The Beast : Fiesta Bowl Redux

So there’s this little game coming up this weekend. Miami vs Ohio State. No. 12 vs. No. 2. Jacory vs. Pryor. Dotting the I. Script Ohio. Etc Etc Etc. I’ll let every other writer, blogger, talking head, and prognosticator deal with this year’s “Biggest Game Ever!!” I thought the best insight I could provide this week was a little trip back in time.

So let’s take a trip back to 2002 and the national championship game in January of 2003. Actually, we’ll start a few years earlier in 1999 when I started traveling with the team. Our first game that year was against Ohio State in the Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands. At the time I didn’t fully understand the tradition of Ohio State football. The Buckeyes weren’t all that in the ’90s. I think most Bucknuts would tell you they are willing to forget the Cooper years. Little did I know I’d be having nightmares about Scarlet and Gray for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to 2002. That was my first year on the sidelines. You can imagine my emotions when I got that phone call from Greg Reed, the GM of WQAM who had picked me to be the sideline reporter on the broadcasts. We had just partied like rock stars in downtown Miami after the Rose Bowl win. Miami was on a roll and we were on top of the world. Here I am, a 25-year old punk in the biz who felt like I just got the best job in the world. Really when you think about it, it made sense. Here I am, a UM grad, someone who’s heart is somewhere between the Breezeway and the Memorial Building. I didn’t just bleed orange and green, I lived it, every day of my life since I was able to use words. But I didn’t just love UM, I had worked my backside off since I got to the Gables in 1994 covering the team and spending every waking moment at the Hecht.

Miami is reeling off wins left and right throughout the year. We go up to Gainesville and Mo Sikes takes care of business. We clobber the Big East. We beat FSU. I have it on very good knowledge from a security guard who was in the end zone of the Cotton Bowl who later went on to work at UM, that when Randall Hill ran up the tunnel in Dallas shooting off his guns, he was yelling “it’s too easy, it’s too easy.” That’s what every game felt like in ’02. It was almost not fair. All of that talent. All of that swagger. All of that football that resembled something more out of PlayStation than the real game of college football. We were all caught up in it.

While I was older than the players, I didn’t feel like I was coming from a different generation. The seniors started school just as I finished. They had many of the same professors I had. They knew the staff at the Rat and at allCanes just like I did. This team was still mostly Butch’s team and I was as close to the players as possible. Remember, times were different at The U back then. As a member of the broadcast crew I could see a lot more of practice, I could wander the hallways of the Hecht, sitting in coaches’ offices, and picking their brain about the upcoming opponent. For example, I used to get about 30 minutes a week to talk football with Dorsey and Matt Walters. I could sit in the SID office, and off the record, get the real deal about the team, the opponent, and everything else.

There was nothing cooler than in the fourth quarter of blowouts when I would sit on the bench, yucking it up with guys. I remember a game in Syracuse where Miami blew out the Orange 49-7 (same game where the Canes did the warming the hands off the ball celebration) when Receivers coach Curtis Johnson came down from the booth midway through the fourth and I stood next to him the rest of the game. He’s coaching up Andre Johnson and I’m right there as if I was a freshman WR trying to pick up a thing or two. Now a days, FAHGETTTT ABOUT IT. But that’s another blog for another time. The point is, I was dialed in, and felt more like a part of the program than just some radio guy. So let’s get to “the game.”

Miami beats Virginia Tech in that wild “let’s get Dorsey the Heisman” game, and we’re off to Tempe, Arizona. We arrive to the desert at least a week before the game. We get off the 777 wide body and there’s a band playing to greet s. There are photogs on the tarmac. There’s media everywhere I look. It was like the Beatles had just arrived in the States for the first time. Right then, on the tarmac at the airport I knew things were out of control.

We checked into the team hotel, and then went over to the media hotel to check out the best thing about bowl games: The Media Hospitality Room. I have to be honest. I’ve been to every major bowl game. No one does hospitality like the Fiesta Bowl. Remember Tostitos was the big sponsor and when you walked in to the hospitality room, there were table, after table, after table, after table, after table of Tostitos. We were munching on stuff that had not even hit the grocery store shelves. I was trying nacho chips in flavors you’ve never dreamed of. This place was stocked 24 hours a day. You could wander in there at 4 a.m. and grab a bag of Tostitos and fresh bean dip. I kid you not. The other great part of the Media Hospitality Room, free margaritas, all of the time. I’m not talking watered down, or frozen margaritas. I’m talking premium tequila, hand made ‘ritas whenever you wanted them. Let’s just say there was a lot of dehydration that week.

Oh, did I mention they had a half dozen 60-inch TV’s with PlayStation hooked up. True story. A few friends of mine were playing Duke/UNC in a college basketball VIDEO GAME, and I was standing behind them watching them play. Standing next to me was legendary Miami Herald columnist Edwin Pope. After about 20 minutes Edwin turns to me and says, “ I didn’t think Duke and Carolina played this early in the season.” The graphics were so good, he thought it was real game. No Joke.

The team practiced at a community college. Every day it was like a rock concert. Here comes ESPN personalities, politicians, celebrities, and of course Charles Barkley. I would get into my car after practice and asked myself If I was watching a Led Zeppelin Reunion concert or Canes football practice. The real spectacles were the press conferences and media avails. I remember walking into one of the hotels with the Miami players that were due to speak that day and former WFOR sportscaster Jill Martin (who’s now a big time national TV personality) was following Brett Romberg and treating him like he was Elvis. They are walking down the hall and all of a sudden out of nowhere up walks a gaggle of gorgeous Playboy playmates. If only TMZ was around back in the day.

I’ve covered five Super Bowls and to this day I’ve never experienced one single event like that Fiesta Bowl. Craziness. It was about this time when I was starting to realize that not only was the hype over the top, but that these Canes may have lost their focus a bit. Remember, wins had come easy. Everyone has already given them the trophy. And to make matters worse, media events were becoming less about X’s and O’s and more about “how big of a spectacle can we have.” I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach. But in talking to the players, I still felt confident that they’d be able to storm through the Buckeyes. They were wrong, I was wrong, everyone was wrong.

Look, I know Miami turned the ball over a million times. I know there was a bogus flag. I know some weird things happened in that game like your NFL-ready running back suffering a devastating injury. But, the bottom line is Ohio State was wayyyy more physical than Miami had thought they would be. After the first few series, I wandered over to an area right behind the offensive line. I was always told if I really wanted to get a feel for how the game was going, go over and listen to Kehoe and his bunch. So that’s what I did. And what I heard was alarming. I get over there and I hear Kehoe asking his guys what they were seeing out there. Miami’s o-line was getting man-handled. As Kehoe polled his guys, the answers were not pretty. Finally, the last guy Kehoe solicited for info was Carlos Joseph. He asked Carlos what he was seeing out there. The reply: “I don’t know coach, I’m just playing.” Carlozs was totally baffled. After hearing that I turned on my mic and gave the guys upstairs the cue that I had a nugget.

Whenever I had something compelling from the sideline I would say “GOT IT” on the mic. This would be heard by Joe and Don in their headsets and then they’d throw it down to me and the engineer would put me on the air. They threw it down to me and I said something akin to the following. “Guys, Miami is having some real problems identifying what Ohio State is doing up front, defensively. I would say there’s some communication issues going on. But right now, life is not good in the trenches for Miami’s o-line.” During the break, Don asked me to tell him exactly what Kehoe was saying. I relayed the info. A pen got thrown out of the broadcast booth. I digress. If you ever go to a Canes game and watch the Hurricanes Broadcast crew in their booth, you might see a pen go flying out of DBJ’s hand. If you see that, you can be assured things are not going well.

Once Miami realized it was going to be a dog fight, that’s when the spectacles, the hype, were shoved away and a different mind set took over. The problem was, it wasn’t enough. Somewhere late in the game and the game was going back and fourth, I was on the sideline when the offense was on the field. I found myself standing next to one of my go-to guys: Matt Walters. He looked down to me and said, no matter what Beast, this is a great game. This was in the heat of the battle, and Matt had the sense to take a step back for a second and just realize how great the game was. I’ll never forget that conversation. You know how the game played out. Ken Dorsey gets knocked out for a play. DC completes the pass. Etc Etc. Somewhere there was a flag thrown. I never saw the flag. I was too busy running out on to the field to try and stick my mic in front of Coach Coker. Somewhere there is an overhead shot of the game as the flag is being thrown. You see confetti. You see mass chaos, and you see me, in the middle of the field. That walk back to the sideline felt like it took an hour. Miami failed to score. Game over. Championship lost.

The locker room felt like a wake. I was one of the first people in the locker room and I did the smart thing and hid behind a group of lockers. There was Dorsey with a towel over his head, weeping. There was Willis McGahee on crutches. There was player after player staring at their lockers, looking for answers. I’ve been in some bad locker rooms before. This one was the worst. Imagine being around 100 people that all felt like they had just lost a member of their family. To make matters worse, I had to get right on a bus and head to the airport with some senior staff members who also had to get back to Miami for the opening of the Bank United Center (then called the convocation center). Luckily Miami beat UNC in a game when Darius Rice tied the game up on a last second three point shot. That helped a little bit, but not a lot. The nightmare in the desert was in full effect. There were a lot of sleepless nights after that. It still hurts. Even right now as I right this, I’m having a hard time getting the vision of a towel covered, weeping Dorsey out of my mind. Here’s a kid who absolutely gave every piece of himself to this program, who left it all on the field, and for the first time in two years, felt the pain of losing.

I’d like to think a win in Columbus this weekend will make it all feel better, but it won’t. It will be nice, but nothing will make the pain go away except for another national title. When Miami earns another ring, I’ll be able to push all of these bad memories out of my mind. Until then, as Don Bailey Jr. implored after the flag was thrown, “SOME ONE GET ME THAT MAN’S [official Terry Porter] HOME ADDRESS!!”

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