Playing out the string

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla.

Al Groh trotted off the field for the 110th time as Virginia’s head football coach on Saturday at Miami’s Land Shark Stadium.

One has to wonder if this was one of his last few times participating in the ritual while wearing the orange and blue.

For three hours, Groh battled. He coached his defense on the sidelines. He tried to inspire the lifeless offense. He barked at officials, who seemed to find new ways to bungle calls.

Inevitable conclusions

In the end, there was nothing the embattled veteran coach could do to change the outcome — a 52-17 beating at the hands of a Miami program that is starting to rediscover its swagger.

Afterward, Groh looked like a beaten man. He attempted to inject some humor into the postgame press conference, held in the pro stadium’s Field Club, an unusual setting for such a gathering, at least in college football.

“Field Club, huh?” Groh said to handful of reporters. “I thought clubs were where you went to have fun.”

There wasn’t much fun for Groh on this sunny Saturday in South Florida. His offense was its usual woeful self and his defense, as has been the case recently, bowed to the pressure of an unrelenting and talented Miami offense that ran up 83 physically-draining plays.

Other than a pair of blocked punts, UVa’s special teams weren’t so special, either — particularly when victimized by a spectacular, bone-jarring 60-yard punt return by the Hurricanes’ Thearon Collier, a guy Groh warned his team about all week long.

In happier times

Throughout the day, Groh’s mind must have drifted back to 2007, when he brought the Cavaliers to Miami and delivered the worst beating in Hurricanes history — a shocking 48-0 whipping that ruined the school’s farewell party in the old Orange Bowl.

The difference in talent on the two rosters must have been disturbing. Groh talked afterward about all of Miami’s playmakers and how his team knew its only chance to survive this test would be to contain those talented Hurricanes.

Didn’t happen.

Miami rolled up 52 points, the most since it pummeled hapless Charleston Southern 52-7 last year. The Hurricanes put up 515 yards of total offense, the most since routing Florida A&M three years ago.

A defense, no matter how good it may be, can only stay on the field for a certain amount of time before yielding to constant pressure.

Consider that Miami’s running game, ranked 95th in the country, rushed for 268 yards against the Wahoos.

All of this led to Virginia’s third straight loss and its 10th over the last 13 games.

Certainly, Groh realizes that the end is near.

He’s been around the block enough to know when things turn for the worst. In previous years, give the man credit. He’s been able to hold teams together under the worst conditions, rally them, coach them up, and turn potential disasters into respectable seasons.

The magic may be gone.

With heavyweights Boston College, Clemson and Virginia Tech lying dead ahead, the Cavaliers will not be favored to win another game.

Groh will coach his hardest, try to salvage some glory out of what little there is left to fight for. In the end, we suspect it won’t be enough to hold off the clamoring for a change in the program’s direction.

Losing at home to Duke, once the laughingstock of ACC football, was a blow. Losing by a lopsided count to a revived Miami program that Groh’s guys walloped two years ago, was yet another.

“Clearly we played a team — that we could see last year with all of the young players — on their way back to being a powerful team,” Groh said of the 16th-ranked Hurricanes. “Earlier in the year it caught our attention when they beat a team like Oklahoma. When you can match up with athletes like that, that was an indication to us. We certainly saw that with our own eyes today.”

What the Virginia coach also saw with his own eyes was a lack of that type of athletes in his own program, which is one of the major factors in the Cavaliers’ downfall.

While Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage insists that no decision will be made on Groh’s fate until the end of the season, the writing is on the wall.

Groh can surely sense it, just as if he were smelling out a new scheme to blitz an opposing quarterback.

It appears that neither the win count over the rest of the month nor financial obstacles (an estimated $4.5 million buyout for the remaining two years of his contract), will have any bearing on Virginia’s impending decision to make a change.

The end is near and like a drowning man thrown overboard in stormy waters, it appears there’s nothing Groh can do to save himself.

There are no more lifelines.