By Mark Wilson 1/2/14

They never forget the date 1/2/84 in South Florida. 30 years ago, it was the night that the University of Miami became relevant in college football.

I thought of that while watching Kyler Elsworth make one final stop on a Stanford running back to seal Michigan State’s first Rose Bowl victory in more than a quarter century.

It’s not that MSU wasn’t relevant in football before OR after that New Year’s Day in 1988 it’s just that they’ve never found a way to REMAIN relevant. After all, the Spartans won Rose Bowl’s long before George Perles or Mark Dantonio took the reigns.

Albeit, not many of them.

Miami was a different deal back in 1983. They had no history of solid football success; hadn’t even been to a bowl game since 1967. In fact, when Lou Saban, possibly a second cousin to Nick, stepped down as coach and A.D. in 1978 after just two mundane seasons, there was talk of disbanding the program.

Yes—- Miami would DUMP college football on campus.

At the very least, there was sentiment to drop from division one to 1-AA or even division two. The Board of Trustees went so far as to schedule a vote on it. If not for John Green, Miami’s football fortunes would have gone the way of basketball.

The Hurricanes fielded NO basketball team after 1971, a few years after NBA legend Rick Barry left Coral Gables. Ron Fraser’s baseball program was the crown jewel at “The U.” Well, baseball along with tennis and golf.

Hoops didn’t exist and football was a dying joke.

THAT was the University of Miami athletic department in the late 70’s.

Back to John Green.

No, not the John Green who was part of the “Malice at the Palace” when the Pistons and Pacers brawled but Dr. John Green; university executive vice-president.

He convinced the board to try football at the D-1 level one more time. He had just the guy to turn things around.

Green went out and got Don Shula’s offensive coordinator with the Miami Dolphins, Howard Schnellenberger.

The board couldn’t pronounce his name much less SPELL it.

As it turned out, Shula stumped for the football program to remain off U.S. 1 and what Shula wanted… Shula pretty much got.

To this day, Shula is GOD in Miami.

Schnellenberger had returned to South Florida four years earlier after a failed 17 games as head coach of the Baltimore Colts. Prior to that, he had been Shula’s O.C. during the perfect Super Bowl season of 1972. Howard was long regarded as a brilliant offensive mind.

In college, Schnellenberger had spent time at his alma mater Kentucky and then joined his old coach, the iconic Bear Bryant, at Alabama from 1961-65. But, when he arrived in Miami he had been out of the college game for 14 years.

The University would give it one more shot with the guy that had the funky long last name.

Seriously, Miami was MINUTES away from scrapping football… and now they were hiring a big time NFL assistant to take them to the Promised Land.

C’mon, that is good stuff!

His first four years at “The U” were nothing to write home about.

All he had to show for those seasons was a single bowl appearance in 1981 at the Peach Bowl. Any thoughts of competing for a national championship were about as distant as basketball returning to campus.

One thing he did have going for himself was his quarterback. Jim Kelly had shocked many by dissing Penn State to play in Coral Gables. Joe Paterno had wanted Kelly to come to State College as a linebacker. Kelly wanted no part of switching positions. He was an all-state high school QB in Pennsylvania.

Problem was; Kelly couldn’t stay healthy.

By 1982, Kelly’s final season, he barely played enough to register a blip on the football map. He threw exactly THREE touchdown passes with one interception. Those were his SEASON totals.

Current University of Georgia head coach Mark Richt was Kelly’s backup and played more than Kelly in ’82. In fact, Richt’s best game came against Michigan State.

In a driving monsoon rain at the Orange Bowl on September 25th, Richt led Miami to a fourth quarter comeback versus John Leister and the Spartans to win 25-22. It may have been Muddy Waters’ best game as MSU coach in his fateful three lousy seasons as head man.

A LOSS might have been Muddy’s best? Uh, yeah.

Miami ended up losing four times that year and made no bowl trip. 7-and-4 back then didn’t always guarantee a bowl appearance. Plus, the Hurricanes were still one of 25 programs playing as independents. It would be a while before they joined the Big East and eventually the ACC.

1982 gave ZERO evidence that something special was about to happen.

I was working in television down in Miami then; at WTVJ which was the CBS affiliate Channel 4. It has since changed to NBC 6.

There was a new sheriff in town as well.

Sam Jankovich had become athletic director and not many could figure out if Schnellenberger and Jankovich got along that great. At the very least they tolerated each other.

1983 would be a big year for Howard. He intimated when he drove down the street from his Dolphins’ gig to the Hurricanes Greentree practice facility that he “wanted to compete for a national title within five years.”

Time was ticking. ’83 was year five.

Kelly was gone. He took his three measly TD passes from ’82 and parlayed them into an NFL first round draft pick with Buffalo during that reputed “quarterback draft.” Blowing off Buffalo because he didn’t want snow, Kelly opted for big money from the Houston Gamblers of the upstart United States Football League. Kelly would end up starring in the USFL before his Hall of Fame career with the Bills. He got the snow anyhow.

Richt had left to begin his coaching career and the only other quarterback on the roster with playing experience was Kelly Vanderwende. He had backed up Richt when Kelly was hurt. Vanderwende had thrown 68 passes with two touchdowns and four picks in ’82.

Oh, there were also two freshmen.

Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde had been recruited by Schnellenberger from Ohio and New York respectively.

I remember asking Howard early on in ’83 about his QB “situation.”

“We’ll just see how it shakes out,” he told me in that raspy, husky pipe-smoking voice.

At the press conference for spring football, we all piled into a small classroom-like office at the Greentree facility in Coral Gables to get Howard’s “state of the team” address.

When I say “we all piled into,” I’m talking about a handful of media who actually gave a crap and had to cover the team because that was our job. I sat next to Christine Brennan of the Miami Herald. Christine went on to become an excellent columnist for USA Today.

We laughed about sitting at these old time desks; the kind you had back in the old days in third grade. They had small chairs attached to what looked like a plank of wood. If you don’t know them— ask your parents.

It was like Howard was making us go back to school.

I was recently OUT of school and didn’t want that nightmare anymore.

Schnellenberger proceeded to run down the 1983 version of his Hurricanes. Vanderwende’s name came up more than Kosar’s or Testaverde’s. I think I looked at Christine with bug eyes as if to say, “He’s not really going to start THAT guy?”

At that point, I was starting to imagine the University of Miami without football.

I’m telling you, we walked out of there into the sweltering SoFla humidity hoping the baseball team could get back to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.

Football wouldn’t be worth covering in the fall.

No one talked about the Hurricanes. It’s as if they didn’t exist. Howard hadn’t done a bad job but he hadn’t lit a fire in the fan base. The alumni were getting restless. Schnellenberger’s four year record was a decent 30-and-15 but just that one Peach Bowl was all he had to show for it.

Hey, at least he WON it.

It was Howard’s first of six bowl victories as a college coach. He never lost a bowl game. 6-and-0.

But, in fall of ’83 bowl win number TWO seemed a long ways away.

Seemed even further away when Miami opened up the season in Gainesville with a 28-3 loss to Florida. By then Kosar had won the starting QB job as a frosh. Vanderwende would be his backup. Testaverde was going to redshirt.

One of the Miami writers, I don’t recall if it was Christine or Edwin Pope of the Herald, wrote that they shouldn’t even come home. They should fly straight to Houston for their second game against the Cougars of Bill Yeoman.

I liked Yeoman because he had been an assistant to Duffy Daugherty for years at Michigan State before taking the Houston position in 1962. 25 years Yeoman spent there.

He was also the architect of the veer offense.

Anyhow, here was Miami. 0-and-1, unranked and heading to Texas to take on a living legend.

Yawn!

We didn’t even bother traveling to the game for WTVJ. No reason to spend the money covering a sad sack football group with nothing going on.

Yawn again!

Houston wasn’t very good and somehow the Hurricanes waltzed into the Astrodome and smoked Yeoman’s Cougars 29-7. Kosar played well as did his favorite receiver Glenn Dennison. Dennison was a tight end in a receiver’s role.

Offensive coordinator Tom Olivadotti came up with a terrific game plan that was not evident in the loss to the Gators. Gary Stevens got excellent defense from Jay Brophy and company.

Ok, fine. 1-and-1.

Big deal.

Purdue and Notre Dame were up next at the Orange Bowl. The Boilermakers stunk in 1983 and Miami shut them out, 35-0. Kosar was getting the hang of it.

Marc Trestman, the current head coach of the Chicago Bears, was QB coach for Schnellenberger and worked hard with Bernie. He said something very telling early in that campaign.

“That kid is going to play on Sunday’s some day.”
Trestman already could see Kosar’s NFL ability after just a few games. He had the size and that three-step drop. Kosar was quicker than most people gave him credit for.

It showed against the Irish.

Notre Dame was 13th in the nation and coached by the “Holy Roller,” Gerry Faust. They were fresh off a loss to MSU in Perles’ first season at East Lansing. The game was in South Bend and shocked a lot of people. Perles had a signature win before October hit. The Irish were #4 in the nation before that defeat.

Faust had nothing cooking for a second week in a row.

Miami shut out Notre Dame 20-0.

Back to back shutouts? C’mon, you gotta be kidding?

Three weeks earlier it looked like the Canes couldn’t have shutout Miami Southridge High School. Maybe Killian or Hialeah, but NOT Southridge.

All of a sudden, “The U” was excited.

Miami’s winning ways were infectious. It started to steamroll. 56-17 at Duke, 42-14 over Louisville, 31-7 at Mississippi State.

Four straight games and the Canes didn’t allow more than SEVEN points in any one contest.
17-7 in Cincinnati over the Bearcats; 20-3 at the O.B. over #12 West Virginia.

By now, the voters had noticed. Miami was ranked FIFTH in the country after the win against the Mountaineers. They climbed the ladder fast.

Unranked on September 24th and now #5 by November 5th.

Meanwhile, Nebraska was motoring right along under Tom Osborne.

We started watching because now the Orange Bowl was very much in Miami’s sights. They had not played a “home bowl game” since 1951.

The Cornhuskers were on their way to a perfect regular season and it was obvious that Nebraska could start making plans for Miami on January 2nd.

Miami had two games left.

They got a scare from East Carolina but won the game at the O.B. 12-7. It knocked them DOWN a spot in the AP Top 25 poll to number six. But, they were 9-and-1 and only Florida State stood in their way of the first TEN win season in school history AND a date with Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

We were far from laughing or yawning anymore.

On November 12th, Howard Schnellenberger delivered.

Miami stormed out of Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee with a 17-16 victory. Bobby Bowden told me it was one of his more devastating losses. The Hurricanes celebration on the field looked awkward because they didn’t know HOW to do it.

It truly did come out of nowhere. A freshman QB with a team not destined to set statistical records, just peeled off 10 straight wins for the first time in nearly 60 years of Hurricanes’ football.

Five years…. after the program nearly went away!

Just like Schnellenberger said, he had the Canes competing for a national title.

The Orange Bowl committee officially handed Howard an orange and he took a bite— rind and all. We got that on tape for TV as we would one more time.

Schnellenberger was not the most gregarious of coaches. He was all business even if his wife Beverlee was very much into the South Florida socialite life. They were great together; cute southern couple.

Even if they really weren’t that southern.

Howard and Beverlee were the toast of Miami. All Schnellenberger had to do now was finish the job.
Nebraska, sure enough, came into the Orange Bowl a perfect 12-and-0. Back then, 11 games was a season but if you played in the opening Kickoff Classic, you got a 12th game.

Osborne had an awesome team.

Mike Rozier would win the Heisman. Irving Fryar was an NFL receiver and Turner Gill was the all-american QB. Dean Steinkuhler won awards at guard while Tom Rathman was about to take San Francisco by storm.

Miami had… uh, Kosar.

Guys like Stanley Shakespeare, Dennison, Brophy, Albert Bentley and Eddie Brown were good players but names that faded like a cheap pair of Levis.

As crazy as the city was over the Orange Bowl, our newsroom was worse.

Most of the people who worked at WTVJ had actually attended college at “The U.” They were in a frickin’ frenzy over the Canes. Even our stoic, legendary anchor Ralph Renick was excited. Renick didn’t get excited by much, but he was into this thing.

Our off-air sports director Bernie Rosen, another Miami grad, ran around like a madman doling out assignments left and right. The sports department consisted of me, Tony Segreto, Hank Goldberg (same one that is on ESPN) and producers Stu Jacobs and Steve Krull. We also had two dedicated videographers, Ross Noble and Jimmy Arminio.

University of Miami graduates ALL!

Here was me with my MSU degree and our intern, Tom Zack who was a Detroit native. We kept our level heads about us.

Tom loved being from Detroit and wasn’t the biggest fan of anything Miami. He was ecstatic to get a guy from Michigan working in the sports dept. His wife Cindy thought we were both bats.

When it came game time, after all the hoopla and hype and falderal, Ross would shoot the video and Zack would accompany him.

Tony, Hank and I went to stand around and watch on the field and in the press box.

We did the requisite pre-game shows and lead up to the game shows and shows of shows with more shows to show that we can do shows.

Phew!

Miami was abuzz for the first Orange Bowl game involving the home team in 33 years.

Nebraska was an 11 point favorite.
Kosar couldn’t have cared less. He came out guns blazing. Two touchdown passes to Dennison and a field goal by Jeff Davis later, and Miami led 17-0 after one quarter.

Osborne pulled a trick play out of his bag. He worked the “fumblerooski” with Gill and Steinkuhler. Gill intentionally fumbled the snap so his Outland/Lombardi Trophy-winning lineman could pick it up and ramble 19 yards for the score.

At half, the Huskers had cut the Canes lead to 17-14.

Bentley and freshman running back Alonzo Highsmith each scored rushing TD’s after long Kosar drives and Miami was up big again, 31-17 after three.

15 minutes left for a national title.

The reason “national title” could be spoken is that two of the teams ahead of Miami had already lost their bowl games. Texas and Illinois went down to defeat earlier in the day; Auburn barely beat Michigan 9-7. With no BCS, Miami had to rely on the voters for that mythical designation.

That left only Nebraska.

Rozier’s backup Jeff Smith scored early in the fourth quarter to trim the lead to 31-24. Stevens’ defense had to come up huge and they did as the minutes ticked off.

Under two minutes to play, Gill had Fryar wide open in the end zone but Fryar made a rare drop. About a minute later, they got the six points anyway. Gill kept the ball on the option and at the last second, pitched to Smith who bulldozed into the right corner by the pylon.

Touchdown Huskers. 31-30 Miami. Decision time, Tom Osborne.

While the Nebraska coach was figuring out what to do, I realized that Smith had slammed right into our intern who was carrying the recorder while Ross had the camera. Back then, we didn’t have the fancy schmancy technology we do today. Local ENG video tape recording was still in its infancy.

So, Tom Zack couldn’t move. He stayed with the recorder as Smith bashed into him.

Back at the station later we watched what Ross shot. It was just Tom’s feet as he lay on his back after the granite hit by Jeff Smith. It took a good hour or so for us to stop laughing like hyenas.

Ok, it took a week.

While Zack was still down, and yes he was fine, Osborne made his decision to NOT kick the extra point.

HUH?

Just kick the extra point, take the 31-31 tie and win the mythical national championship. It was that simple!

Not for Dr. Tom.

Osborne said, “Go for it.” Nebraska… went for it.

Even earlier in the week he was asked what he would do and told reporters, “I hope it doesn’t come up. I’ll be crucified one way or another.”

Gill took the snap, looked around and saw Smith. He threw. Kenny Calhoun broke it up.

Game over. Calhoun raced around like he’d won a car on “The Price is Right.” He was now in Canes lore.

31-30.

Let the crucifying begin.

An all-time classic and quite possibly the best bowl game ever until that point. Maybe it STILL is.

Everyone was hugging and kissing in Canes Nation. Howard Schnellenberger did what he set out to do, what ALL coaches set out to do. He won his national championship in his fifth season at “The U.”

I took a camera and went around campus that night, to the Rathskellar bar and even to the frats, sororities and dorms. They weren’t burning anything, which was nice, but they were raising some hell.
There was no doubt that Miami was #1 in the final AP Poll.

Schnellenberger took another bite of a sweet Florida orange, rind and all, squarely into our Channel 4 camera and smiled the biggest smile I had seen from him since I got to town. I think Beverlee had a slice of that orange as well.

Things didn’t settle down for about four or five days. Rumors already started to fly that Howard had coached his last game at Miami. He and Jankovich agreed to allow him to pursue a pro head coaching gig; no colleges just pro.

Even though Brent Musburger had asked Schnellenberger the big question prior to the game;

“So, you will be back as head coach next season, Howard?”

“Oh, no question about that, Brent,” said Howard slyly.

Tom Zack put together a great musical tribute to the Hurricanes season using Willie Nelson’s “The Party’s Over” and stuck that quote in there.

The Orange Bowl wasn’t even cleaned up yet when Schnellenberger announced he was heading to the USFL to coach a team moving from Washington to either Miami or Orlando.

Fans and alum in Coral Gables were irate.

They finally had a guy lead them to glory and now he was booking for a gig in a league that had one foot out the door and another on a banana peel.

Howard looked like “dead man walking” at his press conference. He knew he was abandoning the Canes faithful but he also knew he gave them something that would live forever. He was honestly miffed by their reaction.

As it turned out, the USFL folded and Howard never coached a day for the Orlando Renegades.

Jankovich went in hot pursuit of the next coach.

Look at the job he had to offer!

A reigning national champion with a returning quarterback and most of the high flying offense and hard hitting defense was on the plate. It was nearly an unprecedented job opening.

All along it seemed that Auburn’s Pat Dye was the choice. Our staff at Channel 4 broke the news that the head dude at Oklahoma State was in the mix. Almost no one had heard of the cat.

I had a good source tell me that Jimmy Johnson would be the next head coach.

Jimmy who?

We did something really weird to get confirmation on the story we worked at for about three days. It was something totally out there and innovative.

We called.

Yep, we called Jimmy’s mother in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

She let the cat out of the bag without knowing. We weren’t even sure why she was at his house, or if anyone would pick up the phone. There were no cells or internet or anything like that. If you didn’t get someone on their home phone… it didn’t happen.

Our sports director arranged for a “live truck” and by 11 PM that night we had Jimmy Johnson on the air talking about taking the Miami coaching position while others in town were still talking up Pat Dye.

Welcome to Scoop-ville 1984.

The rest, at “The U” is history.

So, while watching Mark Dantonio hoist the Rose Bowl trophy on Wednesday night, it reminded me about a program that was just five years removed from almost tanking football in general. Miami’s national title changed a lot of things there.

Even basketball returned.

Bill Foster was appointed the first head coach for Miami hoops after a 14 year hiatus and he credited ALL of it to Schnellenberger’s championship.

MSU already has basketball. Tom Izzo is the keeper of that flame. No issue there.

But, what Dantonio and the Spartans did on January 1st, 2014 is make Michigan State football relevant like never before. NOW, we can put them in the talk about winning it all when the college football playoff begins this coming season. Everything begins… with relevance.

It happened 30 years ago and there’s no reason why it can’t happen again.