Posted by: Chris Vannini on February 7, 2013

Al Golden wants you to know that the city of Miami matters to him.

The head coach of the Hurricanes doesn't appreciate the word spreading around that he doesn't want to recruit the inner-city, or other places of Florida.

The Hurricanes are No. 17 in the composite team recruiting rankings, which is impressive given the class had just 17 players. While on 560 WQAM on Thursday morning, Golden defended his work in the city.

"I love the University of Miami. I want to be here forever, and I'm trying to get it right," Golden said.  "I've only been here two years, and I'm trying to learn the dynamics of everything. A lot of it is that you're under fire because you can't please everybody. I've studied the roster breakdowns and I look at the best team that's ever been here. That 2001 team, 55 percent of that team was from Florida. We're between 57 and 60, and we would have been over 60 yesterday if we hit a couple down the stretch.

"There's talk of me not wanting to recruit the inner-city? I just don't understand that. ... Florida State and Florida took one kid in Dade and Broward last year. One kid. They get a free pass? They took one kid out of this area. We did a great job down here last year. We missed on a couple targets (this year), but we got the guys (we wanted). Look at the guys we got. I'm excited about those guys, and it's being overshadowed by the other stuff. It is what it is.

"But in terms of whether or not we recruit the inner-city, I don't take a dime from my football camp. Not a single dime. I do that so we drive the price down and keep it at $59 a day so we can give access to all the inner-city kids. We don't run an overnight camp that's hundreds of dollars because we know the kids can't afford it. We try to keep the price under $60. We have an open door policy for all the high school coaches to come to spring ball and watch film and do whatever they need. We ran four clinics in the inner-city for the (some) coaches last year.

"We want to be a part of the city. Plus the things we do in the community for our community service side. It doesn't always work out the way we want it, but don't think for a second we're not recruiting the inner-city or those relationships aren't critical and very important for us."

You can listen to Golden's interview by clicking here.

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Chris Vannini is the lead writer for CoachingSearch.com and has covered Michigan State sports for The State News, The Oakland Press and MLive.com. He writes a weekly column for the Detroit Free Press on behalf of SB Nation. Vannini lives in Big Ten country, so his foot speed is far from SEC caliber, but his pulse on coaches is hard to match. Be sure to follow @CoachingBuzz on twitter and send your feedback to chris@coachingsearch.com