FIU’s magical triumph a new low for Miami Hurricanes in historic night at Marlins Park | Opinion
There was a lot of talk this week about “hallowed ground.“ It wrapped up Saturday night in nostalgia, romanticizing the occasion. It meant to lend a historic gravitas to the Miami Hurricanes’ football game vs. cross-county rival FIU at Marlins Park — where once the old Orange Bowl stood and so much UM glory was lived.
Well, oh my did that script flip!
The history belonged entirely to underdog FIU this night. The Panthers made their own.
Little Brother finally stood up, and Big Brother cowered.
FIU 30, Miami 24.
The Canes had a huge majority of the 27,339 fans in attendance. But FIU had the most at the end. The ones left, making the joyous noise.
It was only the biggest victory in FIU football’s mere 16-year-existence and such a very personal triumph for Panthers coach Butch Davis, who of course led UM from 1995 to 2000. It made FIU bowl-eligible at 6-5. Far beyond that, though, for one magical night it cast away the long, dark shadow the Canes always have had over the smaller-conference Cats.
Davis got a Gatorade bath as the game ended.
“Sticky!” he described it. Of the night: “It is. It’s special.”
UM has played football since 1936. Has won five national championships. Plays in the Power 5 Atlantic Coast Conference to FIU’s little Conference USA. Miami had easily won all three previous meetings and was a 20 1/2-point favorite this night.
It was simply one of the most stunning, biggest upsets in the history of major South Florida sports.
For all of the celebrating FIU hard-earned for itself, and waited so long to feel, the devastation on the other side was equal.
“One of the darkest nights in this program’s history,” Canes coach Manny Diaz called it — and that didn’t sound like hyperbole. “That’s on me.”
So is this: Miami is now 0-3 this season when it has more than a week to prepare, despite being favored in each game.
“We talked about it like the elephant in the room,” Diaz said — and yet his Canes came out flat.
This defeat humiliates Hurricanes football and everyone connected.
Canes fans who liked Diaz a lot better as a defensive coordinator than as their head coach will only grow in volume and number after this, as Miami falls to a 6-5 record that feels so much worse than FIU’s 6-5.
Why didn’t Diaz deploy N’Kosi Perry for a spark when starting quarterback Jarren Williams was struggling most of the night with inaccuracy, and throwing three costly interceptions?
The defeat underlined what a disappointing season this has been for Diaz. If this is “The New Miami,” they’d better send out for a new New Miami. Because this one ain’t workin’.
Miami already had dropped out of contention for the ACC Coastal division crown, and now can expect a modest bowl invite indeed, and maybe not even that unless its wins at Duke next week to close the regular season.
Orange Bowl Committee members were still toying with scenarios that might have earned UM an invite had they beaten FIU and Duke. Now? Forget about it.
I’m not big on saying somebody “out-coached” somebody else based solely on a result, but in this case it felt like Davis and staff schooled Diaz and staff.
The Panthers were palpably more fired up and readier to play from the start. What had been a bad FIU defense physically had its way with UM’s offense. And Panthers quarterback James Morgan outplayed Miami’s Williams even as Diaz stuck with the QB who had no answers.
“We had to challenge ourselves at halftime that we were matching their instensity,” admitted Diaz.
Davis was not above some gamesmanship, too. Four times in the game — twice as Miami prepared to run a 4th-and-1 play — one of his FIU players would collapse on the field, as if in the throes of sudden cramps, only to rise moments later and get booed off the field by Canes fans.
UM then fell short on both 4th-down gambles.
Either those were the best-timed “cramps” in medical history, or FIU did something either utterly ingenious or egregiously unsportsmanlike, depending on one’s rooting interest.
The lid lifted on the past by Miami playing for the first time on the graveyard of the old Orange Bowl did serve a fitting reminder:
These two football programs both are chasing ghosts.
Miami is chasing its own past, its history, those five national championships.
And FIU is chasing UM, always in the shadow, always the lil’ brother looking up.
For FIU, Saturday’s result won’t change that narrative, but certainly counted as milestone progress.
For UM, getting back to the glory days and national prominence has seemed miles away this season, and seem entirely out of plausible conversation Saturday night.
This was only the fourth meeting between the city rivals, in a relationship that survived the 2006 brawl that almost killed it.
This also was only the fourth college football game ever played at Marlins Park and the first since December 2016, when the last of three Miami Beach Bowl postseason games was played.
UM’s last season playing in the Orange Bowl was 2007, and the sagging old stadium was razed in 2008. Current Canes players were in elementary school. Marlins Park rose on the same ground, opening in 2012.
I stood beside the great fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco on a morning in 1993 when they tore down the original 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. Years later they built a new boxing gym at the same address. No matter. The old ghosts — Cassius Clay, the pre-Muhammad Ali teenager — will always be dancing and floating in that long-gone place that only exists in the memory now.
Likewise, the ghosts of the Orange Bowl and Canes dominance past cannot seem to be recreated, no matter how hard “The New Miami” tries.
Saturday’s historic result was foretold. Nostradamus wore FIU blue.
“The [Hurricanes] offense should be worried,” Panthers senior safety Olin Cushion had declared this week, “because we’re going to gave them backed up to their own end zone a lot.”
It sounded like foolish optimism.
It didn’t sound like that Saturday as Hurricanes fans began to file out early, and the winning band played merrily, and in the ballpark’s concourses you heard fans chanting “F-I-U!” after the game.
That was because, for one astounding night, the best college football team in Miami was not the five-time national champions.
It was Florida International University.
