'83 Canes Back to Celebrate 35 Years of Miami Magic
By David Villavicencio
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The Miami Hurricanes have always been trendsetters.
From Jimmy Johnson’s fast and aggressive defenses to the Turnover Chain that has taken over college football, Miami has been ahead of the rest since it grew into a football power in the 1980s.
But this weekend the Hurricanes will honor the team that started the dynasty, as the 1983 national champions will be back on campus to celebrate the 35thanniversary of Miami’s first national title and running back Albert Bentley believes the players will pick up right where they left off when they arrive at the reunion.
“I think the bonding of winning a national championship is so special and unique,” Bentley said. “The guys that were upperclassmen and graduated before that championship, we may not have that same type of bond as we do with the guys that were on that 1983 championship team.”
That bond is part of what helped the Hurricanes come together after a disappointing 28-3 loss in the season opener and rattle off 11-straight victories to earn the glory of a national championships.
“We actually graded out really well that game,” Bentley said. “That game killed us because of turnovers. We couldn’t overcome the turnovers and I just think we weren’t quite ready to play that game. It wasn’t that we were so bad. We just turned the ball over at bad times and weren’t able to win. The next week and every week after that we did much better in the turnover ratio and you saw how the rest of the season went.”
After that Florida loss, Miami won its next eight games by a combined score of 250-55. In that run, the Canes shut out No. 13 Notre Dame, 20-0, and almost did the same to No. 12 West Virginia, 20-3.
But the Canes had a pair of tight victories in the final two games of the regular season, beating ECU, 12-7, and closing the regular season with a one-point victory at Florida State, 17-16, to clinch a trip to the Orange Bowl and top-ranked Nebraska.
“Late in the season, we had a couple of scary games like the Florida State game and the East Carolina game,” Bentley said. “I still remember on the run for me touchdown against Florida State I kept thinking, ‘I don’t care what happens, I’m going to get in this end zone.’ We needed to score there and win the game and that was kind of the mindset of the whole team. We were willing to do whatever it took to win the game.”
Doing whatever it takes can certainly be applied to nose guard Tony Fitzpatrick.
A senior in 1983, Fitzpatrick was an undersized defensive lineman who played linebacker in high school and was offered the last scholarship in his recruiting class by head coach Howard Schnellenberger after being named MVP of an all-star game in his senior year of high school.
“He is like a dad to me,” Fitzpatrick said. “He came to me on the field and asked me if I wanted to come to Miami. I owe a lot to him.”
Fitzpatrick, who was known for his determination and effort, proved nothing would stop him from helping his team in the Orange Bowl against the Cornhuskers.
“We got beat 28 to 3 by Florida, but then we went on an 11-game winning streak, and I played every game except East Carolina and Florida State,” Fitzpatrick said. “In the last two minutes of the game against West Virginia, I tore the bicep off my shoulder and I needed surgery in my shoulder and was in the hospital right after the game. I had my operation a day later. I had the surgery and started lifting weights two weeks after the surgery with staples in my shoulder. Our athletic trainer, Mike O’Shea, had me on the bike with all types of conditioning. . No contact for six weeks except for Wednesday before the Orange Bowl when coach Schnellenberger held a 15-play scrimmage to see if my shoulder held up and he ran every single play at me and then I went 96 plays against Nebraska.”
The No. 5 Hurricanes stunned the college football world by defeating the top-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers, 31-30, in the 1984 Orange Bowl Classic on January 1, 1984.
“Winning the national championship and having the opportunity to get the ball to score and help the team win is a big time memory,” Bentley said. “Of course, when Kenny Calhoun knocked down that pass is a moment I’ll never forget.”
A defensive back, Calhoun tipped a pass by Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill to stop a Nebraska two-point conversion attempt and secure the Canes’ first national championship.
“The feeling at the end of that game is unforgettable,” Bentley said. “To know it’s sealed up, it’s history and I am a national champion is something incomparable to anything I’ve experienced. Eight years of professional football don’t compare to what I felt that night when I saw the ball hit the ground and I knew it was over. I still get chills thinking about it today when I take myself back to that moment. It was incredible.”
The victory was monumental — for UM football and for college football in general. It was monumental not only because the Cornhuskers were widely considered to be among the most powerful teams in college football history, but it also heralded the dawn of a new dynasty in the sport from a program that had been all but dead just a few short years earlier. That victory — combined with losses by second-ranked Texas in the Cotton Bowl and Illinois in the Rose Bowl — vaulted the Hurricanes into the top spot in the final national rankings.
“That week we felt really confident,” Bentley said. “We had played some really tough teams and I know Nebraska had some scores that season that were basketball scores and everyone just assumed that we were going to be tight and afraid to play against them. But we didn’t feel like they could matchup with us. We watched a lot of film of them and we didn’t feel they could matchup against what we were going to do in the passing game and that would open up opportunities in the running game and we would be able to score against them and it turned out to be true.”
This was the first national title team without a single player making an All-America first team voted by AP, UPI, the Football Writers Association or the College Football Coaches Association.
“I think all of us have a great sense of accomplishment,” Bentley said. “When I look back now at that senior class and that junior class, we weren’t a team full of blue-chip kids. We were a bunch of hard workers. We were blue-collar and we worked really hard and got better from our freshman year to our junior and senior years. That hard work enabled us to be in position to win games because we worked so hard at improving ourselves every day and every year.”
One of the keys was a melting pot offensive line — a Canadian (center Ian Sinclair), a Cuban-American (guard Juan Comendeiro), an African-American (guard Alvin Ward), an Italian-American (tackle Paul Bertucelli) and an Irish-American (tackle Dave Heffernan).
“It is just amazing the guys that Coach Schnellenberger put together,” Fitzpatrick said. “We might not have ball been your five-stars, but he made us believe and play like we were six-stars.”
Miami was only the second national title team to gain more passing yards than rushing yards.
“It’s a tribute to a lot of gutty players and a real team effort,” Schnellenberger said at the time. “We’ve got a lot of overachievers on our team — or else there has been a poor job of selection done by the All-American selectors.”
Countless members of the 1983 national championship team credit Schnellenberger for so much of that team’s success. Fitzpatrick remembers how Schnellenberger’s practices made sure the Hurricanes were ready to dominate on Saturdays and more often than not they did exactly that.
“We had probably the best coach in college football,” Fitzpatrick said. “What he did to us every week, during games, during spring, when it came Saturday, whoever you were playing, they had to pay the price. He encouraged you to be the best on Saturday and whether it be practicing, your body, whatever, and our strength coach, Ray Ganong, was a huge part of that, too.”
The 1983 Miami Hurricanes will be honored at Saturday’s game vs. FIU at Hard Rock Stadium.
