Those loveable 'Canes

Mighty Miami turns itself into a football program to admire

PHOENIX -- There was a time, and it wasn't all that long ago, when the University of Miami played football, everyone quaked.

Thugs. Cheaters. Cocky, loud-mouthed, ugly-uniformed, stupid, Sebastian the Ibis-cheating thugs.

Jimmy Johnson and his hair. The battle fatigues. The smirky Dennis Erickson and Butch Davis. Too many good quarterbacks and running backs and wide receivers. Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis, all that talent and all that speed. Wide Right and all those wins -- 58 straight at home -- and, man, just give me a break already.

Then there's Larry Coker, a plain-as-mayo-on-white-bread lifetime assistant coach, who gets handed the head coaching job and, in his first chance at running a team since he left Claremore High in Claremore, Okla., back in 1979, what's he do? What'd he go off and do last year? Win another national title, of course. The team's fifth title since 1983.

The Hurricanes, as we all should know by now, are on the verge of winning yet another championship if they dispatch of Ohio State in Friday night's Fiesta Bowl. As good as Miami has been for the past 20 years, as maddeningly good as those outlaws from South Florida have been, they've never won back-to-back titles.

Ohio State, heavy underdogs in the game, ought to be plenty nervous about it because Miami, clearly, is a superior team. That doesn't mean the Hurricanes can't be beaten. It just means they haven't been in a couple of years. Thirty-four straight wins they've run up. That has to get the Buckeyes' attention.

But, you know, nobody ought to be quaking at Miami anymore. Yes, the Hurricanes are big, bad and quick. Sure, they can jack up 45 points without breaking a sweat, which in South Florida is quite an accomplishment.

But fear the Hurricanes? No.

How about appreciating them?

"What is important about them," Jim Tressel, the straight-laced coach at Ohio State, was saying the other day "is that not only do they win, but they win with class. They represent college football very well."

You never used to hear the words "class" and "Miami" in the same breath. It was like mentioning "Sapp" and "quiet," or "Sapp" and "skinny." It just wasn't done.

But something has happened over the past couple of years, something that should make us want to bury the image of a South Florida green-and-orange gang and embrace the Hurricanes.

They win. They're as classy about winning as a modern athlete and a modern program can be. And they keep on winning.

"I'm very proud of some things about this team," said Coker, the open-faced Miami coach. "We have over 70 percent of our players graduate in the last 11 years. And 14 to 18 players on this year's team already have graduated. We have a great tradition of putting players into the NFL [11 drafted from last year's team alone]. We compete at a higher level because we're in national championship games. I do think we have character on this team."

Sometime in the late '90s, Miami began to pull out of the muck and probation, brushed off its image and got respectable and respected. Now, with Coker, the Hurricanes are on the verge of becoming a dynasty.

It's funny in a way because Coker is about the last guy you would have figured to be running this program. Miami was prepared to turn to the hard-nosed Tressel to straighten things out after Erickson left for the NFL in 1995. Instead, they went with Davis, and he hired Coker away from his assistantship at Ohio State.

Now, the easy-going Coker, a coach the players lobbied for after Davis bolted for the NFL, is leading the Hurricanes into the best stretch they've had in a remarkable 20-year run.

Who would have figured?

"He's normal, you know?" Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey, a normal guy himself, said earlier this week.

It's an American sport to knock down the mighty, to de-deify the dynasties we build. Sometimes they deserve it, sometimes they don't.

This one, at this point in a fabulous run, does not. It's a good program run by a good guy. And if you can't appreciate that, well, you better learn how, because the Hurricanes are going to be on top for a while.

"I think we are unique," Coker said earlier this week here in Phoenix. "If I'm a kid I'd say 'Let's see, I've got great weather, great facilities, I've got a chance to play in the NFL and I am going to graduate and I've got a chance to play for the national championship.'"

It's a hard package to beat, for sure. The options, it seems, are clear.

If you can't beat the Hurricanes, the least you can do is appreciate them.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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