Kelly: Time for Hurricanes to return to mountaintop | Opinion
Some sports moments last forever, becoming etched in our memories like a tattoo.
And not all of the games, scores, story lines we recall are favorable.
Some scar, like a keloid, triggering trauma.
The last time the Miami Hurricanes were on Monday night’s stage, playing in a national championship game, some of U might have flashbacks of Miami’s 31-24 double-overtime loss to Ohio State.
I would love to purge that Fiesta Bowl from our memory, whipping away the fireworks that went off as Miami was being celebrated for beating the Buckeyes in the first overtime period.
Then referee Terry Porter, a name old-school Canes fans will never forget, threw a penalty flag on Miami cornerback Glenn Sharpe roughly six seconds after the play had concluded, extending a game that went to double overtime, and ended in heartbreaking fashion for the Hurricanes, which were riding a 34-game win streak and attempting to win back-to-back national championships in 2003.
I would love to wipe away the hit Will Allen placed on Willis McGahee’s knee, bending it backwards on a hit that sidelined him for the game, and jeopardized his draft stock.
I will flash back to seeing Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey, the trigger man behind an impressive four-year run for the Hurricanes, balled up on a sofa inside that stadium, unconsolably crying for 30 minutes.
We could have filled a bucket with all the tears from players and coaches that night, and from that point the Hurricanes program was never the same.
Sure The U went to the Orange Bowl the next season, and was relevant on the college football landscape up until getting beat down by LSU on the Peach Bowl field, and then in the stadium’s tunnel after that 2005 game.
But if we’re being honest about UM’s football program before Mario Cristobal, one of the nation’s top recruiters, returned to his alma mater, and school’s spending in the transfer portal skyrocketed, the Hurricanes had one decent season — by Miami’s standards — in two decades.
Between Randy Shannon, the prodigal son who turned into a villain, Al “Folding” Golden, Mark Richt, who burned out after three seasons, and Manny Diaz, the Hurricanes had fallen from prominence.
Monday night’s game, where the Hurricanes enter as an 8.5-point underdog despite playing in their home stadium, with their city as the backdrop, is Miami’s chance to right/write history.
The Hurricanes will never get back that championship lost in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, but beating the No. 1-ranked Hoosiers, giving this football-starved community something to throw a parade for in Coral Gables, or Miami Gardens, will mean so much more.
It’s for all those Optimist, Pop Warner and FYL League programs that develop the next generation of South Florida football players, and the men and women who coach and run and support those leagues, and teams.
This one is for the high school football coaches and their staffs who make sure Rueben Bains and Malachi Toneys of this community become academically eligible.
It’s for the Hurricanes students who bus 20 miles from campus to Miami’s home football games because the University of Miami can’t build an on-campus stadium like the rest of the major college programs.
This one is for all the South Florida football standouts who chose UM even though other programs had better facilities, immaculate stadiums and offered more money during the era of football where payments to players were made under the table, but were still rampant while the NCAA scrutinized and often penalized the Canes, as if they were the only school to break the ridiculous rules.
This is for every Canes legend such as Michael Irvin, Ed Reed, Andre Johnson, Jonathan Vilma, and many others who poured back into the teams of the past two decades, teaching the youngsters the way to greatness.
It’s for every parent who told their child how mighty the University of Miami’s football program once was, but had nothing to back up those claims but old tales.
This is for the future generation of Canes fans this season, this success has given birth to, and those who returned after giving up on the program during their walk through the wilderness after joining the ACC.
And most importantly, it’s for every player on every Hurricanes team who built this once-mighty dynasty into what it was, and died a slow and painful death each season the program was irrelevant.
Leaving Hard Rock Stadium without the program’s sixth, and hardest fought championship because it came through a playoff system, is unacceptable when we consider what everyone who has had orange and green running through their veins has gone through.
To be at the doorstep of football utopia, sports immortality and to not seize on this moment would lead to another heartbreaking, trauma inducing memory.
One U no longer deserve.
