Canes Full Circle

It's been a rough week, since last Wednesday. A very dear friend came down with a rare and potentially devastating illness -- truly "out of the blue," as the saying says. Thankfully, he was treated by the best docs in the country -- at UM/JMH, who properly diagnosed his rare illness, and treated it perfectly. He is on the mend and expected to fully recover. The many who love and admire this man are breathing a very deep sigh of relief.

I thanked the Big Man for this outcome. It could have gone the other way.

But now, involving our beloved Canes, something is coming full circle.

In 1984, November, in fact, my brother was in his first year of grad school out of town. He planned to come visit for the weekend -- to see his family, and watch our Canes host Boston College. We had been taken to the promised land the January before -- Canes first National Championship - but our beloved coach, Howard Schnellenberger, had left to coach a USFL team in Miami that never came to be. The new guy was a fast talking Texan named Jimmy Johnson, and he lead our boys to early wins against Auburn and UF.  We were favored to beat Boston College, even they had an amazing young quarterback named Doug Flutie.

Back then, I was in my second year at Miami Law, and also teaching Freshman English at the College. Since I was adjunct faculty, I was able to buy good seats at the Orange Bowl for half price, and I had 8 -- on the North side of the stadium, closed end zone, around the 20 yard line, 14 rows from the field. I loved those seats -- probably because I saw many great victories from them sitting with my buddies -- Mike, Jeff, and Craig bought the other 6 seats, and we would attend with our wives, who feigned true interest in our Canes back then.

Anyway, my buddy was coming, and Wifey readily gave up her seat so he could attend with us. But then I got sick -- a nasty cold or flu -- I remember having a pretty high fever, which was unusual for me. The weather was cold and clammy, and I decided to watch the game on TV -- I told my buddy to take both tickets. He wasn't having it -- he would watch the game with Wifey and me in my apartment in Kendall. We brought in pizza. I wasn't THAT sick...

Well, turned out the game was one of the most famous ever (infamous for Canes fans). The BC QB, Doug Flutie, scrambled and launched a pass that became known as the "Hail Flutie" to win the game as time expired. Wifey recalls my friend dropping to the carpet in agony as the pass was completed. That stupid pass has been shown thousands of times in replay. As it turns out, I was glad I missed it live.

The Canes went on to lose another game in big fashion -- Maryland staged the then biggest comeback in NCAA history -- 31 points -- to beat us. I WAS at that game. But Jimmy got the team together afterwards, and won us our second championship, before leaving for the Dallas Cowboys and having great success with them.

So no, here we are, 35 years later. The final home game is Saturday -- Canes are hosting Louisville. We have another first year coach -- Manny Diaz -- and some disappointing losses. I gave away my tickets, and am returning the favor to my buddy -- I plan to watch the game on TV with him in the rehab hospital, where he will be putting the final touches on his recovery from this weird illness.

I hope the analogy continues, and our Canes just need to get through this challenging season, and go on to soar again. I also hope there is no similar choking loss at the end --Hail Louisville or something.

But mostly I am thankful my brother is on the mend, after some scary crap the last week. That's the main thing, of course.