The game plan was laid out a month ago: The money to execute it has been set aside.

The University of Miami is prepared to spend as much as a ballpark of $25 million upfront to fix its ailing athletic department, and football program, sources told CaneSport.

That money would initially be tapped into for costs in executing the Monday termination of Athletic Director Blake James and acquiring a new athletic director, the potential buyout of football coach Manny Diaz and the acquisition of a new football coach and then a boost in the annual operating budget to accommodate the needs of the new coach and athletic director.

This is all almost certainly going to happen. It is shaping up as a potential amazing moment in time for the University.

Now The U just has to finish a little better than the football team did in the fourth quarter Saturday at Florida State.

Step A was finding the will.

Step B was building the plan.

Step C was the dismissal of James, who inadvertently had created some of the current problems and needed to be replaced for the athletic department to take this massive forward step.

Step D will be the hiring of a new athletic director.

Step E will be the likely hiring of a new football coach unless things change in the coming days, which is unlikely.

Step F?

The reemergence of The U as a dynamic brand built for modern day.

And of course, hopefully winning big again.

James departed Monday after being informed by President Julio Frenk’s team that his services were no longer needed. The sad part will be that the things he did accomplish in his eight years as AD will go forgotten because these new things taking place are just that big and the mistakes he made in the hours after Mark Richt retired were just that damaging.

Since 2013, when he began his tenure, James did spearhead significant enhancements in all aspects of the department, including student-athlete support, academic achievement, community outreach, facility upgrades, fundraising, ticket sales, broadcast capabilities and content creation.

The public doesn't really see most of that. But for a long time those accomplishments led the University to look away from the problems building in athletics because they represented so much of what the University rightfully stands for.

Miami Athletics also raised more than $150 million under James and completed numerous facility projects during his tenure, most recently the Jimmy and Kim Klotz Baseball Player Development Center. In 2018, the $40 million Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility was opened which included indoor practice fields, new coaches offices, new football reception and recruiting areas, weight room renovations and also new coaches’ offices for golf, rowing, soccer and volleyball.

Other recent facility enhancements include the opening of the Schwartz Center for Athletic Excellence; a new nutrition center; new artificial and natural playing surfaces and lights on the Greentree Practice Fields; a center-hung scoreboard inside the Watsco Center; renovations to the men’s and women’s basketball offices at Watsco Center; renovations to the Hecht Athletic Center; and a new videoboard for the Neil Schiff Tennis Center.

So no, it was not a wasted eight years by any sense of the imagination. It was just all trumped by putting Diaz in one of the nation's most difficult head coaching jobs.

That was asking way too much of a coach who had never led a program nor been part of big winning and recruiting.

Diaz has tried his butt off, remaking his staff every year and attacking the transfer portal. But college football has become so massively competitive. Coaches that can't separate from the pack have no chance to escape the win some, lose some abyss which is why you will see so many jobs open now and in the coming days. The only chance for success is to find a CEO with the magic to execute that separation the way Alabama did in luring Nick Saban from the Dolphins and Ohio State did in luring Urban Meyer,.

So the University had to replace James now to move forward and hunt its own alpha difference makers.

The University team led by Frenk’s chief of staff Rudy Fernandez and senior advisor Joe Echevarria have set off to find a new athletic director with former players Gino Torretta and Alonzo Highsmith among those trying to land the job.

But the list is growing. Vegas Knights executive Jim Frevola, a deputy athletic director at Miami under Paul Dee and Kirby Hocutt, is a potential candidate. So is former Louisville Athletic Director Tom Jurich, but UM would have to sort through the messy end of his time with the Cardinals. Clemson AD Dan Radakovich, a Miami business school graduate, also could become a target and would bring incredible expertise and accomplishment to the job.

This is a heck of a start to a candidate pool. The AD search has gone into overdrive this week and UM could have its new AD by the end of November.

That fits the timeline when Diaz is expected to be terminated as football coach and at that point the University is expected to aggressively escalate its pursuit of Oregon Head Coach Mario Cristobal as his replacement.

Cristobal is presently in the middle of a race to win a third straight Pac 12 title and also qualify for the College Football Playoff. His on field success in these final two weeks of the regular season could shape the timetable of his alma mater’s efforts.

All of this which has come together under the leadership of the Presidents office led by Fernandez and Echevarria has been absolutely amazing for a University that has allowed itself to fall behind for two decades with bad decision after bad decision.

It has only been about a month since CaneSport reported that UM was about to enter this crazy world of insane budgets, expensive coaching contracts, high level negotiations to make everything happen and the financing of buyouts and escalated operations.

But Frenk finally understood the importance of athletics and football to the overall image of the university and that coincided with the University becoming the healthiest financially that it maybe ever has been due to the success of U Health and the University in general.

Allocating a large sum of money to fixing all of the issues that had arisen in Athletics has become a no-brainer for the University which has found that effort to be an energizing exercise for pretty much everyone involved and affected.

The pursuit of a new Athletic Director.

The competition to land a difference making coach as so many of the nation’s top jobs become open.

It all has woken up the power structure of a University that had been lagging behind.

People are really, really excited and that energy is extending far beyond the landscaped confined of the Coral Gables campus.

The tough part was finding the will.

Now the second half is beginning and the University must close better than the football team did Saturday in Tallahassee.

But this is emerging as a real New Miami.

Whoever would have known that the phrase coined by Diaz after his hasty hiring three years ago would become so applicable as he was on his way out.

But yes, the institution that has spent its modern day existence being reactive as the college athletics world evolved around it and left it in the dust is being proactive now, working to carve out the structure of an athletic department built for the future.

Some of the most successful business executives in South Florida, including Mastec CEO Jose Mas, a trustee, have been recruited to advise the University on the path forward and they have rallied behind this cause.

Miami has the ball and is driving for the winning score.

It can’t let the clock run out like it did last Saturday at Doak Campbell Stadium.

Not now.

Not after coming so far, so quickly.

This time it must WIN and I think, as amazing as it seems, that is going to happen.