COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’89 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH : MIAMI DICE : Hurricanes Take a Big Chance on Dennis Erickson

College football’s vagabond coach has turned up this season at Miami, inheriting a highly visible program that was left temporarily without a leader last spring when Jimmy Johnson departed to coach the Dallas Cowboys.

And Dennis Erickson, formerly a Washington State coach who is starting over for the third time in four years, seems to have warmed to his latest challenge.

At Miami, Erickson will have a legitimate chance to compete for the nation’s most highly regarded recruits. His teams will be favored to win most of their games. They’ll have a realistic shot at winning the national championship.

From all indications, this is the situation Erickson laid out for a reporter last year when asked to describe his ideal job.

“No question about it,” he said. “In college football, it’s one of the best jobs in the country.”

In college football.

But even before the Hurricanes have played a single game under their new coach, a national magazine has said Erickson is out of his element and that he belongs in the National Football League.

“That’s not my goal right now,” Erickson said, “but nothing is etched in granite, either.”

With Erickson, it never is.

Although he has never been fired, this is his fourth head-coaching job in eight years.

Only last spring, after leading Washington State to the first top 20 finish in its history, Erickson said of the coaching vacancy at Miami: “I am not interested in that job.”

Only two years before that, he left Wyoming without ever returning to campus to explain his decision to his players.

In both cases, he left a trail of hostility and betrayal.

Erickson, 42, called himself a “young idiot” for the way he handled the jump from Wyoming to Washington State, but he finds it curious that anyone would question his latest move.

“I had opportunities to leave Washington State, other than this, and didn’t even think about them,” he said. “I really liked Washington State, but when you have a chance to go to one of the top programs in the country . . . “

His voice trailed off, but the message was clear: Wouldn’t anybody have made the same jump?

Erickson’s road to Miami led through Pasadena, where last October Washington State overcame a 21-point third-quarter deficit to upset previously unbeaten and No. 1-ranked UCLA, 34-30.

The victory was the highlight of a 9-3 season during which Washington State, which hadn’t won as many games since 1930, finished third in the nation in total offense and beat Houston, 24-22, in the Aloha Bowl for its first bowl victory in 72 years.

“It had a lot to do with where I’m sitting right now,” Erickson said of the nationally televised victory over UCLA. “All the things we were trying to build into that program came together in that game.”

Erickson was in demand.

He had led Idaho to a 32-15 record in four seasons. Then, taking over a Wyoming team that was coming off a 3-8 season, he pulled the Cowboys to .500 in 1986. Washington State was only 3-7-1 in his first season, but last season the Cougars ranked near the top of the Pacific 10 Conference in several offensive categories.

What makes Erickson even more popular is that he produces exciting, wide-open offensive teams.

Fresno State Coach Jim Sweeney, who coached Erickson at Montana State and later hired him as an assistant coach at Fresno State, calls his former prodigy, “Flat out, the best young coach in the country.”

That opinion was shared by Miami Athletic Director Sam Jankovich, a former Washington State athletic director, who made an unpopular choice by wooing Erickson instead of giving the job to Gary Stevens, the Hurricanes’ offensive coordinator under Johnson.

Stevens, who is now the offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, adapted the pro-style attack that was described by Johnson as “the most exciting college offense in the country” and made millionaires of quarterbacks Jim Kelly, Bernie Kosar, Vinny Testaverde and Steve Walsh.

In fact, Walsh, who led Miami to a 23-1 record in the last two seasons, said that he would give up his final year of eligibility if Stevens didn’t get the job, but Jankovich was undaunted.

He wanted someone with head-coaching experience.

“I don’t think this program is at the stage where it can take a chance of having someone learn at our expense, especially in a competitive marketplace,” he said.

Erickson, Jankovich said, “has a lot of the same characteristics, at the same stage, of a Jimmy Johnson--great compatibility within the coaching staff and a (reputation as a) players’ coach.”

Erickson, in fact, is a personable, likable man, despite the reputation he made for himself with the ill-advised handling of his departure from Wyoming, which the coach himself described as a “goofy mess.”

When his Wyoming players left campus for Christmas break, Erickson assured them he would be there when they returned. But when they got back, he was gone. Hired by Washington State at a coaches convention in San Diego, Erickson did not return to Wyoming on the advice of his wife, Marilyn, who told him of death threats that had been made against him. She took several threatening phone calls, she said, and a rock was thrown through a window in the family’s university-owned home two blocks from the Laramie campus.

Erickson, who never returned to collect his belongings, has since apologized for his handling of the situation.

“I still wake up at night in a cold sweat, thinking about what I did,” he said last spring. “I didn’t leave the right way. I was a young idiot. I didn’t do it right.”

His former players called him a traitor. And worse.

Upon his arrival at Washington State, the native of Everett, Wash., told reporters: “I was born and raised in the state. It’s home and that’s the No. 1 thing. I’ve been a Cougar all my life. I love it here and this is where I want to be.”

After Erickson left two years later, Washington State Athletic Director Jim Livengood said in an interview with the Spokane Spokesman-Review that the former coach and his staff weren’t as “focused” on academics as they should have been, revealing that the football team’s cumulative grade-point average during the fall semester last year was 1.94.

“There’s no way of saying this (and not have it) come off as sounding like the coaches didn’t care, which is not the case,” Livengood told the newspaper. “They did care. But it wasn’t to the extent, at least, that I expected.”

Erickson said that his players, unprepared for the success enjoyed by the Cougars last season, lost sight of their academic objectives.

“We got into a season that doesn’t happen there very often and got caught up in winning and going to a bowl game,” he said. “The players lost sight of what they had to do academically. I don’t think you can put that all on my back.”

Pausing for a moment, he said: “But, obviously it’s my fault because I was the head coach.”

At Miami, Erickson came in and scrapped the offense, raising suspicion among his new players, who also were concerned that Erickson might put an end to their showboating, let-us-intimidate-you style.

Erickson apparently alleviated their fears last spring.

Walsh left for the National Football League midway through spring practice, but the more mobile Craig Erickson, who is not related to his new coach, may be better suited to Erickson’s offense, which features motion and keeps the quarterback on the move.

Said Craig Erickson, noting that Washington State’s Timm Rosenbach led the nation last season in passing efficiency: “There’s a lot of good opportunities in (the offense) for a quarterback, throwing in the seams. It features a strong-armed quarterback with quick feet, and I think I fit that role fairly well.”

Erickson learned the basic components of his offense at San Jose State, where he was the offensive coordinator for three seasons under Coach Jack Elway. Elway had picked it up from Jack Neumeier, John Elway’s coach at Granada Hills High School.

Erickson refined it at Idaho and has used it since.

Explaining its success, Erickson said: “When you spread people all over the field, (the other team) has to dictate what it’s going to do to you defensively.”

What Miami will continue to do defensively is intimidate.

“He’s more for that than any of us,” wide receiver Dale Dawkins said of his new coach. “He wants to just go out and get the job done. It don’t matter how we do it--just get it done.

“A lot of people said there’s not going to be all that taunting and finger-pointing. (But) You can’t take that away from us. That’s just the way we play. That’s what we’re used to doing and we play better that way.”

That’s not entirely true, Erickson said.

“I don’t believe in taunting and pointing fingers,” he said. “You won’t see that at Miami. However, what you will see are guys having a lot of fun and if we make a great play, they’re going to jump up and down. They’re going to be excited about making a great hit because that’s what football is all about.”

Erickson isn’t expected to rule with an iron fist.

“When he came in, he said he wasn’t here to stick us down with a 100-page rule book,” said offensive tackle Mike Sullivan. “He said, ‘All we want to do is keep winning.’ ”

Miami, of course, expects to be in a bowl game, possibly playing for the national championship. Expectations are high.

Last spring, linebacker Bernard Clark told a Miami reporter: “We don’t want to go through another season like last year. We don’t want to lose ever again.”

Clark referred to a season during which the Hurricanes were 11-1, losing by only a point to Notre Dame, and wound up No. 2 in the polls after beating Nebraska, 23-3, in the Orange Bowl. In the last three seasons, Miami was 34-2, including 12-0 in 1987, when it won the national championship for the second time in five seasons. The Hurricanes, who have lost only four times in four seasons, have won 42 of their last 43 regular-season games.

Erickson, however, jokes that he is reminded almost every day that only three things are expected of him:

1) Beat Florida State.

2) Beat Notre Dame.

3) Go undefeated.

“Getting the program to where it is has been a great achievement,” Erickson said. “The next achievement will be to keep it at that level.

“There will be a lot of people watching to see where we go. There’s pressure. (But) I knew what the expectations would be.”

In five seasons under Johnson, Miami was 52-9.

Erickson might be as successful, but he will go about his business less flamboyantly than his predecessor. Describing himself as “very, very intense,” Erickson said that he tends to internalize his feelings. While at Idaho he hyperventilated during a halftime speech and fainted in front of his players.

“So far, I haven’t got an ulcer,” he said. “I’ve given my wife one, but I don’t have one.”

Indeed, his wife brings Maalox to every game. She woke up on the morning of last season’s Washington State-Arizona State game with an ulcer.

If she gets that worked up for Arizona State, she might need extra medicine if Miami plays Notre Dame for the national championship Nov. 25 at Miami.

It could happen.

Twelve starters return, including six from a defense that ranked second in the nation last season. Johnson’s last recruiting class was said to be his best and the schedule, before a showdown against Florida State Oct. 28 at Tallahassee, is favorable. The Hurricanes’ first six opponents won only 22 of 68 games last season.

It sounds so good that Erickson might even stick around for a while. His five-year contract imposes stiff financial penalties if he tries to break it. Will he be around when it expires?

“I hope so,” he said. But he can’t say for sure.