We spread the ball around to a lot of different guys because, at that time, Andre Johnson wasn't a proven commodity -- or Ethenic Sands or Kevin Beard. The Pro Football Hall of Fame class will be inducted during NFL Honors, which airs on ABC at 9 p.m. Terms at draftkings.com/sportsbook. He was like, "You serious?" Miami may have cost themselves an ACC title with their first home loss of the season. It was always like a family. You're gonna to fight. Our freshman year, we redshirted, but we would go on road trips and have our jerseys on with sweatpants on the sideline. Coker The way Miami broke the will of Syracuse and Washington in back-to-back games, outscoring them by a combined 124-7. [17] Additionally, the Hurricane defense scored eight touchdowns of its own. #14. Three trades in a chaotic top five, The new law changing service academy football, and the coaches pushing back, Realignment chatter: How the Pac-12 holds the key to it all. Reed Shockey was diving for balls, Ed Reed was coming up full-speed, full-tackle. I still have visions of Tommie Frazier leaving Gator defenders in his wake. I don't want to sound disrespectful, but we were five steps faster than them, 10 pounds hungrier, much more violent, which is a different style of football. Renew Now Close Topbar. Roster includes most starters and key reserves. In 2000, Miami was shut out of the Orange Bowl BCS National Championship Game by the BCS computers. Kenny didn't have the strongest arm in football, but he was just a tremendous leader and just a playmaker. Vilma Incognito told me at halftime, their coach basically said, "Guys let's just try to keep this thing close," and he said that right in front of the athletic director. They just accumulated so many good players that everybody was looking at them as like, 'How have they done this? Reed And so much more. That atmosphere was crazy. Record: 12-0 (1st of 117) (Schedule & Results), Bowl Game: Won Rose Bowl 37-14 versus Nebraska. Yea I've been hurt. The Canes Collapse Against The Noles, Lose 85-84. Rumph We line up, and Ed goes, "Mike, here comes the slant. He was probably the most hated guy in all of Blacksburg that night, but at the same time thank you so much, because you just kind of saved us some heartache. OT Joaquin Gonzalez And we went into the Hall of Fame together this past year. I'll never forget the year before, we beat Florida State and guys were celebrating, and Ed Reed told Dorsey to stand up and told everyone to start cheering for Ken Dorsey. But when you play a team like that, you can't turn the ball over, and I think we ended up throwing four interceptions. Johnson was a member of the Hurricanes' most recent national championship team in 2001. As did what happened in October, when Miami -- ranked No. Dorsey It was intense. I said to our athletic director Barbara Hodges, "Let's reschedule that game for another year," and she was like, "No, We have to go." Back at Miami, where he was named to the university's Hall of Fame back in 2011, Wayne helped The U to the 2001 national championship as a four-year starter, registering 173 catches for 2,510 . We knew when I was there, but in 2001, it became reality. People always say the great teams have to overcome a scare along the way. We weren't trying to sit here and showcase how fast and athletic we were. There are currently 44 players in the NFL who were brought up at the "U." One NFL team has quite a collection of Miami alumni. It is unreal how deep their roster was in 2001. But that goes to the larger point: The focus was not on their talent, but on gaining the respect those players felt had been denied to them going back to high school. [15] Miami won its fifth national championship in the last 18 years, and put the finishing touches on a perfect 120 season. . Schumann returning to Georgia, 'It's the most talented team to ever play': An oral history of the 2001 Miami Hurricanes, Miami's turnover chain set a celebratory standard across the college football landscape. Nebraska proved to be no competition for Miami, which opened up a 340 halftime lead en route to a 3714 final score. LB D.J. It was one of those games. If I slacked off at all, I wasn't going to play as much because Vince Wilfork is my backup. The Panthers had six first-round draft picks on its '01 roster while Miami's '01 team eventually We were mentally driven. The 2001 Miami Hurricanes are considered to be the greatest collection of players in college football history, at least as measured by the NFL Draft. Portis was an even bigger weapon in the NFL over his nine year career. / . The 2001 Miami Hurricanes were the only team picked by fans to defeat the '05 Trojan squad, reflecting the esteem with which the 2001 Hurricanes are held in the college football world.[18]. It was one of those games where the score just got run up. Chudzinski 3 back. / We were pissed. NFL draft questions for teams in the top 10: Will the Colts trade up? The individual's put on the back burner for your brothers. "It was literally, you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. Fitzgerald You were getting into a street fight when you went and played those guys. Gore was a true freshman that got Hurricanes fans excited for the future as he averaged 9.1 yards per carry with 5 touchdowns in his first year on-campus. I went to the University of Florida, where as a freshman in 1995, the Nebraska Cornhuskers staked their claim to the greatest-of-all-time throne after dismantling the Gators in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl. I remember Ed coming up next to me. No. It was one of those things where it was kind of like inevitable for us, you know what I mean? It got a lot of attention. The same standings that kept Miami out of the 2000 national championship game. '", Added former Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni: "That team was so talented, so explosive, so good on defense. If you didn't put in the work, there was somebody behind you ready to take over. Instead, they played their backups and won 37-14, a score that does not reflect the sheer dominance of that game. 15 Washington 3429 on the road, while the Seminoles' lone loss was on the road to the #7 team in the country by 3. But the defense came through, as Mike Rumph, Matt Walters and Reed combined to save the day with one of the most iconic plays in Miami history -- a Walters interception, deflected off Rumph's knee, that ended up in Reed's hands for the defensive score. It was a somewhat natural transition because I knew the players. We never got worried. Ed Reed, Kenny Dorsey -- they took ownership of everything: Lifting, the workouts in the summer, coming in to watch film. A lot of us came back just for this game. The first series, we line up, they run their option, and for as fast as it went for us in practice, it was like they were in sand. I got you over the top." Williams They were big boys, all positions, not just the offensive line. You look back on it, and man, that was a great play by Mike, by me, by Ed. Romberg Like you knew in your bones that we were going to pull it out. I told Mike they ought to bronze your knee and put it in the Hall of Fame, because if that didn't happen, we wouldn't have played for a national championship. 2001 Miami Hurricanes 1 of 20 Ronald Martinez/Getty Images One of the greatest college teams of all time also had one of the greatest draft pools of all time. (From 1937 to 2001, bowl games did not count towards season statistics). "Dominate" had started the year before, breaking down the team before going into the locker room right before we came out for the game. And if you're not on board with this, you got to go. What I remember most, though, is the sheer dominance. Gore has added another 77 rushing touchdowns on his way into the NFL record books. Williams When I look back at our workouts, and the pressure that we put on each other of not letting each other down, there was so much pressure that I would think twice about skipping a workout, I would think twice about skipping a rep, I would think twice about letting my brother down because there was so much invested into it. It's a fun debate, but at the same time, the competitor in you has no doubt about where we stood. Washington had beaten Miami the year before, but in 2001, it looked as if the Huskies wanted to be anywhere but playing in prime time in the Orange Bowl as the Hurricanes gleefully kept their foot on the gas to prove a point. We just knew we were going to win it all. / We all loved Dorsey, but we knew we had other skill sets and talent on that team. But these guys wanted to win that two-minute drill as bad as they wanted to win the Rose Bowl. The final hurdle to the Rose Bowl BCS National Championship Game was at Virginia Tech. The Hurricanes led 34-0 at halftime and could have easily won 59-0 had they decided to play their starters the majority of the second half. And that kind of stuck with me. A total of 38 . The dominance on the field and at the next level was unparalleled throughout the. Still, the resilient Hokies had one more chance to win the game late, taking possession of the ball at midfield and needing only a field goal to take the lead. From the 2001 Miami Hurricanes football team alone, 42 players went on to be drafted into the NFL from (2002-2006), including 17 1st round picks. When Butch left, we were kinda stuck, and I remember we all went upstairs to talk to Mr. Dee, myself, Bryant McKinnie, Ed Reed, Ken Dorsey and a couple more guys. The same standings that kept Miami out of the 2000 national championship game. It seems like that every year. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. So can 2016 Clemson, a team I covered throughout the season as an ACC reporter. But we were fruits of what they'd done. I think they added extra bleachers so now they had the biggest stadium in college football. No team past that's been here [at Miami]. Rumph HURRICANES IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME: NAME: SCHOOL(S) POS: YEARS: INDUCTED: Bennie Blades: Miami: S: 1984-87 2006: Don Bosseler: Miami FB: 1953-56 1990: Andy . A lot of people don't realize the rivalry between Miami and Virginia Tech. I was thinking in my mind, "There's not a lot of time left in this game. At the very end of January, [my family and I] ended up making the decision to leave. I had to challenge them, because if not, they're looking at you like, "What is this?" The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. For whatever reason, we always played them close in my four years there. We sucked on offense. It's one of those weird ones you can't explain, but you've got to get through. How good is that? But there were a few things in the contract we were having a difficult time agreeing on. Former Heisman Trophy Award winner Eric Crouch led the Nebraska Cornhuskers into the Rose Bowl to face the Miami Hurricanes in the 2001 national championship game.. He was leading stuff, telling guys what to do, up and down the court with the ball in his hands, and you could just see this guy had that magical feel for how to play team games. That was it for Miami. There's going to be some tremendous 3- or 4-yard runs. LB Jonathan Vilma How many Miami Hurricanes are in the NFL Hall of Fame? We didn't want to have to change and have to learn a new offense, defense, or anything. We liked what we had already, and we really wanted to just keep what we had. They thought that we looked like a high school team. Shannon / The guys before us set an expectation of how hard you had to work and what that standard was, and we knew we had to live up to that. When I caught it, I wasn't thinking about running it back for a touchdown. The fourth quarter was fun for us, because at that point, the game was kind of in hand, and everybody got to enjoy and be part of it: first, second, third string guys, everybody was getting in and getting to play. One of the things that happened in practice, we caught a few guys in the stadium trying to record our practices, seeing how we were going to stop the triple option. They had confidence. Question, Comment, Feedback, or Correction? In my mind, I didn't know if I'd get the job. Dorsey He made good decisions and he made everyone around him better. 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