ESPN planning a Miami Hurricanes-Florida State Seminoles marathon. Here are the details
Filling hundreds of hours of programming on sports networks during a national pandemic requires a special kind of creativity.
And ESPN has come up with a clever idea for this week: A UM-FSU festival.
ESPN will air the 2002 UM-FSU game at 7 p.m. Thursday, culminating 27 hours in which nine Hurricanes-Seminoles games will air on one of its networks. Six others will be replayed on ESPNU and two on ACC Network, which isn’t available to Comcast subscribers in South Florida.
To recap for those who need a refresher on the particulars of the 2002 game that will air at 7 p.m. Thursday on ESPN:
The Hurricanes entered the game as the defending national champions and riding a 27-game winning streak. After taking a 17-14 lead into halftime, the Seminoles would extend their lead to 27-14 early in the fourth quarter. The Hurricanes rallied with back-to-back touchdowns, taking a 28-27 lead with just more than five minutes to go in the fourth quarter.
The Seminoles lined up for a game-winning field-goal attempt with one second remaining, but the kick was wide left.
The Hurricanes would finish the regular season undefeated, earning their second consecutive trip to the national championship game. The Seminoles would win the ACC and represent the conference in the Sugar Bowl.
ESPN will add nifty production elements to the telecast, including interviews with Canes Jonathan Vilma, D.J. Williams and Brett Romberg. Those three joined ESPN’s Matt Barrie to reminisce about the 2002 game, and those segments will be interspersed throughout the telecast.
Numerous players from both teams are expected to be active on social media throughout the game, including Canes stars Ken Dorsey and Willis McGahee and Seminoles standouts Anquan Boldin and Chris Rix.
The rest of the ESPN-family-of-networks lineup, featuring shortened broadcasts of past UM-FSU games:
Wednesday 8 p.m.: the 1991 game on ACC Network
Wednesday 10 pm.: the 1993 game on ACC Network
Thursday 7 a.m.: the 1985 game on ESPNU
Thursday 9 a.m.: the 1992 game on ESPNU
Thursday 11 a.m.: the 1993 game on ESPNU
Thursday 1 p.m.: the 1991 game on ESPNU
Thursday 3 p.m.: the 2004 game on ESPNU
Thursday 5 p.m.: the 2004 rematch in the Orange Bowl on ESPNU
Thursday 7 p.m.: the 2002 game on ESPN
Also, ACC Network will replay The Bowden Dynasty at 4 p.m. Wednesday and the 30 for 30: The U at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 9:13 AM.
