Mark Richt Will Find New Forms Of Motivation For Surging Miami Hurricanes

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CORAL GABLES (CBSMiami) - The Miami Hurricanes may have landed in the College Football Playoff top four, but they haven't arrived just yet.

The Hurricanes, now ranked third, still need to win regular season games at home against Virginia and on the road at Pittsburgh. Then, Miami will face the 2nd ranked Clemson Tigers in the ACC Championship game on December 2nd. They'll likely need to win all three of those games (barring some shakeups in other conferences) to keep hold of a playoff spot.

Prior to his team's blowout victory over Notre Dame, head coach Mark Richt used a 'chip on the shoulder' approach to motivate his players for game day.

"All I did was take the video of the television copy of people making predictions," Richt said. "Most everybody predicted Notre Dame, and some of them said why they predicted Notre Dame. Some of the 'whys' got their blood pumping. When I saw it, I'm like, 'I think I'm going to show the guys this.' Just collect them all and show them a copy of it. I think guys play better ball when they're a little bit mad."

Now that the Hurricanes have forced the college football world to pay them some respect, Richt's approach will change, or at least get tweaked.

"I asked [players], 'Can you handle any prosperity?' If I did a video of what's going on now, it would be everybody saying, 'Gosh, Miami is not so bad after all' and all that kind of stuff. Can they handle that? I'm not going to be showing videos of that, I can promise you."

As of Wednesday, ESPN's Paul Finebaum - Miami's most notorious critic - is picking Clemson over the Hurricanes in the ACC Championship. Perhaps, Richt can fire up that tape to fire up his team.

But, he may want to avoid this tape of Finebaum putting on the Turnover Chain...

Miami's quest to stay unbeaten continues this Saturday. The 9-0 Hurricanes will host the 6-4 Virginia Cavaliers at 12-Noon from Hard Rock Stadium.