One week later, and the buzz is still loud, like flies over a carcass.
I have seen the Florida International-Miami brawl so many times that I see Miami’s Anthony Reddick swinging his helmet at me in my sleep. I’ve seen every angle, read every commentary and the volcanic ash is finally settling on the college football landscape.
And there’s only one inescapable conclusion. Miami blew it. The university brass had a chance to paint the football program with a clean brush, and all it did was scrawl two giant words, graffiti-style, on the side of its administration building in orange and green letters: “FOOTBALL FACTORY.”
So how does Florida International, a winless team that precipitated the fight by cheap-shotting and badmouthing the Hurricanes the entire first half before launching it by cowardly plowing into Miami’s prone kick holder, Matt Perrelli, come out looking like Oxford on the Atlantic?
FIU’s administration did something about it. It suspended 16 players indefinitely and booted two players permanently. The suspended players must complete 10 hours of anger management counseling and do community service to educate area youth on proper behavior in terms of athletics.
Miami, meanwhile, merely gave coach Larry Coker a short hand to play with at winless Duke. It suspended 12 players for one game, making sure they’re all back for the showdown next week at first-place Georgia Tech. Reddick, who would have faced a prison term had he swung that helmet on any American street, was the lone Hurricane suspended indefinitely.
Miami president Donna Shalala then made it worse. When announcing the decision, she pounded her fist like a loopy booster, saying, “This university will be firm and punish people who do bad things, but we will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation.”
No, Shalala, you’re wrong. You don’t throw a football player under the bus by taking away football. You throw a football player under the bus by taking away his education. You let him stay in school but you take away for one year what he values most, something he’ll value more once it’s taken away.
The message Shalala left was this: You can fight at Miami and still play football. She later amended it, declaring Wednesday that any future fights will result in a season or permanent suspension. However, she’s too late. Those 12 Hurricanes should be clearing their lockers, just like the 16 Golden Panthers nine miles away.
Wednesday I called FIU athletic director Pete Garcia, who started his new job Monday, leaving his old job as associate athletic director at, um, Miami. I asked why season-long suspensions were appropriate.
“Basically, we have an obligation to our own student-athletes to educate them,” Garcia said. “They are here to get an education. The two who were dismissed gave up the right of competing in intercollegiate athletics but they will not give up their scholarships.
“By the same token, we are trying to educate our current student-athletes, future student-athletes and also our youth. We have a commitment to teaching.”
Garcia, on his first day on the job, did better than the former Clinton administrator did after five years as Miami president. Garcia gets it. He took away the most important thing in their lives for the season and the two suspended players, senior Chris Smith and junior Marshall McDuffie Jr., can still better their lives with a college degree.
The appalling discrepancy between the programs is that thuggery is new to FIU. The largest university in South Florida with 40,000 students, FIU has the seventh-ranked business school in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report, and was just awarded a medical school. But it has had a football program for only five years and has been a full Division I-A member for only two.
Under Dennis Erickson in the 1990s, you could have filmed three episodes of “Miami Vice” just tailing Hurricanes players for a weekend. Butch Davis cleaned up the program, but under Coker the reputation is slowly crawling back. While Hurricanes have mostly kept off the police blotter, Saturday was their third ugly on-field clash in their past seven games.
In Miami’s defense, the players showed remarkable control in the first half while FIU, showing an obvious inferiority complex, taunted and baited them. But when Miami’s James Bryant arrogantly bowed to the FIU section after a touchdown and Smith plowed into Perrelli, the Orange Bowl erupted.
Wednesday, I asked South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, a new-school offensive mind with old-school values, how he tells players to defend their teammates without crossing the line.
“If a guy cheap-shots one of your players, the only thing a player can do is get his number,” Spurrier said. “Get a good clean shot and put a little extra into him. All I know is fighting doesn’t work.”
If a Mississippi State player gets so much as a personal foul after a whistle, coach Sylvester Croom makes him do grass drills for a week and takes away his four comp tickets.
“The idea of an entire team being involved never even crosses my mind because my players wouldn’t do it,” he said.
So, after all this, the one thrown under the bus is Coker.
And on the undercard …
At least FIU and Miami did something. Hidden under the shrapnel in Miami were I-AA Dartmouth and Holy Cross duking it out in Hanover, N.H. After Mike DeSantis’ 18-yard field goal gave Holy Cross a 24-21 win in overtime, the Crusaders danced on the Dartmouth “D” at midfield.
The Big Green, which lost its ninth straight, jumped in and fists flew. Coaches, campus security and local police had to break it up.
The punishment? What’s Latin for zero? Dartmouth athletic director JoAnn Harper merely wrote in a statement that “This type of behavior is unacceptable” and she would “continue to review the matter.”
Aren’t they supposed to educate in the Ivy League?
Pac-10 QBs dropping like flies
Four Pacific 10 schools have lost starting quarterbacks. Washington senior Isaiah Stanback is out for the year with a high ankle sprain and will be replaced by junior Carl Bonnell, who originally committed to Washington State. Winless Stanford lost senior Trent Edwards to a broken foot and will be replaced by senior T.C. Ostrander, who has thrown for 1,582 yards as a three-year backup.
UCLA will be without sophomore Ben Olson (knee) for three to five more weeks and his replacement, sophomore Pat Cowan, took a blow to the throat and had trouble barking signals this week. Arizona is down to third-string Kris Heavner after Willie Tuitama sustained a head injury and second-string Adam Austin hurt his leg last week against Stanford.
Footnotes
Don’t expect Adrian Peterson’s broken collarbone to affect his draft status. He’s just lucky it isn’t a knee injury. … The computers rank Boise State 11th in the BCS poll. … Indiana (4-3) is two wins from its first bowl game since 1993.
WAKE-UP CALL FOR COACHES
NORTH TEXAS’ DICKEY HAS HEART SURGERY
College coaches are reassessing their health after North Texas’ Darrell Dickey, a fitness fanatic, suffered a heart attack eight days ago. He is expected to have a full recovery but won’t accompany the team to Arkansas State today and won’t return full time for at least another week.
Coaches should know poor health scared Dickey, 46, into exercise. Admitting to “living hard” for 30 years, Dickey had his gall bladder removed in January. A month later, he was diagnosed with diabetes. The warning prompted him to work out every day for 90 minutes, either running on a treadmill or on the steps of the Mean Green’s Fouts Field.
He lost 40 pounds. Turns out, it might have been too late. Heart surgery last Friday revealed an artery 95 percent blocked, and doctors estimated it became clogged well before he began exercising.
With Kansas’ Mark Mangino and Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis covering more than their share of the sideline, you wonder who’s next.
“I have my whole staff get a complete physical,” said Arkansas’ Houston Nutt, who plays basketball in the offseason and jogs for 30 to 45 minutes daily in season. “I try to make our guys get out of the office every day for 30 to 40 minutes. This business has gotten so tough. You put so much on yourself, and with the outside pressure there’s even more. You’ve got to take care of yourself and stay healthy as you can.”
