Miami Hurricanes Football 2011: Wanted, A Quarterback Who Is Able To Lead

College football is all about the quarterback, plain and simple.  Although the Heisman Trophy winner doesn't always win you a championship, all good teams were built around great quarterbacks.

Within the last 10 years, nine of the Heisman Trophy winners were quarterbacks. All of them part of a BCS bowl game.

The NFL is different; there are so many great players and so many different leaders that not every team has a great quarterback that leads. (See Trent Dilfer and the Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl year.)

In college, almost every great team has a great quarterback that leads them; unfortunately for Miami, they haven't had one since 2002.

Ken Dorsey was a Hurricane legend; in fact with a college record of 38-2, he is arguably the greatest college quarterback ever.  Granted he had a loaded team during his time, but he was still the leader.

The best thing about Dorsey was his ability to make big throws during desperate times with limited mistakes.

In fact, all the great Miami teams had great quarterbacks. The list includes Vinny Testeverde, Jim Kelly, Bernie Kosar, Steve Walsh, Gino Teretta, Dorsey and Craig Erickson.

Since Dorsey left, Miami has had unreliable quarterbacks. This list includes Brock Berlin, Robert Marve, Kyle Wright, Kirby Freeman and now Jacory Harris.

Granted, Berlin, Wright and Freeman were successful in winning bowl games, but they still were unable to lead with the great players that they had. Based off the 2000, 2001 and 2002 seasons, the Hurricanes were still getting great recruits in.

Jacory Harris was to change all the bad luck at quarterback, and after a decent freshman season, he took over as Robert Marve left the team.

Harris had a sophomore season of ups and downs.  He had some great starts and showed some leadership skills after the first four games of the season in which he led the team to a 3-1 record; all teams were ranked.

The problem with Harris is that he does not understand the speed of Division I football.  His passes are lobbed in instead of zipped, and that caused a majority of his 17 interceptions.

Last year, Harris was supposed to have fixed the issues, but after a four-interception game against Ohio State in just the second game of the season, it was apparent that his interception problem wasn't fixed.

Harris ended up with 15 interceptions and that was while starting only nine games.

After a hard hit at Virginia sidelined Harris for three games, redshirt freshman Stephen Morris came in to fill the void. 

Morris almost brought Miami back against Virginia, but it was too little, too late.

Morris did go on to a 2-2 record, not bad considering the circumstances, but he was too interception prone, throwing nine interceptions in the six games he was in.

There are good things to take out of the play of Morris.  One, his arm is much better then Harris and two, he is a much better scrambler.

If Morris can limit his mistakes this spring and fall, there should be no way that new head coach Al Golden can keep him off the field.

The main issue for Golden is getting either Morris or Harris ready.  Not just physically, but mentally. 

All the Miami greats have had great football minds and great knowledge of the game.  I see it in both Harris and Morris, but considering Morris is more athletically gifted, I believe he needs to be the main starter.

His leadership will improve, especially since he got some starts his freshman year.

Once that happens, the Hurricanes can get back, but without a great quarterback, we will be saying, again, "Wait 'til next year!"