Legendary high school coach/former Miami assistant Tim “Ice” Harris: Hurricanes will shock nation, “winning starts right now”

Miami Booker T. Washington’s Tim Harris is a legendary high school coach who has led the Tornadoes to state titles in 2007, ’12 and ’13. In between he has ties to the Miami Hurricanes program, coaching the running backs under Al Golden (2014-15) and working as assistant to head coach Randy Shannon from 2008-10.

Oh, and did we mention one of his sons, Brandon, played cornerback for Miami while another is now the Hurricanes’ running backs coach, Tim Jr.?

Yes, Ice has the pulse on all things high school football … and a pretty good sense of where things are heading in the college ranks.

Which brings us to this: Harris says the Miami Hurricanes are oh-so-close to what fans want to see, a return to the top of the nation.

Asked to pick a year when he thinks UM will be a playoff team, Harris doesn’t hesitate.

“It’s got to be now,” he says. “I think right now they are setting themselves up, have the staff together. What I saw in the spring and at the clinics, these coaches are putting it together. They’ve got a philosophy, a standard that they want to go with and I think now watching it from the outside looking in I’d say the kids are buying into what coach (Mario Cristobal) is putting together and the way coach is going with the program.

“I think the winning starts right now. Where they want to go is going to happen now, and the kids that they are bringing in, they want to make sure that things happen now. So everything fits the circle that you have to fit, and I’m looking for them – and they are as well – that the winning starts right now and being in the playoffs starts right now.”

So yes, Harris predicts that Miami – which most experts believe will win 7 or 8 games this season – will shock the world in 2023.

“You can call it shock, whatever, I just think it’s things that are going to happen and have to happen because of the people and how they are developing their kids,” Harris said. “What I saw in the spring – you can just imagine the tempo and where it’s going through the summer and what they are doing in that weight room. That shows a lot in terms of where our kids will be. I feel great in terms of where they are going and where they are going to be in January.”

Harris isn’t the only guy on the Booker T. staff with a very personal attachment to UM. Two of his coaches, offensive coordinator Davon Johnson and running backs coach Eduardo Clements, played at Miami out of Booker T.

Tim “Ice” Harris

“It’s great – we’re big on guys who played for Booker T. and went on to play in college and come back and want to get into education, get into coaching,” Harris said. “That’s what we are there for, to make sure we set a standard for young guys that want to get into coaching and doing it the right way.”

Harris points to a Benedick Hyppolite, who played and coached at Booker T. and is now an analyst at Miami, as well as former Miami OL Brandon Washington (played for UM when Harris was there, graduated from Miami Northwestern), who is now the line coach at UM’s third opponent of the season, Bethune-Cookman.

“My high school coach helped me, and now we are just trying to make sure we do what we can to help young people who want to get into education and into coaching,” Harris said.

Harris sees the University of Miami as a continuing conduit for that, and points to it as a “traditional historic program that’s been consistent throughout.”

“(Even with the struggles) the kids move onto the NFL, so we’ve had development here that every young kid has to be able to look at that big picture and see what’s happening in that area,” Harris said. “Their guys are graduating, going off to the NFL. There are a lot of high standards here and kids have to be ready and have the dreams and goals to go after it if you choose to be a Hurricane.”

With that in mind, does the team need to win now to land top recruits?

“Well, they’ve been doing a good job with recruiting because of the people that they have here,” Harris said. “Whatever the record is, the people that coach has put together here at the University, you can see the recruits are coming in and committing not just for ’24 but beyond. They see what’s happening because of the people. The way they are developing and coaching the young men, the winning is going to happen. It’s going to come. They are on the right track.”

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