Miami and Florida Are Getting Back in the Ring

Seeking whatever inspirational advantage he can find, University of Miami Coach Butch Davis gathered his players together in their hotel New Year’s Eve, popped in a videotape and spent two hours studying quick-strike tactics on offense and defense in the fabled game film “Gladiator.”

“I think it’s a great message movie about team unity,” Davis says.

To say nothing about the importance of not losing one’s head during the big game.

Florida Coach Steve Spurrier has not seen “Gladiator” and has not shown it to any of his players in the lead-in to tonight’s Sugar Bowl. Overkill, he must have figured. Many of his players have already experienced hand-to-hand combat firsthand.

Wednesday night, in the French Quarter, on the corner of Bourbon and Conti streets, for instance.

There, according to various eyewitness reports, either “about a dozen” or 40 Florida and Miami football players exchanged words, shoves and eventually a few punches, providing a round of pregame entertainment for jaded locals who have seen it all before, usually on a nightly basis.

The Florida-Miami scuffle made headlines in the papers here but warranted no more than a two-paragraph statement from the New Orleans Police Department, which described the incident as an “alleged altercation.” No arrests were made, Police Sgt. Paul Accardo told the Times-Picayune, because “there are lots of fights on Bourbon Street and in the French Quarter that don’t result in arrests. This happens to have generated a lot of publicity because the two football teams were involved.”

And because the two football teams come from Miami and Florida, which used to stage legally sanctioned, fully refereed brawls on an annual basis before agreeing to a cease-fire in 1987.

“That was going to happen [regardless],” Florida safety Marquand Manuel said of the altercation. “They were running their mouths, and there comes a point where you’ve got to defend yourself. There’s only so much you can take, somebody talking trash.”

And, Marquand suspects, it will continue this evening at the Superdome, with the Gators and the Hurricanes meeting on a football field for the first time in 13 years, with Miami playing for a possible share of the national championship and Florida cast in the unfamiliar role of early-January spoiler.

“It’s going to be a hit-you-in-the-mouth game,” Manuel says. “Ain’t nobody going to back down. They’re not going to back down, we’re definitely not going to back down. We just got to go out there and play, man.”

That, in itself, has been enough to reopen long-ago wounds and cause old blood to boil. For a good four decades, beginning with its first installment in 1938, Florida-Miami was the state’s yearly civil war: north versus south, upper-crust Gators versus working-class Hurricanes, a rocking keg of seething antipathy fermented by years of indignities and insults, real and imagined.

On the old fight card, Florida stood for arrogance and haughtiness, a reputation that continues to season the speech of Spurrier, who quarterbacked the Gators against the Hurricanes from 1964-66 and says, “I would say they despised us more than we despised them.”

Too big to care--that was the Gator approach. Scrapping for respect--that was the Hurricane counterpunch. The stereotypes played to form, and came to a head during the final moments of the 1971 game at the Orange Bowl. Florida led, 45-8. Miami had the ball at the Gator seven-yard line with 1:20 to play.

At the next snap of the football, 10 of 11 Florida defensive players belly-flopped onto the grass, permitting Miami’s John Hornibrook to score untouched--giving Gator quarterback John Reaves another series and another chance to break Jim Plunkett’s NCAA record for career passing yardage. Florida got the ball back and Reaves got the record.

The Hurricanes never forgave the Gators for that humiliation. During the last 10 years of the rivalry, with Miami in peak swagger under Jimmy Johnson and Florida weakened by NCAA penalties, the Hurricanes went 7-3, including a 31-4 rout in the final 1987 meeting which looks like a typographical error but isn’t. The only points Florida scored came on two safeties, both occurring on Miami punting downs.

In 1988, the Southeastern Conference expanded, requiring Florida to play seven conference games instead of six. Florida used the development as a convenient means to shut down the Miami series, despite protests. In the late 1980s, a Democratic state senator from Miami Beach named Jack Gordon sponsored a bill that would have required Florida to play Miami every season, but the bill never made it to a formal vote.

Spurrier tried to enact reform on his own, announcing his intent to revive the Miami rivalry when he was hired in December 1989. “We can’t hide, duck or go blind every time the University of Miami’s mentioned,” Spurrier said at the time.

A two-game home-and-home set was scheduled--at Gainesville in 1992, at Miami in 1993. But the series was scrapped with the SEC expanded again and split into two divisions, requiring eight conference games.

The schools tried it again, scheduling regular-season meetings in 2002 and 2003, but the bowl championship series beat them to the calendar.

And, from bare knuckles on Bourbon Street to open microphones at the Hyatt Regency, it sounds just like old times.

Miami running back James Jackson: “I think this is a big-time grudge match. I think everyone is ready and pumped up from the little incident that happened.”

Florida’s Manuel: “It’s going to be ugly. There’s not going to be anything pretty about it.”

At stake:

For Miami, a possible share of the national title if Florida State defeats Oklahoma.

For Florida, one more chance to send the Hurricanes gnashing their teeth into the winter.

Nothing personal, says Spurrier, who claims Miami doesn’t even rank at the top of his most-reviled list anymore.

“We can only hate or despise so many teams,” he says.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SUGAR BOWL

Florida (10-2) vs. Miami (10-1)

When: Tonight, 5 PST

Where: Superdome, New Orleans

TV: Channel 7