OxfordPress.com

For Miami University football fans, for Shane Montgomery and his staff, for the players who came into the season with a sunny mixture of talent, experience and high expectations, the last five weeks have been pure misery.

It's hard to believe how much has changed since Oct. 25.

When that day started, the RedHawks had seemed reborn and renewed. Despite their 2-5 record overall, they had real hopes of making a return trip to the Mid-American Conference championship game, Montgomery had real reasons to think his team had turned the corner, fans had real reasons to come watch Miami take on Kent State in the fourth of a record-breaking six home games this season.

The week before, the reeling RedHawks had gone to Bowling Green, the MAC East Division preseason favorite, and had outplayed the Falcons, winning 27-20 behind a fresh, new offense led by redshirt freshman quarterback Clay Belton and true freshman running back J.R. Taylor and behind a defense that made big plays (Robbie Wilson's interceptions, Joe Conliglio's three tackles for loss) instead of giving them up.

Up to that point, nobody else in the MAC East Division had shown any signs of pulling away from the pack. If the Bowling Green game was a sign of things to come, if the RedHawks could win, say, four of their remaining five games — three of which were at home — they almost certainly would win the third MAC East title in Montgomery's four years as head coach.

Everything would have been just fine.

But everything was not fine. Whatever the win at Bowling Green represented — a bad day for the Falcons, a fleeting glimpse of what might have been, a last hurrah — it was not an indication of things to come. This was not the real RedHawks of 2008, however much they wanted to believe it was.

The real RedHawks of 2008, did not play with a sense of urgency, exuberance or precision in the first quarter, consistently had to come from behind, were prone to injuries, had a hard time completing passes that gained any significant yardage, and had momentary lapses on defense which turned opponents' 5-yard gains into 50-yard gains.

The real RedHawks of 2008 showed up the following week at home against Kent State, not a particularly strong team. The final score that day, 54-21, started the final decline which led directly to Montgomery's resignation.

It was a decline Miami's football program could not afford. Not with the ever-present problem of attracting fans to Yager Stadium even when things are going well.

One year the RedHawks needed to draw 21,000 fans for their final home game in order to avoid Division I-A probation for lack of attendance.

That took place not during one of the three losing seasons under Montgomery, but rather in 2004, Terry Hoeppner's last year in Oxford, the year Miami won the MAC East title and went to the Independence Bowl.

So you can imagine the Miami administration's dismay, during a season in which the school played six home games for the first time in its history, that its team could manage only one unimpressive victory at Yager Stadium against a Division I-AA opponent.

It was a disastrous season, and regardless of whether he could have prevented it, Montgomery as head coach was the man wearing the bull's-eye on his back. It goes with the job — always has, always will.

I don't think Montgomery is a bad coach. There is a learning process involved in this profession, often painful, always difficult. And Montgomery, besides being a classy human being, is an extremely smart man. I see this as a temporary setback for a coach who has, I predict, championship days ahead.

But for now the football is out of Montgomery's hands.

Now, with the future of Miami football hanging in the balance, as the search for a new coach no doubt has begun, it's in the hands of Miami Director of Athletics Brad Bates.

Good luck to Shane, good luck to Brad. I'm not sure who needs it more.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.