The Miami football program had been in the doldrums when Howard Schnellenberger took over as head coach in 1979 and after a 5-6 opening year, promptly went 25-9 over the next three seasons. The 1983 Miami Hurricanes were clearly a team on the rise, but no one could have guessed they would win one of […]
The 1983 college football season was a seminal year in the history of the sport. Miami’s stunning upset of Nebraska in the Orange Bowl to win the national championship marked the start of a dynasty and dramatic shift in the balance of power to the state of Florida in general. 1983 was also a year […]
The 1984 Orange Bowl—following the 1983 college football season–was arguably the most seminal game in college football history, when the heavily favored Nebraska Cornhuskers met the up-and-coming Miami Hurricanes.
This is part of a series of sports history articles aimed at preserving the best moments of the modern sports era, from 1976 to the present. The focus is team sports—college & pro basketball and football, major league baseball and hockey. This article offers a snapshot of 1983 sports, a year highlighted by two epic upsets in college football and college basketball, and two dynasties crossing in the night in the Stanley Cup Finals.
An era comes to an end tonight when Dennis Erickson takes his Arizona State team onto the field in Las Vegas to play Boise State. Erickson will not be back as Sun Devil head coach and the odds are pretty good it’s his last game on the sidelines anywhere. With Erickson, along with Florida Atlantic’s Howard Schnellenberger, moving into retirement, the last vestiges of the great Miami Hurricane dynasty of the late 1980s and early 1990s has gone into the history books. While the Notebook was admittedly not a fan of the ‘Canes, their historical significance and on-field excellence is beyond dispute. So on this night, let’s take a look back on the glory years of Miami football history.