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| Monday, October 9 Canes good, but tough to tell how good By Bob Harig Special to ESPN.com | |||||
MIAMI -- There is nothing quite like the Orange Bowl when there is reason for fans to fill it. The rickety old stadium comes alive, venom spewing from the upper deck, victory in the air.
But South Florida's venerable venue is only as intimidating as the team that plays in it, and for most of the past several years, there was little reason to fear the formerly scary ball park.
Until Saturday.
Bobby Bowden will attest.
The Florida State coach has savored some of his sweetest victories at the Orange Bowl, and suffered some of his cruelest defeats. The 27-24 loss to the Miami Hurricanes falls among the latter.
Another kick sailed to right of the goal post as the clock expired, and an old rivalry was alive and well.
"If they had not beaten us, everybody would have said, 'They're not back yet,' there's no doubt it," Bowden said. "But today, they proved that give them 85 scholarships like anybody else and they can be as good as anybody else."
It was the ninth time during Bowden's 25-year tenure at Florida State that Miami had dealt him his first loss of the season. He is now 11-14 against Miami.
The Hurricanes (4-1) had not defeated the Seminoles (5-1) since 1994, when Dennis Erickson was the head coach and Warren Sapp terrorized quarterbacks. There were five straight defeats for UM and coach Butch Davis, the big asterisk next to his name whenever there is talk of the turnaround he has performed.
Davis has a 44-20 record at Miami, but 10 of the defeats have come to FSU and Virginia Tech. "I want to beat them every bit as bad as the alumni and the players do," he said before the game.
And everything pointed to this being UM's best chance in the Davis era. A preseason top-five team, the Hurricanes put themselves right back in the thick of national championship consideration with the victory.
"It is a great victory for our club," Davis said. "It is one we really worked for and wasn't an accident. We worked for it and earned it."
Such a thought could have only been a dream to some of the seniors on the team who lost 47-0 to the Seminoles in 1997. Davis said UM had just 58 scholarship players, the result of NCAA sanctions imposed for sins committed by Erickson's regime. That day in Tallahassee, UM had 29 freshmen or redshirt freshmen playing for the first time against FSU.
"We were just trying to keep them (the Seminoles) from stealing our equipment," Davis quipped.
Davis is not the only coach feeling a bit more secure today after defeating a bitter rival. Georgia's Jim Donnan knows exactly what Davis was enduring. He had never defeated Tennessee before Saturday's 21-10 victory. In fact, the Bulldogs had not won against the Volunteers since 1988. "I think the mental edge is important," Donnan said. "When you continually beat somebody and you know you've had that kind of success, you expect to do well when the game gets close, and maybe the other team doesn't think they can make plays." No fluke Northwestern appeared headed for a dismal season after being dismantled by TCU and tailback LaDainian Tomlinson. But the Wildcats knocked off Big Ten favorite Wisconsin in overtime, then followed with victories over Michigan State and Indiana. They are 5-1 overall and 3-0 in the Big Ten for the first time since their 1996 co-Big Ten championship season. And without Ohio State on the schedule, there is talk of another trip to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. Coach Randy Walker attributes much of the team's success to a no-huddle offense he says he stole from the Cincinnati Bengals and coach Sam Wyche in the early 1990s. Walker was then the coach at Miami of Ohio. "Boomer Esiason was the quarterback and that was our way of trying to control the tempo of the game," Walker said. "We quit doing it at Miami the last couple of years. But we were talking here last winter and it was just kind of a mutual thing that we said let's reinvestigate this thing. "The no-huddle is just a different way of communicating, but it does put pressure on the defense. We are going to play as soon as the referee puts the ball in play. That's what we will do. I don't think people pay 30 bucks a ticket to watch you sit in the huddle. "That's kind of our motto around here: 'They didn't come to watch us huddle, they came to watch us play.' And we play fast. Not frantic, there's a difference. We try to play with poise and control. But we're going to play pretty up-tempo." Sorry schedule Kansas State keeps moving up in the rankings, but has set itself up for trouble in the Bowl Championship Series standings because of the strength of schedule factor that is used in the formula. K-State's schedule was ranked 131st among all schools (not just I-A and I-AA) in Jeff Sagarin's ratings this week. Sagarin's computer is one of eight used to determine strength of schedule in the complicated BCS formula. How bad is K-State's schedule? New Haven, a Division II school, was ranked ahead of the Wildcats at 123. The Wildcats' strength of schedule number figures to get better as the season progresses and Big 12 opponents are played. Surprising SEC The Southeastern Conference is often considered the best in college football, which made for quite an oddity over the weekend: No SEC team was ranked in the Associated Press top 10, which had not occurred since Oct. 17, 1988. Bob Harig covers college football for the St. Petersburg Times. | ALSO SEE Wide right again: Miami upsets second-ranked FSU Florida State might not recover from an upset like this Va. Tech becomes new No. 2 in ESPN/USA Today poll AP poll: Nebraska, K-State gives Big 12 top two spots | ||||
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