turned into first-round picks. Portis was the exception, and as it turned out he's presently the NFL's highest-paid running back.
Garcia believes there are dozens of hidden gems to be found each year, and he's convinced UM's staff to trust their own elevations of a player's athletic ability, character and intellect to discover who best fits Miami's system as opposed to putting all their energy into targeting the nation's top prospects.
Freshman linebacker Darryl Sharpton is the perfect example of the type of player UM is trying to build its program around. The only other Division I-A school that offered Sharpton a scholarship was Stanford, but he quickly established himself this fall as one of Miami's most promising freshmen.
"Just because he's not 6-foot, most colleges said, `you can't play football for me,'" assistant head coach Art Kehoe said of Sharpton. "That guy will spend his whole life trying to prove to the world that he belongs here, and belongs in the NFL. That's what we want."
Even though Kehoe admits he has made recruiting mistakes, he said four issues are investigated to determine if a player is meant to be a Hurricane.
Is he a hard worker, someone who will study film when it's not demanded, like Reed does? Is he tough mentally and physically? Does he really love football, or is he just playing it because he's big? And is he smart, not just book smart, but also a thinker on the football field.
"How do you put a value on toughness, leadership ability, loving the game, caring about your teammates," Kehoe said. "The one thing Pete's talked to us about is when a red flag comes up, pay attention. Don't be enamored with a kid because FSU, USC, Penn State wants him. When you get guys with the right character and the right work ethic into your program, you're going to win. Making a mistake because a kid's fast and can jump over a building will cost you in the long run."
