Hard Rock Revival

by: Camron Ghorbi

The Miami Hurricanes are on the verge of history, with fewer than 600 tickets remaining before Hard Rock Stadium is sold out on a season-ticket basis for the first time ever.

Ask Chris Fallica – better known as “The Bear” and one of the behind-the-scenes giants involved with ESPN’s College GameDay – and he said saw this day coming during one epic stretch last season.

“The biggest thing for me was the scene the morning of that show,” he said. “When I pulled up in the morning with Kirk [Herbstreit] to get to site and we saw the line of people wrapped around the building to get to the University Center to be there for the show, I was like, ‘wow.'”That was more than I think anyone ever could have expected.”

More than just its location smack in the middle of Miami’s picturesque campus, this GameDay was different for another reason, according to Fallica.

“I think what really made it special was we weren’t going for the opponent. There’s been a lot of times with College GameDay where there has been a team ranked number one, number two or number three and they’re playing a road game against a team that might give them some trouble,” he said. “Notre Dame was ranked very highly, but we weren’t going for Notre Dame.”

The Hurricanes – winners over Hokies the previous Saturday, ranked No. 7 and undefeated at 8-0 – were riding a wave of momentum and in the driver’s seat of the ACC’s Coastal Division.

“We were going for Miami,” he said. “Miami was good. Miami was undefeated. Miami was the host, and oh, by the way, it was Notre Dame. It was a great matchup.”

The Hurricanes went on to pummel the third-ranked Irish in their first visit to play Miami since 1989, winning 41-8 in front of another boisterous crowd.

One Notre Dame player called it the loudest atmosphere he had ever played in.

Before the game, some said that Irish fans would outnumber the orange and green in the Hard Rock Stadium stands.

Wrong they were.
“I remember prior to the game, people were asking, ‘How’s the crowd going to be? Will there be a lot of Notre Dame fans there?’ And I remember Kirk and I were saying to people, ‘No. You have no idea. This is going to be completely something that you do not expect…this is going to be an even better scene for Notre Dame than Virginia Tech.'”
Correct he was. 

The turnover chain appeared four times that night, punctuated by play-by-play extraordinaire Chris Fowler’s now-famous call of Trajan Bandy’s back-breaking pick-six that sent the crowd into eruption: “Break out the chain again!”In fact, the only thing that went wrong that November Saturday in sunny south Florida was the turnover chain worn by Alex Rodriguez, Hurricanes supporter and College GameDay’s “guest picker” of the afternoon.

Much like the criticism from skeptics, he had it all backwards.

“The reconstruction that they did to that stadium, I can tell you – a guy who has been doing Miami games forever…those games were as loud as I can ever remember a Miami game,” Herbstreit said in an interview with 560 WQAM this past spring.

The win over the Hokies started to turn the tides in the minds of Fallica and others.

“Nearly everyone in the world was picking Virginia Tech to win that game, and to be there that night and see the way the fans reacted and responded, the way the team took advantage of that crowd, that kind of woke me up a little bit,” Fallica said.Fast forward less than a year, and Miami has fewer than 600 season tickets remaining. No tickets remain in the lower bowl or upper section of the stadium.

Long the subject of critical fodder for pundits, the Hurricanes showed their force in those eight days – on the field, on campus and in the stands –putting the myth of Miami’s “fairweather” fanbase to rest.

Now they’re on the verge of history, expected to sell out Hard Rock Stadium on a season-ticket basis for the first time ever. 

Fallica, who graduated from Miami in the spring of 1994, will always look back upon that November stretch as a turning point in the minds of many.

“The scene for the show, you couldn’t ask for anything more. It was a beautiful day, there were a ton of people there in a good, compact area,” Fallica said. “When I heard the set was going to be for the show, I was at first like, is that going to be big enough? I didn’t really remember the area being super, super big. “To see the way the show was shot, the location of the set, the way [David] Pollack jumped off the diving board into the pool, it worked out beautifully. It was a great spot, a great scene, and something I’ll never forget.”