Miami coach Al Golden.JPG

Miami coach Al Golden, a Colts Neck native, has not wavered on his commitment to the school as they've undergone NCAA investigation.

(Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)

Eight months into his tenure as Miami's football coach, Al Golden received a call. He still remembers this day acutely. Shawn Eichorst, then Miami's athletic director, was on the other end. A story would be coming out the next day that would allege that the school was party to one of the biggest scandals to hit college football.

Golden had just finished the second scrimmage of training camp. He was 22 days from beginning his first season at the school. For a few hours he did not understand the significance of that call. When he arrived on campus the next morning, with TV trucks from every major network parked outside of his office, it struck him.

Golden and Miami have since resided in NCAA purgatory, all stemming from allegations made by Nevin Shapiro, a former Miami booster convicted for running a nearly billion dollar Ponzi scheme. From prison he has tried to scorch his formerly beloved Hurricanes. The university's culpability has been held in the hands of the often slow-moving NCAA, which has taken the investigation at a glacial pace.

"It’s hard enough to beat Tallahassee or Blacksburg," Golden said. "Now you have to try to fend off an amorphous entity, if you will, in the NCAA. We have not been able to make the allegations and the threat of sanctions into a fixed value, which has prevented us from moving forward.

"It’s truly been a much more difficult probation than probation itself. Because once you’re vulnerable in this business, there’s no way to circumvent it."

To the investigation, Golden has been a bystander of sorts. When the school met with the NCAA's Committee of Infractions in Indianapolis last month, he was there, but he was not at the school when the alleged violations occurred.

The wonder has been why he chose not to leave. College coaches have fled for less. He surprised even his parents by staying. But Golden says he never even considered it. Instead, he has continued to recruit, putting together well regarded classes, and making steady progress in the standings.

And he expects nothing less. To witness it, look no further than his roots, from Colts Neck to Temple. Or you can listen for it before every Miami home game.

Before Golden took over, the Hurricanes came out on to the field to "Born to Run." Golden added another Bruce Springsteen song, "Land of Hope and Dreams."

"This train, all aboard," Springsteen sings.

"And if you’re not, the train will leave you behind,” Golden says.

* * *

It took Bill Bradshaw 10 minutes to decide to hire Golden as Temple's next football coach. In 2005, the program was a wasteland – the nadir of Division-I college football. Its previous coach had announced a month into the season that he would not return, then finished out an 0-11 year in the school's first season since being kicked out of the Big East.

That sent Bradshaw, the school's athletic director, on a hunt for a new coach and it put him into a small hotel room in Charlottesville, Va., where Golden was Virginia's defensive coordinator and Temple had just been defeated the day before.

Ten minutes into their Sunday morning interview, Bradshaw wrote down four words on a piece of paper: "This is our guy."

"Al impressed me as someone who wanted to build something that lasted and which he did eventually," Bradshaw said.

"That morning he described what he was going to do. He saw things that others did not. That’s what impressed me about Al. And, obviously, his intensity. Al didn’t do anything that wasn’t excellent."

That intensity has carried well for Golden. Growing up in Matawan it is the singular characteristic his parents remember of him. The youngest of three sons to Toni and Al Sr., Al was impassioned. Where his older brother Shaun, now a Monmouth County sheriff, reacted to a poor Little League game by moving on, Al would get stirred up.

In high school, when the family moved to Colts Neck, he played football and basketball at Red Bank Catholic, and would lift weights at the same local gym as Springsteen, sometimes acting as his spotter.

“He always knew what he wanted," Toni said. "Intensity. Competitive. But he was a good kid.”

In 1993, Golden decided upon coaching as his career – an unforeseen route. He had played at Penn State and then spent one year in the NFL with the Patriots. He had intended to finish his masters in political science and go into public service.

That plan changed after he was cut from the Patriots by Bill Parcells. It spurred a friendship between the two that has lasted. “That kid reminds me of me,” Parcells once told Al Sr.

"It had a profound impact on me even though, as I always say to Coach, he was the one who released me or ended my career," Golden said. "The reality is he gave birth to an ever bigger one."

Golden returned home, moved back in with his parents and started a new career. He worked at his alma mater, RBC, for a season before moving on to Virginia as a graduate assistant. His parents had accepted his decision, but before Golden left for Virginia, his mother only asked that he earn a graduate degree like her two other sons.

From that point, Golden made a quick ascent. He spent three years in Charlottesville, then three at Boston College as a linebackers coach, then he took the same job at Penn State.

In 2001, he returned to Virginia as the defensive coordinator – the youngest in Division 1 football.

When he left, four years later, Golden was a rising star among assistants. With Temple he found a difficult rebuilding operation.

It was assumed the worst coaching job in Division 1, even by Bradshaw. Shortly after Golden took over, the program was docked nine scholarships because of low Academic Progress Rate scores under his predecessor.

"You look at the Miami situation and you see some parallels there," Bradshaw said. "They weren’t things that he didn’t believe he couldn’t overcome. He would just say his job was made more difficult. He never looked down. He never blinked."

When he left, in 2010, Temple had been rejuvenated. Golden had led the school to its first bowl game in 30 years and consecutive winning seasons.

After his second, third and fourth years at the school, Golden and Bradshaw would meet in the offseason and discuss his future. He had been presented with multiple opportunities to leave, as many as 10 by Bradshaw's count. The two would talk about each one, trying to decide if it was right.

Bradshaw knew Golden would not be there long. When the Miami opening arose, it was time to leave.

* * *

Even Golden's very first hours at Miami were pockmarked. He had called his parents the day before their wedding anniversary party to let them know he was Miami's next coach. The next day, during the celebration at a Red Bank country club, the news leaked publicly and Golden sped down to Temple to break the news to the team before anyone else could.

When Shapiro's allegations surfaced, Miami was also asked to scramble.

The past two years have not been without difficulty. The school forfeited two bowl appearances. The NCAA's investigation has been tarred by its own messy handling and the end is still unknown. Golden may very well begin a third season with no formal understanding of how the NCAA may rule.

The process has been mentally and physically exhausting for him – in some ways more so than at Temple. Golden was "devastated" when he found out, his father says. Toni Golden watched the developments from the hospital that day and could not stop crying. Since then, Golden has had to battle, what he calls, a "toxicity" each day.

The biggest battleground may be in recruiting. Miami has strung together strong classes in each of the past two years, both top-15 according to one outlet.

"It makes it very difficult to recruit when you can’t give people answers in black and white,” Golden said.

Miami's ambiguous future has been a subject of negative recruiting among high school prospects. Golden's approach has been to be straightforward.

"I just think it comes to the belief that Miami is going to turn around and Golden is the man to do it," said Rod Harris, the coach at Palm Beach Central, which has sent one four-star recruit to Miami and has had another verbally commit.

Golden says has never thought of leaving the school. He has seen two athletic directors move out for other jobs. He has reached and exceeded his breaking point. But he has stuck through it, leaning on his parents as a pillar. Don't flinch, they told him.

Now, he sees the decision in binary terms. To go would be to validate Shapiro's claims, to give him a victory.

"We would be making the decisions for all the wrong reasons," he said. "There’s so many great things about the University of Miami…All those things still exist. It’s just a little bit more difficult to see through the clouds. We really believe that at the end of the day, when these clouds part, we’ll be in one of the greatest places to coach football in the NCAA.”