The Fix Is In

Butch Davis would know.

The man most responsible for the Miami Hurricanes being ranked No. 1 in the country and for the Cleveland Browns--with apologies to the San Diego Chargers and Chicago Bears--being the NFL surprise team of the year says it is more difficult going from the NFL to college than from college to the NFL.

Many USC fans are nodding. Maybe the Notre Dame powers who may be willing to get rid of Bob Davie should think carefully about running after Oakland Raider Coach Jon Gruden.

Because Butch Davis is worth listening to.

The Hurricanes are coached by Larry Coker, but they belong--in attitude and talent and spirit--to Davis. The Hurricanes got BCS-ed out of the national championship bowl game last season, but now Miami holds its fate in its hands, and 1,000 miles away in Cleveland, that makes Davis happy.

“I love those kids,” he says. “Of course I keep up with what they’re doing.”

Davis is the coach of the Browns now, a rookie who has done the most masterful turnaround coaching job in the NFL this season.

The Browns, who won all of five games in their first two seasons as an expansion team, have won four already this year. They have a big game against AFC Central leader Pittsburgh today and could grab a share of the division lead.

The team built by Davis in Miami hasn’t been messed up. And a messed-up team previously coached by Chris Palmer has been repaired, it seems, by a man with freckles and some fix-it ability.

Davis helped Jimmy Johnson fix the Dallas Cowboys, then he went to Miami and fixed the Hurricanes. Just when he could have been living large and winning a national title, he left the Hurricanes for another fix-it project.

It was an ugly departure. Davis was called a liar by many close to the Miami program. When his name had been mentioned for the Browns’ job, Davis had said, unequivocally, that he would not leave. Then he left. It was a mistake, Davis has said, to have spoken so adamantly about his future in Miami.

“But if you don’t,” he said last winter, “it hurts you in recruiting.”

If that is what’s known as playing both sides against the middle, hedging bets, if it makes your stomach turn a bit because that means Davis wasn’t telling only his own Miami players he was staying but high school recruits as well, it also can be said that Davis left the Miami program much healthier than he found it. When he arrived, Miami was about ready to be put on probation, with several players who had police records.

And, obviously, Davis has already made the Browns much healthier since he arrived.

Defensive back Ray Jackson says, “The first two years here, there were a lot of cliques. With us as an expansion team, we had a Minnesota group here, San Francisco there, the big-money guys here, the rest of the guys there.

“It’s not like that now. We’re all here on one mission and that’s to get to the playoffs. You see guys standing up during the whole game. We genuinely care about each other here.”

A day after his Browns have blown a 14-point lead over the Chicago Bears in the last 32 seconds of regulation and then lost in overtime, Davis can’t help himself. He smiles at the mention of Miami and clasps his hands together, a muffled clap. Of appreciation, of nostalgia.

Davis has just finished speaking of the Sunday collapse. For 58 minutes of Sunday’s game, the Browns dominated the Bears and were going to be 5-2 and tied for first place with the Steelers.

Because of the way the Browns lost, giving up two touchdowns in 32 seconds, losing the on-side kick, letting the Bears complete a Hail Mary pass, getting an interception returned for an overtime game-winning touchdown, left the players unwilling to feel good about being 4-3.

But it is worth feeling good about. The Browns, who started from scratch two years ago, have accepted Davis, have listened to him, have become no different from a big, well-paid college team.

“I am a big chemistry guy,” Davis says. “I look at this football team a lot like my family. We spend thousands and thousands of hours together during the course of a season. I owe it to the guys on this team to bring in players guys are going to want to be around on an everyday basis.”

It is this ability to be together 15 hours a day, if you have to, that makes Davis say it is easier to go from college to the NFL.

“You can work with your quarterback as many hours as it takes,” Davis says. “You can teach all day long. To me, the restrictions the NCAA places on the number of hours a week coaches can spend with players is a mistake.

“But when you are used to doing that, you might have trouble at first in the college game. You might have an idea of what you want to do but you don’t have the time to teach that to your players.”

Linebacker Dwayne Rudd, who was signed as a free agent by Davis, says he came to Cleveland partly because of Davis:

“You could tell the man understood the game and that he wanted to build a team. He had a record of accomplishing that. He has made us a true team because he got everybody to respect everybody else.”

Even now, Davis says, one of his best coaching jobs was the day Miami beat UCLA in 1998.

“We got beat, 66-13, by Syracuse and then had UCLA,” Davis says. “UCLA was ranked No. 2 in the country and was 10-0 and looking to play for the national championship.... We vowed after we left the locker room at Syracuse that we would never mention that game ever again. We never, ever spoke another word about that game. We didn’t even look at it. We just went straight to work for the next week. We beat UCLA, 49-45.”

Now Davis is going to have to get the Browns to forget about last Sunday’s horrible finish.

“I told the team, ‘Just look at what the Arizona Diamondbacks did,”’ Davis said. “‘They got their hearts ripped out three nights in a row in New York City and it couldn’t have been any more devastating, and yet they bounced back. They continued to believe in themselves and they won the World Series.’ That’s what we’ve got to do.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes . com.