Tuesday, January 02, 2007

ESPN's Anti Miami Crusade Continues

For most sports fans today a trip to the front page of ESPN.com one probably thought would result in seeing pictures of Boise State's heroic win last night, or of Jim Mora Jr, or of the NFL Playoff matchups. Instead the front page story was a retrospective about the 1987 Fiesta Bowl game, which according to the by-line pitted "good versus evil," and changed Football forever. Yes, ESPN has now gone on record calling the 1986 Hurricanes led by Vinny Testeverde and Jerome Brown as "evil." Never mind that Miami had a higher graduation rate than Penn State that year among its Football players and never mind that most college offenses now resemble Miami's 1986 offense not Penn State's 1986 offenses, it was an evil team's loss that changed the game.

Memo to ESPN. Want a real game that changed Football? Try the 1984 Orange Bowl when an option oriented "unbeatable" Nebraska team lost to Miami running a pro style offense with a QB who threw sidearmed. The door for FSU, BYU, The Spurrier Fun and Gun, Boise State, the pistol, etc, etc opened up that night. Passing offenses had come to College Football for good.

2 comments:

Danny said...

You are right on the mark! Yes, that 1984 game, Miami vs NU was a game that changed college football forever. That debacle in the '87 Fiesta Bowl, being called "evil" is "evil" in and of itself! One of the things I think that made Miami, "MIAMI" was in fact due to the stigma television announcers laid on the Canes, and it really all started with the thrashing of Notre Dame in 1985 when the announcers including Brent Musberge, Pat Hayden and Ara Parseghan telling everybody that watched the game that day, that Miami was not only "bush", but also cheap for running up the score 58-7. Beating America's seetheart so badly was apparently not a nice thing to do, even though ND had run up the score on many, many teams over the years, what hypocrits!! That5 is really where all the "Thug" talk, and stuff really stared, but was really inflated after the '87 Fiesta Bowl, in which a far more talented team lost to Penn State, something that wouldn't have happened in 1 chance of 1000 that year.
"F" em all!

GO CANES!!!

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.

Listen to Canes Rising Radio!