INSIDE COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Blown-out Hurricanes

Florida State vs. Miami loses its luster

by Ivan Maisel

Issue date: October 13, 1997

The fifth-year guys knew what this game meant. They had been recruited to play for the Seminoles in the winter of 1992-93, in the wake of Wide Right II, back when Florida State versus Miami was the top rivalry in college football and the Hurricanes owned the Seminoles.

The older Florida State players understood that Miami not long ago served as a yardstick for the Seminoles' program. The Hurricanes beat Florida State five out of six times from 1987 to '92, including twice when last-minute field goal attempts drifted wide right. They repeatedly ruined Seminoles coach Bobby Bowden's national championship dreams. Even when Florida State did beat Miami, in 1989, the Hurricanes won the national championship.

It didn't matter that Florida State had won three of four meetings with Miami since 1993, or that these Hurricanes showed up in Tallahassee last Saturday with a 1-3 record. "The last couple of weeks, I was rooting for them," Florida State middle linebacker Daryl Bush, one of the Seminoles' fifth-year seniors, said after the game. "I wanted them to come in here undefeated. I wanted it to be a big game for reasons other than us saying it was a big game."

So the Seminoles prepared to play a vintage Miami team.

They got Maryland.

"I think the Hurricanes are a little bit better than Maryland," said Bush, who recognizes play action quicker than he does sarcasm, "but that's sort of what happened."

Just as Florida State had trampled the Terrapins 50-7 three weeks earlier, it destroyed Miami, 47-0, handing the Hurricanes their worst loss since 1944. Miami finished with minus-33 yards rushing and 131 yards total offense, and it avoided committing seven turnovers only by falling on all four of its fumbles. The Hurricanes didn't push inside the Florida State 30 until the final three minutes of the game. Miami coach Butch Davis called it "about as poor a performance as you can collectively have."

He got no argument from the Seminoles' elders. Proud as the fifth-year players were of their first shutout of the season, they appeared almost dumbfounded by the performance of the visitors. Take Florida State linebacker Sam Cowart, whose first-quarter hit on Miami quarterback Ryan Clement left Clement lying on the Doak Campbell Stadium turf for about a minute and set the tone for the afternoon. Though he returned to action later in the game, Clement never again set his feet firmly, and he completed only 5 of 14 passes for 52 yards. "They weren't fighting," Cowart said. "They just quit. They came out and fought for a little while, and then they just lay down. They gave up."

"They didn't have that nasty edge," said Seminoles defensive end Andre Wadsworth, who starred at Miami's Florida Christian High. "That spitting, eye-poking, ankle-twisting, earhole-digging something."

Ah, those were the days. Last Friday, Bowden sat behind his desk, chewed on a cigar and fretted. He refused to believe what his eyes had seen of the Hurricanes on tape. He refused to take Miami lightly even though the team has been ravaged over the last two seasons by the loss of 24 football scholarships due to NCAA sanctions. "They've beaten us so much," Bowden said, ignoring Miami's September losses to Pitt, 21-17, and West Virginia, 28-17. "Most of these kids were raised on wide right. They've heard it all their lives. To the players and coaches, it's still Miami week."

Two weeks before the game Bobby's son Jeff, the Seminoles' wide receivers coach, double-checked with the Florida State ticket office to see where the Miami fans would sit in Doak Campbell. He wanted to make sure that if the game went into overtime, the Seminoles would be driving toward the end away from the Hurricanes fans. The younger Bowden didn't know at the time that Miami would return 2,600 of its allotted 10,000 tickets. "You didn't see a lot of Beat Miami signs in town," Bobby added. In fact none of the game-week trash talk that had been an integral part of this rivalry surfaced. What could anyone really say?

The silence extended to the crowd of 80,165, which seemed largely bored for the first three quarters as Florida State rolled up a 30-0 advantage. Yet some 60,000 stayed to the end, digesting the enormousness of what the Seminoles had done to their onetime tormentors. When Scott Covington, Miami's backup quarterback, moved the Hurricanes to the Florida State 10-yard line late in the game, Seminoles defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews put his first unit back on the field to preserve the shutout. The fans stood and roared. "Then," Wadsworth said, "it sounded like a Miami game."

Two plays later senior cornerback Samari Rolle, who played at Miami Beach High, made a diving interception for Florida State. "That number 11," Cowart said of Covington, "he was like, I can't wait for the bus to ride up and get me out of here."