Scenes from 2025 and the playoff run.
Saturday night I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch football. When I got up in the morning and shook off my hangover…..exhaustion, I realized that for the first time in more than 20 years, the University of Miami Hurricanes are ranked the #1 Football Team in the country. It’s been a long road back to the top. I mean LONG.
I grew up without college football, really. I lived in Maryland, which is known the steamed crabs, Natty Boh Beer, and the Orioles baseball team. I certainly knew what football was – having lived through Bob Ursay stealing away in the middle of the night in a Mayflower van with the Baltimore Colts. Our colleges were known for basketball. Our King-of-the-School Jocks were the Lacrosse Bros and the Olympic-bound swimmers.
But then I moved to Florida.
I came to Florida in 1995, and was introduced to a level of football I couldn’t possibly imagine in the mid-Atlantic: Rivalries – real, lifelong rivalries. Tailgates that last a full workday. Branded college gear with your logo on EVERYTHING.
I was lucky enough begin my college graduate studies in 2001 at the University of Miami. I knew they had a ‘well-known’ football program. But really, I had no idea.
Of course, they won the College Football National Championship that year. They had rarely been beaten at home in YEARS. They had a 34 game winning streak from 2000-2002. And there I was. So now that the Canes are back in hunt for their 6th National Championship – yes, I said it – I thought I would take a look back at my top UM Football Moments.
The OB Was a Vibe
I started going to games while they were still at the Orange Bowl. Yes, it was hot. Yes, the bathrooms overflowed…often. No, there weren’t any seat backs. But, that stadium would ROCK. Literally. Its frame was made of metal, and when the crowd get going, the entire structure would vibrate and hum. The stadium itself would sing. There is NOTHING that compares.
We loved meeting people at the tailgates. However, the OB was in the middle of Little Havana. There was no dedicated garage, only a couple of open parking lots. You would have to negotiate with someone’s Abuela in the neighborhood to park on their lawn, and hope that you didn’t get blocked in or you would be there until the end of the game. And in the years before Duolingo, let’s just say my Spanish was poquito. And if you needed to pee, you could always go into the seediest bar in Miami (and that is saying A LOT), the Bowl Bar. Dark, smoky, mirrored walls, everything you touched had decades of cocaine fueled memories.
Bowl Games
My undergraduate institution had exactly 1 winning football season while I was there – Towson State University went a whopping 4-3. Football season ended at the last regular season game. NOT IF YOU’RE A MIAMI HURRICANE.
This new world of Bowl Games and traveling after Christmas to watch football is amazing. You get to meet SuperFans. You get to meet fans from around the world. Alumni parties. I spent many a New Year’s Eve in a new city watching the Canes play. I mean, I travelled to Boise-F*cking-Idaho to sit outside in December and watch football. We were interviewed on the news and asked why we would leave Miami in December to come to Idaho. I don’t remember my answer, I think my brain was frozen. We made friends that drove down from Alaska to see the game. Yes, Alaska.
In 2010 they played Notre Dame in El Paso, TX. No, the Canes didn’t win….but Dave and I were on the cover of the newspaper the next morning.
During one of the Bowl Games in Orlando we met Jorge at the hotel after party drinking Fireball from some sort of large dispenser bag we deemed the ‘colostomy bag of booze.’ We finished the bag…and more than 10 years later we are still drinking with him at games.
2007 – The End of the OB and the Beginning of UM Mommy
I almost gave birth during a football game.
I graduated from UM for the 2nd time in the spring of 2006. I said goodbye to my student section tickets and hello to the Alumni section. We hopped in with some of our running friends who had a block of tickets never missed a home game. By 2007, I was pregnant with our first – Matilda – and everyone was happy to have a dedicated designated driver for the entire season. When I say I was pregnant…I mean pregnant. The running joke was that if I went into labor during a game the University would feel compelled to give me season tickets for life. Seems fair, right? Well, I actually did go into labor on November 3, 2007 – but not on the field. I remember watching the game in the hospital with my OB while waiting to progress (spoiler: it did not go well. Hello C-Section). When we didn’t show up for the game, we got a call from our friends at the stadium because the security guards were worried about me. I made it back to the Orange Bowl the following week, and celebrated with everyone in the section by giving out baby pictures for the very last UM Game at the Orange Bowl. Of course, we got blown out by Virginia in a spectacular loss on national TV.
UM Family Everywhere
In the years since Matilda arrived on the scene in 2007, life has been life-ing. We kept our season tickets up until 2012 or so, and loved the new amenities of the pro Stadium (Joe Robbie, SunLife, Dolphins, LandShark, Hard Rock…all the names!) I have changed more diapers at Hard Rock statdium than would care to learn. And it’s all good.
I still loved reppin’ the Canes all over the world, and have raised to kids dripping in Orange and Green. No regrets. Even my dad back in Maryland now proudly sports The U.
And now that we are back to being #1…..BRING ON THE HATERS. The world is a better place when everyone hates Miami Football. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
