This is insane. Sileo is no Canes hero. He almost cost us the entire 1987 season and national championship by playing without eligibility. It was just before the season started that it came out that he no longer had eligibility. It was partly the fault of laxness and incompetence in the administrative offices, but you can't say that Sileo should not have any responsibility to what could have been a disaster. Any game he would've played in that season could have resulted in a forfeit.
I'm confused.
Let me see if I can explain it to you.
Sileo was booted from the University of Maryland program. I'm not sure exactly why. Sileo's wikipedia says it was because of allegations that he threw somebody out of a second story window. I never heard or read that. (I did hear from someone back around that time that there was a story floating around that he shoved head coach Bobby Ross in the locker room).
Sileo did play for us in 1986, a year we should have won the NC but in which we were upset in the Fiesta Bowl by Penn State.
My recollection is that Sileo was part of a DT rotation, I don't think he was the starter until halfway through the '86 season after Derwin Jones fractured his elbow.. I think the starting DL for most of the season was Bill Hawkins and Danny Stubbs at DE, and Jerome Brown and Derwin Jones at DT. Greg Mark at DE and Sileo at DT would come off he bench. Sileo moved into the starting lineup halfway through that season after Jones' injury. I don't know if Jones played in the Fiesta Bowl, I know that Sileo started and he did open the game with a sack. We blitzed on the first play and Winston Moss blew in there so fast that PSU QB ducked under and Sileo got the sack.
As you might remember, Derwin was a quiet, steady solid DT frnm a tiny Christian school in Dade County who started for us most of his career. He never had much of a pro career. Derwin, sadly, died from cancer while he was in his '30's.
Um Loses Derwin Jones For 6 Weeks - tribunedigital-sunsentinel
If you look at Sileo's wiki, it has a long paragraph with a lot of honors and exploits. I don't know if it's all true--I guess I have to assume it is. I had forgotten we actually sacked Schaeffer on the first play, although I do remember how fast Moss blew in there from the right side, setting up Sileo's sack.
That '86 season was the only one Sileo played for us and he did not start the entire season.
He was expected to start for us the next season, 1987. Brown and Danny Stubbs had graduated. I think the starting DL was supposed to be Hawkins and Greg Mark at DE, Sileo and Jones at DT. Just a few weeks or even days before the '87 season opened, there were questions raised about Sileo's eligibility. I think the questions came from the University of Maryland. I live in Maryland and I know that there is kind of an adult division called University College, which had night and weekend courses. I don't know if it has full time programs. I have the impression that it is somewhat different from the regular undergraduate college. Sileo apparently earned some of his transferred credits from the University College, not the regular undergraduate program. I believe that some administrators at the University of Maryland raised the question about the credits that UM had accepted for Sileo. Our academic administration started an intensive review and probably communicated with the University of Maryland. As I think about it, I think Sileo's five year eligibility from first starting college would have expired in '87.
I even believe there were some recriminations. I vaguely recall someone at University of Maryland responding to criticisms from our side or by the press by saying that they could not believe that academic staff at UM was so sloppy as to accept a telephonic explanation of Sileo's credits when he was first accepted and declared eligible at Miami the year before. The Maryland spokesperson thought it was awfully unprofessional and incompetent to not do the thorough checking necessary to review all his transferred credits. At the end, after Miami academic people did a thorough review, it was determined that Sileo had no eligibiity for the '87 season. Had the issue not been raised and had his academic record not been subject to a thorough re-review, Sileo would have played the opening game and perhaps the rest of the season. Even if we found out early in the season he was not eligible, we would have forfeited any games in which he played and whether we would have been in line to play Oklahoma for the NC is doubtful. Suppose we forfeited and been given losses for the first few games of '87 after we had won them on the field--would we have still ended up playing for the NC? I doubt it.
Remember, that season we went undefeated and won the NC. Our team that year was probably nowhere near as talented as the '86 team which did not win it. Think of all the guys from '86 who were gone by '87: Alonzo Highsmith, Danny Stubbs, Winston Moss, Vinny Testaverde, Jerome Brown and others. When we found out during fall practice that Sileo was not eligible for the '87 season they moved an undersized Greg Mark inside at DT where he started most of the season at less than 240 lbs. I think his weight that year was about 238. The kid took a beating the entire year. That's why Jimmy Johnson said if there was one guy who he would want to take into a dark alley with him it would be Greg Mark. The kid, pound for pound, was tough as you could find. (Another kid who was nowhere on the national recruiting lists for his senior year in HS).
So, Sileo, whom I think should have been responsible for knowing his own academic history, must bear at least some responsibility for almost jeopardizing part or all of the 1987 season if he had gone ahead and played in any games. He also let down his teammates. To me, he was just a thug who came into the program as a retread who did give us some additional talent on the DL and rather than helping us almost win the NC for '86, is remembered (by me, at least) as the guy who almost cost us the '87 NC.
I'm trying to remember a brief conversation I had with Butch Davis a few years later. It was in that bar on Bourbon Street, Fritzel's, where a lot of UM fans would hang out when we were in New Orleans. It was just before the '90 Sugar Bowl, when we were to beat Alabama for the NC. Butch and Tony Wise were hanging out in the bar. They had just spent their first year with the Cowboys on the coaching staff. They loved the Canes, and their former players, so much, they came to the game. Their last season coaching at UM was '88. I have a vague recollection of something in the conversation about Sileo--I think I mentioned Sileo's name and I don't think Butch had such a positive reaction. Interesting, given that Sileo ended up with he Cowboys briefly. (see the text of Sileo's wiki which I've linked). Butch had been Sileo's position coach at UM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
I don't listen to sports talk radio anymore. In fact, outside of my beloved Canes, I don't follow sports much anymore. How in the world somebody like Sileo could maintain some semblance of a career with his crudeness and trash-talking is beyond me. He's much worse than Don Imus whose career was almost derailed by one slip about the Rutgers women BB team. Sure, it was a bad comment, but not a pattern like Sileo.
If Manny is really bringing Sileo back to motivate the kids, maybe Manny is too young to remember all of Sileo's body of work, which as a player, was not that much. Who is around from the great defenses of the late '80's who could talk to our kids about the kind of mentality we are trying to restore? Sileo was only there really for one season.
There are so many exemplary football alums who established a body of work at UM and the pros over many seasons, and who played more recently. If our kids know Sileo, it is probably from his loud mouth on radio. What does that demonstrate? Trash talking? Is that what we want to bring back? I always kind of liked our outlaw image, but I was ambivalent. It brought us a lot of grief, too. Bring back the heart and savagery as players, not the trash talking.
EDIT: I went back and checked and realized that Bill Hawkins and Dan Stubbs were both still with the team in '87. That year we would have had three very good DE's, but we had to move Mark inside when Sileo was declared ineligible. I don't know who else could have played DT for us that year. I recall Russ Maryland getting into that '88 OB against Oklahoma, but he was still young. We had a slew of really good players that we lost from that '86 team.
Still confused. My post was a joke about Sileo originally naming the title of this thread Mark Richt and then posted that Manny invited Mark to speak to the team. I have no clue to what you are responding to, but more power to ya.
I thought you were confused about my post which I think was right above and which very briefly questioned whether we should celebrate Sileo as one of our more illustrious football alums. He played next to Jerome Brown, but he was not Jerome Brown. Heck, he didn't even start over Derwin Jones until Derwin fractured his elbow. How many of you remember Derwin? He was a quiet, humble kid who was dependable and coachable, came from a tiny Christian academy, but started a heck of a lot of games for us. Didn't have a pro career and sadly died while still a young man, not from bad behavior, like some do, but from cancer.
I saw all these claims of honors for his performance the one year Sileo played, which was really about half a year as a starter (1986), and I don't know how he did so much in essentially half a season to earn all those accolades. Go back to wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
So, he made second team AP All-American and both honorable mention and second team All-American by Sporting News for playing essentially as a starter for half a year in 1986?
By the way, how does one earn both honorable mention and second All-American by the same service, Sporting News? That is odd. (That was in the same year, remember he only played for us in 1986.) That's like being Heisman Trophy Winner and 1st runner up at the same time, or being Miss America and first runner up the same year.
He (or I guess, whoever wrote the article for Wikipedia) says he Miraculous Dan made apparently 8 fumble recoveries in that one year. Well, that "fact" seems to have overlooked by those at UM who keep track of records, since the 2016 media guide says the season record for fumble recoveries is 5, held by three players: LeeRoy Lewis (1965); Ted Hendricks (1968) and Mike "Bad News" Barnes (1972). See if you can look at page 212 of the 2016 Media Guide:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/miami.sidearmsports.com/documents/2017/6/23/4920107.pdf
Hope the link works.If it doesn't, go to the official UM website, University of Miami Hurricanes Official Athletic Site, and go to the football page. You'd have to drill down, I think clicking on sports and then football and start looking around. You'll find a posted acrobat file that's hundreds of pages long. That's the officlal 2016 media guide. They used to print those out and they were nice keepsakes. Now, I don't think they print them out anymore. I used to buy multiple copies every year.
I guess I could go through and pick apart some of the other claims made in the long wikipedia article about Sileo, all his many accomplishments in what I think was about half-a-year as a starter. I think some of the others are dubious, but I'm not ready to challenge them without more research and frankly, it's not worth the time.
Don't get me wrong. I think he could've been quite a player, had he continued to play in college with the quality coaching he would get at UM. Still, I recall vaguely I thik some fairly negative sentiments by Butch, who was his position coach at UM. I remember we also had a brief conversation about upcoming HS QBs, and Butch mentioned, I think, Cale Gundy, the younger brother of Mike Gundy. I think both were from Oklahoma and Butch had coached at OK State before coming to UM. Butch was also very familiar with that part of the country: Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma. Didn't both Cale and Mike Gundy play at Oklahoma State? I don't feel like looking it up now.
Remember also that wikipedia is something to which anybody can make entries or changes. I've actually done it once or twice.
I wish CMR and Manny, if they are going to bring in football alums, could bring in more exemplary former players with recognizable achievements at UM and long NFL careers. Heck, they could even bring in Burgess Owens, although he is from an era which current players know nothing about. See my mention of Burgess in the Matt Corral thread, I think it is.
They could also try to bring in people who have been that successful as players and been successful off-the-field as well. Nowadays, the more serious kids realize the longterm value of a quality education.
Not all our former players made their millions in the NFL. Wasn't there a Ken Hunt who gave a million to the athletic department a few years ago? I remember Ken Hunt from the early '60's, a good young RB whose leg was permanently harmed by a gun accident. I didn't know anything about him after he stopped playing because of the permanent injury. He came out of nowhere to give a ton of money. He was grateful to the university for continuing to honor the scholarship.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/11977497/former-miami-rb-ken-hunt-makes-largest-athlete-donation-school
I remember my friend, **** Sorensen, talk about his gratitude to the university and the program for giving him a college education. He didn't make it with the Dolphins, so he went into the business world.
I'm just getting sick of the spouting off at other people by this guy Sileo and his exaggerated claims of his accomplishments as a part-time starter in one year at UM.
I guarantee Sileo wrote his own wiki page
I'm confused.
Let me see if I can explain it to you.
Sileo was booted from the University of Maryland program. I'm not sure exactly why. Sileo's wikipedia says it was because of allegations that he threw somebody out of a second story window. I never heard or read that. (I did hear from someone back around that time that there was a story floating around that he shoved head coach Bobby Ross in the locker room).
Sileo did play for us in 1986, a year we should have won the NC but in which we were upset in the Fiesta Bowl by Penn State.
My recollection is that Sileo was part of a DT rotation, I don't think he was the starter until halfway through the '86 season after Derwin Jones fractured his elbow.. I think the starting DL for most of the season was Bill Hawkins and Danny Stubbs at DE, and Jerome Brown and Derwin Jones at DT. Greg Mark at DE and Sileo at DT would come off he bench. Sileo moved into the starting lineup halfway through that season after Jones' injury. I don't know if Jones played in the Fiesta Bowl, I know that Sileo started and he did open the game with a sack. We blitzed on the first play and Winston Moss blew in there so fast that PSU QB ducked under and Sileo got the sack.
As you might remember, Derwin was a quiet, steady solid DT frnm a tiny Christian school in Dade County who started for us most of his career. He never had much of a pro career. Derwin, sadly, died from cancer while he was in his '30's.
Um Loses Derwin Jones For 6 Weeks - tribunedigital-sunsentinel
If you look at Sileo's wiki, it has a long paragraph with a lot of honors and exploits. I don't know if it's all true--I guess I have to assume it is. I had forgotten we actually sacked Schaeffer on the first play, although I do remember how fast Moss blew in there from the right side, setting up Sileo's sack.
That '86 season was the only one Sileo played for us and he did not start the entire season.
He was expected to start for us the next season, 1987. Brown and Danny Stubbs had graduated. I think the starting DL was supposed to be Hawkins and Greg Mark at DE, Sileo and Jones at DT. Just a few weeks or even days before the '87 season opened, there were questions raised about Sileo's eligibility. I think the questions came from the University of Maryland. I live in Maryland and I know that there is kind of an adult division called University College, which had night and weekend courses. I don't know if it has full time programs. I have the impression that it is somewhat different from the regular undergraduate college. Sileo apparently earned some of his transferred credits from the University College, not the regular undergraduate program. I believe that some administrators at the University of Maryland raised the question about the credits that UM had accepted for Sileo. Our academic administration started an intensive review and probably communicated with the University of Maryland. As I think about it, I think Sileo's five year eligibility from first starting college would have expired in '87.
I even believe there were some recriminations. I vaguely recall someone at University of Maryland responding to criticisms from our side or by the press by saying that they could not believe that academic staff at UM was so sloppy as to accept a telephonic explanation of Sileo's credits when he was first accepted and declared eligible at Miami the year before. The Maryland spokesperson thought it was awfully unprofessional and incompetent to not do the thorough checking necessary to review all his transferred credits. At the end, after Miami academic people did a thorough review, it was determined that Sileo had no eligibiity for the '87 season. Had the issue not been raised and had his academic record not been subject to a thorough re-review, Sileo would have played the opening game and perhaps the rest of the season. Even if we found out early in the season he was not eligible, we would have forfeited any games in which he played and whether we would have been in line to play Oklahoma for the NC is doubtful. Suppose we forfeited and been given losses for the first few games of '87 after we had won them on the field--would we have still ended up playing for the NC? I doubt it.
Remember, that season we went undefeated and won the NC. Our team that year was probably nowhere near as talented as the '86 team which did not win it. Think of all the guys from '86 who were gone by '87: Alonzo Highsmith, Danny Stubbs, Winston Moss, Vinny Testaverde, Jerome Brown and others. When we found out during fall practice that Sileo was not eligible for the '87 season they moved an undersized Greg Mark inside at DT where he started most of the season at less than 240 lbs. I think his weight that year was about 238. The kid took a beating the entire year. That's why Jimmy Johnson said if there was one guy who he would want to take into a dark alley with him it would be Greg Mark. The kid, pound for pound, was tough as you could find. (Another kid who was nowhere on the national recruiting lists for his senior year in HS).
So, Sileo, whom I think should have been responsible for knowing his own academic history, must bear at least some responsibility for almost jeopardizing part or all of the 1987 season if he had gone ahead and played in any games. He also let down his teammates. To me, he was just a thug who came into the program as a retread who did give us some additional talent on the DL and rather than helping us almost win the NC for '86, is remembered (by me, at least) as the guy who almost cost us the '87 NC.
I'm trying to remember a brief conversation I had with Butch Davis a few years later. It was in that bar on Bourbon Street, Fritzel's, where a lot of UM fans would hang out when we were in New Orleans. It was just before the '90 Sugar Bowl, when we were to beat Alabama for the NC. Butch and Tony Wise were hanging out in the bar. They had just spent their first year with the Cowboys on the coaching staff. They loved the Canes, and their former players, so much, they came to the game. Their last season coaching at UM was '88. I have a vague recollection of something in the conversation about Sileo--I think I mentioned Sileo's name and I don't think Butch had such a positive reaction. Interesting, given that Sileo ended up with he Cowboys briefly. (see the text of Sileo's wiki which I've linked). Butch had been Sileo's position coach at UM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
I don't listen to sports talk radio anymore. In fact, outside of my beloved Canes, I don't follow sports much anymore. How in the world somebody like Sileo could maintain some semblance of a career with his crudeness and trash-talking is beyond me. He's much worse than Don Imus whose career was almost derailed by one slip about the Rutgers women BB team. Sure, it was a bad comment, but not a pattern like Sileo.
If Manny is really bringing Sileo back to motivate the kids, maybe Manny is too young to remember all of Sileo's body of work, which as a player, was not that much. Who is around from the great defenses of the late '80's who could talk to our kids about the kind of mentality we are trying to restore? Sileo was only there really for one season.
There are so many exemplary football alums who established a body of work at UM and the pros over many seasons, and who played more recently. If our kids know Sileo, it is probably from his loud mouth on radio. What does that demonstrate? Trash talking? Is that what we want to bring back? I always kind of liked our outlaw image, but I was ambivalent. It brought us a lot of grief, too. Bring back the heart and savagery as players, not the trash talking.
EDIT: I went back and checked and realized that Bill Hawkins and Dan Stubbs were both still with the team in '87. That year we would have had three very good DE's, but we had to move Mark inside when Sileo was declared ineligible. I don't know who else could have played DT for us that year. I recall Russ Maryland getting into that '88 OB against Oklahoma, but he was still young. We had a slew of really good players that we lost from that '86 team.
Still confused. My post was a joke about Sileo originally naming the title of this thread Mark Richt and then posted that Manny invited Mark to speak to the team. I have no clue to what you are responding to, but more power to ya.
I thought you were confused about my post which I think was right above and which very briefly questioned whether we should celebrate Sileo as one of our more illustrious football alums. He played next to Jerome Brown, but he was not Jerome Brown. Heck, he didn't even start over Derwin Jones until Derwin fractured his elbow. How many of you remember Derwin? He was a quiet, humble kid who was dependable and coachable, came from a tiny Christian academy, but started a heck of a lot of games for us. Didn't have a pro career and sadly died while still a young man, not from bad behavior, like some do, but from cancer.
I saw all these claims of honors for his performance the one year Sileo played, which was really about half a year as a starter (1986), and I don't know how he did so much in essentially half a season to earn all those accolades. Go back to wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
So, he made second team AP All-American and both honorable mention and second team All-American by Sporting News for playing essentially as a starter for half a year in 1986?
By the way, how does one earn both honorable mention and second All-American by the same service, Sporting News? That is odd. (That was in the same year, remember he only played for us in 1986.) That's like being Heisman Trophy Winner and 1st runner up at the same time, or being Miss America and first runner up the same year.
He (or I guess, whoever wrote the article for Wikipedia) says he Miraculous Dan made apparently 8 fumble recoveries in that one year. Well, that "fact" seems to have overlooked by those at UM who keep track of records, since the 2016 media guide says the season record for fumble recoveries is 5, held by three players: LeeRoy Lewis (1965); Ted Hendricks (1968) and Mike "Bad News" Barnes (1972). See if you can look at page 212 of the 2016 Media Guide:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/miami.sidearmsports.com/documents/2017/6/23/4920107.pdf
Hope the link works.If it doesn't, go to the official UM website, University of Miami Hurricanes Official Athletic Site, and go to the football page. You'd have to drill down, I think clicking on sports and then football and start looking around. You'll find a posted acrobat file that's hundreds of pages long. That's the officlal 2016 media guide. They used to print those out and they were nice keepsakes. Now, I don't think they print them out anymore. I used to buy multiple copies every year.
I guess I could go through and pick apart some of the other claims made in the long wikipedia article about Sileo, all his many accomplishments in what I think was about half-a-year as a starter. I think some of the others are dubious, but I'm not ready to challenge them without more research and frankly, it's not worth the time.
Don't get me wrong. I think he could've been quite a player, had he continued to play in college with the quality coaching he would get at UM. Still, I recall vaguely I thik some fairly negative sentiments by Butch, who was his position coach at UM. I remember we also had a brief conversation about upcoming HS QBs, and Butch mentioned, I think, Cale Gundy, the younger brother of Mike Gundy. I think both were from Oklahoma and Butch had coached at OK State before coming to UM. Butch was also very familiar with that part of the country: Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma. Didn't both Cale and Mike Gundy play at Oklahoma State? I don't feel like looking it up now.
Remember also that wikipedia is something to which anybody can make entries or changes. I've actually done it once or twice.
I wish CMR and Manny, if they are going to bring in football alums, could bring in more exemplary former players with recognizable achievements at UM and long NFL careers. Heck, they could even bring in Burgess Owens, although he is from an era which current players know nothing about. See my mention of Burgess in the Matt Corral thread, I think it is.
They could also try to bring in people who have been that successful as players and been successful off-the-field as well. Nowadays, the more serious kids realize the longterm value of a quality education.
Not all our former players made their millions in the NFL. Wasn't there a Ken Hunt who gave a million to the athletic department a few years ago? I remember Ken Hunt from the early '60's, a good young RB whose leg was permanently harmed by a gun accident. I didn't know anything about him after he stopped playing because of the permanent injury. He came out of nowhere to give a ton of money. He was grateful to the university for continuing to honor the scholarship.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/11977497/former-miami-rb-ken-hunt-makes-largest-athlete-donation-school
I remember my friend, **** Sorensen, talk about his gratitude to the university and the program for giving him a college education. He didn't make it with the Dolphins, so he went into the business world.
I'm just getting sick of the spouting off at other people by this guy Sileo and his exaggerated claims of his accomplishments as a part-time starter in one year at UM.
I guarantee Sileo wrote his own wiki page
[MENTION=2335]TheMatador[/MENTION]
bravo, sir
Let me get this straight, we run off Danny boy Sileo and the thread gets stickied? Is this like now the poster thread of mentally unsafe new members? Like all newbies need to read this thread before posting? That is excellent!!!! Honestly I was surprised it took as long as it did for guys to start mocking him....
[MENTION=2335]TheMatador[/MENTION]
bravo, sir
Thank you. Every time I get a tapatalk notification in my gmail I hold my breath, hoping it's not some hate. I don't really want to get into some of the kind of stuff I see going back and forth in some of the threads. It happens a lot, by the way, we discuss a player, a recruit and an decent, informative discussions of pluses and minuses turns into exchanges between two posters who hate each other. I get tired of reading that crap just to get some good information on the program, the players and the recruits.
I don't like criticizing any former player, but this guy (Sileo) has gone too far. All the BS in that wiki...I mean, it's just ridiculous. Outrageous claims. Just the claim about fumble recoveries that would erase records that have stood since I was just starting college. By making his claims on something so widely-read as wikipedia he is destroying the credibility of an otherwise outstandiing site built by volunteers and which usually seems to be accurate and honest. Then, he smears the guys who played for us over the years and had significant accomplishments that are still at the top of the record books--heck, I hardly remember LeeRoy Lewis who has the all-time record fumble recoveries. Then here comes Sileo claiming he surpassed it by making more recoveries in half a season as a starter. (We did have a pretty good team in '65, although I missed it entirely. I was going to college in another state and never was able to get any information on the season. I read about the season years later, and how we pulled a major upset by tying national power Notre Dame 0-0. I remember we had two tough power backs, Pete Banaszak and Spaceman Doug McGee, a legend for his leaping and landing on his head, thus requiring design of a special helmet to protect his head. We had a shifty breakaway back, Russ Smith, younger brother of one of the greatest backs in UM history, a legend, the great Frank Smith from the early 1950's.)
I suspect the years of steroids plus meningitis might have affected Sileo's brain...although i suspect it was damaged from the start.
This is insane. Sileo is no Canes hero. He almost cost us the entire 1987 season and national championship by playing without eligibility. It was just before the season started that it came out that he no longer had eligibility. It was partly the fault of laxness and incompetence in the administrative offices, but you can't say that Sileo should not have any responsibility to what could have been a disaster. Any game he would've played in that season could have resulted in a forfeit.
I'm confused.
Let me see if I can explain it to you.
Sileo was booted from the University of Maryland program. I'm not sure exactly why. Sileo's wikipedia says it was because of allegations that he threw somebody out of a second story window. I never heard or read that. (I did hear from someone back around that time that there was a story floating around that he shoved head coach Bobby Ross in the locker room).
Sileo did play for us in 1986, a year we should have won the NC but in which we were upset in the Fiesta Bowl by Penn State.
My recollection is that Sileo was part of a DT rotation, I don't think he was the starter until halfway through the '86 season after Derwin Jones fractured his elbow.. I think the starting DL for most of the season was Bill Hawkins and Danny Stubbs at DE, and Jerome Brown and Derwin Jones at DT. Greg Mark at DE and Sileo at DT would come off he bench. Sileo moved into the starting lineup halfway through that season after Jones' injury. I don't know if Jones played in the Fiesta Bowl, I know that Sileo started and he did open the game with a sack. We blitzed on the first play and Winston Moss blew in there so fast that PSU QB ducked under and Sileo got the sack.
As you might remember, Derwin was a quiet, steady solid DT frnm a tiny Christian school in Dade County who started for us most of his career. He never had much of a pro career. Derwin, sadly, died from cancer while he was in his '30's.
Um Loses Derwin Jones For 6 Weeks - tribunedigital-sunsentinel
If you look at Sileo's wiki, it has a long paragraph with a lot of honors and exploits. I don't know if it's all true--I guess I have to assume it is. I had forgotten we actually sacked Schaeffer on the first play, although I do remember how fast Moss blew in there from the right side, setting up Sileo's sack.
That '86 season was the only one Sileo played for us and he did not start the entire season.
He was expected to start for us the next season, 1987. Brown and Danny Stubbs had graduated. I think the starting DL was supposed to be Hawkins and Greg Mark at DE, Sileo and Jones at DT. Just a few weeks or even days before the '87 season opened, there were questions raised about Sileo's eligibility. I think the questions came from the University of Maryland. I live in Maryland and I know that there is kind of an adult division called University College, which had night and weekend courses. I don't know if it has full time programs. I have the impression that it is somewhat different from the regular undergraduate college. Sileo apparently earned some of his transferred credits from the University College, not the regular undergraduate program. I believe that some administrators at the University of Maryland raised the question about the credits that UM had accepted for Sileo. Our academic administration started an intensive review and probably communicated with the University of Maryland. As I think about it, I think Sileo's five year eligibility from first starting college would have expired in '87.
I even believe there were some recriminations. I vaguely recall someone at University of Maryland responding to criticisms from our side or by the press by saying that they could not believe that academic staff at UM was so sloppy as to accept a telephonic explanation of Sileo's credits when he was first accepted and declared eligible at Miami the year before. The Maryland spokesperson thought it was awfully unprofessional and incompetent to not do the thorough checking necessary to review all his transferred credits. At the end, after Miami academic people did a thorough review, it was determined that Sileo had no eligibiity for the '87 season. Had the issue not been raised and had his academic record not been subject to a thorough re-review, Sileo would have played the opening game and perhaps the rest of the season. Even if we found out early in the season he was not eligible, we would have forfeited any games in which he played and whether we would have been in line to play Oklahoma for the NC is doubtful. Suppose we forfeited and been given losses for the first few games of '87 after we had won them on the field--would we have still ended up playing for the NC? I doubt it.
Remember, that season we went undefeated and won the NC. Our team that year was probably nowhere near as talented as the '86 team which did not win it. Think of all the guys from '86 who were gone by '87: Alonzo Highsmith, Danny Stubbs, Winston Moss, Vinny Testaverde, Jerome Brown and others. When we found out during fall practice that Sileo was not eligible for the '87 season they moved an undersized Greg Mark inside at DT where he started most of the season at less than 240 lbs. I think his weight that year was about 238. The kid took a beating the entire year. That's why Jimmy Johnson said if there was one guy who he would want to take into a dark alley with him it would be Greg Mark. The kid, pound for pound, was tough as you could find. (Another kid who was nowhere on the national recruiting lists for his senior year in HS).
So, Sileo, whom I think should have been responsible for knowing his own academic history, must bear at least some responsibility for almost jeopardizing part or all of the 1987 season if he had gone ahead and played in any games. He also let down his teammates. To me, he was just a thug who came into the program as a retread who did give us some additional talent on the DL and rather than helping us almost win the NC for '86, is remembered (by me, at least) as the guy who almost cost us the '87 NC.
I'm trying to remember a brief conversation I had with Butch Davis a few years later. It was in that bar on Bourbon Street, Fritzel's, where a lot of UM fans would hang out when we were in New Orleans. It was just before the '90 Sugar Bowl, when we were to beat Alabama for the NC. Butch and Tony Wise were hanging out in the bar. They had just spent their first year with the Cowboys on the coaching staff. They loved the Canes, and their former players, so much, they came to the game. Their last season coaching at UM was '88. I have a vague recollection of something in the conversation about Sileo--I think I mentioned Sileo's name and I don't think Butch had such a positive reaction. Interesting, given that Sileo ended up with he Cowboys briefly. (see the text of Sileo's wiki which I've linked). Butch had been Sileo's position coach at UM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
I don't listen to sports talk radio anymore. In fact, outside of my beloved Canes, I don't follow sports much anymore. How in the world somebody like Sileo could maintain some semblance of a career with his crudeness and trash-talking is beyond me. He's much worse than Don Imus whose career was almost derailed by one slip about the Rutgers women BB team. Sure, it was a bad comment, but not a pattern like Sileo.
If Manny is really bringing Sileo back to motivate the kids, maybe Manny is too young to remember all of Sileo's body of work, which as a player, was not that much. Who is around from the great defenses of the late '80's who could talk to our kids about the kind of mentality we are trying to restore? Sileo was only there really for one season.
There are so many exemplary football alums who established a body of work at UM and the pros over many seasons, and who played more recently. If our kids know Sileo, it is probably from his loud mouth on radio. What does that demonstrate? Trash talking? Is that what we want to bring back? I always kind of liked our outlaw image, but I was ambivalent. It brought us a lot of grief, too. Bring back the heart and savagery as players, not the trash talking.
EDIT: I went back and checked and realized that Bill Hawkins and Dan Stubbs were both still with the team in '87. That year we would have had three very good DE's, but we had to move Mark inside when Sileo was declared ineligible. I don't know who else could have played DT for us that year. I recall Russ Maryland getting into that '88 OB against Oklahoma, but he was still young. We had a slew of really good players that we lost from that '86 team.
Still confused. My post was a joke about Sileo originally naming the title of this thread Mark Richt and then posted that Manny invited Mark to speak to the team. I have no clue to what you are responding to, but more power to ya.
I thought you were confused about my post which I think was right above and which very briefly questioned whether we should celebrate Sileo as one of our more illustrious football alums. He played next to Jerome Brown, but he was not Jerome Brown. Heck, he didn't even start over Derwin Jones until Derwin fractured his elbow. How many of you remember Derwin? He was a quiet, humble kid who was dependable and coachable, came from a tiny Christian academy, but started a heck of a lot of games for us. Didn't have a pro career and sadly died while still a young man, not from bad behavior, like some do, but from cancer.
I saw all these claims of honors for his performance the one year Sileo played, which was really about half a year as a starter (1986), and I don't know how he did so much in essentially half a season to earn all those accolades. Go back to wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sileo
So, he made second team AP All-American and both honorable mention and second team All-American by Sporting News for playing essentially as a starter for half a year in 1986?
By the way, how does one earn both honorable mention and second All-American by the same service, Sporting News? That is odd. (That was in the same year, remember he only played for us in 1986.) That's like being Heisman Trophy Winner and 1st runner up at the same time, or being Miss America and first runner up the same year.
He (or I guess, whoever wrote the article for Wikipedia) says he Miraculous Dan made apparently 8 fumble recoveries in that one year. Well, that "fact" seems to have overlooked by those at UM who keep track of records, since the 2016 media guide says the season record for fumble recoveries is 5, held by three players: LeeRoy Lewis (1965); Ted Hendricks (1968) and Mike "Bad News" Barnes (1972). See if you can look at page 212 of the 2016 Media Guide:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/miami.sidearmsports.com/documents/2017/6/23/4920107.pdf
Hope the link works.If it doesn't, go to the official UM website, University of Miami Hurricanes Official Athletic Site, and go to the football page. You'd have to drill down, I think clicking on sports and then football and start looking around. You'll find a posted acrobat file that's hundreds of pages long. That's the officlal 2016 media guide. They used to print those out and they were nice keepsakes. Now, I don't think they print them out anymore. I used to buy multiple copies every year.
I guess I could go through and pick apart some of the other claims made in the long wikipedia article about Sileo, all his many accomplishments in what I think was about half-a-year as a starter. I think some of the others are dubious, but I'm not ready to challenge them without more research and frankly, it's not worth the time.
Don't get me wrong. I think he could've been quite a player, had he continued to play in college with the quality coaching he would get at UM. Still, I recall vaguely I thik some fairly negative sentiments by Butch, who was his position coach at UM. I remember we also had a brief conversation about upcoming HS QBs, and Butch mentioned, I think, Cale Gundy, the younger brother of Mike Gundy. I think both were from Oklahoma and Butch had coached at OK State before coming to UM. Butch was also very familiar with that part of the country: Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma. Didn't both Cale and Mike Gundy play at Oklahoma State? I don't feel like looking it up now.
Remember also that wikipedia is something to which anybody can make entries or changes. I've actually done it once or twice.
I wish CMR and Manny, if they are going to bring in football alums, could bring in more exemplary former players with recognizable achievements at UM and long NFL careers. Heck, they could even bring in Burgess Owens, although he is from an era which current players know nothing about. See my mention of Burgess in the Matt Corral thread, I think it is.
They could also try to bring in people who have been that successful as players and been successful off-the-field as well. Nowadays, the more serious kids realize the longterm value of a quality education.
Not all our former players made their millions in the NFL. Wasn't there a Ken Hunt who gave a million to the athletic department a few years ago? I remember Ken Hunt from the early '60's, a good young RB whose leg was permanently harmed by a gun accident. I didn't know anything about him after he stopped playing because of the permanent injury. He came out of nowhere to give a ton of money. He was grateful to the university for continuing to honor the scholarship.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/11977497/former-miami-rb-ken-hunt-makes-largest-athlete-donation-school
I remember my friend, **** Sorensen, talk about his gratitude to the university and the program for giving him a college education. He didn't make it with the Dolphins, so he went into the business world.
I'm just getting sick of the spouting off at other people by this guy Sileo and his exaggerated claims of his accomplishments as a part-time starter in one year at UM.
[MENTION=2335]TheMatador[/MENTION]
bravo, sir
Thank you. Every time I get a tapatalk notification in my gmail I hold my breath, hoping it's not some hate. I don't really want to get into some of the kind of stuff I see going back and forth in some of the threads. It happens a lot, by the way, we discuss a player, a recruit and an decent, informative discussions of pluses and minuses turns into exchanges between two posters who hate each other. I get tired of reading that crap just to get some good information on the program, the players and the recruits.
I don't like criticizing any former player, but this guy (Sileo) has gone too far. All the BS in that wiki...I mean, it's just ridiculous. Outrageous claims. Just the claim about fumble recoveries that would erase records that have stood since I was just starting college. By making his claims on something so widely-read as wikipedia he is destroying the credibility of an otherwise outstandiing site built by volunteers and which usually seems to be accurate and honest. Then, he smears the guys who played for us over the years and had significant accomplishments that are still at the top of the record books--heck, I hardly remember LeeRoy Lewis who has the all-time record fumble recoveries. Then here comes Sileo claiming he surpassed it by making more recoveries in half a season as a starter. (We did have a pretty good team in '65, although I missed it entirely. I was going to college in another state and never was able to get any information on the season. I read about the season years later, and how we pulled a major upset by tying national power Notre Dame 0-0. I remember we had two tough power backs, Pete Banaszak and Spaceman Doug McGee, a legend for his leaping and landing on his head, thus requiring design of a special helmet to protect his head. We had a shifty breakaway back, Russ Smith, younger brother of one of the greatest backs in UM history, a legend, the great Frank Smith from the early 1950's.)
I suspect the years of steroids plus meningitis might have affected Sileo's brain...although i suspect it was damaged from the start.
Who the **** is Dan Sileo?
What??? Dan Sileo [URL=https://www.canesinsight.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=93]#93 3[/URL] left??? No more newspaper clippings??? July is not even over yet!!
