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A football revival to make the basketball team proud

Sporting News, The, March 22, 1999 by Mark Blaudschun

The preseason talk in college football centers on the usual contenders--Florida State, Ohio State, Florida, Tennessee--plus a couple of suspects, Arizona and Penn State. Remarkably, no one is talking about Miami, outright winner of three national championships and co-champion once during a nine-season span (1983-1991) and carrying as much mystique as any school in the past 25 years.

Maybe it's time. Down in south Florida, where Hurricanes basketball has become hotter than the NBA's Heat, the signs of life in the Miami football offices are unmistakable.

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On a warm, late-winter evening, with twilight setting in, walk through the coaches' offices and you will see darkened but not empty rooms. Videotape machines are humming and plans are being made for spring practice, which began this week.

"We're getting there," says Miami coach Butch Davis, who has guided the Hurricanes through the turbulent days of probation and now has Miami back to where it should be: a top-20 and, perhaps, top-10 team next season.

"We're even redshirting people," says Davis with a can-you-believe-it grin, less than two years after he looked at a roster that included only 59 scholarship players, the effects of NCAA sanctions that included scholarship reductions and limitations.

Davis is cautious in his optimism. He has to fill the quarterback position, where third-year sophomore Kenny Kelly takes over for Scott Covington, and running back is another concern, because of the departure of Edgerrin James. But James Jackson and Najeh Davenport seem more than capable of picking up the slack.

College football needs Miami back in the main show. More important, the Big East needs Miami to be more than good.

"There's no question about it," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese says. "Having Miami back to the level where it once was is vital for our league. Every league needs a team like that."

Tranghese made it clear he wasn't trashing teams such as Virginia Tech, Syracuse and West Virginia, which picked up the Big East mantle when Miami tumbled the past few years.

It's just that Miami has a mystique about it that you can't find in places such as Blacksburg and Morgantown.

No one really expects the Hurricanes to dominate like they did in the 1980s, when it seemed they were winning national championships every other season. But to pick up your preseason magazines and find the Hurricanes in the same group as Florida State, Tennessee, Nebraska and Ohio State or Michigan? Yes, that is reasonable.

Davis says it still will take some time. The Hurricanes still are thin in a lot of areas, and Davis still has to work hard to keep the talent flowing down to Miami instead of up to Gainesville and Tallahassee in the fertile recruiting state of Florida.

But the Hurricanes' remarkable come-from-behind, last-second win over UCLA last December in front of a national television audience and, more important, recruits in for a visit, has been an invaluable benefit.

The turnaround might not come this season. Miami may be overscheduled with non-conference opponents, including Ohio State in the Kickoff Classic in August and Penn State and Florida State in September. All three might be in the preseason top 5.

But if the 'Canes get lucky and mature quickly, they might steal a couple of wins and get back faster than Davis hopes or thinks they will.

"Right now," says Davis, with a laugh, "we just want to have a football team our basketball team can be proud of."

The Hurricanes had that once. And with the talent starting to flow into Coral Gables, they may have that again. And that is good not only for Miami, but also for the Big East and all of college football.

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CAMPUS RUMBLINGS, LOCKER ROOM WHISPERS

Excitement is starting to build at Clemson, where new coach Tommy, Bowden was greeted not only by his players for the first day of spring practice last week, but also by 300 enthusiastic Tigers fans, eager to see Clemson return to the national forefront.... Former Clemson coach Danny Ford has been approached by some prominent political types about running for Congress in South Carolina next fall. Ford is seriously considering it. If it happens, don't expect to see any references to Clemson's 1981 national champion team, coached by Ford, in political ads. Yeah, fight.... Cheers to Georgia and Georgia Tech for not giving in to greed by moving their annual game (scheduled to be played next season at Tech) to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The overwhelming response by Tech students and supporters was to keep the game on campus, at 46,000-seat Bobby Dodd Stadium, rather than move it to the 71,000-seat dome.... Alabama also is making a move back to campus games. With $35 million in renovations completed at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, the campus facility now seats 83,817 and has 81 luxury boxes. Which is why the Tide are making the move to switch all future SEC games to Bryant-Denny. Birmingham's Legion Field, long the site for most of the Tide's biggest SEC games, will be phased out gradually. Alabama coaches feel it's a tremendous recruiting edge to have games on campus. ... Word has it that the NCAA will approve a new bowl in Mobile, Ala., to be played on December 22. There aren't enough quality teams now to fill all the bowls, so why add another?

A football revival to make the basketball team proud

Sporting News, The, March 22, 1999 by Mark Blaudschun

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