All publicity not good publicity for FIU football

FIU football is grabbing national attention, but it’s not for a great catch or big win.

It’s for players stripping naked at the beach and using the public shower.

Welcome to the FIU football program.

What put FIU on the map was the infamous brawl with the University of Miami in 2006. What a way to grab headlines, by getting thumped 35-0 and making SportsCenter for starting one of the worst on-field brawls in football history.

We also had something unique to Miami and college football: a Cuban-American Head Coach—Mario Cristobal.

Just before the beginning of the 2011 season, Cristobal received a five-year contract extension that would keep him at FIU through 2016 after the school’s first ever bowl appearance and win. A feat that would have gotten you laughed out of the room for mentioning it just three years earlier when the team won a single game in two seasons.

In 2011, FIU completed its best ever regular-season at 8-4, but failed to win the Sun Belt Championship. FIU was still able to go to a bowl game based on its record.

Even in defeat, FIU achieved another milestone by going to its second consecutive bowl game.

But then, there was last season, where FIU regressed back to the struggles of its youth, posting a 3-9 record after being picked to win the Sun Belt title in its final season with the conference.

FIU was not heard from until last December when they thrust back into the spotlight by firing Cristobal.

Cristobal, who was set to make $453,000 (and will still be paid until 2016), continued to get contract extensions to keep him around and was let go, seemingly on a whim for a 3-9 season after two straight bowl appearances.

Since Cristobal was fired, the football team has been making its own headlines. Whether it’s from Kedrick Rhodes being charged with firing off a gun on campus, Marques Cheeks and Raymond Jackson shooting at each other with airsoft guns and having their coach take them out of police custody or Jeremiah McKinnon threatening a person in their car, the team seems to keep bringing this negative attention onto themselves.

Finally, the only way to grab everyone’s attention during the offseason: shower naked at a public beach and send out a press release about it. That one got picked up by most major sports websites and local television stations just to make fun of them and the University.

So, over the past seven years, most of the reasons the University and FIU football have ended up on the news or SportsCenter is because of negativity. Only two or three times has it been for something good, like going to a bowl game.

Let’s improve the quality of the athletes we bring into our University instead of the kids that bring in the bad attention, like getting naked at a public beach and showering, allegedly.

It’s like putting a fresh paint job on a beat-up pickup truck.

Painting it is not fixing any of the mechanical issues: it’s just making it look better.

Oh wait. . . we did that with our basketball court.

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