HTS 2019: The U

This weekend we’re heading down to Miami Gardens. No, not Miami. Miami Gardens. Tech and the Hurricanes are tied at exactly twelve games apiece in the series. This one’s for all the marbles. Or, at least until the next time this series gets knotted up.

Miami Hurricanes

Opponent Background:

• Conference: Atlantic Coast Conference (2004 - present)
• Location: Miami, Florida
• All-time Record: 625-364-19 (.629)
• Home Stadium: Hard Rock Stadium (Capacity: 65,326)
• National Championships: 5 - 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, 2001
• College Football Playoff Appearances: N/A
• New Year’s Six Bowl Games: 23 (Orange: 10 - 1939, 1946, 1951, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1995, 2004, 2017 Peach: 3 - 1981, 2004, 2005 Fiesta: 4 - 1985, 1987, 1994, 2003 Sugar: 4 - 1986, 1990, 1993, 2001 Cotton: 1 - 1991 Rose: 1 - 2002)
• Conference Championships: 9 — (Big East: 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003)
• Division Championships: 1 — 2017
• 2017 Season Record: 7 - 6 (4 - 4 ACC)

Past Results:

• Team Head-to-Head Record: 12-12-0 (.500)
• Recent Meetings:
  2015 - 38-21 Miami (Miami Gardens, FL)
  2016 - 35-21 Miami (Atlanta, GA)
  2017 - 25-24 Miami (Miami Gardens, FL)
  2018 - 27-21 Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA)
• Coach Head-to-Head Record: 0-0-0 (N/A)
• Tech record in this week’s venue: 1-6-0 (.142)

Remember When the Students Almost Stormed the Field Against These Guys Last Year? That’s How Chippy it Was...

Miami’s first football season was in 1926, when they fielded just a freshman team. That team played eight games and won each one, including two against the University of Havana. For its first two varsity seasons, it was an independent and played solely home games. When it joined the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1929, most of the big name teams had already begun to splinter off. In 1932, they hosted the first Palm Festival, which later became the Orange Bowl, defeating Manhattan College. In 1937, the Hurricanes moved out of University Stadium and into Burdine Municipal Stadium, which later became more famously known as the Miami Orange Bowl. Miami saw success mixed with recruiting violations and lower points for a while. The 1970s, though, proved to be the nadir of the program. Year after year of dwindling win totals and attendance numbers proved too much for even a talented coach like Lou Saban to fix, and he left town for Army when his players threw a guy into a lake. Perhaps, though, on the edge of dropping down a division or even eliminating the team all together, this was the best thing that ever happened to Miami, as they were convinced to give football one last shot and rolled the dice on a man lacking any college head coaching experience, a man named Howard Schnellenberger. The rest, they say, is history, for better or for worse.

Within five years, Miami had its first national championship, after Nebraska’s Tom Osbourne rolled the dice in the 1984 Orange Bowl and decided to play for the win. In what was literally a home game for the Hurricanes, they were able to upset the unbeaten Cornhuskers for the 31-30 win. Unlike at Louisville, here Schnellenberger actually lived up to his promises. He promptly left for the USFL shortly after. The next season, the first of Jimmy Johnson’s tenure, saw Miami regress to 8-5, including being on the losing end of the “Hail Flutie” play in the final game of the regular season. This was the year that, regrettably, saw the invention of the U hand signal as well. They won another championship with Johnson at the helm, and cultivated a harsh persona that pervades their school even today, to some extent. The final season with Johnson saw the first edition of Catholics vs. Convicts, yet another memorable game, and one that cemented the idea of Miami as a ruthless band of ne’er-do-wells.

Miami took two more national titles in Dennis Erickson’s first three seasons, and also joined the Big East Conference. In the meantime, though, Miami’s reputation for skullduggery and rambunctious, obnoxious antics reached new highs, with Notre Dame refusing to continue the rivalry and a Boston Globe writer deeming the nine unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and personal fouls “the most disgusting thing [he’d] ever seen in college sports.” the “Miami Rule” was instated to reward belligerent or egregious behavior with a fifteen yard penalty. After that, though, was a slide to normalcy in the Butch Davis years. However, the Hurricanes responded to his departure by immediately winning their fifth and final national title in 2001. Since then, they’ve joined the Atlantic Coast Conference and won one division title in a division quite literally designed for them to win and face Florida State every year. Meanwhile, some nerds up in Atlanta and a Polytechnic Institute from Blacksburg have done locked up that crown the vast majority of the past decade and a half. This is no longer accurate. The Coastal is a no-man’s land. Honestly, I’m not convinced anyone will win this division. Not a single team.

In one of the great tragedies of the modern sport, the Hurricanes moved out to what is now known as Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens following the 2007 season. This meant the iconic stadium would be torn down, and the team has suffered as a somewhat lost and disconnected shell of its former self for some time. Its attendance is much lower, the stadium is much harder for students to get to, and, frankly, the atmosphere just isn’t the same in Miami Gardens. But, since Marlins Park now stands on the site of the former Orange Bowl, there’s no going back. This is who the Hurricanes are now. The Hurricanes now are a team that Tech finally broke a losing street to. A team that, frankly, was a band of rude, undisciplined, and bombastic guests last year. The win under the lights at Bobby Dodd was probably Tech’s most convincing, at least at home. To quote Paul Johnson, “I wish we had a whole team of Brad Stewarts.” Honestly, I’d even take the one that already exists. But we’re in a new era, and headed to a new stadium, where we have one win. That win, though, the 2014 Orange Bowl, is one we’ll gladly take any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

As far as Tech football history goes, From the Rumble Seat has been taking a look at it since May 2018 over at Rearview Mirror. The short version is that Tech football began ignominiously in 1892. A game up in Athens in 1893, which Tech won, set the stage for one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport and also is one of the mythic origins of the Ramblin’ Wreck nickname. If that wasn’t enough, it’s also how Tech got its colors. Apparently gold is a color for cowards, if the residents of Athens are to be trusted. Tech was pitiful, to put it nicely, for quite some time until one man, Frank Turner, started an initiative to hire a bonafide legend as a football coach. That resulted in John Heisman. Heisman, innovator and champion, saw much success on the Flats until he dramatically left town as part of his divorce. The old man was replaced by William Alexander, who was known for his team’s strong academics and his own 1928 national championship.

Coach Alex was, in turn, replaced by his own protegé, Bobby Dodd. By the end of Dodd’s tenure, Tech had amassed three national championships, twelve conference championships, including five in the Southeastern Conference, which just mean more. What’s more, Dodd and Institute president Edwin Harrison had decided to go independent to make a stand not only for football principles, but its intrinsic academic ideals as well. Dodd and Tech would not sacrifice student-athlete education and well-being. The independent years were lean for Tech and did not result in the dream of a “Notre Dame of the South” status.

Eventually, Tech joined the Atlantic Coast Conference. By the end of the decade, coach Bobby Ross brought the Jackets from the utter depths of football irrelevance to win a national championship, Tech’s fourth. It is hard to overstate just how terrible Tech was at its nadir. Since then, the Jackets have seen average-to-great years, the most recent excellent year being 2014, when Tech was a few plays from the inaugural College Football Playoff. Tech’s years of triple option play - the heights of an Orange Bowl win to the lows of a three win season - would come to an end following the 2018 season. The Jackets have an all-time record of 737-505-43.

Tomorrow, Tech will head to Miami to play the Hurricanes. It happens every year. Sometimes, it’s ugly. Sometimes, it’s sad. And about half the time, we win. The game will be shown on ACC Network and can be heard over the radio in the usual suspects, 680 AM / 93.7 FM and the Georgia Tech IMG Sports Radio Network, featuring the voice of the Yellow Jackets, Andy Demetra, as always.

With the appearance of the historical matchup preview, that means it’s after Friday at 10:00 AM and that concludes From the Rumble Seat’s regularly scheduled pregame content. Tune in tomorrow starting at 6:00 AM for How to Watch continuing through the gameday thread and the postgame recap. Less than 36 hours until toe meets leather! As always, go Jackets!