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Notes on being a fan when we sucked

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BrockBerlin

Redshirt Freshman
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Jan 30, 2012
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I am 34 years old. My first canes game was in 2002 as a ten y/o with my dad and uncle. I have never seen the Canes win a title. I have followed the Canes religiously from childhood to now. This is the first off-season since elementary school in which the canes are a legitimate title contender for me. I was just thinking to myself about how simple it was to follow a garbage team.

I attended the title game with my father and it took me a week to un-wind emotionally from the stress of that game. Waiting 20 years to get there and finally see the Canes take the field to contend for a title was surreal. Now I am thinking through the season and realizing that there are only two realistic outcomes: either we win it all, or we face heartbreak in the playoffs. I don't see us not making it deep into the playoffs either way (barring injury ofc)

Remember how stress free August used to be? We'd hope for an ACC title appearance. Get excited about completely stupid wins (just saw a highlight of the NC State game where Morris threw a bomb to PD 60 yards to win) - we'd get excited over the stupidest **** and then go back to following the sport as fans of college football with the Hurricanes as a footnote on the season as a whole. I would show up game after game and get excited to beat UVA like a complete ******.

Now we have two Heisman candidates on the roster - arguably the best recruiting class ever for the Canes - and are picked by respectable analysts to go all the way. It's a completely different experience. I used to long for national media to mention us and talk Miami football, now its everywhere. I couldn't consume it all - I don't have the time as an adult with kids to listen to every podcast talking up Miami. When I do hear it, it just stresses me out.

This isn't a complaint. Just an observation now that our longed for return has become a reality. I'm not stressed about Stanford, I find myself now thinking about the playoffs and the title game a full five months from now. I didn't realize it would feel this stressful. All worth it - just wondering if anyone remembers how hilariously chill it used to be following this team when we were stacking up 7-5/8-4/6-6/9-3 seasons on repeat. What a strange feeling!
 
My fandom began in 2001 at age 10 so I get this. Luckily got to see one title in my lifetime, even if it was on TV, but it was so long ago I don’t even remember that much about it. And I didn’t understand the game like I do now so seeing them win one today would definitely feel much sweeter.

Dynasties come and go, so I’m going to enjoy every moment of this one and just not look so far ahead like we all tend to do. Before we get to Vegas for the national championship, we have 12 regular season games to win. Gotta win the games we’re supposed to win, then go to South Bend and beat Notre Dame when almost everyone outside this fanbase just assumes we lose that one because it’s at South Bend. Then, we have to win the ACC championship and put the whole “can’t win the ACC” talk to rest. If we do that, then we still got 2 playoff games to win before we get to Vegas. Then, if we get there, we gotta finish the job this time. That’s 16 games. I’m gonna take it 1 game at a time and soak it all in. I truly believe we’re the team to beat. I’ve done my homework on it. Removed the fan hat, went up and down the other top team’s rosters, all that. If we stay healthy and play our A game, I just don’t see another team that can beat us if we’re truly the team we all believe them to be. Too deep, too good at every position group. We’re one of the very few teams that can withstand some injuries and still win it, aside from the key players. Mensah and Mali are the 2 guys we gotta keep healthy. Everyone else, it’s next man up, and we can still do it.

Friday can’t come soon enough. 🟧🙌🟩
 
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BrockBerlin said:
I am 34 years old. My first canes game was in 2002 as a ten y/o with my dad and uncle. I have never seen the Canes win a title. I have followed the Canes religiously from childhood to now. This is the first off-season since elementary school in which the canes are a legitimate title contender for me. I was just thinking to myself about how simple it was to follow a garbage team.

I attended the title game with my father and it took me a week to un-wind emotionally from the stress of that game. Waiting 20 years to get there and finally see the Canes take the field to contend for a title was surreal. Now I am thinking through the season and realizing that there are only two realistic outcomes: either we win it all, or we face heartbreak in the playoffs. I don't see us not making it deep into the playoffs either way (barring injury ofc)

Remember how stress free August used to be? We'd hope for an ACC title appearance. Get excited about completely stupid wins (just saw a highlight of the NC State game where Morris threw a bomb to PD 60 yards to win) - we'd get excited over the stupidest **** and then go back to following the sport as fans of college football with the Hurricanes as a footnote on the season as a whole. I would show up game after game and get excited to beat UVA like a complete ******.

Now we have two Heisman candidates on the roster - arguably the best recruiting class ever for the Canes - and are picked by respectable analysts to go all the way. It's a completely different experience. I used to long for national media to mention us and talk Miami football, now its everywhere. I couldn't consume it all - I don't have the time as an adult with kids to listen to every podcast talking up Miami. When I do hear it, it just stresses me out.

This isn't a complaint. Just an observation now that our longed for return has become a reality. I'm not stressed about Stanford, I find myself now thinking about the playoffs and the title game a full five months from now. I didn't realize it would feel this stressful. All worth it - just wondering if anyone remembers how hilariously chill it used to be following this team when we were stacking up 7-5/8-4/6-6/9-3 seasons on repeat. What a strange feeling!
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And you are a youngster.

Many many hard times in this family long before that.

Bottom line, don’t take the good times for granted.

I always said, Shalala took us out of the “race”…and I’m not huge fan of NIL…but I am loving the fact that we can now determine how much we want to engage. It is the “Wild Wild West” I hoped for. No corrupt NCAA President stacking the deck…no six figure under the table payoffs or family jobs, cars whatever we couldn’t match….

If “amateur” collegiate sports have to become professional sports for Miami to get back…that is where it ends for me. It is poetic justice for the last 20+ years of basic irrelevance…some self imposed, but aided by people who never wanted this brand back in the discussion.

**** em all, deal with it.
 
Reading that made me full on realize what I did as a 47 year old Uncle take my nephew 13 years old to see Cam Ward at home against FSU.

Brother from someone who cant remember not being a Cane with my grandfather taking me to games when I was little in 1984.

It is the most weird emotional ride of my life. Guys Ive tailgated and text and post with becoming more constants in my life then some family members and certainly even long term girlfriends and now to my wife and children. My calendar of my life has been the University of Miami football schedule. Skipping Thanksgiving with family in 2001 to drive to Miami by myself to see a postponed Washington game in the OB is something Ive never regretted and my Mom has never gotten over. She seriously has been angry about it saying out loud to her sister's My Aunts, he doesn't care about this family, he just cares about that Miami team.

Ive posted this before. In 8th grade I won the Thomas Wolfe writing contest for students a 13 years old. We're playing Houston on Thursday night, David KlinglerI just wanna watch Lamar Thomas. At that age, Im certain he hung the moon. Wearing my russell athletic green 36 to school my Dad bought me at the mall, seemingly every other day to school. BUT this stupid story was to be written for months. Mom said you're not watching that game unless its written by game time. Came straight home and penned some 20 pages bs about growing up poor and seeing my older brother (I was the oldest of two) get sucked into drug dealing and go to jail and killed in prison. I have no idea how I wrote that. I won two weeks later. My elementary school and Teacher are all happy and they want to have a thing at the school and then you will present it in Asheville on October 12th at noon in Asheville. I said **** no. Thats Penn St in the Orange Bowl. Mrs. Berne looked confused as ****. She called my Mom. I said the only reason I wrote the thing was to watch my Canes to begin with. Are you kidding me? They threatened to suspend me. My Mom was livid. Shes saying you're going. I went. Like a 13 year old, pitching a fit the whole way. I got up there, read it and walked off and kept going to the car, saying hurry up, lets go. My Mom was embarrassed. My teacher was mad. I barely made it back to Sylva to see the end. Missed Lamar Thomas's bomb. Now part of it was pre empted for Supreme Court confirmation bull****. So even the tape in the VCR had that bs on it.

But I remember thinking, you know when I get old enough to drive, you can see it, if you make it happen and go. And I started doing it.

Like a pilgrimage. To Mecca. The Orange Bowl. Every chance I could. Laying in section X in the **** soaked floor of the OB wrapped in bear hugs going bezerk with strangers but brothers after Wide Right III against FSU(hottest fing day ever at the ol girl) felt like I was with true family. The electricity in the air against Washington that night is a feeling that really cant be articulated. The sound of PK Sam's head getting cracked by Sean Taylor like a shotgun is like nothing Ive ever heard. Hugging Paul Dee in the tunnel after LSU in Atlanta bc hes crying is just weird. Bc Im a total stranger but Im crying and I just reached my arms out. Thats one of the weirdest true things Ive experienced

Man its crazy. When you go to so many games and you just love it, you get so many side stories of players that you meet, and their families. But its some of the best moments of my life.

Watching it come full circle for this younger generation is a payoff I didnt expect but I love that too.
 
RightSaidFred said:
We haven’t won anything yet.
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We haven't won a title yet (under Mario), but don't kid yourself....last season was the most successful season we've ever had without bringing home the chip.

- Beat Notre Dame
- Beat UF
- Beat FSU
- Beat Ohio State
- Won 2 major bowl games
- Got within 1 good pass of winning #6

You literally couldn't ask for a better season where we didn't win a title. The '27 class is all the proof you need. Mario & this team took the next step last season, and it was a big one (pause).
 
I was 8 during the championship game for 2001, but I went to my first game in 1998. I remember watching the championship game on TV and seeing the confetti and all that, but I definitely didn't understand it and feel like I do now and what a championship would feel like. It's basically like I've never seen the Canes win one.

OSU and Ole Miss last year are my all-time highs as a Cane fan. Breaking the 7-game losing streak against FSU was high on the list as well just from that losing streak being in my peak years of becoming a die-hard fan.
 
Obviously not your fault that you youngin’s (20’s, 30’s, 40’s) didn’t get to experience the lean years as I did in the late 60’s and early 70’s. ****, in the 70’s there was talk about shutting down the football program altogether.

How far have we come?! I was honestly beginning to believe I’d never see us win another National Championship in my lifetime. Mario has given me real hope that I might actually get to see another one. **** near did last year.

It’s been said ad nauseam that when Miami is great, college football is much better as a whole. We’re on the precipice of making that a reality and I couldn’t be more excited about the upcoming season.
 
NZ Cane said:
stacking up 7-5/8-4/6-6/9-3 seasons on repeat....Fkn Awful.

Now that run last season, beating the sec/osu that was fun.
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Worst part, we had A BUNCH OF sunshine pumpers on here saying everything is fine, meanwhile got boys growing to men with not even a decent memory and those same sunshine pumpers talk about checkdowns from Ward, you honestly cant make this **** up dawg..

I will always hate these everything is fine, pro style bro POS, burn two decades and ..

This Is Fine GIF


The Rock Wrestling GIF by WWE
 
I am also 34 years old. My first UM game was in 2001 when we beat the ever living dog **** out of Washington. And my naive young self thought, maybe it'll always be like this. Two months later we won the National Championship is a dominating fashion. "Well ****, it'll always be like this." Fast forward a year later, my first true sports heartbreak when we lost to Ohio.

A few years through Middle School and HS, I thought maybe we have a chance to have a great team. And of course, they were always just an illusion. Watching our rivals find national championship success during our down years, made the down years even more worse.

Last years run, from post-SMU to the National Championship, was the most fun I've had as a UM fan since 2002. And I was a season ticket holder during the 2017 season. Being able to have national, big time success, with a HC who is willing to die for this ****, makes it even more special.

We haven't won the big one yet, but we have won games that we have gotten blown out in previously. Not only did we win, we imposed our will on them.

We'll get #6 soo **checks watch**, in about 147 days.

Go Canes.
 
RightSaidFred said:
We haven’t won anything yet.
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This type of reasoning just baffles me. The whole championship or the season was a failure mentality is crazy.

If you can’t enjoy where we are now when we were irrelevant just a few years ago, I don’t know what to tell you. Of course we want to win it all, and losses will always sting, but have some perspective.

Enjoy the ride, because we weren’t even in the race not long ago.
 
Jonnyblaze said:
This type of reasoning just baffles me. The whole championship or the season was a failure mentality is crazy.

If you can’t enjoy where we are now when we were irrelevant just a few years ago, I don’t know what to tell you. Of course we want to win it all, and losses will always sting, but have some perspective.

Enjoy the ride, because we weren’t even in the race not long ago.
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This guy is a known negative ****. He’s always been that way.
 
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