PS
Something else worth noting—just in case I haven’t clearly noted it before:
ISN’T the hiring of our present Head Coach turning out WELL??!
(FINALLY, we seem to have gotten it right!)
As such things often go, it isn’t just skill but FIT that makes the difference.
All the WAYS it “FITS” are an amazingly appropriate and APT “fit” for US, Dan Mullens, and the Program.
Despite ALL the obstacles and impossible-to-anticipate events, we have made dramatic and undeniable progress each year since his arrival.
I urge the more “reactive” (some would say “kneejerk”) portions of our fan base, who sometimes tend to take extreme rather than reasoned positions the moment we encounter the unexpected set backs that well-designed and talented competition sometimes poses, I would say: “Hey folks! This is why we play the GAMES!”
As for the competition we’re ALL in it for, as for example the mythical poster in the 17th century travel shops might have claimed regarding a trip to the New World on The Mayflower, “GETTING THERE IS HALF YE FUN, LADS!”
Sorry for the levity, but the truth is in there: It is the trip itself, the very COMPETITION, the uncertainty, the long search for the right people and their long hard work getting themselves ready—for their OWN sake AND ours—it’s ALL an amazing process with elusive and unique rewards all their OWN as well.
And WE are part of that. Have been, one way or another, since the moment we walked on Campus years back—for many of us in complex and elusive ways long before THAT. It is in our BLOOD.
No use trying to soft-pedal it. You either “get it” or you don’t. Even on Campus there were those that dismissed the whole “rah-rah jocko mentality”! Thought it was mainly for “drunken frat boy idiots” and their airhead cheerleader girlfriends. In certain scholastic circles I was shunned once my long and enthusiastic “football-thing” inevitably came to the fore...I laughed it off—or debated my position, as the discussion demanded—but in the end, we indulged each other...That doesn’t seem to be how such “fundamental differences of framing and focusing on our contrasting points-of-view” are currently dealt with.
On a personal AND societal level confrontation and mistrust more rule our public discourse now. In my opinion, that must somehow change.
The way competing college fan-bases enthusiastically but nonetheless still mostly in-friendly-competition confront their contests seems a MUCH BETTER model for how depth-of-emotional fervor need NOT mean anything more than whatever the outcome ends up being on the field, along with deciding whatever larger eventual consequences might be ultimately “on the line”.
We might have played a few “pranks” on each other “back in our day”—but those who went further (like the hated bullies we had to contend with back in the early 80s at “da Eww...” (UM)) were eventually SHUNNED...In the case of Miami, it got to a point where the complaints of fans, students and alumni got SO bad that the UF Regents finally voted to discontinue our annual game against them (for many years the first game on our schedule each season)—and except for a legislature-ordered meeting between our teams that finally took place
back in the first years after the Millennium, it was thankfully not repeated until the start of LAST season; Although no longer suspended/“forbidden”, it is still no longer a regularly-scheduled meeting.
I have recounted some of their unfortunate, destructive (even criminal) activities here in the past...The point is that we don’t NEED those or THEM, imho.
Whether it’s the continued regular need for sanctions against the whole program (latest for pervasive gambling, and worse) or various childishly selfish sideline displays, many of us dread the day that kind of thing is brushed aside, allowed to be a part of things after all.
For now, college football is an example of how serious emotional investment, and even its formal confrontation on a “field of play” between trained and organized representatives of competitors, is openly and safely set up and officiated, and its contested results accepted as “over when the final gun goes off”! Not always in good-nature or even “good order”—not fully, not always—but when it’s over, it’s OVER, except of course for the jawing out here. The internet has changed EVERYTHING in that regard, after all.
