Miami football is back — and trying to break through that Miami indifference
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — As bedlams go, Miami forever sustains the ability to out-bedlam most everybody else’s bedlam. So a bedlam that thrived just outside Hard Rock Stadium during pregame Saturday evening did seem singular along the college football trail. It boasted music that boomed, people who danced and proof that tailgating can entail more than standing around chitchatting while siphoning hooch up the yap and into the veins.
It did seem intensely Miami, the adjective as well as the noun, and it epitomized something third-season Miami coach Mario Cristobal brought up Monday in his news conference. He said the noise around the stadium before his team played loathed rival Florida State — and the noise around No. 5 Miami’s ascent to 8-0 — “allows our players to learn more and more about the great history of our university and our program and certainly take more pride in being a Miami Hurricane.”
Oh, that’s right: They need that. Most of them were born during the outset of the wane. None felt the peerless vitality and persistent amusement of Miami’s two-chapter dynasty from 1983 to 2003 that became the most unforeseen and thus most remarkable in college football’s nutty 155 years. When it comes to subjects such as the terrain-altering rise first concocted and conducted by the late Howard Schnellenberger, most would have to hear about it from elders, and we all know the limitations of that.
“I mean, just pulling up [in the team buses],” said Cristobal, himself a former Miami offensive tackle, “it was so different. It was off the charts. And I think we’ll see that trend continue to get stronger and stronger.”
Inherent in those words was the program’s quirky reality and not just that it plays 25 miles north of campus — and 25 of the rudest road miles extant. It plays in Miami, long lampooned in some sort of “Alice in Wonderland” moral construct where it’s considered gauche for citizens to ignore games while lavishing in sunshine and about a hundred more entertainment options. In their 25 home games since the coronavirus pandemic, in an NFL stadium, the Hurricanes have hit the capacity 66,200 only twice — in 2022 against Florida State and Saturday night against Florida State.
