Party Crashers: How the Canes Changed College Football
By Christy Cabrera Chirinos
HurricaneSports.com
The stage is set and the Hurricanes are ready to step into the spotlight.
When Miami takes the field Saturday night for its season opener against rival Florida at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, a nation of college football fans will be watching.
The game stands virtually alone, a Week Zero showcase of two longtime rivals that will kick off a season-long celebration of college football’s 150th anniversary.
Given how Miami has helped shape the modern era of the sport’s history, more than a few Hurricanes greats say it’s only fitting their alma mater – the small private school in Coral Gables that turned the college football establishment upside down with a decade of dominance in the 1980s – should be showcased on a night that’s essentially a birthday party of sorts for the sport.
And who better to attend that party than college football’s original party crashers?
“I think of Miami as the little engine that could. We didn’t have the best of everything, but we took pride in beating up on the schools who did have everything,” said former Hurricanes fullback Alonzo Highsmith, a member of Miami’s first national championship team who is now the vice president of player personnel for the Cleveland Browns. “No one likes when the little guy starts beating up on the big guys. You become disliked and hated because you’re not supposed to beat up on Notre Dame or Nebraska or Oklahoma. But we did.”
Millions of words have been written and thousands of stories have been told about that unprecedented nine-year stretch during which the Hurricanes won four national titles.
That attention, though, isn’t undeserved.
In and of itself, what Miami did during that time is remarkable. That the Hurricanes’ success came after a decade of upheaval that included multiple coaching changes and even talk of disbanding the football program makes it the stuff of legend.
“We knew what it took. We went out and stressed it. We told everybody what the deal was,” said former Hurricanes coach Howard Schnellenberger, who took over as Hurricanes coach in 1979 and led Miami to its first national title four years later. “I knew we were on a collision course for the national championship, so I said, ‘Get in there, put your hats on, get your football shoes on and let’s go practice. Let’s roll. Let’s go work and work and work, and if we do that, we’ll become winners very quickly. And so, it came to be.”
While both Schnellenberger and Highsmith pointed to the Hurricanes’ work ethic as a big part of Miami’s turnaround, the coach made other tactical changes at Miami that impacted not only his program, but college football itself.
He made it a priority to recruit speedy, highly skilled athletes from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, dubbing his primary recruiting base “The State of Miami.”
These days, practically every major college football program makes it a priority to recruit South Florida, an area which has churned out countless NFL players, college All-Americans and top-notch blue-chip prospects.
On the field, Schnellenberger also helped the Hurricanes put together an efficient, effective passing attack. Jim Kelly set the tone and during Miami’s first championship season in 1983, Bernie Kosar completed 62 percent of his passes, throwing for 2,329 yards and 15 touchdowns.
That year, the Hurricanes became just the second national championship team to gain more passing yards than rushing yards and Miami’s status as “Quarterback U” began to take shape, with players like Vinny Testaverde, Craig Erickson, Steve Walsh, Gino Torretta and later, Ken Dorsey, following suit.
“We were kind of ahead of our time with the pro-style passing attack that Coach Howard Schnellenberger brought to The U and college football during that time,” said former safety Kenny Calhoun, whose deflection on Nebraska’s two-point conversion attempt in the 1984 Orange Bowl helped seal Miami’s first championship. “That put us on top offensively, so we could compete with the defenses that weren’t aware of the pass or weren’t that adept at defending the pass. Also, what helped us a lot was that we had a great defense back then. … We had a really good defense and if you have good offense that can score you at least 20 points or more a game and you have a shutdown defense and you’re playing opponents that run the ball, back then, that was a great equation for us to just come on top.”
When former head coach Jimmy Johnson took over in 1984, he followed a similar blueprint: recruit South Florida athletes and focus on speed, speed and more speed. He made sure the Hurricanes played a schedule that featured some of college football’s best teams including Auburn, Florida, Michigan, Florida State, Notre Dame, Florida, Penn State, and Oklahoma, among others.
Those matchups gave the Hurricanes national exposure and made Miami an intriguing destination for top players.
And more often than not, the Hurricanes were winners in those games. They celebrated their victories brashly and with little shame, which endeared them to their fans and few others.
“The schedule was such that we were on television every other week and fortunately, we were good enough to beat those teams. That’s how it got on such a roll,” said Johnson, who led Miami to a national title in 1987. “Being on national television, beating all those top teams, that helped our recruiting and that’s why it continued on for quite a few years after I left.”
He continued, “But people hated us. I remember being on the bus, going in to Notre Dame and little old ladies were throwing stuff at our bus. People were spitting at us. We weren’t well liked on the road, at all. But we kind of took pride in that. They didn’t like us because we were beating them. The one thing everyone talks about is our swagger. I let our guys be themselves and I think they enjoyed that. In fact, I’m sure that added to some of their play. … We were disciplined, but we didn’t mind gloating a little bit.”
There was more at play for some of the Hurricanes themselves, particularly those who grew up in South Florida during one of the area’s most challenging eras.
“If people were born and raised in South Florida, you knew the turbulent times that were going on in the city of Miami then. The riots during the 80s, the city was known for the cocaine cowboys and we fed off everything that was going on in the city,” said former Hurricanes safety Bennie Blades, a Jim Thorpe Award winner and two-time All-American whose 19 career interceptions still stand at No. 2 on Miami’s all-time career list. “We fed on that and we had a coach that allowed us to be ourselves. It wouldn’t have worked if we would have had a coach who said ‘No, we’re going to be straight and narrow and we’re not going to celebrate.’ That wouldn’t have worked. Guys would have rebelled and the program, I don’t think, would have been the same. But we had a very charismatic coach in Coach Johnson. He said, ‘You win and I’ll take the brunt of all the criticism.’ That meant the world to us.”
During that stretch between 1983 and 1987, the Hurricanes and Gators met five times, with Miami winning three of those matchups.
A season-opening 28-3 loss to Florida in 1983 propelled the Hurricanes to 10 straight wins that helped give Miami the opportunity to face Nebraska for the national title in the Orange Bowl.
On that night, a 9-year-old Hurricanes fan stayed up past his bedtime to see Calhoun bat down that ball and watch his hometown team make history. Now, as the Hurricanes and Gators prepare to renew their rivalry, that young fan will be on Miami’s sideline as its head coach.
Manny Diaz grew up knowing the impact the Hurricanes had on the South Florida community. He understands, schematically, how the program and the coaches who came before him helped revolutionize college football.
He understands, too, what the Hurricanes mean to the South Florida community and he’s determined to do his part to build on that past and now, help the Hurricanes write a new chapter in their storied history.
“You’re talking about being five years removed from a decision on whether to continue the sport or not and then to be national champions five, six years after that decision … imagine what that would be in today’s terms. Imagine zipping past all of the teams that seem to be dominant right now and winning. It would seem so improbable. Even trying to imagine it seems silly,” Diaz said. “But that’s exactly what happened with that ’83 team. And once that standard was in place and Coach Johnson came, it was warp speed from there.
“And that’s the duty. To be in this program, you have to live up to that. It doesn’t mean winning every game. It doesn’t mean winning a championship every year. Everyone knows that’s very difficult to do. It means the effort and the competitiveness and the toughness of the way those teams played, that has to be the standard here.”
