In which the Canes try not to fumble away a perfect season
(note: for bonus points, see if you can find the secret message in this week’s preview)
The year is 2024, which means this is Miami’s 21st season in the ACC. As we all know, it’s been a tremendously successful run for the ‘Canes, with an uncountable number of preseason division/conference titles to their credit. Keeping up with all of those mythical accolades can be a bit of an ordeal, honestly. Every member of the national college football media seems to enjoy the annual tradition of hyping up Miami’s odds of winning a mediocre conference that, as ESPN has often tried to assert, can only be considered a good conference if its linchpins Miami and Florida State are good.
And then there are the fans.
Knowing how to deal with Miami fans is an art unto itself. No fanbase—in my book, not even UGA’s fanbase—is more oppressively intolerable to be around when their team actually appears to be competitive. Exhaustion is a natural symptom of prolonged exposure to people who won’t shut up about THE U and DADE COUNTY and ED REED and THE CULTURE and SWAGGER… but there is a silver lining. Eventually, all Miami fans seem fated to evaporate, because if the ‘Canes implode partway through the season—which has been their custom for over 20 years—those fans and that noise always seem to vanish without a trace, leaving one to stare out at the 742 people in attendance for a game against an FCS opponent and wonder if all those throngs of fans ever truly existed.
Miami perpetually exists in a weird place. Absolute confidence emanates from every corner of the program. Recruits see a program playing up its tremendous history but never talking about any accomplishments from their own lifetimes. Incredible wealth showers the program even now, but a closer look reveals its origins in pandemic-era hospital profits and a lone, loud megabooster frantically staving off bankruptcy. Overwhelming pride in the program manifests in eternal fanbase SWAGGER that becomes a little more amusing with every passing year since the last time they won anything of consequence.
Considering Miami is undefeated this year and very likely playoff-bound thanks to an extremely annoying combination of being ridiculously talented and ridiculously lucky while facing a ridiculously easy schedule (GT genuinely might be the third-best team they face in the regular season), let’s review an incomplete list of teams and entities who, as of November 2024, have scored at least as many touchdowns in the ACC title game as Miami:
- Georgia Tech
- Florida State
- NC State
- Cal
- Caltech (still undefeated)
- Emory (still undefeated)
- Miami (Ohio)
- Iowa
- Iowa’s punter
- Those guys at the Iowa-Nebraska game last year who had shirts that just said “Punts”
- Goldberg, the pro wrestler
- Goldberg, the Mighty Duck
- Alan Shepard, the first American in space
- Commander Shepard
- Shadow the Hedgehog
- Shadow, the mischievous black lab from my childhood neighborhood who once casually strolled into our garage, dug a tennis ball out of my dad’s sports bag, and took it home, causing my dad to get annoyed at 9yo me for not stopping her (???) and in fairness I was in the driveway but was too amused watching it play out
- Tim Tebow
- Terry Tate, the office linebacker
- “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen
- The guy who repaired the torn-up turf during the 2017 Big Ten title game
- The torn-up turf from the 2017 Big Ten title game
- Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
- Me, the person writing this
- You, the person reading this
- You, the person slyly reading this over the previous person’s shoulder
