UM-UF: Anybody remember Orlando in '76 or Tampa in '84?

[Hurracanes]

I was at that game. I never thought in a million years that 1983 would turn out like it did.

After we won it all those losers actually made license plates that said, “Gators 28 National Champions 3”

Those aholes will never change.

Hence, August 24th is so crucial. A victory that night i’s like injecting steroids into this program and shutting those *****’s up for many years to come since they’re afraid to play us.

 

[QuattroCane]

I was at the 84 game...I was living pretty close by in Clearwater....Kosar hit Eddie Brown for game winner...then a pick 6 with seconds to go to add misery...

That place was stunned, ironically that game was the worst abuse I've ever taken from opposing fans, they were brutal.

IIRC Sam Jankovich was jumping up and down in the end zone on one of the last TD's

 

[SWFLHurricane]

That place was stunned, ironically that game was the worst abuse I've ever taken from opposing fans, they were brutal.

IIRC Sam Jankovich was jumping up and down in the end zone on one of the last TD's

Yeah the Lizard fans were azzwipes....but nothing compares with what VT & WVU fans were like in the 90s at away games.

 

[NJshoreCane]

Yeah the Lizard fans were azzwipes....but nothing compares with what VT & WVU fans were like in the 90s at away games.

Agree on the WVU fans 1000%.
They were enabled by the campus cops who just turned their heads when shet started going down with visiting fans.

 

[Gatorhater]

The ‘84 game was epic! ESPN’s first nationally televised night game, 5 days after beating #1 Auburn in the Kickoff Classic. Bernie and Willie Smith were incredible. Gators Lorenzo Hampton scored with 42 seconds left to take the lead and their fans were raining crap down on the Canes section. Bernie took us down the field in 30 seconds and threw the prettiest pass to Eddie Brown in the corner of the end zone. Heaven! We kickoff and then pick them off and return it for another score with every Gator knocked on their *** during the return. Doesn’t get better than that!

You left out the best part. Gators were trying to carry their coach Charlie Pell off the field while Bernie started that winning drive. Pell was fighting to get down, yelling and pointing. Meanwhile ice water Kosar was busing proving that he would have beat NE in the title game that pass January even if they made that two point conversion. I loved all our last second wins that broke so many nole’s hearts but doing it to the gators was much better.

 

[straight talk]

If I remember correctly, it was Tolbert Bain with the Pic 6 at the end...

It was

 

[Hegemon]

Those are the in-state neutral site games in modern series history (there were two games at the Gator Bowl stadium in Jacksonville during the late 50's)

Canes got beat 19-10 at the Citrus Bowl in 1976..

Canes won 32-20 at Tampa Stadium in 1984.

Any recollections from those particular matchups?

I assure you the level of ***gotry from UF fans was the same as it is today.

 

[straight talk]

You left out the best part. Gators were trying to carry their coach Charlie Pell off the field while Bernie started that winning drive. Pell was fighting to get down, yelling and pointing. Meanwhile ice water Kosar was busing proving that he would have beat NE in the title game that pass January even if they made that two point conversion. I loved all our last second wins that broke so many nole’s hearts but doing it to the gators was much better.

Was sitting on the 40 yard line about 10 rows up. After a long pass to Willie Smith UM had the ball on the Gator 1 yard line. A time out was called and the new JImmy Johnson staff was in turmoil as to what play to call. Bernie Kosar stepped in a yelled "let's play football" . He called the basic off tackle run for the winning touchdown. The Tolbert Bain pic six just made the score look better.

 

[MainLineCane]

How epic?

Click on the link below and find out for yo'self

1984: Canes win, Gators lose and Bernie "MF'in" Kosar is The Man

That's the mentality this team has to get back to..... REFUSE TO LOSE

 

[Billy D Williams]

I was at the 84 game...I was living pretty close by in Clearwater....Kosar hit Eddie Brown for game winner...then a pick 6 with seconds to go to add misery...

My senior year at USF! Me and my frat Bros were drinking cheap as always Kesslers Whiskey and frying fish. I was so dejected because I thought we had lost and I left. When I got to my place the Bros called to tell me the Canes came back to win. So I missed one of the greatest comebacks in Canes history. Downtown Eddie Brown was a great one that goes unmentioned too often.

 

[Gables Cane]

I was in Tampa for the ‘84 game. Awesome experience. Kosar to Willie Smith and then a pick 6 to seal it.

The year before I was in Hogtown for Bernie’s first game and left the stadium dejected but we went on to win the MNC.

 

[SWFLHurricane]

I was in Tampa for the ‘84 game. Awesome experience. Kosar to Willie Smith and then a pick 6 to seal it.

The year before I was in Hogtown for Bernie’s first game and left the stadium dejected but we went on to win the MNC.

It was Eddie Brown not Smith

 

[Gables Cane]

It was Eddie Brown not Smith

You are right. My bad. I do seem to recall that the Gators took the lead on an illegal pick play that wasn’t called and our coaches were upset. I also remember Jimmy wanting to play it safe near the end (wanting to run the ball) and Kosar imploring him to let him throw it.

 

[Gatorhater]

Was sitting on the 40 yard line about 10 rows up. After a long pass to Willie Smith UM had the ball on the Gator 1 yard line. A time out was called and the new JImmy Johnson staff was in turmoil as to what play to call. Bernie Kosar stepped in a yelled "let's play football" . He called the basic off tackle run for the winning touchdown. The Tolbert Bain pic six just made the score look better.

Bernie truely had ice water in his veins. He was the coolest Cane QB ever. I think JJ was forced to keep a bunch of Howard’s staff that was basically in rebellion until they either quit of got fired. I’ve always thought the team won the first two games to settle matters from the year before. Auburn because they claimed they should have gotten voted number one and the swamp slime because of our opening loss to them. After those two games, things got strange.

 

[Bernie20]

You are right. My bad. I do seem to recall that the Gators took the lead on an illegal pick play that wasn’t called and our coaches were upset. I also remember Jimmy wanting to play it safe near the end (wanting to run the ball) and Kosar imploring him to let him throw it.

That’s why Bernie was going ape **** on the sideline. We had one play left before going for the fg and back then fg’s were not a sure thing, no matter how short.

He wanted to throw it in the end zone one time before going for the winning fg.

It would have been a 22 yard fg or so. I think we were inside the 5.

When I saw Bernie drop back to throw I almost passed out and then when I saw him lift a perfect corner throw to Eddy Brown, it was pure elation.

Unforgettable.

 

[OriginalCanesCanesCanes]

“Gators 28 National Champions 3”

Those aholes will never change.

So typical of these douche bags. The best you can come up with is a license plate that says we won the national championship? They really are retards. The premiere short bus riders in college football fandom

 

[daytonacane]

I have watched this numerous times and thoroughly enjoyed each & every time.
We had gone to a UCF game in Orlando, left in the 4th quarter and drove to Tampa for the Canes game. Sat among a bunch of drunk gators who taunted us. They left before Kosar did his magic, but we ran into them in the parking lot & they didn't know we had won. We really enjoyed telling them of the last 42 seconds of this classic game.

 

[TheMatador]

I do remember the '84 game. I think it was the second game that JJ had coached. He had won the KO Classic against Auburn and Bo Jackson 20-15, I think.

The Gator game wasn't all that wonderful from JJ's point of view, because I think that was one where Lorenzo Hampton broke a big one on us. Johnson said after the game he was very concerned about the lack of speed on our defense. He said that, on that run, nobody on our defense was even close to Hampton. (I think it was Hampton, UF had another RB that was pretty good). Johnson is also quoted as saying words to the effect, "I don't know where the speed down here goes, maybe it goes to Florida or FSU." As he was able to see more of his team, he was clearly not happy with what was emerging before his eyes by the defense.

He didn't like the slowness of our defense, and he didn't like the scheme. Later in the season, Johnson made a mid-game change to his attacking 4-3. I think it was against Jim Everett at Purdue. Johnson took one of our stand-up DE's (trying to remember the name, perhaps Dallas Cameron or Victor Morris) and told him to just put his hand on the ground and do nothing but rush the Purdue QB. Do nothing else.

These were the steps along the way to the disastrous outcome of the '84 season. Johnson was unhappy with the defense he inherited from Schnellenberger that was being coordinated by a DC, Bill Trout, who he inherited with some of Schnellenberger's holdovers.

This whole mess blew up with the yardage we gave up to Flutie the day after Thanksgiving on the Hail Flutie loss, the disaster against Maryland where they put up something like 42 points to come back and beat us at home. It continued with the fiasco in the Fiesta Bowl against UCLA. We had what sounded like a civil war inside the staff, especially on defense. Trout resigned before the end of the season. Jimmy was playing with some other Schnellenberger coaches--Hubbard Alexander, Joe Brodsky, Christ Vagotis, Bill Trout. Some became loyal to Jimmy and even followed him to Dallas, like Alexander and Brodsky. Others, like Vagotis and I think Trout, left UM as soon as they could get out and followed Schnellenberger to Louisville.

While we could savor the games against Auburn (who had challenged our right to call ourselves NC the prior year (1983). Auburn actually won the NY Times computer poll and they printed up their own NC gear and sold it. We didn't get the respect we deserved because we opened the '83 season with a loss to Florida.) There were dark clouds on the horizon for UM for the remainder of the '84 season. I don't know how many times I had to watch SNL replay that Hail Flutie on TV...it made me sick.

Johnson was right, he saw what was happening on our defense in that UF game and he was **** concerned. Kosar was brilliant at bringing us back and he had a real money receiver in Fast Eddie Brown. I also remember that Darryl Oliver, an unsung RB from Palatka, had a very hard run toward the end of that game. He played less and less as we gave more time to Alonzo Highsmith I think. I believe that the re-positioning of Highsmith the year before by Schnellenberger was regarded as a big mistake by Johnson. He said at the end of Alonzo's career, that he would have kept Highsmith at DE in his 4-3 defense and would have created havoc on opposing defenses with Danny Stubbs and Alonzo rushing the passer. Don't forget that Alonzo was perhaps the top high school defensive player in the country his senior year at Columbus. Schnellenberger, an offensive coach, felt he was thin at RB so he switched Alonzo to RB. JJ probably would never have entertained it as a defensive coach.

All you folks who are so confident against UF.....I remember the unwarranted ****iness by so many of you before LSU last year, and I remember similar attitudes in years past. I really feared LSU because I remember that bowl game (Peach Bowl?) where they manhandled us and yet some of our kids had the nerve to try to follow into their lockerroom and fight.

I will go into this game with my fingers crossed. We have a completely new staff, especially on offense and with our DL coach, and I will hold my breath until I see how our OL and QB play in a game.

This is not the same as the '84 situation, where we had a new coach come in after spring practice and he inherited a lot of staff that were not his guys. And they had a different philosophy. Here, we have Manny's handpicked staff. He's worked with most of them, he knows them. But they are still new. They sound promising but until I know more about our OLs and our QBs I'm not going to be overconfident.

 

[TheMatador]

Yep, the game was a big deal nationally because ESPN was debuting college football. I was driving up from California to Spokane, Washington to go to Air Force Survival Training. I was driving tandum with a buddy. We had just finished flying training. Told him if we find a hotel or motel with cable we are stopping. Found a hotel in Bend, Oregon. Only way to watch the game was rent a motel room that had it on cable. LoL. MIssed first quarter, but it was a classic. Once game ended we got back on the road.

Done that.

i guess it was the '66 team, not sure, that went to the Liberty Bowl against Va Tech. (Frank Beamer played on Va Tech that year). I was living in Cocoa Beach on the east coast of the state at the time. The game was not being broadcast anywhere near where we lived.

We found out there would be broadcasts near the southwest coast of Florida. We (my father and I) took off in the car. Drove down south below Orlando, kind of near McCoy AFB. Radiator sprung a leak. We would stop on the side of the road and I would bend down and get a jar of water from a roadside stream. Put water in the radiator. (We knew nothing about anti-freeze back then, just put water in radiators, maybe that's why they didn't last too long before springing leaks.) Finally, kept driving toward the west coast of Florida, came to Lakeland, found a little old motel in the center of the city, asked this elderly couple if we could rent a room with TV for a couple of hours. They said yes, probably thought it was weird. They were foreign born, probably didn't understand why football was so important. The game was on their TV, so we watched the bowl game, paid for the room, turned around, and drove back from Lakeland to the east coast of Florida. Had never been to Lakeland before, haven't been since. But we saw the game....but those are the kinds of things you have to do if you are a serious Canes fan.

Maybe it was the '67 team...heck. Don't remember. There were not that many bowl games and a team with a fairly good record would often be shut out of one of the very few elite bowls, of which I guess there were four: Orange, Sugar, Rose and Cotton.

The Cotton was big time back then because of the Southwest Conference and most of the other bowls had major conference tie-ins. We had no conference so we were generally left out. Besides, we went through years when we struggled to win a lot of games. We didn't have the resources to compete with the big state schools. I remember some of our freshman classes were very much on the small side. There was not parity of scholarships. The state schools like Texas would be deep maybe with well over a hundred players and we would have far less.

I think that '67 team might have finished number 9 in the country. Playboy Magazine might have ranked that team preseason number one. One of the years Charlie Tate closed practice after there was all kinds of publicity about our team. Pro scouts came to practice and publicly praised our talent. I remember one quote where a pro scout compared Vince Opalsky to Larry Smith at Florida. Both, in theory, were studs. Smith was big and not slow. Opalsky was almost as big and probably a lot faster. Why he didn't shine more might have been due to the fact he got hurt a lot. He had one or two season-ending shoulder injuries. I remember him sitting on the bench with one shoulder covered in an ice bag as his season had just ended.

Now, I wonder if a good weight and conditioning program prevents such injuries, or at least the duration. Not only was the preventive conditioning and strengthening not as good, but the post injury treatment including surgical techniques and PT, and other rehabilitative techniques were also probably nowhere as advanced.

I know when I was in HS in the early '60's, nobody where I grew up knew about physical therapy. If you had an injury, you went to the orthopedic surgeon and that was it, I guess.

Now, I sometimes go to an outpatient PT place where one of the surgeons has had a long history as team physician to quite a few pro and college teams in the Washington area. He has gotten out of being a team physician now, but every afternoon I would go in for my PT there would be a ton of HS kids working out. I don't think they had serious injuries, but these were the kids of very affluent families, kids who often attended one of the many elite prep schools in the area, and if they had the slightest ache or pulled muscle or whatever their parents were happy to pay for them to go over multiple afternoons a week and do some PT exercises. The kids were generally pretty nice but if they were not I can imagine I would not have liked them very much. I knew quite a few older people with mediocre insurance and serious orthopedic conditions who could not get the PT they needed just to recover enough to function in life.

 

[SWFLHurricane]

There's "Holding"....Then there's what Jerome had to endure during the Flutie Hail Mary Game.....In ALL my yrs watching CFB....I've NEVER seen such blatant Holding during an entire game on one player...Especially on the last play....smfh