Cane Whuppin'

Unbeaten Miami flogged Nebraska early and often to win an undisputed national title

By Austin Murphy

Question: How do you shut up 70,000 scarlet-clad Nebraska fans?

Answer: Start the game.

There wasn't a lot of drama in Thursday's national championship game between Miami and Nebraska at the Rose Bowl, but then, that's what happens when you send a microchip to do a man's job. The Cornhuskers were invited to the national title game despite the fact that their buns still ached from a 62-36 butt-kicking administered at Colorado on Nov. 23. Nebraska didn't exactly vindicate the BCS computers' faith in it. Somehow managing not to laugh at the Huskers' misbegotten attempts to cover their receivers one-on-one, the Hurricanes jumped out to a 34-0, second-quarter lead and cruised from there to a 37-14 victory.

John Biever

The clean finish to the season failed to mollify Rose Bowl purists, who spent the week griping that their beloved game had fallen into the mercenary hands of the BCS. For the first time in 56 years the Rose Bowl didn't match the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-10 (or their predecessor conferences). The game also didn't immediately follow the Tournament of Roses parade on New Year's Day. Instead, it was pushed back two days and then played at night!

If that strikes you as cruel, your heart would have gone out to Princess Rachel, a member of the Royal court. On the night of the 46th annual Beef Bowl at Lawry's The Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, the comely 17-year-old found herself at a table with most of the Miami offensive line. Although the princesses are given lessons in etiquette and elocution, no amount of finishing school could have prepared Rachel for her dinner with the Hurricanes hogs. Backup center Joel Rodriguez introduced her to one of the starters, who shall remain nameless. "He's 305 pounds, 22 years old and a virgin," said Rodriguez. Things went downhill from there.

Click the image to see more multimedia Miami's Clinton Portis discusses the long quest for a title and Nebraska's failure to put up a fight. Start Miami makes BCS moot One-on-One: Bryant McKinnie CNNSI.com's TREV ALBERTS I've never seen such a well-balanced team, and obviously the general of that team is Ken Dorsey. We talk about all the pieces they have on their offense, but it still all comes down to Dorsey. I think that Dorsey doesn't get the credit he deserved. So many times you look at this team and say, 'Any quarterback can do that.' It was clear to me tonight, watching with my own eyes, that Dorsey truly is a great player. Sure he has talent, but he makes that team go. MORE ALBERTS CLOSER LOOK Miami wide receiver Andre Johnson set the tone early with a 49-yard TD to open the scoring, and repeatedly burned Nebraska's Keyuo Craver. FULL STORY College Football Beat CNNSI.com's Stewart Mandel says it would not have mattered who the BCS matched up with Miami, because the Hurricanes were just that dominant. FULL STORY HEROES & GOATS HERO GOAT Andre Johnson The sophomore wideout racked up 199 yards and two touchdowns on seven receptions to win co-MVP honors with QB Ken Dorsey. BCS Were the Cornhuskers deserving of the Rose Bowl? Seven turnovers and 99 points allowed in the last two games indicate otherwise. MORE STORIES College Recap Grid 'Canes clamp down on option Nebraska fans suffer again Oregon ponders what-ifs

Starting center Brett Romberg took a run at his understudy, asking Rodriguez if the cut on his right index finger was the result of picking his teeth. "He's always picking his teeth," Romberg explained to Princess Rachel. "It's disgusting. He's got brutal teeth, too. I don't know what it is with the Cuban guys." This doubled as a swipe at starting right tackle and first-team All-America Joaquin Gonzalez, a Cuban-American who is the best student on the squad. He's working on his master's in business administration, but his linemates prefer to focus on his dental shortcomings.

Romberg takes heat for his squat build and short arms. "They're more like flippers," says Rodriguez. Left tackle Bryant McKinnie, the Outland Trophy winner, catches flak for wearing overly tight jeans and for his colossal skull (which, while beach-ball-sized, seems in proportion with his 6'9", 336-pound body). All of them give as good as they get, and all were similarly merciless on the field six nights later. They opened holes that allowed Clinton Portis to rush for 104 yards on 20 carries and provided womblike protection for junior quarterback Ken Dorsey, who completed 22 of his 35 passes for 362 yards and three touchdowns.

Nebraska came at Miami with a defensive scheme similar to the one used unsuccessfully by Florida State against the Hurricanes in October, crowding as many as eight players in the box to take away the run. This left the Cornhuskers' defensive backs in one-on-one coverage with the Miami receivers. The Hurricanes liked that matchup. Said offensive line coach Art Kehoe after the game, "Our guys were licking their lips."

Forty-one days earlier, in the Cornhuskers' only defeat, their vaunted Blackshirts defense yielded 582 yards to Colorado. That loss dropped Nebraska from No. 1 in the BCS standings to No. 4. Only a series of upsets suffered by Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and Tennessee enabled the Huskers to back into this title game. They weren't always made to feel welcome once they arrived on the scene. On Dec. 28 a group of Nebraska players attending a Lakers game was introduced to the crowd and was vigorously booed. "Oh, yeah, we got booed about six times," said middle linebacker Jamie Burrow. "That's O.K. We started cheering for the Raptors -- and they won."

The Blackshirts responded to the Colorado disaster by sweeping it under the rug, for the most part, preferring to talk about their stout play in the 11 victories preceding the collapse against the Buffaloes. "It's not like we got overpowered by Colorado," said nosetackle Jon Clanton. "We had bad technique."

Their technique hadn't improved much by Jan. 3. The truth is, this was a good-but-not-great Nebraska defense that included only one All-Big 12 player. The Blackshirts were exposed by the Buffaloes and stripped bare by the Hurricanes.

Growing up in Orinda, Calif., eight miles from Berkeley, Dorsey dreamed of playing in the Rose Bowl for Cal, whose home games he often attended. While Dorsey was throwing for 52 touchdowns in his career at Miramonte High, the Golden Bears' coaches had eyes only for a quarterback named Kyle Boller from Hart High in Newhall, Calif. (Boller-led Cal went 1-10 this season.) Dorsey's Gumby-like physique (6'4", 185 pounds as a high school senior) didn't help his cause. "A lot of teams wouldn't take a risk on me," he says. "Michigan told me flat out, 'You're too small.'"

Dorsey couldn't go wrong by throwing to Andre Johnson, who burned Nebraska for 199 yards and two touchdowns. John Biever

"Miami gave me a chance when a lot of schools weren't willing to," Dorsey says. From the moment he arrived on campus, the coaches were struck by his precocity: his cool in the huddle, his quick release and accuracy. Dorsey started and won three games as a freshman and then led the Hurricanes to an 11-1 record last season. The sole loss came at Washington, and Miami insiders say it was the only time in his college career that Dorsey seemed intimidated. He completed fewer than half his passes, was sacked four times and tripped twice over the feet of his teammates.

Dorsey settled down in the second half, leading the Hurricanes to four touchdowns before they ran out of time in the 34-29 defeat. They haven't lost since. Dorsey is 26-1 as a starter and has taken his place among the great Miami quarterbacks: Jim Kelly, Bernie Kosar, Vinny Testaverde, Steve Walsh and Gino Torretta, several of whom he describes as "close friends."

"Gino really helped me get adjusted to the speed of the college game," says Dorsey. "We worked on my drop getting faster so I could get the ball to the guys quicker. With Steve, it's been more X's and O's -- identifying what teams are trying to do to me, learning what to watch on film. Bernie's kind of been a big brother." It was Kosar who consoled Dorsey after the loss to Washington, recalling how he'd lost his first start, the opening game of 1983, and went on to win the national title that season.

In this year's rematch game with Washington, Miami edged the Huskies 65-7. Some folks in the Washington camp were upset because they felt the Hurricanes had run up the score. That false accusation -- coach Larry Coker had gone to his second- and third-stringers in the second half -- raises an interesting question: What's the world coming to when you have no grounds for accusing Miami of poor sportsmanship? The truth is, as Division I-A players go, these Hurricanes are downright gentlemanly, even given their teasing of Princess Rachel. They're not like the Miami players who arrived at the 1987 Fiesta Bowl in combat fatigues, and they're unlike those who committed nine personal fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties during a 46-3 Cotton Bowl victory over Texas in '91.

Coach Butch Davis may have made a mess of his leave-taking from Miami -- by telling his players he had no intention of bolting to the NFL even as he negotiated with the Cleveland Browns last January -- but it's tough to find fault with much else he did during his six-year tenure. Despite inheriting a program that would be stripped of 31 scholarships as punishment for NCAA rules violations, he laid the foundation for this year's team and did it while making over Miami's image.

Like Davis before him, Coker is intent on recruiting better citizens than some of the thugs waved in by Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. He asks that his assistants do a bit of detective work. "You can find out, in recruiting, who's a bad character real quick," says Hurricanes defensive coordinator Randy Shannon. "You just need to ask the right questions." Shannon likes to pull a recruit's schoolmates aside in a hallway between classes. "They'll tell you whatever you want to know," he says.

It's not that Miami isn't yapping on the field; it's just a different kind of talk. Against Temple, when Owls defensive lineman Dan Klecko came after Bibla, who he felt had held him on a play, Gonzalez rode to the rescue. "He was ready to fight," says Gonzalez of Klecko. "I went up to him, put my arm around him and said, 'Dude, you have the most beautiful blue eyes I've ever seen.' He had no clue what to do."

The prototypical new Hurricane is soft-spoken middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma, whose eight tackles against Nebraska included two cartoon-violent collisions that elicited delighted roars from the crowd. "We have a lot of quiet, easygoing guys like me, who leave it all on the field," he says. "People talk at us, and we listen and say, 'That's nice. Now look at the scoreboard.'"

Vilma, a sophomore from Coral Gables, Fla., goes 6'2", 211 pounds. Howard Clark, who started at outside linebacker, is 6'1", 228. The Cornhuskers made no secret of their game plan: With their huge offensive line they intended to wear down these relatively light linebackers and eventually overrun them. Said Nebraska's Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Eric Crouch before the showdown, "Late in the game we're still pounding the ball. I don't think a lot of teams have shown that to Miami yet."

And they still haven't. "Even if they did get outside on the option," said linebacker D.J. Williams after Thursday's victory, "we felt we had the speed to run them down."

Postgame attempts to bait Miami players into crowing, by asking them if Nebraska was intimidated, if Nebraska was worthy to share the field with them, failed miserably. "We didn't intimidate them or defeat their will or anything like that," said safety James Lewis, whose 47-yard interception return for a touchdown in the second period provided the winning margin. "They had too much pride. They played hard to the end."

These are definitely not your older brother's Hurricanes. "The coaching staff has recruited young men of character as well as talent," said a short, smiling woman in a green Miami jacket and black Nikes. This was university president Donna Shalala, standing outside the locker room, congratulating players and coaches as they walked by. "You can do that and win the national title. And Miami never intends to go back."

Moments later, Portis emerged from the locker room, scoffing at the temerity of any squad that would presume to take away the Hurricanes' running game. "No one can make us one-dimensional," he scoffed. Portis is one of three juniors -- the others are tight end Jeremy Shockey and cornerback Phillip Buchanon -- considering entering this spring's NFL draft. If those guys stick around (and even if they don't), beware the Hurricanes next season.

And what about what president Shalala said? Isn't it great how today's Miami players combine character and talent? "It's true we haven't had anyone arrested in a while," said Portis, a twinkle in his eye. "But you know what? Going back to last season, we've had to win 23 games to win this title. It's been a long road. We may get about 30 guys arrested tonight."

With that, he disappeared into an orange-and-green-clad crowd and started celebrating.

Issue date: January 7, 2002