Let me take you back to a time not that long ago. The year was 2004, and realignment was afoot within college football. Miami, along with Virginia Tech and later Boston College, came over from the Big East to the ACC.
Miami’s going to the ACC Championship *for the 1st time ever*
Yeah, we’re kinda surprised too.
Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports
The Canes were the crown jewel, having won a national title following the 2001 season and coming one play away from doing so again a year later. Things got so contentious that the teams left in the Big East sued the ones exiting. But Miami was indeed allowed to leave along with the others, and they were set to being a long run of prosperity in the ACC, right?
Miami had just had its worst season since 1999, and it was an 11-2 campaign.
The Canes were on the precipice of the doldrums that were the mid-to-late 2000s, but they hadn’t yet begun the descent. Nothing really would signal the down years to follow. Miami was elite, right?
Florida State and Miami were separated into different divisions, for competitive balance, and the conventional wisdom was that we’d get Miami and FSU in the conference title game more often than not.
But that didn’t happen.
Miami would traffic between five and nine wins for the next decade-plus of ACC play until the season. They fired Larry Coker, then Randy Shannon, and then Al Golden in a cascade of ineptitude.
The Canes finished second in the ACC Coastal in 2012, and could have gotten to the ACC title game because they finished second behind North Carolina, which was banned from postseason play. But Miami was also banned from postseason play, and the honors fell to third-place Georgia Tech.
Then Mark Richt showed up last season.
And after a 9-4 campaign that looked much like the others Miami has had since 2004, Miami has gotten its act together in spades.
The Canes flew out to an 8-0 start and put themselves in a position where they didn’t even have to win over the next two weeks to clinch the division. Virginia lost to Louisville in Week 11, giving Miami the division crown.
Richt has brought the swag back in his own way to the program. This is not the squad that embraced the bad-boy image of the late-80s. But they’ll get a chance to do the same thing those teams were capable of doing: Winning a conference title.
Pair that with the statement 41-8 victory over Notre Dame, and The U is officially back, folks.
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