Steve Kim: Remembering 1988

Published Jul 29, 2005

Remembering 1988

Ah, yes, the autumn of 1988, I was 16 years old, my favorite TV show was 'The Wonder Years' (like many others, I had a thing for Winnie Cooper), I had a pair of Cavaricci pants that I thought were so cool, the original George Bush was several months from taking office, Jose Canseco had gone 40-40, Michael Jackson was still black (well, sort of) and I was going into my junior year at Montebello High School - the Harvard of East L.A.

But what was most memorable to me was the football team that came out of Coral Gables, Florida that year. The 1988 University of Miami football team was thought to be in a rebuilding mode after capturing its second national championship the previous year. 12 Hurricanes from that team would get drafted into the NFL, including the likes of Michael Irvin, Bennie and Brian Blades, Brett Perriman, Danny Stubbs, Matt Patchan and George Mira. 17 players in all from that '87 squad would sign professional contracts.

The same program that had gone 33-3 in the previous three seasons was expected to struggle in 1988 playing one of the most daunting schedules in the nation. Unlike their predecessors, this Miami team was a relatively anonymous group. Outside of their peerless signal caller, Steve Walsh, this was not a collection of stars. Coach Jimmy Johnson had always stated for as many flashy players he had under his reign, the foundation of his program was built by a unit of hard-working players that he labeled as 'stylish overachievers.'

This description fit the 1988 team to a T.

1988 was a bridge year for the UM program. Gone were the high-profile Howard Schnellenberger recruits who Johnson had inherited in 1984, and it was at this time that Johnson's imprint would be fully seen. Even so, talented youngsters who would star in later years for another coach would redshirt this particular season - guys like Lamar Thomas, Darrin Smith, Michael Barrow, Ryan McNeil, Gino Torretta and Stephen McGuire, among others.

Replacing the ballyhooed 'Bennie and the Jets' in the defensive backfield were relative unknowns Bubba McDowell, Donald Ellis, Hurlie Brown, Roland Smith, and a true freshman out of Houston named Charles Pharms, who had essentially recruited himself to Miami. The defensive line lacked the star power of previous units but was anchored by the likes of Greg Mark, Jimmie Jones, Russell Maryland and Bill Hawkins. A fat guy by the name of Cortez Kennedy, who made no impact this season, was a token player at best. The linebacker unit was strong, but not star-studded, with Maurice Crum, Randy Shannon, Rod Carter and Bernard Clark holding things down.

The explosive 'Bomb Squad' crew of Irvin, Blades and Perriman was succeeded by the blue-collar unit of Dale Dawkins, Andre Brown and Randall Hill. At running back, Cleveland Gary and Leonard Conley provided a nice mix of power and speed. The offensive line was made up of tough, undersized street fighters who made up for a lack of size with tenacity and technique. Barry Panfil, Bobby Garcia, Scott Provin, Darren Handy, Darren Bruce and Mike Sullivan made up the front wall. Rob Chudzinski and Randy Bethel made an effective tight end duo.

But the most important cog on this team was its signal caller, Steve Walsh, who had the poise and decision-making prowess of a 10-year NFL vet. He ran Gary Stevens' pro-style attack with the precision of a surgeon. He always seemed to be three steps of any defensive coordinator he matched wits with. And it was Walsh who made this team an elite unit.

This memorable season would begin on a hot summer night at the Orange Bowl, in front of a national audience watching on CBS against the preseason number one, Florida State. This game had been moved up because the game the previous season, a pulsating 26-25 Hurricane win at Doak Campbell, was considered the game of the year and the de facto national championship game. That one blemish was the lone loss of '87 campaign for the Noles.

Coming into this season, the Noles were the consensus pick to run the table and win Bobby Bowden his first ring. They brought back the slashing Sammie Smith, the 'Fab Four' receiving quartet and their defense was led by All-American cornerback Deion Sanders.

This would be their year. Nole doubt about it.

As they embarked on their journey, taking a cue from the '85 Chicago Bears, they would cut their own rap video, 'The Seminole Rap'. The Sugar Hill Gang they weren't, but the video did catch the eye of someone who just happened to notice it one late night on his satellite dish.

That someone was Jimmy Johnson.

A bemused Johnson would tape the attempt at hip-hop and proceed to hold a special screening of it for his squad. That wasn't the only bit of bluster coming from Tallahassee; under their jerseys for the opening game, FSU wore shirts that read 'Unfinished Business' that spoke of revenge and retribution.

As they strutted into the Orange Bowl, they would soon feel like Custer at Little Big Horn and Napoleon at Waterloo.

When it was all said and done, Miami had thrashed the Seminoles 31-0, and it wasn't even that close. Walsh's deft passing would keep the Noles off balance all game. His TD toss to Rob Chudzinski late in the first half over the middle would made the score 17-0 and basically ended the competitive nature of the ballgame. But the defining play of the game was Gary dragging Sanders into the end zone like a rag doll. It was perhaps at this time that a 'prime time' aversion to contact was made public.

A gracious Bowden would call Johnson a 'defensive genius' as his usually high-powered offensive was throttled. A message was sent: Hey, America, the team you love to hate isn't going anywhere.

As they regained their top ranking, Miami would go on the road and hit 'The Big House' of Meeeechigan. And it was here that the inexperience and youth of this team showed. Several key bobbles would turn into
Wolverine interceptions and a huge Michigan offensive line would pave the way for the hard-charging Tony Boles to gash Miami's defense. As Chris Calloway caught a Demetrius Brown toss in the corner of the end zone to make it 30-14 Michigan, it seemed that UM was on the verge of its second consecutive loss as the nation's top ranked team in the house of maize-and-blue.

If Chick Hearn was announcing this game he would've put it in the 'frigerator. Instead, Keith Jackson would tell the ABC audience, "The water is getting verrrrry deep for the Miami Hurricanes." After an exchange of punts, Miami would find itself down by 16 with 7:16 remaining.

Most teams would be down for the count. Most teams don't have Walsh under center.

Going into a hurry-up offense he would quickly move the Miami offense down field and hit Chudzinski for six, followed by a two-pointer to Dawkins. After another Wolverine punt, Walsh would lead Miami to another score. From around mid-field, he would face a fourth down, where he would find time and eventually hit a crossing Gary, who with a crushing block from Dawkins (who then gave the obligatory taunt to punctuate his play) sprung downfield to bring UM to within two. The two-point conversion failed, but this book was a long ways from being written.

It was at this point Bobby Harden would make one of the most memorable plays in UM history. I can still see it now, as the onside kick went: bounce, bounce, BIG BOUNCE, Harden would then jump high into the air, deflect the ball to himself and eventually recover it. God bless you Bobby Harden, God bless you.

Miami's sideline went nuts, Michigan band members went numb. A kid in Montebello nearly knocked over all the furniture in his house running and jumping around excitedly.

After a key draw play to Gary, an unknown freshman walk-on kicker by the name of Carlos Huerta would split the uprights for a 31-30 win. Forget Val Kilmer, this was the 'Ice Man.'

So that's why they put up those four fingers, huh?

After two relatively easy wins against Wisconsin and Missouri the Canes would go to South Bend for the grudge match of the century. It was here that 'Catholics vs. Convicts' was immortalized on a t-shirt and the most heated rivalry in all of sports came to a head.

The festivities began with a brawl between the two teams during the pregame warm-ups. Once again, Miami would be plagued by turnovers and sloppy play against an inspired and talented Irish squad led by the likes of Tony Rice, Ricky Watters, Raghib Ismail, Chris Zorich and Todd Lyght. On two separate occasions Miami would be down by two touchdowns. Each time they would fight back valiantly, led by Walsh's 424 yards in the air and four scoring strikes.

But while they nearly overcame seven turnovers, they couldn't cope with perhaps one of the worst calls in college football history. With Miami driving for a late score, deep in Notre Dame territory, Gary would haul in a Walsh pass on fourth down and reach for the end zone. Replays showed that Gary had perhaps broken the plane of the goal line for a score. But inexplicably, the Irish would take possession as the split officiating crew working the game had mistakenly called the ball over on downs, believing that it was fourth and goal, not fourth and two.

The crew would admit their mistake and apologize the following week. That was small consolation in the wake of Miami's 31-30 loss, their first regular-season loss since 1985.

As the Canes lost their top ranking they would crush the trio of Cincinnati, East Carolina and Tulsa by a combined mark of 122-13 in their next three contests. As they embarked on the last quarter of their schedule, they would face three traditional powerhouses: LSU, Arkansas, BYU.

The game at Death Valley in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is one of my personal favorites. This game was played in front of a prime time national audience watching on ESPN. And it rained hard. How hard? Well, Jimmy Johnson's hair got messed up. Yeah, it was a monsoon.

But the inclement weather didn't seem to affect the 'Canes as they ran their offense with precision. In watching Walsh play pitch-and-catch with his receivers, you got the sense that he could've done the same thing while Noah built his ark. As Hill recovered a Gary fumble in the LSU end zone to begin the scoring, the real downpour would come down on the Bayou Bengals.

Miami would hammer the Tigers by a stunning score of 44-3. In retrospect it would be the end of the Mike Archer era at LSU. Despite going on to tie for the SEC title, the program never seemed to recover from this crushing loss. And it wasn't just the fact the Hurricanes smashed LSU; it was the manner in which they did it, like nobody else in the country.

They didn't just beat teams, they ruined programs for years. Like a Hurricane blowing through a third-world country, they left everything in their wake in ruins. Their Baton Rouge festivities would begin when a group of Hurricane players would surround the caged LSU Tiger mascot and proceed to taunt it unmercifully during warm-ups. Hill would shoot off his six-shooters to the LSU crowd after a touchdown. Pharms and his defensive cohorts would do a group bunny-hop dance after a late first-half INT in the end zone to throttle an LSU drive. Randy Shannon and his mates would perform the 'Sweathog Slap' after big hits, further inciting what was left of the partisan crowd. Roland Smith and Robert Bailey celebrated a defensive score by performing the 'Troop' dance to punctuate the night.

It was Hurricane football at its finest. You either loved or loathed it.

The team played hard, they taunted, they pimped and boogied and they had fun. All while blowing out a team in its own backyard. Ah yes, the good ol' days. Next would be a home game against the undefeated Arkansas Razorbacks, a team that Miami had hammered the year before. A Razorback team hell-bent on revenge would control the flow of the ball game with the hard running of Barry Foster and a hard-hitting defense led by Steve Atwater. In what was a defensive struggle, a dropped interception by Atwater would allow Huerta to kick a late game-winning field goal. Miami would escape with an 18-16 victory.

In the final game of the season, the Canes would stifle the normally high-powered BYU offense, led by Harden's three picks, to down the Cougars 41-17 in the Orange Bowl.

Unfortunately, Miami would not get a chance to exact revenge on Notre Dame, as it was West Virginia who was tabbed to play the Irish in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. For the first time since
1984, the Hurricanes would go into their bowl game without a legitimate shot at the brass ring.

Pitted against the 11-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers in the 1989 Orange Bowl, the Canes aimed to make a statement as to just who was the best team in the country. Led by Walsh's 277 yards in the air and two touchdown tosses, and a smothering defense that stifled the multi-talented Steve Taylor and the vaunted 'Husker running game, Miami would dominate in a 23-3 victory.

They would eventually finish number two in the country. And it would be the end of two eras of Miami football. Soon Johnson would be off to Dallas to take over the reigns for the legendary Tom Landry, replaced by Dennis Erickson. Walsh would file for the NFL supplemental draft and rejoin Johnson in Valley Ranch. His career record at Miami would stand at 23-1 with one national title.

It was a helluva year. Johnson would say of his last team at Miami, "I think they probably gave more of themselves, committed more time and effort than any other team we had."

Indeed, they came within a botched call at South Bend of making it back-to-back titles playing a schedule that featured the preseason number one who went 11-1 and finished number three in the AP (FSU), the Big 10 and Rose Bowl champions who finished 9-2-1 and fourth nationally (Michigan), a one-point loss to eventual national champion* (notice the asterisk) Notre Dame, the SEC co-champion on the road (LSU), the Southwest Conference champion (Arkansas) who finished with a mark of 10-2 and twelfth in the country, a 9-4 BYU team, and the Big 8 titlists (Nebraska) who had an 11-2 season and finished tenth in the land.

All this came in a sandwich year where they were expected to drop a few more games. It was a team that wasn't as glamorous or as flashy as teams that came before and after it. Andre Brown would lead the wide receivers with 47 grabs for 746 yards and eight scores. Gary would lead the team in rushing with 480 yards and did sterling work out of the backfield as a receiving threat. Harden would lead the team with four picks. Outside of hard-core Cane fans, who would really recognize these names?

In the 1989 NFL Draft, the Canes would lose just five players, a huge drop from the previous years. But they had the guy who went in the supplemental version of it, Steve Walsh, whose performance was among the best in school history, completing 233 of 390 passes for 3,115 yards and 29 touchdowns. But his impact went far beyond his impressive numbers. When he was running the Miami offense, he had a certain mystique about him. With him slingin' the leather, you knew everything would be alright. It was in this era that Miami was cutting-edge in its offense: while everyone else was BETA, the Hurricanes were DVD. With Stevens' system and Walsh's arm and brain, the 'Canes had the most efficient and prolific passing offense in the country.

But surrounding 'Cool Hand' Walsh was a scrappy, hard-nosed cast of players that continued to build upon the Miami tradition that was now in full swing. This team brought it every single week, they had fun, they entertained and most importantly, they won with style.

Those were the days.

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