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Article: The de-volution of a Miami Fan

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Awsi Dooger said:
Programs like Notre Dame and USC have so many natural advantages and football heritage that their brief downturns are relatively meaningless.
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What natural advantages does Notre Dame have? Their program is in Indiana.

We've won five championships since 1983. That includes a championship in each decade. Notre Dame has won one NC in that span.

This program makes NFL coaches out of anybody competent. If you fail here, you won't find another job because you're a hack. Even in the midst of NCAA scandal, Sun Life, five-loss seasons and irrelevance, we still pull in Top 10-15 classes. And that doesn't include the South Florida sleepers who would kill for a Miami offer.

The best players in the world play here. Their mothers live here. That isn't changing. The gap between South Florida and the rest of the country gets bigger every year. Now the region is producing elite college quarterbacks (Geno, Bridgewater, Cato), NFL-caliber TEs (O'Leary, Walford) and offensive linemen. Our entire front five on Saturday was from South Florida, including studs like Flowers and Feliciano.

Nobody has won or played for as many titles in my lifetime as Miami. This program takes a backseat to nobody.
 
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What pains me most though is my own personal affectations regarding UM football. As a younger fan, losses were aberrations. I would be sick for a week after a loss - both with the pain of the loss itself, but also with the general unfamiliarity with the feeling. Miami doesn't lose. That's not normal. Over time, the losses began to pile up and my mindset began to change until suddenly I woke up last Sunday morning feeling...well...fine. And it scared the **** out of me.


That paragraph sums up excatly identical to how i feel.
 
imlive365 said:
What pains me most though is my own personal affectations regarding UM football. As a younger fan, losses were aberrations. I would be sick for a week after a loss - both with the pain of the loss itself, but also with the general unfamiliarity with the feeling. Miami doesn't lose. That's not normal. Over time, the losses began to pile up and my mindset began to change until suddenly I woke up last Sunday morning feeling...well...fine. And it scared the **** out of me.


That paragraph sums up excatly identical to how i feel.
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Wow. Took the feeling right outta my chest. This GT game was the first time I felt absolutely nothing. I'm dead inside. If Alfraud Golden isn't fired at the end of the season, it might be over for me....
 
Duvalco.Cane said:
imlive365 said:
What pains me most though is my own personal affectations regarding UM football. As a younger fan, losses were aberrations. I would be sick for a week after a loss - both with the pain of the loss itself, but also with the general unfamiliarity with the feeling. Miami doesn't lose. That's not normal. Over time, the losses began to pile up and my mindset began to change until suddenly I woke up last Sunday morning feeling...well...fine. And it scared the **** out of me.


That paragraph sums up excatly identical to how i feel.
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Wow. Took the feeling right outta my chest. This GT game was the first time I felt absolutely nothing. I'm dead inside. If Alfraud Golden isn't fired at the end of the season, it might be over for me....
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I'm a young person. Early 2000s is when I become a fan because that's when I started understanding football. I remember going to the Orange bowl with my dad parking across the street back in the neighborhood by a church. Walking across sitting in the end zone bleachers and not worrying about Winning but wondering how Much we were gonna win buy. As the Years have passed its gotten easier and easier to not get up set after the games. And with this coaching staff anytime we play a team Where they predicate there offense on running the ball I already know in my head we have no chance whatsoever.
 
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This post basically summed up how I feel as well.

I was born into the Cane family and I'll die a Cane. My fuggin casket will be orange and green when I leave this world.

Like you the loses hurt and I was becoming numb. During GT I was playing Xbox instead of watching it because I was raging and didn't want to feel that way. And like you I woke up Sunday and felt ok. But today, fug that, I'm #Renewed... Renewed on getting these m'fers out of here and getting a coach who can do what it takes to bring the U back. Not some stubborn *** coach who is married to his friend and their system. Change, grow or die.
 
Ghost, best post I have read on this board in a long time. Funny, how many die hard Cane fans have become apathetic. I have been a fan since the late 70s so I lived through the glory days, when a loss like ND in 88 would haunt me for weeks, but now losses have very little meaning and it sucks.
 
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Kirijax said:
Good post. I'll never understand people who "switch" teams. Is that possible? If I stopped rooting for the Canes, I'll stop watching college sports altogether. There is no other option.
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NONE
I would get a Saturday job ****.
 
We all have different perspectives, that's fine. I went to my first Cane game at the University of Kansas and UM made a big impression on me that day. It wasn't that they won or how they won, but how they played and what Schnellenberger was building. Since that day I have been a Cane fan, hooked. A few years later during the 1982 season I watched Jim Kelly play in front of 7,500 fans and by that standard the stadium looks full today. How many teams can claim 5 NC's in 30 seasons? While I don't care for Golden or the way he manages a team and face filled with ulterior motives, I don't need another team. I just want my team to win and contend. For those of you looking for a winner, have fun. Being a front runner is a crappy way to choose a team and for that matter a lousy way to go through life. Golden will be gone before long, UM will hire another coach and let's hope it's a strong one, a young Jimmy or a sober Dennis.
 
I forgot about that last game in the OB. Flew in for that, too. I must have blocked it out as part of my defense mechanism.

Oh, and Felix? You need a reading comprehension course my man. We are just having a brief group therapy session (if you will).
No ones going anywhere and if we were ******* frontrunners we'd already be gone. capisce?
 
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I do believe that Golden is going to get to try to right this ship one more time, regardless of how much more grumbling the fan base does. However, I do think his chance will come at the expense of Mark D'onofrio. If he persists on keeping him, Al will get the axe.
 
sowba said:
Great post, ghost. As someone who grew up overseas, I never had a football team until I came to UM in 07. I came in with Randy Shannon and I left with him. Needless to say, my only experience with being a die-hard Canes fan has been one of gradual familiarization with mediocrity. There have been a few shining moments and glimmers of hope; but even in those moments, there was always the assurance that the linings were grey, and that a let down was imminent. I was at the last game in the Orange Bowl against UVA, and there was nothing of former glory in the air that night. You all likely remember the score. I remember the entire student section tearing the seats apart and a terrible, baffled irony.

I love hearing you "old-timers," relatively speaking, those of you who marched along with the Canes in the glory days. Your stories, almost mythical from my standpoint, are honestly the one thing that ties me to whatever is left that allows me to believe it can happen again. We "are" a great tradition, at this point, only in the sense that we "were" a great tradition. Our stadium is a castration. Our coaches are seemingly impotent. Our season is in shambles, and our future uncertain.

Every year a new batch of Canes fans are baptised in the same manner that I was: in the holy water of mediocrity. So for those of you who can still bear witness to the halcyon days of Miami football, please continue to remind us. It's how we get through.
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I was there for the beginning in '83 thru '86 and have been ever since. We've been mired in mediocrity for 10 years....Alabama was there alot longer, FSPoo was too,,,all of them were- look at Notre Shame- before Manti Teo we hadnt heard from them in 20 yrs!!! we will get back to greatness soon- there is so much going on right now that points in that direction!
 
I refuse to accept any loss, any "fan" that wants to dispute that as living in the past or any other bull**** golden-esque excuse can suck on the furthest crevice of a monkey's ***

For that reason I have only begrudgingly watched one game this year, and that was famu

Biggest reason why ive been coming to like this site so much better..most of you are on the same boat. **** go over to itu and the mother****ers are still holding hands singing kumbaya and talking about Manny ******* Diaz as a possible DC.
 
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brandon_almeida said:
I do believe that Golden is going to get to try to right this ship one more time, regardless of how much more grumbling the fan base does. However, I do think his chance will come at the expense of Mark D'onofrio. If he persists on keeping him, Al will get the axe.
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I think Golden is smart enough to know that he and D'No will get 1 more year automatically because of Shalala stepping down. I think this is why the admin/coaches haven't bothered to reach out to the fans which has fueled more fan outrage. I also think this is why Golden won't part with D'No. I think he rolls the dice with D'No 1 more year.

Look at UF's AD. He came out with statements that at least let the fans know their opinions were being heard. In contrast, what are we hearing? Nothing but support for the coaches and the process.
 
Great post, ghost. I've discussed this at length with Lu and others--I've never felt so detached from the program. Let me sit on the couch for a few minutes...

Like many on here, I grew up with the Canes. Some of my earliest (and best) memories with my old man involve the Canes--the wins AND even the losses. I fulfilled a lifelong dream when I enrolled in the school and eventually graduated, and I was there through the best of times (1999-2003). In the years following, I'd plan my visits back to Miami from law school around the Canes home schedule and I'd try to get firms to fly me down to interview on a Friday so that I could attend the next day's game. When I moved back down, I'd work late on Friday and Sundays to clear my Saturdays. I missed weddings for games. The purpose of this is not to brag, at all, but just to show the type of mindset and (perhaps) unhealthy obsession I've always had with this program.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but somewhere between VT and Duke last year, it all changed. I compare it to the moment the detective in The Usual Suspects makes the Keyser Soze connections. It all hit me at once, too. All the talk of clouds, all the substance-less puffery, the incessant excuse-making, I reached my tipping point and it flipped a switch in me. To the point where, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn't watch the Spring Game. I paid little attention throughout the summer workouts and practices, and I fought the urge to get excited for the opener (and any other game since then).

So two weeks ago, when I realized the tickets I had bought to take the little dude to Sesame Street Live meant I wouldn't be able to go to the game against Cincy, I was...completely unaffected, if not downright relieved. A friend of mine is having his first kid's baptism in two weeks, right as we're kicking off against UNC, and I...don't care. This is the part that hurts the most. The apathy. The hope is completely gone at this point. These guys have managed to do what was once unthinkable--they have removed all the Cane spirit from the most hardcore of fans.

I'll never forget the way I felt when I saw that yellow flag hit the field in Tempe. That deep and profound feeling of emptiness that is hard to put into words. Walking out of that stadium was brutal, we were stunned. To go from the pure euphoria of seeing the championship stage rolling onto the field to having to walk out of there with 80,000 buckeye fans yelling OH-IO. And you know what, as incredible as this sounds, I miss it. As painful as that was, it meant something. These games mean nothing to me anymore.
 
Kirijax said:
Good post. I'll never understand people who "switch" teams. Is that possible? If I stopped rooting for the Canes, I'll stop watching college sports altogether. There is no other option.
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It's much like attending out-of-country interrogations or executions. Eventually, it just gets wearing to submit yourself to the same old crap.

I used to see Miami gear everywhere - back when we were winning. Now it's easier to find Gator crap, or even Mississippi State crap than to find UM gear around the country.
 
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