Man this oughta get Gonzo stirred up. Actually it made me realize all the underlying emotions I have always noticed from just about any Miami fan I have ever discussed football with. I guess THEY understood and felt it but I didn't. http://www.gatorsportsforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=213087
I'm no fan of Miami but I attach zero credibility to that bombastic and shallow self-serving analysis.
Sid, Since it is a repost of another's opinion I would take it as such. Just an opinion but some of the things said rings true with me because I am a Gator fan who has run into or had conversatioins with many Miami fans in the past and always I sensed a feeling of them taking the UF-Miami rivalry much more serious than I. When Gonzo first came on Prodigy years ago he just worked himself into a frenzy constantly criticizing Florida and now some of that has become a little clearer perhaps as to why.
I'm no Cane fan either but that is a lot of self-serving crap. For 15-20 years Miami was the team in the Sunshine State , followed by FSU and then UF. At least to most of us impartial observers.
I liked the part that in the 80's only the great Gators were a real rival for the Canes. Yeah, that's right, those Catholics v Convict games were totally unnoticed by the football world (which of course is a 15 mile circle around Gainsville.) Oh and this is my favorite quite "college football is no longer a regional game" yeah, the leading schools play teams from all over the country not just their region.
Gonzo worked himself into a frenzy over Notre Dame and Florida. As a ND fan I naturally I noted his abnormal obession with the Irish more than the same with the Gators. Recently though here on the Skybox I've noted that he's more obsessed with the Gators though. Miami on the Field in the 80's was the team of the decade nationally not just in Fla. But they were, as we all know, an outlaw program made up of thugs and thieves, lead by coaches who cared nothing about the rules or sportsmanship. Their fans were a reflection of that, most Irish fans that I know talk about the abuse heaped on them by Miami fans in the Orange Bowl. Randy Shannon seems to be determined to change that whole culture down there, I hope he does. The ACC needs them to be good and they need FSU to be good, the rest of the league just doesn't inspire anybody. Terry
Everyone always forgets it seems that Florida had a six game winning streak over FSU in the early 80s and in that time beat Miami three times also....including the Canes only loss by a 28-3 margin in their 1983 National championship season.
Well in the early 80's neither FSU or UF were national players that they became in the 90's. After '84 it was the Hurricanes when you talked about Fla football. Spurrier in the 90's of course changed that. I know you guys had some good teams, but when you thought about the SEC in the 80's you thought about Tenn, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn not really UF. I think in the early 80's Bowden was just getting started (didn't he arrive in '79) and was going all over the country to play teams. I think by the late 80's he'd won enough games that FSU was off on their 14 year run of bowl wins and top 5 finishes.
Bowden took over at FSU in 1976 and the noles got better every year until they went 11-0 in 1979 and finished with an Orange Bowl loss to Oklahoma. Florida only lost 3 SEC games total in 1983, 84 and 85 and was actually unbeaten in the SEC in 1984. In 1980 it took the famous Hail Mary Belue to Scott TD for eventual National Champion Georgia to outlive Florida for the SEC title. The Gators had some good teams in those days and won some big games.
Were those teams the Kerwin Bell teams? Who was the UF QB who had such a big game vs Univ of Houston?
Those 80s teams were Qbs Wayne Peace and Kerwin Bell teams. Peace was a great QB and had a surrounding cast that included James Jones at RB and Wilbur Marshall at LB. 1985 Florida featured Neal Anderson and John L. Williams at RB. The Houston game you refer to was in 1969 and it was Qb John Reaves who led UF to 60 plus points.
Says the guy who's team was once called out by Sports Illustrated as deserving of the Death Penalty. You remember this from the Summer of '95
Do you remember how many far greater infractions of the law since then have been committed by Texas and Notre Dame, UF, FSU, Okla, Neb, OSU, PSU, Va Tech, LSU, Arizona, Wash ad nauseum ??? Those were tame days compared to gang rape accusations at ND, manslaughter at Neb......wholesale cheating at Texas....payola at OSU....debauchery at Colorado, beating up girlfriends and stealing at Florida...fixing games at the PAC 10...Getting cars for free and tutors doing your work while your glovebox is stuffed full of cash....etc....ad nauseum Your statements are ridiculous when compared to what has happened since in many campuses to a far greater extent. SI would have to request that 30 Div 1 programs be banned nowadays, in the minimum
Yes that's all true there have been players at schools all over the country who have done bad things. The difference is that the culture didn't encourage that behavior and at least at Notre Dame those players were expelled. At Miami bad behavior was a badge of honor. You are the guys who took Willie Williams even after you found out he was a fellon. What other program has had to make a rule that players can't possess guns??? Hopefully Randy Shannon will stay the course and not tolerate the behavior that was part of the culture of Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson, etc.
Again, baseless and garbage statements that have no relevance to real serious criminal and grave academic cheating scandals that have occurred since. Since 1997....only one Miami player was dismissed....the famous Willie Williams....who never set foot with a game jersey on at a game. ---------------- Compare that to venerable Duke ======================== "Durham, North Carolina - In response to the absence of serious administrative malfeasance of any kind, as well as a considerable dearth of legal woes including charges of sexual assault, Duke University president Richard Brodhead announced yesterday that the football team’s season would be cancelled. “Though we stand firmly on the side of our student athletes, the lack of criminal accusations against our football program cannot be ignored. This matter will continue to not be pursued in the courts of law. Duke University, its administration and its athletic program make no assumptions concerning the innocence or guilt of our football players in a hypothetical case, but we have deemed it necessary that their season be cancelled for the sake of unity and healing. This is a unique opportunity for us to seriously broadcast our wants, our needs and our beliefs, and today all three coincide: Duke football must not occur,” Brodhead said. " =========================== Go do a simple search for Texas, Neb, Notre Dame, OSU, UF, FSU, Baylor, SMU, Texas Tech.....and come to your senses that you don't throw dung out when that dung stinks in your own backyard. Would you like to compare transgressions since 1997?....you lose....and in a giant lopsided way. Heck....I got a 1922 article accusing Notre Dame players of playing for a pro league for money......1922 !!!
While Sid is right that is a shallow self serving analysis, if you get by the fact it's a one sided picture, there is a lot of truth to some items in that article. I kept an article for a long time about some incidents between the two schools. While I don't remember the specifics one of the last games we played Miami in Miami the Hurricanes gave the president of our University very poor seating for the game. While that's a small thing, it's also a small action on the part of Miami. What is also true is that the Miami fans were far more rabid about the Gators than vice versa, I'll say more about that in another post. I have attended both schools, have degrees from both school with a dual Masters from Miami which allowed me to teach the years I taught at the Community College level. In addition I have held season tickets to both football programs. I didn't hold season tickets to either school until the 80's when I got season tickets to Miami with the Rotary club I belonged to at that time. Later I moved from Miami to WPB and my kids were at Florida where I had gotten my undergraduate degree. We dropped our Hurricane tickets and started attending Gator games with a couple of our daughters while they were in Gainesville. About the time they graduated the Gators hired Spurrier and expanded the North Endzone. That's when we got our Gator tickets. I grew up in Miami and my first college football love was Miami. Before I was old enough to drive I used to catch the bus to the Orange Bowl to watch the Hurricanes who played on Friday night in those days. I saw Miami play Kentucky while The Bear was coach there and Babe Paralli (not sure I spelled that right) was the QB. I was a Hurricane fan right up until I left for Gainesville for my freshman year. Even while in Gainesville I followed Miami very closely and rooted for the for many years. This post is long enough and the wife is serving supper so I'll continue later in another post.
Is that Duke article about the football team, did you just make that up and get it confused with the Lacrosse team incident? BTW the issue isn't that other schools have had players break the law, it's that other schools don't go out an purposely bring in bad actors/characters. It was a badge of honor at "Da U". Maybe not anymore since Randy Shannon is in charge.
To continue my Gator, Hurricane story. Like I said I grew up a Hurricane fan, but at that time I was just a kid. I didn't have the same seats week after week so really didn't get that involved at the games with the same fans week after week, but it was very enjoyable and I loved the Canes. Then came the fall after my graduation from High School and I went to the University of Florida where during orientation week I attended my first Gator game. The atmosphere was electric even then and even though we were never seriously in competition for SEC championships or high national ranking. I was hooked for life. At that time I was still a Hurricane fan also but very fast the Gators were number one in my heart for life. I graduated and didn't go to a college football game for years, in fact I watched and listened to the Gators whenever I could but was really more of a NFL fan than college fan. I still had a lot of interest in the Canes also but not the same level as the Gators. I would watch them on tv but not tune them in on the radio. During this time we had five kids, moved around the state and lived mostly in Ft. Lauderdale. In the mid 80's my job took me back to Miami and my kids were now in High School and getting ready to go to college. This was also the time of my life where my company sent me to the University of Miami to an Executive MBA/MIE (Industrial Engineering) program that took me two years to complete. During this time in Miami I started finding out just how much that Miami fans hated the Gators. I mean they could be playing anyone else but if you talked very long the conversation would always come back to the Gators. Miami considered the Gators their number one rival and had an intense dislike for them, meanwhile the Gators by that time had started thinking that they could seriously compete for the SEC Championship on a regular basis and FSU was also becoming a bigger rivalry. Just prior to starting the two year program at Miami I bought season tickets with the Rotary club as I stated above, I held those for a couple of years but let them lapse when the going to school on Sat just proved to much as attending games. This was right after Miami won their first National Championship. I was sitting in the stands when Dough Flutie threw his miracle pass to defeat the Canes. I let them lapse for one year, then bought them again in a different area of the stadium and not with anyone we knew. We had those tickets for several years and two of them were the Testerverde years. He was amazing. Anyway we sat with some very nice folks including a young coupe that sat right in front of us. I mention them because of something striking about a lot of the season ticket holders. All year long we all came to the games wearing our Cane gear, but when the FSU game came around all of a sudden about 30 - 40% of the fans in our area had on garnet and gold and were doing the tomahawk chop. Unreal how many of the season ticket holders at that time were FSU or Gator fans, that included the young couple in front of us. The next season that couple was gone and there was a guy there that wasn't nearly as much fun. I tried talking to him once or twice during a game. Geez like so many Cane fans this guy was obsessed with the Gators, the first time I talked to him it took him about two minutes to get around to his hatred of the Gators, and the game wasn't even with the Gators. That happened a couple of games and I gave up on him. Actually that was not unusual for Cane fans they were always obsessed with the Gators even when they were playing someone else. We moved to Jupiter, near West Palm Beach, and I kept the tickets one more year. We only attended a couple of games and gave our son, who lived in Miami and was a Cane fan, the tickets for the other games. Then Spurrier came to Florida and the season tickets became available. By that time one of our daughters had moved to Kissimmee after graduation. We got 6 season tickets with us, her and another daughter in Jacksonville and of course their husbands. We would go to Kissimmee on Friday night to stay with the one daughter, to Gainesville and back on Sat for the game, then home on Sunday. A lot of fun with our daughters. Back to the Cane tickets, what happened to me over time is that there were way to many Miami fans like the guy mention above who was obsessed with the Gators. I finally asked myself, why the heck should I pay for season tickets, drive a long distance to support the team then listen to jerks like the guy above bad mouth the Gators for every game? Gradually over the years because of way to many people like him I quit even rooting for the Canes, in fact I could care less whether they lose or not. The reason is of course fans like the guy above and the persona that the Cane team developed over the years like Terry mentioned above. What Miami fans have never accepted is that as the SEC schedule expanded to 7 games then 8 games we could not maintain two in state rivals. Over the years FSU had displaced Miami as the top in state rival and when we cut back to one game a year with either Miami or FSU we kept FSU on the schedule. It's a more natural rivalry and so many of the students at both schools know each other from high school etc. I could, and may later, say a lot more but there is some underlying truth to that article even though it is largely self serving.