It wasn’t just Irish Eyes on the Miami Hurricanes today. There were 14 representatives from 11 NFL teams at Notre Dame Stadium; including Chicago Bears GM Ryan Pace. Additionally five reps from three bowl games came to South Bend. You even had two individuals on behalf of the Canadian Football League Saskatchewan Rough Riders in attendance.
As HUUUUGEEEEE as the Miami Hurricanes vs Notre Dame Fighting Irish rivalry was back in the 1980s, today’s meeting certainly did not have the same gravitas. You already know that these two teams are not what they were back in the 1980s and 1990s, but they put on a great show anyway.
In the final minutes it became a crazy, up and down, see-saw kind of game, and the entertainment value tonight kind of inadvertently compensated for the fact that two sides have met only twice in the last 25 seasons. However, they will face off again in 2017 at Miami.
The Canes won the ’87 national title and the Irish followed suit in 1988, and the only time Miami defeated the Irish in South Bend came in 1984 when the 14th-ranked Hurricanes won 31-13 over 17th-ranked Notre Dame as heavy rain plagued a prime-time contest.
Earlier this week, the Notre Dame campus was treated to a screening of “Catholics vs Convicts,” the new ESPN Films 30 for 30 which will debut on ESPN Dec. 10th.
The documentary, as well as re-visiting all the topics that we talked about in the paragraphs above, reminds one of where Miami Hurricanes football has been, when it was once a Category 5 superstorm. We’ve seen it cycle up and down like meteorological patterns quite a bit, but it was hopeful that the barometric pressure had been rising intensely early this season.
Miami started off 4-0 and rose to #10 in the nation. You were starting to see some Category 3 levels of excitement then. However, the Canes are 0-4 since, in danger of not making a bowl and thus, a tropical depression has set in. The early season was just a false dawn.
Just over a month ago, many believed that the transition from Al Golden to Mark Richt would be smooth sailing, and the fast start to the season supported that idea. The last month has seen reality set in however.
Brad Kaaya may be a potential NFL Draft first round pick, but he can’t do it all himself. He put up pretty good numbers, but he’s getting no help at all from his offensive line and running game.
Miami managed just 18 yards rushing on 0.5 yards per carry. Kaaya was sacked five more times at ND, after having been sacked 8 times last weekend by Virginia Tech. This team has work to do, and it’s not just this specific 2016 team.
The Canes have significant holes in their program. I do believe that Mark Richt is the right guy to turn things around, but Miami Hurricanes fans need to be patient and give him time to make it happen.
“You can look in a group of guys’ eyes and see if they’re going to pack their bags, and that wasn’t it. We lost four in a row, as you mentioned back there,” said Richt at Notre Dame today.
“We haven’t lost our fight.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv1oR_k5f3w
“That’s the thing that made me most proud of what happened tonight, but we all know it’s about wins and losses, and we lost.”
Like Lin-Manuel Miranda sings in Hamilton, “in the eye of the hurricane there is quiet, for just a moment, a yellow sky,” and that’s where we are right now.
Things could get much stormier for Canes fans before they get calm again.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.