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Origin of Throwing Up The []_[]??

TheOriginalCane said:
The original version was when Michael Irvin would throw up The U just using his index fingers (the Utah U).

Later, after a UM-FSU game (1988) where the cameras captured UM students mocking “the chop” with middle fingers, the administration wanted us to do something different with their hands. I’m not going to get into great detail about one particular person “inventing” the hand signal, but there was coordination between the marching band (who would play The Imperial March (from Star Wars) while the cheerleaders would show the students how to do the hand movements.
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I ignored all the advice about the middle finger when we played them in 1990. And I'm betting you might have also "forgot" that the admin didn't like that. 👊
I remember the admin really hating the "yo mama" chant we did, almost as much as they didn't like us yelling F you Brent to Mussberger after we beat ND in 1986. But Yama Yama man loved it.
 
FtMyersCane said:
I was friends with Val and John Routh both. RIP Val.

Don't know about anything that really may or may not have happened before but was in the Band of the Hour and can confirm we were asked to play the Death March on third down while the cheerleaders encouraged the stands to do the U just like the video says. It was definitely the cheerleaders who popularized it.

Incidentally, we stole doing the death march on third down from Arizona who used to do it. Also our Miami U fight song was stolen from UCLA.

Feel pretty unc having been there and knowing all this.
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Truth. There was coordination between the band and the cheerleaders. ****, you probably knew my roommate who was in the band at that time. He told me about it then, that’s how I knew we were going to be doing it.
 
Gennaker Cane said:
I ignored all the advice about the middle finger when we played them in 1990. And I'm betting you might have also "forgot" that the admin didn't like that. 👊
I remember the admin really hating the "yo mama" chant we did, almost as much as they didn't like us yelling F you Brent to Mussberger after we beat ND in 1986. But Yama Yama man loved it.
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I remember. In fact, I was talking to people during the UM-FSU game, lamenting the loss of the “Hey…your mama” song, as well as “Kiss Him Goodbye”…which was always great to sing in the third quarter…

I wrote the article in The Ibis yearbook about Yamma Yamma (Jim Fleming) when AD Dave “Maggot” Maggard forced him off the sidelines (he returned under Paul Dee). Little known facts, Jim was a cheerleader, USBG President, and the founder of WVUM.
 
FtMyersCane said:
John was an absolute character. He was a professional mascot basically, before we had student mascots. We drank with him a good bit. Pretty sure he sweated out a lot of alcohol in the Sebastian uniform. He was also the Miami Maniac (owned the copyright to it) and then was Billy the Marlin at some point. He was actually brought to Miami by Ron Fraser, he was a mascot before UM but I can't remember where.

A couple of great John/Sebastian stories: (1) 1991 Cotton Bowl, the blowout. He thought he would entertain people by pretending to brand Bevo. He had a branding iron (from god knows where) and he put aluminum foil on it to make it more visible. He pretended to sneak up on Bevo who was laying peacefully at one corner of the field. In Texas, they are pretty protective of ol' Bevo and on top of that, him getting branded by aTm was how he got his name so they weren't gonna take this branding foolishness lying down. They snapped his ropes and he jumped up ready for business. Pretty sure John ran faster than any of the players that day, he was GONE.

The other story is when we were at FSU in 1989 and he came out with the fire extinguisher to make like he was going to put out the flaming spear. He got roughed up by the Leon County deputies. What I didn't know at the time was he had accidentally discharged the fire extinguisher at one of them because he was startled and had an itchy trigger finger. They let him go ultimately. We lost that game but got our revenge in 1991, one of the wide right games. I was sitting in the end zone for that one and when both teams streamed out of the field we were so confused for a second.

John's antics are a core memory for me.
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John was ****y the Gamecock before Ron Fraser hired him to create The Miami Maniac for baseball. The Maniac was so popular that he was asked to redesign the costume and logo for Sebastian a year later. FYI, San Sebastián Hall (the namesake) still stands at LeJeune and University.

John did the first “C-A-N-E-S” cheer at the UM-ND game in 1989. I remember being at a baseball game where he tried to do it differently as The Maniac. He would point to his eye (See), then he would do a New York hand signal with his fingers together (Aay), then he would point to his rear end (End), then his knee (Knee) in order to spell out CANES. It took us some time, but we eventually caught on.

When John redesigned the Sebastian logo, he took ownership. John is the reason the corncob pipe has never reappeared. John is also the reason Nike designed “The Clam” as a secondary logo so that they would not have to pay John separately for Sebastian.
 
Look, here is the reality.

Sometimes things that LATER become tradition, or take on new meaning, have their origins years earlier.

The split U was invented in the 1970s by an alum of my fraternity. It was supposed to be used in all sports. For a long stretch, it was only used in football.

There are a ton of cheers I learned in the 1980s that got outlawed by Tad Foote. ****, the real old heads remember the sexually suggestive “banana cheer” that the cheerleaders used to do (“peel the banana and…uhhh…take a bite”). Among others. We don’t play “Hail To The Spirit of Miami U” as much as we once did.

But I promise you…we had a lot of different references that became much bigger years later. We were The U in the 80s and 90s, but it wasn’t as widespread until Kellen Winslow’s “Soldier” rant. We were The Canes all along (“We got some Canes Over Here”). We were also Miami and UM. JJ started the 4 fingers (Michigan comeback?). I believe that the hurricanes warning flags got started when I was in school (I remember one of the flag carriers blew out his knee carrying one of the flags on a windy day and collapsed on the field). And I remember the smoke getting started by Sebastian with just a fire extinguisher back in the day.

Lots of great memories.
 
nobody will admit it because of how he ended up but the first one who called it the U is Kellen Winslow when he said something like we only care about this U. that had to be 2002-2004. that's as the poster above said the beginning of when it became widespread.
 
TheOriginalCane said:
Look, here is the reality.

Sometimes things that LATER become tradition, or take on new meaning, have their origins years earlier.

The split U was invented in the 1970s by an alum of my fraternity. It was supposed to be used in all sports. For a long stretch, it was only used in football.

There are a ton of cheers I learned in the 1980s that got outlawed by Tad Foote. ****, the real old heads remember the sexually suggestive “banana cheer” that the cheerleaders used to do (“peel the banana and…uhhh…take a bite”). Among others. We don’t play “Hail To The Spirit of Miami U” as much as we once did.

But I promise you…we had a lot of different references that became much bigger years later. We were The U in the 80s and 90s, but it wasn’t as widespread until Kellen Winslow’s “Soldier” rant. We were The Canes all along (“We got some Canes Over Here”). We were also Miami and UM. JJ started the 4 fingers (Michigan comeback?). I believe that the hurricanes warning flags got started when I was in school (I remember one of the flag carriers blew out his knee carrying one of the flags on a windy day and collapsed on the field). And I remember the smoke getting started by Sebastian with just a fire extinguisher back in the day.

Lots of great memories.
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Boy, I’ve heard some great stories from multiple people over my years. Have we ever considered a “History/Tradition” section that would be a sticky somewhere here at CI (@DMoney )? I think this collective knowledge should be available for the next gen; I find it mind boggling just the gap between the 2001 team to now, let along the other great teams/players.
 
CanesDynasty said:
I'll add to that.. I don't remember Miami being referred to as "The U" prior to 2004. Also, the saying "It's a Canes thing, you wouldn't understand" I believe started around our 2000 to 2003 run, but maybe it was earlier, I'm not 100% sure on that one.
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"It's a Cane Thing, You Wouldn't Understand started well before the 2000-2003 run.
 
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