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Since the early 00s, the talk about the best team in program history tends to fall into a few pretty consistent opinions: '01 is the unquestioned GOAT, the five natty squads are the best five, and a lot of the others tend to blend together. We wanted to separate things and see what fans thought, so we found to perfect type of survey to do that.
Last week we selected, in our opinion, the 15 best teams from Miami's history and put them into a wiki survey that has respondents answer all questions in an A or B format (found here: allourideas.org/bestcanesteam). The fifteen different teams represented were 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. 1700+ votes later, and we had a ranking.
The number on the right side is the likelihood of victory when a respondent answered a prompt between that team and one other one from the survey.
Here's what we learned:
2001 is still the one: There was very little opposition to the 2001 Canes, much like in real life. They were offered to voters 228 times and chosen on 98% of those opportunities.
National Titles are NOT automatic for the top 5: Many tend to start there and the trend for many of the voters was to put them in a special category where they'd go over all non-title teams, but the reality is that when you break down the wins and losses, 11-1 (or 12-1) teams are really tough to separate. The '83 and '89 teams were passed up by two non-champs, but all four had one loss and the argument could easily be made that '02 and '86 lost to better teams. An important factor might be the "what if" aspect of '86 and '02, because even if '89 and '83 had emerged undefeated, most would likely still rank them behind '01, '87, and '91. Speaking of what ifs...
"What if" finds a home with the '02 and '86 teams: Probably the two most devastating losses for Miami create the most obvious chances for the "what if" game to be played, but it goes beyond just winning the title. The fact that voters put them ahead of two other champs means that we could be having a very interesting conversation right now about the #1 overall team had either of these teams emerged victorious against OSU or PSU. I personally think that an undefeated 1986 team with Jerome Brown, a Heisman Winning #1 overall pick, AND Alonzo Highsmith plus the larger than life event of the fatigues walk out mixed with the Boz coin toss would put 1986's team in the top spot.
2000 is the Best of the Rest: As confident as the voters seemed to be slotting 86 and 02 ahead of two title teams, so were they with the 2000 squad who very nearly caught 1983 (though I'm guessing a recency bias was a factor). Their loss to Washington and the '88 Catholics vs Convicts game are two that tend to stick in the minds of Canes fans, though I'd argue to a lesser degree than the aforementioned bowl losses. The '92 squad being so low is a bit surprising considering they, like '86, just completely fell apart in the (basically) championship game after a very good season.
The two loss teams bunch together: All of these two loss teams are not totally created equal, but the voters separated them that way. Four of the five are very much fringe teams that were either just before something really clicked or on the downside of an era.
Below is a link to the first post of the thread with a video of the honorable mention squads, then in the following posts we'll link to all of the other posts in the threads.
Last week we selected, in our opinion, the 15 best teams from Miami's history and put them into a wiki survey that has respondents answer all questions in an A or B format (found here: allourideas.org/bestcanesteam). The fifteen different teams represented were 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. 1700+ votes later, and we had a ranking.
The number on the right side is the likelihood of victory when a respondent answered a prompt between that team and one other one from the survey.
Here's what we learned:
2001 is still the one: There was very little opposition to the 2001 Canes, much like in real life. They were offered to voters 228 times and chosen on 98% of those opportunities.
National Titles are NOT automatic for the top 5: Many tend to start there and the trend for many of the voters was to put them in a special category where they'd go over all non-title teams, but the reality is that when you break down the wins and losses, 11-1 (or 12-1) teams are really tough to separate. The '83 and '89 teams were passed up by two non-champs, but all four had one loss and the argument could easily be made that '02 and '86 lost to better teams. An important factor might be the "what if" aspect of '86 and '02, because even if '89 and '83 had emerged undefeated, most would likely still rank them behind '01, '87, and '91. Speaking of what ifs...
"What if" finds a home with the '02 and '86 teams: Probably the two most devastating losses for Miami create the most obvious chances for the "what if" game to be played, but it goes beyond just winning the title. The fact that voters put them ahead of two other champs means that we could be having a very interesting conversation right now about the #1 overall team had either of these teams emerged victorious against OSU or PSU. I personally think that an undefeated 1986 team with Jerome Brown, a Heisman Winning #1 overall pick, AND Alonzo Highsmith plus the larger than life event of the fatigues walk out mixed with the Boz coin toss would put 1986's team in the top spot.
2000 is the Best of the Rest: As confident as the voters seemed to be slotting 86 and 02 ahead of two title teams, so were they with the 2000 squad who very nearly caught 1983 (though I'm guessing a recency bias was a factor). Their loss to Washington and the '88 Catholics vs Convicts game are two that tend to stick in the minds of Canes fans, though I'd argue to a lesser degree than the aforementioned bowl losses. The '92 squad being so low is a bit surprising considering they, like '86, just completely fell apart in the (basically) championship game after a very good season.
The two loss teams bunch together: All of these two loss teams are not totally created equal, but the voters separated them that way. Four of the five are very much fringe teams that were either just before something really clicked or on the downside of an era.
Below is a link to the first post of the thread with a video of the honorable mention squads, then in the following posts we'll link to all of the other posts in the threads.
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