Miami coach Al Golden is a great recruiter. His prowess for going into a recruit’s home and selling the program successfully is immediately visible. The tie, the haircut the can-do attitude – you can see why parents (and their sons) buy what he's selling.

But we have yet to see him be a great coach. Is he a good coach? Sure. It may not be fair, but Golden can’t be a great coach until his team starts winning big games, which it has never done.

What Golden did to the Temple program, while impressive, was not as remarkable as it looked. The Owls were an absolute doormat in the Big East until they left after the 2004 season. Between 1980 and 2008, Temple had a total of one winning season, and did not play in a bowl game for the entire duration.

Golden deserves credit for helping to change the culture in North Philly, but the lion’s share of recognition should go the administration and the Mid-American Conference. The MAC welcomed Temple as a football-only school with open arms starting in 2007, and both sides were smart enough to realize what a good match they were for each other.

The Owls gave the MAC, home to the metropolitan powers of Oxford, Ohio, Muncie, Indiana and DeKalb, Illinois, a top-10 market in Philadelphia. The MAC gave Temple, which was working on three decades of futility, a schedule in which it could be competitive and eventually successful.

Golden was praised as a phenomenal coach because of the rapid turnaround: Temple was 3-31 in the three years preceding him, and around .500 by his second year. But they should have been. As it turned out, playing the likes of Eastern Michigan and Akron tends to be easier on the win column than playing West Virginia and Pitt.

Yet, Golden’s Owls never so much as made the conference championship game, and there isn’t a good reason as to why that’s the case. In 2008, Golden’s third full season, you could see his recruits taking over, particularly at the end of the season. The Owls went 4-4 in the MAC and challenged –including eventual champion Buffalo – everyone they lost to.

2009 Temple had the most talent in the conference. Eight Owls were named First-Team All-MAC. Temple had the conference's best player in defensive tackle Muhammad Wilkerson. It had the best running back in Bernard Pierce. It had far-and-away the best defensive line. It had, if not the best offensive line, one as good as rushing leader Northern Illinois. It had a decent quarterback, and even the best kick returner in the conference statistically.

But thanks to a 35-17 loss on the last day of the regular season to Ohio, the Owls watched the Bobcats represent the MAC East in the MAC Championship Game. Ohio won that game as a result of preparation – the Owls couldn't compensate for a fairly-predictable Ohio offense, and truly lost the game after second-half adjustments.

2010 Temple returned almost every important piece – seven of the eight First-Team All-MAC selections returned – and were in Golden's fifth year, meaning that almost every player on the roster was his recruit.

The Owls finished even worse than the season before. An early season loss to Northern Illinois coupled with a home loss to Ohio knocked Temple out of contention with a week to play. The 5-3 finish in the MAC left Temple without a bowl bid.

The situation Golden is in at Miami is Temple multiplied by 100. He has a distinct advantage over the rest of the ACC because all the recruits he could ever need are in his backyard: Miami-Dade County is one of the biggest hotbeds for football talent in the entire country. He has a popular brand to sell, which he didn't have at Temple. He's at the helm of one of two ACC programs that can say its won it all in the BCS era. And he has a board of trustees that will – to a fault – support its football program.

But Golden, like the Hurricanes of the past eight years, hasn't turned talent into titles.

We'll give him a break for the next two years: These aren't his guys and this isn't his mess. But Miami isn't Philadelphia, and no one is going to throw a parade if he wins nine games. Big games keep cashing big checks. If Golden doesn't flip his history and realize the high standard by the time his recruits are starters – to borrow a famous line from Bill Parcells – he'll always be known as a phenomenal grocery shopper but a lousy cook.