Highway Robbery Revisited 20 Years Later

Wednesday marks the twentieth anniversary of one of the most unfortunate and undeserved results in the history of College Football. That it happened in a game which they constantly replay on ESPN Classic, has its own Wikipedia entry and sell a DVD of in selected stores has made it painful to live with for 20 long years. Notre Dame's aura and following has made this game one of the most famous played in recent years.

In 1988 the national media intensified a war against the University of Miami football program that had begun three years earlier when Coach Jimmy Johnson allegedly ran up the score in Notre Dame in Gerry Faust's final game as Irish Head Coach. From that point on the pro Notre Dame elements of the college football media (that is to say the majority of writers and TV commentators in the day...a notable exception was the legendary Keith Jackson who seemed to relish in finding a team that could replace USC, his longtime favorite as a rival to torment Notre Dame.) ripped Miami in every way possible. The build up to the national title game following the 1986 season between the Hurricanes and Penn State was characterized as a matchup between good guys and bad guys. In 1987, Miami beat Notre Dame at the Orange Bowl 24-0 in a game where Lou Holtz decided to spite the crowd's celebratory countdown as the clock expired by calling a time out with a second left in the game.

Coming into the 1988 matchup between the teams in South Bend, the Hurricanes had not lost a regular season game since the 1985 season opener versus Florida. Over three years of victories. The media, the college football elite and most of all Notre Dame did everything possible to reverse this. The matchup was dubbed "catholics vs convicts." An irony considering Notre Dame would have more players arrested from that team going forward than the Canes and would graduate a lower percentage of its players from that team than Miami did. The national media led by CBS played along and blamed Miami for a pre game tunnel skirmish clearly caused by Notre Dame players and problems during the game almost certainly caused by drunk Notre Dame fans who three things on the field and shouted some of the most vile things you'd ever here even by the vile standards of American football fans.

But none of that mattered to the College Football elite who had a clear agenda: Put Miami back in its place. The emergence of Miami and to a lesser extent BYU and Florida State had threated the big city sports writers and TV personalities that covered the sport. The way the game was being played was changing and power was shifting from the Midwest and deep south to Florida and the Rocky Mountain states. (the next season Colorado would emerge like BYU as a massive national power, and would get close to Miami like treatment from the media.)

Notre Dame won the game 31-30, when Miami missed a late two point try. However three horrible calls, far worse than the call modern day Miami fans complain about from the 2003 Fiesta Bowl obsess about threw this game to Notre Dame. One of these calls, Cleveland Gary's "fumble" on the goal line is replayed over and over again even though every time I see it is obvious he both broke the plain AND the ground caused the fumble. This "loss" was painful for South Florida sports fans and still haunts many, myself included to this day. We had essentially had a title stolen from us to satisfy elites who covered the sport. Miami won out that season and finished ranked second behind Notre Dame, and had beaten five conference champions and then #1 Florida State in the process. These wins included a victory at the Big House against Michigan and a 44-3 romp over SEC Champ LSU in Baton Rouge.

This game was a bitter pill to swallow. But the following season the Irish came in ranked #1 having played a tougher schedule than Miami and was run out of the Orange Bowl 27-10 by the Hurricanes in the final regular season game. Miami ended up winning a national title that was quite frankly undeserved, considering Miami lost to Florida State before beating Notre Dame and FSU had after all lost to Brett Favre and Southern Miss. But the previous year Miami had been robbed of the title to satisfy a blood thirsty elite. Karma has remarkable ways of working.

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