I was digging into the history of Miami football recently after the Fiesta Bowl and I honestly had no idea that Miami was essentially a nobody until the 1980s.
Pretty impressive how quickly they went from considering dropping the football program to building it into one of the top-15 best programs of all time.
Yes, that's why Howard Schnellenberger was held in such high esteem in the state of Florida. He's essentially the Hurricanes version of Bobby Bowden except he left for the USFL...Sadly it turned out to be a bad decision on his part as the Miami team ended up moving to Orlando and he chose not to be part of it. That said, Schnellenberger put the wheels in motion for what would be a dynastic type program for the next 20 years. If he had stayed at The U I think he would've had similar success as his successors.
Also was the inaugural HC of the FAU Owls. Love Coach Schnelly.
Check out the rebuild he did at Louisville too.
Perennial losing record, basketball school, and they were playing games in a minor league baseball stadium in front of a couple of thousand.
I can't find the article, but I read somewhere when he was what we would now call the OC at Alabama in the 60's they were working on run/pass option stuff for Joe Namath until he hurt his knee. Could have changed a lot of things in football had that happened.
You're exactly right. Louisville at one point was close to dropping to I-AA. He was there a bit before my time (I only attended three games in the baseball stadium, when Ron Cooper was coach) and a lot of the football program's growth happened after he left, but he for sure got things rolling.
It's kind of a shame the college football Hall of Fame has a 60% minimum win percentage because based on his work at Miami, UofL and FAU, he should be in it.
Him and Erk Russell should absolutely be in
For real. His win percentage is .788 with three nattys at GSU in the first decade of the program's existence. Insane.
If his OC during those years, Paul Johnson, is in the HOF (deservingly so), I don't see why Russell isn't.
Unfortunately he didn't coach enough games to qualify
Ahhh. That's stupid.
Especially considering that he’s also a legendary DC for UGA and was there 17 years. It’s kind of weird that the CFB HOF ignores coordinator success entirely and that Bud Foster won’t be able to go either
Dude also probably hated GT more than any other UGA coach, so it is the perfect irony that his best disciple coached at GT for 11 years as part of a HOF career
I wonder what he would have thought about COFH 2008 when Tech ran up 409 rushing yards (passing: 1/6 for 19yds) using the offense that brought him such success? Perhaps he would have momentarily smiled at the irony of the situation, laughed that the Hambone was running amok in the FBS, and then resumed his hatred of Tech.
That offense, especially the first few times a defense faces it, can be hard to handle. If CPJ had a B-Back/FB who could be the "feature" back in the offense, like Dwyer and, later, Synjyn Days, it was nigh unstoppable. Unfortunately, he didn't have many of those dynamic FBs while at GT and that offense can sputter if the FB isn't a threat to go the distance every time he gets the ball.
Under Jeff Monken, GSU returned to the Hambone offense, beating Florida in 2013 on the back of 400+ rushing yards and returning to the FCS national title picture. In 2011, they famously pissed off Saban by running up 300yds, the most by an Alabama defense in his entire tenure. 😅
Finally, it's hard to overstate the importance of Johnson's option philosophy and innovations in today's offenses. I read somewhere that Urban consulted with him in adapting the "spread option" principles into a "spread that heavily features the option." I think it's great that modern RPO offenses are essentially an amalgamation of the work of Johnson and Leach, two coaches known for their...expressiveness.
Minimum 10 seasons as a head coach and Russell coached 8
And 20 seasons as Georgia's DC.
Somebody get Diego's lawyer on this.
I thought they were letting in Mike leach with a waiver on the win% requirement
You can thank Baylor Bears coach Grant Teaff for the 60% minimum. 170-158 record. Got voted in because of his buddies. Other folks said “wait a minute”. The rule was instituted after that.
Plus he cared for a special needs son. Just a true legend. (Son had a rare disease but was able to live a relatively normal life until later in life when a surgery to remove his colon put him in a coma and left him with severe brain damage until he passed)
The Louisville football program probably doesn’t even exist today without Howard.
If he stays, The U might not have been The U as we know it today.
They'd still win a ton, probably, but the ass-kicking roughrider thing came from Jimmy Johnson.
Schellenberger would have run a more traditional program
Its not a coincidence that Miami, FSU & Florida got good at about the same time. They figured out how to recruit guys in Florida nobody was finding.
"Nobody" isn't quite accurate. Oklahoma and Nebraska had pipelines there for years.
Well yeah it wasnt literal
And he’s not in the college hall of fame because he doesn’t have the winning percentage
Sure, but in this case it's dumb. His percentage is low because he started FAU football and rebuilt perennial losers (The U before him and Kentucky before him).
The man took the hardest path and didn't just cruise into an easy job.
And yet there are still multiple coaches in the hall who don't meet the winning percentage anyway, like Hayden Fry. It's a bonkers rule
Once Grant Teaff was voted in, the winning percentage rule was made.
He came into our gym in middle school smoking that cigar and we all got headaches.
LOL!
Lou Saban was instrumental in bringing the program to national championship caliber. Schnellenberger inherited a program ready to succeed. Short stay at UM but long term impact.
What? Saban went 3-8 and 6-5 in two seasons before leaving.
Schnellenberger led Miami to their first bowl in 14 years in his second season, then won a national championship in his fifth season.
The only think Saban can be credited with is that he apparently didn’t live Schnell a fully barren cupboard. But they were a mediocre at best program before Schnell arrived
If you've got a Disney/ESPN subscription, the 30 for 30 two-parter on The U is a fun watch
Such a good and memorable soundtrack too
How many million times do you think that title song was played last night lol
Or if you're a reader Bruce Feldman's Cane Mutiny. It's essentially a more detailed account of part one of The U
Was about to recommend this as well. One of my favorite 30-for-30’s
My favorite part is the last game in the Orange Bowl.
Maybe my most depressing day ever as a Hurricanes fan. Such an embarrassment to get blown out like that.
Cocaine Cowboys too
I'd also add that in the 80s, the school had a president that absolutely hated the football team and did nothing to support it. We won despite all that.
A lot of people don’t really know that the University of Miami is a small private school and not particularly easy to get into. I can see why it can irk people to be mistaken for a large public school, even if it’s a little elitist.
A lot of people think USC is a public school even though California has one of the most straightforward public university systems that USC clearly doesn’t fit into, and USC has a reputation for rich kids just like Miami.
In a different vein, Michigan kinda feels private to me even though it is public, maybe I'm in the minority
Most of the student body is from out of state, I think? And it tends to cater to the academically elite and/or wealthy?
The only folks I know that went to Michigan since 1990 fit the previous sentence.
It's a very hard school to get into, so they draw high level students from across the country with a high number of international students. Who can afford to go out of state if you get admitted but little or no funding? Students from wealthy families
A public school not being run for the benefit of the state’s students on the large part?
I am shocked /s
Most elite public schools nowadays are run like that, basically most of the Big 10 public schools and a few of the SEC schools (Florida Georgia Texas mainly)
I think it’s stupid, but opinions vary
I had a similar discussion the other day. Florida’s and Texas’ governors are trying to water the schools down. Georgia seems less of an issue (I’m married to an UGA alum).
But yeah, a public school’s student body should be at least 45% in state, imo.
Knowing some people that went there pretty well, it gives the “Yeah we’re a public school technically, but we want to be a private school” vibe.
The amount of times that I have told people I went to Miami and them being confused when I tell them we only have 11,000 undergrads is pretty high. Maybe not as high as the amount of times I mention going to Miami and people saying “Miami Ohio?”, but pretty high. (Sorry Ohio)
It’s equally surprising to find that Miami University in Ohio is public.
I didn’t even know that, so yes, surprising!
Good ol Tad Foote.
It was consummate 80s.
It's wild to look back at Nebraska's 70's and 80's schedules and see that Miami, Florida St, and Oregon were all semi-common buy game opponents for non-conference play.
They made their reputations on anyone, anywhere.
My parents are both 'Bama alums, and they said Miami was a common homecoming opponent back then.
As an independent, some of Miami's schedules from those days are insane. Looks like Miami and Alabama were fairly regular opponents in the '60s and '70s. Lots of blowouts, mostly for Alabama but a few for Miami. Only two out of 18 games being decided by 14 points or less is kind of crazy.
Before 1983 the legacy is pretty much just Ted Hendricks
bro, how can you leave out jim otto and jim kelly like that? also ottis anderson.
Jim Kelly was at the start of the modern U
Andy Gustafson coached some strong teams in the 50s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mira
Nah, Miami had a solid program for awhile. Not a national title contender, but solid.
My father used to tell me “Hell. All 3 big Florida schools used to be the Homecoming game for everyone when I was young”.
When I was a lad the local newspaper did a feature on the three main Florida teams: Florida, Florida State, and Tampa.
In 1977 #5 Ohio State opened the season against Miami in Columbus. The Buckeyes won 10-0 in unconvincing fashion.
It was considered a massive failure for the defending co-champs of the Big Ten to squeak by the lowly Hurricanes.
The calm before the storm…
There's a Woody Hayes BBC documentary from that era that shadows the Ohio State program before, during and after that game.
Miami is not central to the doc, obviously, but when mentioned they're not described as a power the way they would have been a few years later.
Also that famous sports illustrated cover story from 1995 asking Miami to drop its football program.
Seems like a run of the mill insane hot take in 2026, but in 1995 it was a big deal. The media landscape was different back then.
That was for different reasons than the 70's though
I'm guessing that you are under 40 because you just about couldn't watch ESPN without hearing this story when I was a kid.
We are a generation away from people knowing that Miami is the New Money of college football.
They are 62nd in all time wins. Miami of Ohio is above them.
I'd argue the new money of college football is Oregon
Miami is the new money of the 80s. FSU of the 90s and Oregon of the 00’s.
I think Oregon and Clemson co-own being the new money of the 10s, not sure anyone really fits that bill for the 00s besides maybe (to a significantly lesser extent) like Virginia Tech?
Boise. Moved from I-AA to I-A in 1996. The did win 10 games in 1999 and then went crazy in the 00s.
Clemson won a national title back in 1981 and won the ACC five times that decade so I don’t think of them as new. Long dormant perhaps.
Clemson is old money. They had a hiccup when the NCAA actually punished teams, but they were the ACC for decades.
There hasn’t really been a new month team for a while which is boring. NIL has changed this. Indiana, Ole Miss. We could have others. Maybe Georgia Tech? Who knows. It’s going to be nuts.
Don’t they have to win a championship first
Feel like you need to win a natty for that...
Right now it feels like it's Indiana, but we'll see after tonight.
I think 41 (my age) must be the line. I only heard it from the 30 for 30
I think they actually did drop basketball for a while too and were like the only university that size to not have a basketball team.
How cool would it have been if they leaned into baseball though?
For almost 20 years we didn’t have basketball, we joined the Big East in specific to help our basketball program
Which is so crazy because when I was growing up when I thought of Miami I thought about sports
And all the American sports franchises there are relatively new.
Dolphins were an AFL expansion team in 1966 and joined the NFL in 1970. This is probably what put Miami on the sports map, especially with Don Shula (who was already famous) and then of course 72' Dolphins.
Miami Heat were an expansion team in 1988.
Both Miami (Florida) Marlins and Florida Panthers in 1993.
Basically Miami ~30 years ago was kinda like Vegas now.
Additional fun fact: Miami is the only major US city that is majority foreign-born!
That last part makes a lot of sense because I watched a lot of Marlins games last year and nearly every week they had a heritage pride night
Like a lot of sunbelt cities it had a considerably lower population until the second half of the 20th century. One reason for the post WWII boom in the sunbelt is that air conditioning being affordable made it more attractive for people to move to places like Miami and Phoenix.
Bonkers to think a school with sports wouldn’t sponsor basketball. Doesn’t the NCAA now designate a school’s primary conference as the one in which they play basketball? Was Miami just independent in everything they played?
Apparently six years independent in hoops from 1985 resurrection to 1991.
There were still a few independents back then (ND, Marquette, DePaul, Dayton among the better known).
For a long time Miami had one of the more successful baseball programs in the country under Ron Fraser. 44 year long streak of making the post-season tournament and four national titles. Plus I think the Canes had one of the only profitable baseball programs because of how good Fraser was as a marketer.
Pretty sure all the Florida schools became powers around the same time, Miami, FSU and Florida, 80s to 90s. Could they just not hold onto in-state talent before then?
Florida’s population grew 4.5x between 1950 and 1990. That could be one of many factors.
There was no in-state talent before then lol. Florida became much more livable after the advent of air conditioning and the population boomed after that. In 1950, Florida had the same population as Kentucky and 25% of the population of Ohio. By 1980, it was nearly the same size as Ohio and had almost triple the population of Kentucky. All the families that moved to Florida from the 60s-80s had kids that became college-aged in the late 70s-90s which is when all three schools started to boom in college football. They also had the benefit of recruiting being more regional, so not every program was gonna try to scout and recruit as many Florida players so it was easier to lock down some of those players. Once the 2000s came around, the internet made recruiting much more national and programs from the other side of the country like USC and Oregon, let alone other SEC or even B1G teams, were trying to recruit the state.
Also, a lot of the better players in the '70s, especially in Central and North Florida, would just get snatched up by Bama and other SEC teams. South Florida just wasn't the same back then. A lot of Miami-area schools didn't integrate until the late 60s and it was mandated around 1970s. Looking at historical lists, Miami high school football just couldn't compete with the teams further north in the state. But around the same time the Canes and FSU got good, football took off in the region.
Florida was decent before the 80s. Haven't you seen a Gatorade commercial? Miami was first in the 80s, and then FSU caught them in the mid 90s. Florida resurged when Spurrier came back, and they dominated Tennessee.
Mostly I just knew that Florida was the last team to win their first natty.
But Gatorade came from winning a major bowl
Not much in state talent back then, nor was it really being looked at in earnest. The rise of the Florida teams coincides with a couple of things
End of segregation in the state
Rise in population through the 70s and 80s
(Especially black and brown families fleeing war in Latin America or violence in NYC/Chicago/Boston/LA)
Increase of recruitment or inner city youth
And stabilization of these recruiting areas.
These areas were not initially considered recruiting hot zones until the U dominated in the 80s with essentially, completely home grown talent that just out ran everyone.
Thats when it became a rush to create pipelines in South Florida
Howard Schnellenberger was an amazing coach who single handedly turned the University of Miami from a small, unknown private liberal arts school into a”The U”.
What he did with Miami is equivalent of someone turning Pepperdine into a power football school with multiple national championships.
He was also a raging alcoholic.
We played Louisville my freshman year in Louisville. My roommate was the A&M ballboy on the Louisville sideline. He was laughing after the game that the bourbon emissions off of Schnellenberger were so strong that he got buzzed.
A friend of mine was on the OU team the next season and said that Schnellenberger was always drunk at practice and during games.
Both Miami and Florida State considered dropping down a level in the 1970s. They were both dreadful teams that were going nowhere. They were hampered by being independents, which restricted their scheduling choices. As a Gator it hurts me to say this but I always admired FSU for their scheduling back then: Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Notre Dame.
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Late flag thrown
And that's why BYU's greatest win in program history is 1990 over Miami. Detmer doesn't get the Heisman without a win over a team that otherwise gets natties in 1989, 1990, and 1991.
Still shocked at that loss. Miami's only losses between 1986 and 1989 were against Penn State with seven turnovers, to Notre Dame after a horrible fumble call late in that game, and to FSU without Miami's starting quarterback. Then we opened against BYU in 1990 and just couldn't stop Detmer and that offense from throwing for a million yards.
I think OP, based on flair, is conveniently ignoring the 1991 AP poll
whaaaaaaat?
I mean, uh, isn't it weird there was no AP poll in 1991?
Coke money is a hell of a drug
Bigger than the thrill of being a serial killer?
I think Florida & FSU may be similar. Home air conditioners were not common before the 50’s so Florida wasn’t very populous.
My question is: how did Miami go from being a solid program in the 60’s and early 70’s to almost shutting it down by the late 70’s?
And really, the same for FSU.
Money and desegregation (their refusal)
I can see where money could have been tight. The segregation/desegregation angle…I don’t think I’ve see it mentioned before
It's never really talked about but a big issue was that Miami in particular was an upper crust white school in coral gables in a very nimby area and was very reluctant to admit black students (as in outright refusal)
I appreciate the history lesson! We need to hear all of the stories about desegregation of CFB. In 2025, I learned how Lee Corso helped open Maryland football to minorities and how RC Slocum did the same as an assistant at Texas A&M.
Of course! Schellenberger and Jimmy Johnson were instrumental in Miami doing so, which is part of why the AD also butted heads. They wanted Miami to be a "respectable" institution vs the team that was giving them their money
So a bunch of quitters didn't quit because they happened to win a bunch on National championships??? Man, college football has really changed...
This is oozing with sarcasm fyi before anyone gets feelings hurt.
Wasn’t there a good documentary about Miami’s rise a few years back? About how they set out to dominate recruiting in the “state” of Miami?
30 for 30
17 years ago jfc
It came out 17 years ago?
2009 was 17 years ago?
Hopefully you can point to where I screwed up the math
You didn’t. It was more me having an epiphany.
Well I hoped
That's basically what they did. Locked down an entire region of incredibly talented players and made it an actual revolution.
This is what made it hilarious when Randy Shannon recruited Jacory Harris and all his friends, then found out everyone else figured out South Florida a decade ago.
I mean it made sense. That northwestern team just beat the ass out of Southlake in Texas in the perfect city vs Liberty City game
The problem is he couldn't beat Cris Carter and Saban for the rest of the county
The timeline where “the game” is ohio state / Grand Valley State
Howard Schnellenberger
Let’s all invest NIL money into a time machine so we can retroactively shut down the Miami football program back then!
What a tragedy they didn’t go through with it
Right? Imagine how much better you guys may have been, a fella can dream right.
Y'all almost did too
Still working on the low attendance 50 years later
It's only good when they win
It’s also why Miami is not a Blue Blood.
It’s not an insult and it doesn’t mean that the program hasn’t had great moments. But they’re New Money and always will be. That’s not a bad thing.
*New Blood
Sam Jankovich was a Midas man at Miami and New England
UChicago take notes
You should watch "The U" 30 for 30's
Winning cures all
In 1979 because attendance used to be so bad, Burger King would run a promotion that if you purchased a Whopper you’d get free tickets to a UM football game
My grandfather taught at Miami back in the 60s - early 70s. I remember him telling me how terrible they were at football while he was there, but it was nice cause it was easy to get cheap tickets to take my dad and uncles to games.
Five national titles. 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001.
Miami had a very solid program in the '50s and '60s with some top 20 finishes and big names like George Mira and Ted Hendricks, but yeah, by the mid-'70s the team was pretty bad. Lou Saban helped settle things and then Schellenberger was the real catalyst to making Miami the team of the '80s.
CFB in the 1970’s was nothing like today. Most schools didn’t make money, they lost money.
"90% of gamblers quit right before they win"-ass stat.
And then cocaine solved everything
More like racial violence pushing people to South Florida
Just a happy coincidence that there was a huge influx of disposable income from the cocaine trade.
It was actually more due to displacement due to riots in NYC and LA that increased the population in the inner cities of Miami, Broward and Palm Beach that would become the main UM recruiting grounds
You could argue Kansas State was, at several different points during the 1998 Big 12 CCG, one play away from this trajectory. I think if they hold on against A&M, they beat Tennessee for the title and win 2 more national titles (2000 and 2003 being the most likely years). Maybe 2012 ends in a title as well.
I've read that if Snyder didn't work out for KSU, they were going to end the football program.
Why do you think 1998 going differently would affect how 2000 and 2003 played out? Do you think having a championship would have affected later AP rankings?
A national championship would've helped their recruiting which perhaps gets them over the hump in those years. It also depends if playing in the 1998 natty prevents the exodus of Stoops/Mangino/Venables.
I can’t speak to your last sentence but it is true that Kansas State was one of the most woeful programs in the 1970s. The problem for the Big 8 was there was nobody to replace them with. Tulsa? UTEP?
Those titles were a big boost 50 more people have attended the games in that time
My dad was one of them. He got to watch some legendary teams like Darrel Royal’s Longhorns, Bear Bryant’s Tide, Parsheghian’s Irish for cheap
Tbf peak U always sold out the OB. It was one of the most hostile home arenas through the 80s
I’m pretty sure any team would have turned into an instant success back then if they had Luke Skywalker from 2Live Crew payrolling the team. It just so happens Miami was the one that got all that dough to buy those teams.