Good Morning POU!
This week we’ll take a look at some of the documentaries for the ESPN 30 for 30 Series that focused on race matters as intertwined with sports. First up is the infamous “U”.
Throughout the 1980s, Miami, Fla., was at the center of a racial and cultural shift taking place throughout the country. Overwhelmed by riots and tensions, Miami was a city influx, and the University of Miami football team served as a microcosm for this evolution.
The image of the predominantly white university was forever changed when coach Howard Schnellenberger scoured some of the toughest ghettos in Florida to recruit mostly black players for his team. With a newly branded swagger, inspired and fueled by the quickly growing local Miami hip-hop culture, these Hurricanes took on larger-than-life personalities and won four national titles between 1983 and 1991.
Upon winning the National Title in 1983, Schnellenberger stepped down to pursue a career with the USFL, which gave way for Jimmy Johnson, who took the Miami arrogance to an entirely new level.
In fact, “The U” was so notorious, that Sports Illustrated even wrote that the football program should be disbanded in 1995.
Filmmaker Billy Corben, a Miami native and University of Miami alum, tells the story of how these “Bad Boys” of football changed the attitude of the game they played, and how this serene campus was transformed into “The U.”
From the Director:
In 1980, three dangerous fronts collided in Miami. The explosion of public violence from the Cocaine Wars, the influx of thousands of criminal Cuban refugees during the Mariel Boatlift and deadly race riots https://gigglesgobblesandgulps.com/buy-avodart-online/ following the acquittal of Miami-Dade police officers who beat a black insurance salesman to death.
Long before hip-hop superstars and thug culture filled our airwaves, shopping malls and iPods, the Miami Hurricanes brought street values and hood bravado into America’s living rooms. If the ‘Canes didn’t invent the end zone celebration dance, they certainly popularized and perfected it.
By the late 1980s the Miami Dolphins were no longer capturing the collective imagination of South Florida as they once had. The Hurricanes had become Miami’s team. My team. I remember my father paying 10 bucks to park on somebody’s front lawn and then following the crowd a couple of blocks to the Orange Bowl. I remember watching these young warriors emerge through that smoke to the bloodcurdling roar of Miami football fans. They were not the steeped-in-tradition choirboys of Notre Dame, but they were our hometown heroes: diverse, brash and dangerous. Just like the city of Miami itself.
They spoiled us with national championships: 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991. We literally expected to win a national title every year. Beano Cook called the ‘Canes “the greatest dynasty since Caesar,” and he was right. I watched this team, over the course of a generation, pump out some of the most thrilling, controversial and brilliant players in football history: Jim Kelly, Michael Irvin, Vinny Testaverde, Cortez Kennedy, Warren Sapp, Jerome Brown, Jessie Armstead, Ed Reed, Bernie Kosar, Clinton Portis, Jeremy Shockey, Jon Vilma, the list goes on.
This is my team. The team that forever changed how football was played — and most certainly put the “nasty” into dynasty.