9

On January 1st, 1992, I watch the Miami Hurricanes defeat the Nebraska Cornhuskers 22-0 in the Orange Bowl and win the National Championship. The game is marred by a severe thunderstorm and only one camera filming the game works. Four days later my father and I load up the 4Runner and drive to West Palm Beach from NY.

Before going down, I call the Athletic Department, asking them to house me in the athletic dorms. Since I’m not a scholarship player, it isn't possible. Instead, I’ll be housed in a dorm reserved for juniors and seniors, meaning the dorm is all about being chill and quiet.

I was the only kid I knew who was going to a college they had never visited. While my father and I drove by the University of Miami a year earlier, we never actually entered the campus. Some might say going to a college you’d yet to visit, especially one 1200 miles from home, might not be a good idea. Kids from my town toured five or six colleges before deciding. For some of them, choosing was a process which consumed them since middle school.

Not me.

Even when it came to football, I didn’t have a favorite college team (though of course I did really like Miami, but remember we played football Saturday afternoons. The only collge football I got to watch were Saturday night games and the bowl games on Jan 1st). I didn’t have alumni parents pushing me in a predetermined direction. My sister went to college in Switzerland. When I was a freshman, I went to a Penn State football game because a friend’s father was a dedicated alumnus (PSU was one of the schools my mother secretly applied to. After my junior year, many people thought PSU, Pitt, or Syracuse was where I would end up playing football). Other than The Naval Academy and West Point, That trip to Happy Valley was the only time I had visited a major university campus.

With Miami, you didn’t just get a campus, you got a city. A great city. I was about to be exposed to a new reality. Rather than cloistering myself away at some small North Eastern college tucked away in some little college town where everything centered around the school and its prevailing white culture, I was going to be immersed in a multicultural, international city full of palm trees, danger, weirdness, and warmth.

Warmth.

As we drove south on I-95 it was amazing to see the weather change and get warmer and warmer. When we saw the first palm tree somewhere in South Carolina, a huge smile spread across my face. When we hit Jacksonville and entered the Sunshine State, I knew without a doubt that a place where winter never touched was the place for me.

I had been to the city of Miami a few times but never more than a few hours. I’d been to Miami Beach and Joe’s Stonecrabs once. The first time I saw the city at night that January, glistening under a full moon, warm breezes rustling the palms, the smell of the ocean in the air, AND NOT HAVING TO BE BUNDLED UP, I didn’t think I was in heaven, I KNEW I was in heaven.

Miami was the right place for me. The city pulse—you could feel. How could I ever have even thought about going anywhere else? It had been a strange path, but it ended up in the perfect place.

The UM campus is one of the nicest campuses you’ll ever see, and it’s small (UM when I attended had around 12,000 undergrads and another 3,000 grad). Called the ‘University of Miami’, but technically in Coral Gables, the campus is self-contained, only sprawling a little bit beyond it’s boundaries. As for Coral Gables, it’s a beautiful town with multitude of homes designed by Mizner, the legendary architect who blended Spanish Moorish, New Americana and Latin flare. Coral Gables’ claim to fame is that it’s the first planned residential community in America. Essentially, it was America’s first gated community, a giant town created where there was nothing before.

To add to the greatness of the whole situation, Coconut Grove abutted The Gables. An artists colony and the highest point in Miami where pirates once lived, ‘The Grove’ was where you mostly hung out if attending UM. South Beach was far and just starting to get going again after being dormant for many years. There was really only one bar on Ocean Drive Whiskey Tango. It was rundown and had a pool table. They didn’t card anyone. I loved that place. Next door, elderly people sat in wheelchairs on the porch of their retirement home dressed in bed clothes.

So my father sets me up pretty good, we even buy a bike (which is stolen in one day). My dorm is right on Lake Osceola; a little body of water right in the middle of campus. My room is on the 4th floor, lake view. My roommate-to-be wasn’t back yet from winter break, but by seeing his stuff, he seemed like he could be cool enough. And when I say his ‘stuff’, I mean to say he had practically nothing in the room. Not even a TV, which thankfully I had brought with a SEGA Genesis. He didn’t even have a CD player, which again, I had. The room was stark and cold with two powerful air conditioners. A bathroom connected to another dorm room. In the other room was a strange senior I hardly talked to and Australian student studying Marine Bio. Neither had gone home for Winter break (unlike other dorms, this ‘residential hall’ as it was called stayed open over break). The Aussi and his two Aussi buddies became good friends of mine within a few days. Their love of beer and hard drinking fit right in with my life philosophy of fun first, school second, or third, maybe even fourth if at all. Plus I had a car. They were now mobile.

Orientation was boring, but I was just happy to be at college, though, once again, I was out of phase with the typical experience by coming in a semester late. One day I changed outfits three times for three orientations, finally settling on a pair of lizard skin cowboy boots, ripped light blue jeans, and a green paisley shirt with Indian Motorcycle baseball hat. I had zero Miami vibe going on with my wardrobe, though I did bounce my beloved Timberlands. At night I wore jeans, sneakers, and a patterned button-down shirt with a t-shirt underneath. For shorts I had to take scissors to a pair of jeans and cargo pants. One of the seniors working orientation lived on my floor. She was a UM cheerleader. A very pretty blond girl from northern FL who chatted me up nonstop and was more bubbly than a magnum of Champagne. She invited me over to her room. There I was, just about to turn 19, first few days at college, laying on a 22-year-olds bed who happened to be a hot little cheerleader for the football team.

Great set up for something exciting to happen, right?

Wrong.

I had no game. I mean none. A girl had to practically throw herself at me if anything was going to happen because lords know I wasn’t going to be making any first moves. Or, I had to know without doubt to the square-root of 100% positive that she liked me and wanted me to make a move. It wasn’t really about fear of rejection, it was about the fact that I was very conscious of not wanting to make girls uncomfortable when in my presence. Girls always said things like: I feel so safe around you, I feel so comfortable with you. How could I break that trust by making a move? Sometimes that ‘feeling safe and comfortable’ can turn into something more, but for me it was about not being an aggressive asshole. That aggressive asshole also tends to get a lot of action. I wasn’t a player. If I liked a girl, I wanted to take her out for dinner. Get to know her. Also, I’m a bit lacking when it comes to recognizing certain social cues. Those subtle cues we humans give each other to convey feelings are sometimes lost on me. On top of this, she lived on the same floor around the corner. One false move could be bad for my reputation.

So there I was laying on a bed with a very cute blonde cheerleader wearing midriff pajamas making light sexual references and waiting for me to make a move. But instead of doing anything, I wondered why such a hot girl would want me. I went through a checklist: I can be entertaining and funny, girls like that. I’m a good enough looking guy. Courteous. Nice but also with an outlaw streak. Instead of something exciting happening, we sat there awkwardly as I convinced myself there was no way she liked me and that to make a move would be a big mistake. (This wouldn’t be the last time I missed out on hot cheerleader action as you will find out later.)

The next night I gathered the courage, rented a movie, get a box of Rasinets and two bottles of 7UP, thought we could snuggle and then I would make a move. When I knocked on her door, a guy answered. I did an about face. I hardly saw her again.

One of the first things I did when I got on campus was to go over to the Hecht Athletic Center—the home of the Miami Hurricanes football team and the seat of sports power at the ‘U’ (for the record, the ‘U’ wasn’t a term used in the early ‘90s at all as I remember it).

Back then the complex was underwhelming and in need of some serious upgrades, but it was this very same lack of flair that gave it character. Also, the whole complex was pretty much wide open to the public with the exception being the locker-room and weight room. There was only one unlocked door on the second floor separating day-to-day Athletic Department office space from the coaches offices, meeting rooms, and football administration. I told reception I was a recruited walk-on, was here to meet a coach and start my compliance paperwork. Before trying out, they had to make sure I was eligible, which of course I was. Then I met the graduate assistant who would be handling walk-ons. His name was Greg Mark, a great defensive end who played for Miami in the late ‘80s. Getting hold of him was not easy, but finally I caught him sitting in his little windowless office.

For me, the prospect of being on the Hurricanes was the biggest deal in the world. To everyone else at Miami, including Coach Mark, it meant nothing. I wasn’t some big time recruit who would be welcomed with open arms. Nobody but me cared if I was on the team or not. I was excited. I couldn’t contain it. But Coach Mark, sitting there, spitting dip juice into a cup, while not blowing me off, simply told me to show up on February 25th for walk-on tryouts. Spring football would be starting right after spring break in mid March. I had a hundred questions, but focused on what that tryout entailed.

Just a weigh-in and running test, he said.

What is the test like? (I had been practicing 100-yard sprints all Fall on a local field. I hated every second of it, but at least I wouldn’t be going in cold.)

100-yard sprints. 16 of them. Timed.

Oh…shit.

After the running test, Coach Erickson will review the list and decide who to take…if anyone.

If anyone.

Those two words ricocheted around my mind.

There was a chance I would not make the team. I had never even once considered such a possibility. And the fact that the tryout was only a running test? I thought we’d be having some kind of two or three day tryout where we’d get to show our football abilities. If my running skills and endurance were the only things that would get me on the team, I was in trouble. Big trouble.

Next I went to the weight room. I was nervous as all hell. The strength coach’s name was Coach Role. A short, stocky man who was a funny hardass more than a few cards short of a full deck.

You’re a what? He said to me when I told him I was a new invited walk-on. You ain’t done nothin’ yet. You can’t work out here until you are on the team. The best he would do, after some pleading on my part, was to give me the orange UM Football workout binder. Sitting in the corner of his office were boxes of Hot Stuff. It had been taken off the market and Role stocked up on all he could find.

Next order of business was school and my major. Some kids think about their major day and night for years before attending college. I thought about mine for two minutes. Sitting there with the academic advisor, going over a list of possible majors, I stopped him on Architectural Engineering (AE). A five-year program giving a student a Bachelor of Science; AE was a difficult program to get into. They only took 60 new students every year out of hundreds who apply. To this day I wonder how I got into that program. The only thing I come up with is that since even though I wasn’t yet on the football team, academically I was a football player because all my information came through the athletic department. And I also made sure to mention to every administrator I came across that I was a football player. Maybe football players got some kind of preference? Ya think?

The drawback of getting into a very difficult major that I pointed to in the catalog because it sounded cool, was that I had absolutely NO BUSINESS BEING IN AE. None. I was stuck in Geometry 2 in high school. Now I would be taking trigonometry, physics, calculus, along with prereqs like English and history. On top of this, I needed to take not the average five classes a semester (which was considered to be a ‘full load’), but six. Six classes a semester. And since I had to be at the Hecht Center every day for practice at 2:45 (to get taped and meetings), my classes would be starting 915am five days a week.

Early on in my life I discovered that I’m a night person. When I was nine I would stay up till the Monday Night game was 100% finished if it were a blowout. That would often be 12:30am. I had a TV room that was pretty much all mine and my mother let me stay up without question. Both my parents are late-night people so they understood me. Was it the healthiest thing in the world staying up past midnight on a school night? No, but I did it and I would've just laid in bed tossing and turning anyway. Elementary school didn’t start till 930am, but middle and high school were 825am. I was always late. Waking up in the morning was a daily hell. Missing school was thus one of my favorite things in the world since it meant I could sleep in. I faked being sick more than most kids for the extra sleep and late morning 80s gameshows like the Price Is Right, Card Sharks, and Press Your Luck. I really just wanted the space to move at my own pace. If school started 11am, I wouldn’t have ever missed a day.

College was supposed to be my time to make my own schedule. No more mom waking me up in the morning and me begging for five more minutes. I’d sleep till 10 or 11am.. That was my goal.

But if I wanted to be in the AE program I’d have to alter my sleep-late dreams.

My roommate came back. He was a goofy guy named Mike from Rhode Island who wore wire-rim glasses, laid around in his too-big tighty-whities, looked like Jon Lovetts and did a good Jonny Carson impression.

He loved Andrew Dice Clay and Ford Fairlane was his favorite movie. We got along great. Him, me, and the Aussies were a little gang. I drove them all over Miami.

School started, and after just a week of dealing with the early schedule and the impossible classes where I sat totally clueless, I went to my adviser and told him that the AE program just wasn’t for me. I entered the Arts & Sciences department, dropped all the hard early classes, cut down to 12 credits and only took core curriculum. I got my late wake up, and on Fridays I cut class, giving myself a long weekend every weekend.

The first few weeks of school are a blur. I hardly went to class. I drank almost every night, and Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights were benders. I had a fake ID (not that medical emergency card, but a well-done fake NJ drivers license) and my new friends were 21.

Coconut Grove was the place to be. There was a huge mostly outdoor bar called Señor Frogs where everyone went on Thursdays. I was having a great time.

For some reason I decided to pledge a fraternity. Though I liked my new friends, the Aussies were only at Miami for a few more months, and Mike was pretty sure this would be his last semester at UM. I needed a crew, needed a bigger group of friends so I pledged Pi Kappa Alpha. Pike was full of meatheads. They reminded me a lot of some friends from SHS and in fact most were from the Tri-State area. They had a frat house with a pool that was 10 years past needing to be condemned. I made friends with one of my pledge bothers. His name was Ricky (not his real name and later you’ll know why), a Cuban-American from northern NJ. We fast became best friends.

On the night we got our ‘big brothers’ I was served a drink called ‘Skip And Go Naked’. Maybe ten kinds of alcohol mixed with Country Time lemonade, beer, margarita mix and who knows what else. I was a sloppy mess on the dance floor, grinding to Dubby Reggae, got kicked out of two bars, almost started three fights and came super close to being arrested.

That night, trying to survive bedspins and only a little bit conscious, a neighbor came into my room. She and I had hung out as totally just friends. She wasn’t my type. She started taking advantage of me; kissed me, tried pulling down my pants, straddled me. I leaned over and puked into a garbage can. She tried to kiss me again. I had to fight her off. She wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and wasn’t a small girl. I had to heave her off of me. Then I stumbled to the bathroom to hug the porcelain god for an hour. When I came back to my bed she was gone.

A week later after a frat party, Ricky, myself, and two freshman girls went to South Beach. One of the girls had a brand new Dodge Stealth. She made the first move as we lay on the dunes. We fooled around a little and ended up sleeping in the same bed later that night. The next day, at lunch with a bunch of the brothers, to sound like a big shot, I told one of them what Ricky and I did the night before.

You fooled around with who?

I told him the girl’s name again.

That girl was a big crush of one of the most popular brothers, a big Puerto Rican kid. Although they didn’t have any kind of romantic action going on, he was majorly hot for her even though she just saw him as a friend. He lost it. Ordered me to stop seeing her. Yeah, okay.

The girl called me constantly to come hang out. I couldn’t stay away. I hadn’t been with a girl in many months. I was desperate and now that the seal was broken and I knew she liked me, I wasn’t so shy. The frat brother called her so much it was stalking. He would show up at her dorm room at all hours unannounced. He caught me there. Went ballistic. He was a huge fat kid and tried to intimate me. When that didn’t work he told me I’d get ‘black-balled’…aka kicked out of the pledge class. I left her room only because if I didn’t there would’ve been a fight. I was back the next night, though. And the one after that. The girl and I were just fooling around, nothing too intense. In her CD player was always Pearl Jam’s TEN or The Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magic. No more than three weeks after pledging, and reusing to stop hanging out with the girl, a meeting was called to determine my fate. They led me into the common room with the whole fraternity there. I wore my tie as a blindfold. For ten minutes I stood there listening to the forlorn brother who’s crush I was stealing tell me how I wasn’t brother material and if I wanted to stay, I’d have to never see the girl again.

He demanded an answer, but I just stood there. I didn’t care if they kicked me out, and I wasn’t going to fold for that chump. There was a time in that room when I thought that shitbag brother might try to get everyone to jump me, but there were also a few guys in there who really liked me.

After the grilling, they lined the pledge class up and told everyone I had been black-balled.

Fine, see ya. I couldn’t care less. A week later Ricky quit the frat. We spent all our time together. A lot of daytime pot smoking and playing RISK on his green-screened Mac.

When it came to school, I cut about half my classes. By the fifth week of school I still didn’t even have a text book for one of my classes. I tried cramming for a math test at the beach. Then partied too hard later that night. During the test I had to leave to throw up several times. I got a 34% on the test. And please don’t think I’m glorifying being a total joke when it came to school work. Doing good at school isn’t that hard. My problem was that I was never taught how to study. This vital component had been overlooked. It wasn’t until my senior year of college and with the help of a very smart girlfriend that I learned how to really study. After that I was a B+ student with lots of A’s in there. In high school, I thought the kids who did so good had something more than me. I felt I was as smart as them, but just lacking some extra gear. The only difference was that I lacked the ability to organize and study. That was it. No magic there.

Attending Biology 101 one day, which I had only been to twice, I remember being so lost that I got up and left. No way I’d be passing that class so I dropped it, but it was past the time when you could drop without getting an ‘I’ or ‘Incomplete’ which was some kind of ugly purgatory grade that affected your GPA negatively.

But I was having a hell of a good time. Miami was a strange and beautiful new world for me. I learned my way driving around the city and spent a lot of time going to the beach and investigating many of the city’s nooks and crannies alone. I worked out at a gym across from campus and snuck onto the football practice fields at night to run sprints. Winter was non-existent for the first time in my life. I played tons of ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ while listening to The Stone’s Let It Bleed on continuous repeat. (I almost murdered my roommate one night when I found out he shutdown the SEGA, which had a paused almost-completed Sonic game on it. Yeah, I was a Sonic addict.)

A few days before the running test on the 25th of February, I started to get nervous. Everyone back at home knew I had gone to Miami. There were even kids from rival schools who talked about me going to Miami. While I don’t think anyone was thinking I was going to make some big impact on the team, they thought at least I’d make it. If I failed, going back to Scarsdale would’ve been hard. Having the deli guy ask me how football was going and having to tell him I wasn’t playing? Nah, I couldn't have that.

The night before the test, I pulled out a bottle of pills. In the bottle were bronchilators; aka ‘Truckers Speed’. Pure ephedrine. Outlawed since the mid ‘90s (today you can find pills with ephedra, which is an herbal extract, but that is nowhere near the same thing as ephedrine). I bought the bottle over a year before at East Coast Fitness. Weightlifters liked to take them. I was told they’d be good for football. After the caffeine pill debacle, I never even considered taking the speed pills.

In an act of pure nearly fatal stupidity, I decide that tomorrow for the running test I will take two pills.

I wake up 615am. It’s a misty and cool morning. The football complex is a short seven minute walk from my dorm. I take my time. We have to be there 7am. I’m soaking it all in. This is a big moment in my life. Before I leave the dorm, I pop two pills and swallow them on an empty stomach. At the football fields, I find about 35 guys there for the tryout. Some look like legit football players, some not. We check in, step on a scale, and began a team stretch on the 50-yard Astroturf field. A lot of the guys are gripping about being up so early. I can’t believe it. This is the Miami Hurricanes, how could they be complaining?

Out with us is Coach Role, along with an Assistant Strength coach, two Graduate Assistants including Greg Mark, and the Special Teams coach. Not one of them wants to be there. The mist lifts but it remains a rare gray day. Soon we are led to the field and given the rundown by Role.

I don’t know why any of you are out here, growls Role. You ain’t players. If you were, you’d be here already. We don’t need you. Probably ain’t none of you makin’ the team anyway, but we gotta do this.

Then he tells us about the run test: 16x100-yard sprints. You have 18-seconds to run ‘em and a 35-second rest between runs.

Oh…shit, I didn’t know they’d be timed like this.

The anti-pep talk Role gives us hits home. In my mind I’m already preparing what I will tell people when I don’t make the team. Role’s speech really got into my head, but not as badly as the ten guys who just pack up and leave before even running a yard.

Right about now, the ephedrine is kicking in, hard. As we line up for the first sprint, my heart pounding, I realize I’ve made a HUGE mistake. Haven’t learned a damn thing from my caffeine pill experience. This is how people die.

The first seven sprints go pretty good. We were all making time. I’m always in the first group to finish and start to think that I actually made a smart choice taking the pills. By the 8th sprint, some of the bigger guys have dropped out. By the 9th sprint, I enter an alternate reality and am in trouble.

As we run the 10th sprint, my legs turn into cement-filled meatbags. My entire body is ceasing up, but boy, I tell you, my lungs are sucking in that air like never before. I’m hot, panting, heart thudding, head throbbing.

11th sprint and I just make it in 18 seconds. Guys are collapsing in the end zone and not making it up to the line in 35 seconds. My heart-rate is off the chart. The 35-seconds between sprints isn’t enough time for me to catch even a second of breath, but next thing I know, moving on sheer willpower, I’m in a 3-point-stance on the line ready to run the 12th sprint. I lumber down the field. Thighs full of crumbled concrete and on fire. Sounds are warped. Having a partial out-of-body experience. I make it the 100 yards by the nick of time. My low-center of gravity makes it very hard for me to fall over. I stagger around the end zone but I am not going to quit. Not a chance. Only 4 more and I make the team.

Thankfully, someone else makes that call for me.

The Special Teams coach grabs my arm, looks me in the eyes. By this time I have severe tunnel-vision. I try to break his grasp. I only have a few seconds to get up to the line. He’s ruining my chance. No, I have to go on.

You’re done, he says. That’s it. I don’t have the strength to break his grip.

I think maybe he saved my life.

Stumbling to the Astroturf field, I finally go to the ground, my hopes and dreams dashed. One of the coaches comes up and asks if I’m okay. I mumble something and that’s good enough for him.

I lay there for an hour at least, totally unable to move more than a wiggle. No one came out to check on me. Surely someone must’ve seen this big body laying there for so long. Slowly I came back from the abyss, take a shower in the empty locker-room, and shuffle back to the dorm. I sleep till mid-afternoon.

The next day, certain I was not going to make the team, I go talk to Coach Mark. My plan is to lobby him, convince him not to judge me by the running test. I can play ball. I’m not a chump like most of the guys out there. I’ll be an asset to the team. Above all, coach, I’m not ready to stop playing football.

Mark said: Yeah, well, I wasn’t ready to stop playing either, but when I got cut by the Eagles, my career was over.

My heart sank even further.

But, he said, perhaps sensing my suffering and seeing my desperate long face, Coach Erickson likes having big bodies around to beat up, it’s all up to him. He might make an exception in your case, who knows. Check my door on Friday 2pm to see if you made it.

All was not lost.

The next day and a half were excruciating.

On Friday at 2pm I rushed over to the football offices. Walking up to that door was a feeling of anticipation I cannot even describe. There were 6 names on the list. I was one of them. I’d done it, I made the Miami Hurricanes football team. Big bodies to beat up. I would be a tacking dummy. No problem. I was honored. Below the list of names was a note saying to be at the lockerroom 2pm sharp on March 15, the day before spring football started.

First person I called was my mom. The next week were midterms (which I blew off) and then everyone was off on Spring Break. I was on top of the world.

10

Going to school at Miami is like a permanent Spring Break, though, there was Key West, a MAJOR spring break destination for FL colleges and other Southern universities. Ricky and I drove down. We stayed with two girls we knew and ten other people in a hotel room. One of them had a boyfriend with her, who, ironically, attended the Naval Academy. That girl juggled me as her side-piece. In the middle of the night she would lay down with me on the floor and we’d fool around. She made all the moves. Key West was wild and crazy; a mini Cancun. I’d never experienced anything like it. Sex, drugs, drinking, music. There were no rules. Anything goes.

Ricky and I didn’t stay the whole week. We came back to the dorms after five days and were greeted with terrible news. A bunch of guys from Ricky’s floor had been in an accident in Cancun. Their jeep had crashed. One kid was dead, the other terribly burned. We all used to hang out in Ricky’s room playing RISK and smoking weed.

March 15th I was 20 minutes early for our football orientation. A tanned and rested Coach Mark started off by introducing the new walk-ons to the equipment managers who would be giving us our lockers and equipment.

People who haven’t been around a major college program or an NFL team have no idea what it takes to run the organization. There are hundreds of people, from secretaries, to semi-retired state troopers acting as motorcade escorts, to trainers, and of course, the equipment guys. They are out on the field hours before every practice, during, and hours later putting back all the equipment. There must’ve been two-dozen of them who worked the field. Their home was just beyond the locker room buried deep within the Hecht Center, behind powder-coated metal grating—a dreary dungeon with no windows and ten industrial laundry machines. The core group of equipment guys (not student helpers) who did this for a living seemed to hang out there 20 hours a day.

The head Equipment Manager was a wild-eyed maniac. The four guys directly under him were flat out assholes to all us walk-ons. The second in command, a four-foot-nine, stocky tiny guy named Bobby, took great sadisitic joy in messing with us. He thought he was some kind of demigod because he held Erickson’s wires during a game (this was the era before wireless comms, meaning the head coach’s headset had wires connected to it and someone had to shadow the coach, keep slack, and make sure the cords didn’t get tangled).

Bobby gave us the worst shoulder pads in the inventory. The Bike brand helmet was old and the inflatable air cushion inside had a hole in it, the pants were old and smelly. As for cleats we were given a bin to fish a pair out of. I asked for a cup. What’s that? asked Bobby. I told him it protects your balls. It was like he had never heard of one. Finally he sort of understood. No one wears those. Just use the jock. For me, a cup was the third most important piece of equipment behind helmet and shoulder pads. How could these guys not wear them? I found out later that the bulky plastic cup hindered speed, and no one wanted to reduce their most valuable asset, even if it meant getting their nuts crushed.

Another important piece of equipment I had to do without was a mouthpiece. Everyone but the walk-ons had professionally molded orange mouthpieces. It took six days for Bobby to get me a cheap one you could buy at a sporting goods store, and since I didn’t have access to boiling water to mold it, the gummy mouthguard was useless. (This being before the age of Dick’s and having no idea where the closest little sporting supply store was, I couldn’t get one myself.)

The locker-room was now full of football players. I moved unnoticed among them. Didn’t talk to anyone. This was going to be very different than high school.

First day of Spring ball I walked out onto the giant practice fields like filled with confident apprehension. I knew one guy on the team. Guido was his name. We had a lot in common and I really liked him. Our lockers were also right next to each other. A bunch of us walk-ons mingled together while team veterans were all fun n’ games. When getting my equipment the day before, the equipment guys asked me if I was on offense or defense. I could literally pick what I wanted to play. For a brief second I considered choosing offense. Maybe I could become an offensive guard, or…a fullback!

Defense, I said, and received an orange practice jersey (#90) instead of a white one (offense). The jersey was 10 years old.

The team was split between offense and defense. Even during stretching we were separated with the captains in between (who were a rotating group of soon-to-be seniors).

This was the first practice for the reigning National Championship team. There was a great amount of energy and excitement in the air. The team was stacked. Many were saying it would be even better than previous year. This was another UM dynasty in the making and suddenly I was right in the middle of it.

After stretching, I was lost as everyone ran to their position coaches. On a whim, I went with the linebackers (LBs). Coach Tuberville was LB coach AND 1st assistant defensive coordinator. He was a straight-talkin’ honest man with a strong southern twang. About 12 LBs were out there just throwing footballs around. I ended up having a catch with a player named Kevin. He was a white kid from NY too, but upstate near Buffalo. Movie-star hair, good-looking, short but built, Kevin had the prototypical Division-1 football body: Wide shoulders, barrel-chested, thick hips, flat stomach, and skinny calves into skinny ankles.

Talking to another player mid pass who had asked who I was, Kevin said: I have no idea.

“Alexi,” I said.

And thus began the butchering of my name. I never cared of course, but I would become known as Lexus Mercedes. Coach Role called me Ali Mertoz. Coach Tuberville stopped trying and just called me Alex. Everyone was pretty cool and accepting. We ran drills. I felt good on my feet. Nothing was overwhelming. The hitting was hard but restrained. The heat was something new; that South FL sun beating down on us made hydration a must.

At SHS we had to ask permission to drink water and had designated water breaks—a horrendous 1950s policy. At UM there were these handcarts powered by a car battery and eight hoses spouting from a five-gallon cooler. You’d just hold down a lever and water shot into your mouth. I thought the system was brilliant. Even better, two water carts had Gatorade in them!

The starting three linebackers from the previous season were returning: Darren Smith, Jessie Armstead, and middle LB Michael Barrow who was also the team leader. Hands down the greatest linebacking threesome in NCAA history. All of these guys would go on to have great NFL careers. I was the heaviest LB out there, outweighing some of the guys by 15lbs. We were all also around the same height. They were all much faster than me, but quickness in a small space was surprisingly relatively equal. I was as strong as any of them, and when it came to hitting, I was 100% on their level. What I’m getting at, is that I wasn’t overmatched, I wasn’t Rudy. In many ways I was very surprised, and at the same time I’m not claiming I was on the same level as those around me, just not overwhelmed by the great talent. I could hang with these guys, there was no doubt, and that was a huge victory in itself.

We ran this one drill where you stood in-between two guys. One five-yards to your left, one five to your right, and Coach Tuberville threw a ball to one of those guys and you had to beat the pass and knock it down. On my second time doing the drill I batted the ball. Quickness, fast-reaction, no problem.

Another drill was a team defensive drill where the walk-ons played ‘rabbit’. The rabbit catches a swing pass and runs down the sidelines while the entire defense tries to get a hand on you. Instead of a JackRabbit, I was more like one of those floppy Easter bunnies, aka kinda SLOW. Everyone got their hand on me. Some guys punched me in the gut when they ran by. I didn’t mind. Some tried punching in the nuts. That I did mind. Later in the practice there were some light 7-on-7 drills (meaning everyone but linemen). I stood there on the sidelines soaking it all it. A long weird road it had been to get to this moment and I absolutely had no idea where it would go. It didn’t matter, I was there and it was a huge personal triumph.

Practice was, dare I say, easy? Even the running at the end wasn’t a big deal. Just a bunch of 52-yard sprints across the field’s width. I could do this.

Next couple of practices were much the same. For long swaths of them I stood there watching with a smile on my face. The smell of the freshly cut Bermuda grass imprinted onto my DNA (grounds crew cut the grass every day to make sure it was super short which made for a fast surface. The longer the grass, the slower the surface).

I learned that the biggest difference between high school and college football (besides the obvious talent level) was that in high school only about a 1/3rd of the guys really want to go at it in the pit. I mean really craved it. The rest might like the game and even be good at it, but they aren’t starved for the contact. In college…everyone is starved. Everyone hits big.

I studied the UM football guide inside and out. I knew every player and their background. There was one defensive lineman who I approached and enjoyed talking to before practice. He had a father I knew very well from my youth. The father’s name was Rocky Johnson, the son’s name…Dwayne Johnson, later to be known as ‘The Rock’ and known on the team as ‘Dewey’.

In the guide, I found out a relative of Dwayne’s was Jimmy ‘SuperFly’ Snuka, my favorite wrestler from the early ‘80s. Dwayne was a quiet guy and entertained my questions and ramblings. I would chat him up before practice nearly every day. We talked about how interesting and amazing it was that people from the South Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga were such good football players. Dwayne said it was because of their proud warrior culture and the fact they were big, strong, and natural athletes.

A player who you DIDN’T want to talk to was future NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp. Sapp had the energy of 1000 Energizer Rabbits. His motor never idled during practice or in the weight or lockerroom. Always jawing and playing practical jokes, he was keen on stealing people’s helmets and hiding them.

The last thing you wanted to do was line up for team stretch and not have a helmet on. He would even rip the helmet out of guys hands and run with it. The whole team would hoot and holler. I saw him throw a few helmets over the fence into a canal. It happened to a walk-on. He chased Sapp around until Sapp stopped and just leveled the kid with a shoulder block, then he tossed the helmet over the fence. That walk-on became very sparse after the incident. Sapp wasn’t a bad guy, and he always had a smile on his face, he just liked to mess with people. You couldn’t really be mad at the guy, but you didn’t want his attention. Ten months down the road, I got his attention.

Then there was a player with another famous father. When I first saw him, I thought I’d seen a ghost. There sitting at his locker was Bob Marley, except with short hair. His name was Rohan Marley, an LB. We’d smack heads many times in the year to come.

The easy practices ended on Thursday.

Walking out to the field before stretching, I’m met by hundreds of coaches. Small college and high school coaches from around the nation have descended on UM for a weekend-long coaches clinic. The visiting coaches study our stretching as if there’s gonna be a test later. Maybe there will be, who knows.

Right after stretching I hear the words ‘COVERAGE DRILL!’ Players start getting excited. We were finally going to do some full-speed hitting, and take a wild guess who the tackling dummies were gonna be?

The University of Miami is a private university. This means it’s more expensive than a public university like FSU. A team like FSU could have 40+ walk-ons. Ohio State 40+. At UM for Spring ball, there were roughly 15 of us (new guys and veteran walk-ons). Out the 15, I’d say seven failed to show up on a regular basis (and no one cared or took notice). Of the remaining 7, only about 4 of us actually contributed anything. The others just stood around. Some guys were just way too small. How they made the team I had no idea, but I heard some suspicious things, like it was a favor and that kind of stuff.

Any drill where there’s going to be some serious head knocking would be a ticket to the hospital for these smaller guys. (Suspiciously, a few of walk-ons who showed up on a regular basis were absent this day as if they’d been forewarned and knew to stay away.)

Coverage Drill.

I got curious when two of the veteran walk-ons rushed to go pick up two hand-held padded shields (which meant they weren’t going to get tackled), leaving six of us to be the tackling dummies for almost the entire Hurricanes football team! (QBs and most first-string players would not be taking part.)

The drill goes like this: It’s meant to simulate coverage on a kickoff, so 55 guys line up 52-yards away. They are to sprint 35 yards full speed and hit the guys with the shields while losing little velocity, go another 10-yards where they will reach a standing dummy. Simultaneously as the player reaches the dummy, the ball carrier (walk on) is told to go left or right. The attacking player makes a quick cut without losing any steam, and full-speed tackles the ball carrier after a 15 yard sprint.

Lined up were all the visiting coaches and players who were sitting out the drill. Evidently, this drill had been a highlight at UM for many years and everyone was pumped. I now knew what those small younger kids at SHS must’ve felt like when they faced their first live hitting with the seniors.

By this practice I had started wearing my huge shoulder pads from high school. With the neck roll I looked like a tank. I had a lot of muscle and weight on me. A 250-pound ball-carrier is never anyone’s favorite person to tackle. Before the drill commenced, I promised myself I would make people pay for hitting me.

To the great disappointment of the large crowd, the first two ball carriers dove to the ground before getting hit. I can’t blame them. You’re a walk on, you have nothing to gain. You’re 5-9 160lbs. You shouldn’t even be there in the first place.

My turn comes. I can hear the crowd get excited. They know there is going to be a big hit.

They’re right.

I trot out there with ball tucked into my side, am told to run right, and sprint for an orange cone. The player’s name bearing down on me is Denovan, a tall defensive end. Now, for the record, though I dreamed of being a fullback, I had never received any real coaching as how to run with the football. I run practically straight up…not the way it’s done.

CRUNCH.

A moment before impact, I lowered my head a little as Denovan planted the crown of his helmet into my left earhole. We went down in a heap. A very hard hit, and the crowd ‘ooowed’, but thankfully it wasn’t a concussion kind of hit, though my jaw did feel out of place. I wasn’t wearing a mouthpiece. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a tooth. No doubt there would be some serious bruising behind my ear.

It felt good to be hitting again. I just wished I could be doing the tackling.

Again we cycled to the two small guys, and again they took a dive. This time the coaches went crazy. They grabbed each guy and tossed them to the side and told them to get the hell out of there. The crowd was aching for a hit. My turn came up. A coach slammed the ball into my stomach and yelled at me to go left, hard.

I saw Rohan Marley sprinting down the field. Unlike his father, Rohan was built like a fire hydrant. 5-8 on a tall day and packed with 225lbs of muscle, Rohan could bring the pain. He made his cut. I yelled a battle cry as we made contact. I hit him harder than probably anyone in my life. I just trucked right over him but my momentum took me to the ground. The crowd went wild. I spiked the football. Rohan popped up like nothing happened. Showing that a hit hurt was one of the biggest taboos at Miami. In my time there, after the hardest hits, time and time again, guys would pop up and be pretend to be ok.

By now there were just a few of us running. There was hardly any time between hits to catch your breath. Before my third run, a junior RB named Donnel Bennet left the line of coaches and players to give me 20-seconds of coaching on how to run with the ball.

Lower your goddam pads!

Meaning, don’t run like Fred Fucking Flintstone!

The hits got harder and harder. So hard, in fact, I do not remember the four runs before my last run.

All in all I was feeling pretty good. My shoulder hurt, and my head would have contusions all over it, but it wasn’t like I was in a concussion dream world.

That last run I would be going up against the LB Kevin. It would be the hardest hit of the day and the last run of the day.

Low shoulders. Explode through the hit. Keep pumping your legs. Head up so you can see where you’re going. Those were the tips Bennet gave me. I thought he would make a great coach (I recently found out he is Head Coach of a South FL high school football powerhouse).

Kevin came charging down field. He was stout and fast. I went left. Seconds before impact I yelled again; a gargled battle cry. We contacted and down Kevin went. I officially ran him over, putting him square on his ass, but as I trucked over him, he yanked on my jersey and I stumbled, couldn’t keep my feet. At Miami, and I’m sure at almost all big football programs, how hard you hit is how you gain respect. As a walk on, hard-hitting was all I had to cling to. If I couldn’t hit, I had nothing.

Suddenly the the drill ended with a loud horn noise. Practice was moved along by a big digital clock that made an annoying sound when it was time to move to the next evolution. Defense moved on to rabbit pursuit. I stepped up to run, but Coach Mark told me they wanted this to look good for the cameras (which were filming practice from an elevated platform). Good, I needed a break.

Later during practice I was involved in another tackling drill. This time with just the defensive linemen going against offensive linemen. Again we were surrounded by some of the visiting coaches, but this wasn’t a team drill so there was less attention. The first time I ran, I hit a defensive tackle named Pat Riley. He was 6-4 and a solid 280. The collision was full speed with my head down. Hard hit. Okay, no problem. As Riley was getting off me, he told me I better slow it down or I’d get my ass kicked. I understood. It was just a drill, no need to blow it up. I’d said the same thing over the years at SHS to many a younger kid being what we called a ‘half-speed All-American’. It meant that while the starters were going half-speed, the scout team guy was going full. I hated when kids did that, and now that’s exactly what I was doing. The problem was at Miami the guys hitting you weren’t going half speed, and there’s a coach at your back demanding that you go full-speed. What to do?

You listen to your teammates, that’s what you do.

There were some solid collisions during that drill, but nothing to get excited about. After all positions drills were done, the first 11-on-11 mini scrimmage happened. It was my first look at full-speed game-situation play. I was amazed. The speed was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And the passes? 60 yard strikes. Amazing corner-back vs wide receiver battles. Hard running back vs. linebacker hits. This was a great football team with talent everywhere.

After that practice I signed my first autograph. They’d let a bunch of kids through the fence. Not one of them cared that I was just a walk-on. I must’ve scribbled my name ten times.

I decided to work out after practice. The UM gym hadn’t been updated since the late 70s. It had new equipment, but was a windowless cave right off the football fields. The walls were concrete painted orange and black with encouraging slogans painted in big ‘Impact’ font. Every wall had an ibis caricature painted on it. The ibis is the UM mascot. Besides the Oregon Ducks, I can’t readily think of a less fearful mascot in college sports. Actually, since 97.8% of people don’t even know what an ibis is, it’s probably the least fear inducing.

Why the ibis? The ibis is the last bird or animal to be seen right before a hurricane hits. No one knows why they aren’t afraid of canes. (Years after my football days, I watched a video that my sister filmed during Hurricane Wilma of a flock of ibis riding out the Cat-4 storm along a canal. When the wind gusted up to 150mph, the funny white birds with long orange beaks and orange legs would roll with the wind, then pop up and find their footing against the gale.) The lowly ibis also happens to be a sacred bird in Ancient Egypt, and one of the most important figures in their pantheon is an ibis-headed god named Thoth. I would tell people about this fact when trying to up-sell our mascot.

That raw, dark gym screamed gritty football. No frills. Miami might've been all about swagger and showtime, but truth was most of the guys on the team were from Miami and came from tough inner-city neighborhoods on par with anything the Bronx or Compton could dish out. That team was rough and gutsy, but like the City of Miami, there was a never-dimming, mischievous shimmer to the program, like the toothy, spirited grin and gleaming eyes of the Cheshire Cat. A cunning. A knowing. Intelligence and danger.

The gym wasn’t only for the football team. ALL UM sports teams worked out there. Long and narrow with Coach Rolle’s ‘office’ at the end. On the radio were songs like: I’ve Got A Man; Doo-Doo Brown; Humpty Dance; Back To The Grill Again; and songs by Naughty By Nature, Dre & Snoop. But when the county guys on the team were in there alone, there’d be a Country station on. New Rock&Roll was the agreed upon medium everyone could deal with and luckily that was Rolle’s favorite kind of music.

Going back to the lockerroom, I pass a fellow walk-on, a veteran. His face is bright red—eyes bloodshot and watery. He’s kinda smiling, but then again, this guy is always kinda smiling.

“They fucking spanked me,” he coughed.

Thankfully for everyone, that stupid ritual never happened to me. My whole time on the team I only saw the aftermath of it twice, but I heard a firsthand, detailed account of Gang Spanking:  a dozen or more guys lined up as other guys held the victim over the back of a couch. Often it happened after a shower so the victim would be naked. Embossed on his ass would be multiple Adidas leafs as that was what was on the sole of the Adidas thong sandal they gave everyone except walk-ons. Coaches didn’t venture that often into the 4000sqf lockerroom. It was run by the team. Every day, I mean every.single.day someone would ‘try’ someone else and next thing you know two guys are wrestling, being thrown over couches, slammed into lockers. Sometimes it’d be a group brawl. Punches were rare. This was about your ability to beat someone with your strength and quickness. I must’ve given off an aura of some sort, what the black guys called ‘crazy white dude vibe’, because I was only ‘tried’ once.

That night hanging out in the dorms, I proudly showed off my wounds. My left ear had been bloodied and now had a thin crimson crust on it. The skull behind the ear was swollen and purple. My jaw clicked. My right forearm, which I hadn’t felt till later, had the imprint of a face mask embossed into it. I was limping. Why football players enjoy the after-affects of a hard practice or game isn’t easily summed up with words. I think it’s due to some deep biological hunter imprint. Like a hard days’ physical work, even if it’s nearly backbreaking, just feels good when you’re sitting there on the couch after a hot shower. You might ache all over, but dammit, you feel alive.

The second week of Spring ball the team’s long snapper named Tom comes up to me.

‘Snapping is a good way to contribute and get a scholarship,’ he says. It had worked for him. Going into his senior season, Tom had finally won a full ride.

While I didn’t scoff at the idea, I wasn’t gung-ho about it either. Long snapper? The single most unheralded person on the field at any level. The only time anyone ever noticed the snapper was when they sent the ball five yards over the punter’s head and cost the team a victory. On top of that, legs wide as could be, looking between them at whoever you were snapping to, left you totally defenseless. Every time you snapped, you’d get your ass planted into the turf. I did it all the time in high school. Paradoxically, on punts, some teams didn’t even touch the snapper, letting him run down field unabated, showing total lack of respect for him as a player. At the same time, every team needs a good and super-reliable long snapper. Tom taught me the technique. You used two hands and torqued the ball. Tom could launch it back like a missile. Mine tended to roll. My shoulder pads were too big to do it, but when I really tried I could get the ball back there at decent speed. It was something I would consider working on but with little enthusiasm.

The rest of Spring practice was over before I knew it. The final day would be an inter-team scrimmage known as The Spring Game. Nowadays, at major colleges all over the nation, The Spring Game has become a huge deal. Ohio State averages 100,000 at their game and a party atmosphere. The most UM offered back then was an open gate where maybe a thousand people came through to watch the scrimmage. Coach Tuberville had taken a liking to me. Not as a player, but as an assistant. Everyday when the starting offense and defense squared off at the end of practice, Tuberville would have me right by his side holding a clipboard and writing down all his defensive calls. I failed to see it then, but this was an amazing opportunity. One of college football’s best defensive minds was giving me access to his inner workings (in one season, Tuberville would become Defensive Coordinator of Miami, then eventually move on to be head coach at Auburn for many successful years, and then a US senator for Alabama), access to his coaching philosophy and secrets. That kind of access you can’t buy. This could lead to something, maybe me becoming a coach. But, like the long snapping idea, I wasn’t into it. Not my destiny.

For the scrimmage, I asked Tuberville if I would be getting a chance to play. He said everyone played. That wasn’t true. I stood there plastered to Tuberville’s side for three hours. He wouldn’t even let me wear my helmet. As the scrimmage went on and the 4th-string guys were in there playing, I realized I wouldn’t be getting any time. I thought over the past two weeks that I’d proven I could hang with anyone on the football field. It wasn’t like I would go out there and get hurt. Even twice during practice I’d played middle LB, calling plays and everything. I’d made tackles in an 11-on-11 situation. I even covered a few passplays well. All I wanted to do was play. I wasn’t auditioning or anything like that. I had no illusions of grader. Just give me some playing time.

As the last plays of the scrimmage came, I thought about asking to go in. It was a position I had never been in. I hated even thinking about it. Any second I was sure Tuberville would tell me to give him the clipboard, grab my helmet, and get a few plays in. That didn’t happen.

11

The rest of the semester was a complete wash academically. Ricky and I had started hanging out with his brother, Ronnie (also not his real name).

In my life I’ve always gotten along with people like Ronnie. Evil Geniuses. Smart people very in touch with their darkside. Too smart for school, but not too cool. Funny, cunning, weird, master manipulator and highly intelligent, Ronnie lived in a ground floor studio on classy Brickell Avenue near downtown Miami. He talked the biggest game of anyone I had ever met.

Short, stout, overweight, Ronnie assured me he was on his way to big and great things. He had lots of money (he claimed), and though he didn’t have a car (his Ducatti was in the shop…for more than two months) most of his cash was invested in a grow operation in South Miami.

Yes, grow as in he was part of a cannabis grow operation. 250 plants. Pounds of weed grown and sold every three months. Next year Ronnie would be taking over the op. All the profits would be going to him…and Ricky and I if we wanted in.

On Brickell Ave, riding around at night with Ricky’s Jeep top removed, slick streets, it was my own private Miami Vice scene. Ricky, although he liked his brother, warned me all the time that Ronnie was the biggest shit-talker around. The grow op was real, evidently, but who knew if Ronnie would take it over, and if he did, he’d need his own house.

The semester wound down. I only took one final.

Before leaving for the summer I stopped by Mark’s office.

Give me your number and I’ll call you to tell you when to show up for preseason, he said.

A few days after school ended, Zak and Matt, flew down. They’d been sequestered all the way up at the opposite end of the nation in Burlington, VT. We were gonna roadtrip in my 4Runner back to NY, making pit stops in Orlando and New Orleans.

The plan for Orlando was to go to Disney World and eat lots of psychedelic mushrooms. I hadn’t been there since I was seven. We got to the park at 815am, ate 4grms of mushrooms each on empty stomachs and had to borrow a can of warm Coke to wash the fungus down. When I had to buy my ticket, the psyliocibin was hitting my system, signaling the beginning of a 12-hour, truly magical day at Disney World.

…..Yes, it was every bit as fun, amazing and weird as you’d imagine. Rides were breaking down; long lines were journeys into near madness; birds were talking; Mickey’s manifesto was subliminally broadcast through the speakers that were everywhere. On Space Mountain I laughed and cried so hard it was a religious experience. To be back in Mickey Land after so long, and to now be on a psychedelic, was just a beautiful thing.

The three of us Gonzo wannabes next moved on to New Orleans.

One night we visited a strip club. Being extra rowdy at a table was one of the Miami coaches named Ed Orgeron. He coached the defensive line. A wild and loud Cajun, I almost went up to him and told him I was on the team, but he was so crazy I thought it best not to. That evening we were forced to spend the night in the French Quarter as we made a tactical mistake and parked in a garage that closed at 1am. We stayed in a bar populated with people who thought they were vampires. Some of them didn’t seem to be faking it.

That summer Pete and I went to a new gym. I never paid a dime to work out there. I literately just walked in every day, said ‘hi’ to the girl at the front desk and that was it. With my orange-covered workout manual from UM, I followed the eight-week conditioning program the best I could. Another important matter was my failing GPA for the semester. With my mother’s help (of course) I got the entire semester expunged. It was taken off the books and I would get a clean slate. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the truth of what happened.

Back then I didn’t feel personal responsibility for most of my actions. Everything felt like a flowing joke, and in many ways it still does, but part of evolving (I don’t use the term ‘growing up’ because it’s an antiquated idea from the 50s, like only letting your players drink water at practice during scheduled water breaks) is learning to be responsible and take ownership of what you do. When I was 19-20 I didn’t care. Now, I do. Being an irresponsible kid is just part of life and I think it’s important not to beat ourselves up too much over this fact. That doesn’t mean just because we’re 19 we can be terrible people, it means it’s called a ‘lifetime’ for a reason. We don’t have to have it all figured out by 24. In fact, we may never get ‘it’ figured out and that’s totally okay. I consider myself blessed to always be out of phase-shift with the mainstream experience. It’s not something I cultivate, it’s just how my life is and I’m totally at peace with it. Now, when it comes to procrastinating, that’s an affliction I think we have to cure, or end up not getting as much out of life as life wants us to get.

During July a near tragedy almost happens. Nick Bogaty has a small party at his house. 30 people show up, no big deal. A bunch of us are in his attic playing Tecmo Bowl (which to this day I contend IS THE BEST console football game of all time) when someone comes running up the stairs.

“Guys, there’s a fight!”

It went down like this: Three girls from another town had come to hang out. The boyfriends of these girls found out and showed up. One of the kids I knew by working out at East Coast, and his father owned a good deli I often visited when in that area. I thought we were friends. He was half anglo, half Philippino. With him were three other guys. One of them was this short kid of Japanese or Vietnamese heritage. I was trying to make peace, but this little fuck was all up in my face, telling me he was going to kick my ass, jabbing his index finger at my nose. I mean he was really going at it. Without warning, using my fast-twitch, I slammed the heel of my right palm into his forehead and exploded through the move. It was more of a push than a punch. The force jacked him five feet backwards into a bush. Everyone laughed and cheered. His friends excavated him from the shrubs and they left. I felt bad. I’d lost my cool. Alone, I walked out to their car and apologized. I looked the kid I knew in the eyes, and honestly said I was out of line and that I was sorry. We shook on it. Even the kid I jacked into the shrubs said all was cool.

It wasn’t.

Twenty minutes later I’m siting in the den watching MTV when I notice a bunch of cars roll up to the house. Not more than a minute later, I hear a commotion in the kitchen on the other side of the house. When I get there, I see one of my good friends bleeding from the head, another is in the kitchen with a face-full of mace.

They’re getting their asses kicked!! yells someone.

There’s a monster inside of me. He is a happy fellow, much more like one of the Wild Things than Godzilla, but he is still a monster. However…when something I care about, or my own well being is threatened, that Wild Thing morphs into a red-eyed banshee. It is as if I’m taken over. (Sometimes I’ve felt like I was born in the wrong age. This world of laws, order, reason, and intellectual pursuits a mere blip in the history of Man, and that a world of chaos, the Samurai, blood, fangs and claws is our true state.)

Next thing I know I grab a 14-inch-long chef knife. It’s one of those expensive, 440-stainless steel ones with a thick shank and artful wooden grip. I charge out the kitchen door and down the steps. Nick follows me, jumps on my back to stop me, rips my shirt off. I am shirtless, barefoot, wearing black army pants and holding a knife Michael Myers would envy.

My mere presence turns the tide of battle.

About seven carloads of idiots have shown up to fight. There are four or five of my friends getting jumped outside and another four inside. When I see another friend bloodied, I fully lose it.

The first car I see is a new white Cadillac, probably the kid’s father’s ride. I stab the trunk, piercing the sheet metal like it were paper. I stab it half a dozen times, then put my fist through one of the back windows using the butt of the knife. I stab the driver’s door repeatedly. Inside are some very terrified kids. I jump on the hood and drop a knee into the metal, denting it severely, yelling my head off, slide off, and come face to face with the kid I jacked into the bushes.

The look on his face I will never forget. It’s the realization he has made a terrible mistake and it might be his last one because I am going to cut his head off. I can only imagine how insane I looked. What was going on in my eyes, what I was saying.

Again I smash the kid in the face and he goes flying backward into a yard. I’m on top of him in a heartbeat, and with the tip of the knife to his chest I growl at him, order them all to leave. Turns out, most of the cars were already speeding away. The kids in the white car are screaming for their little friend to get in. I let him up and tell him if I ever see him again I will blow his brains out with my shotgun.

One wrong move and I could’ve killed that kid. Ruined my life—and of course his—all because he and his friends couldn’t let it go. That is why I called it an ‘almost tragedy’.

You gotta let go.

But, you gotta defend yourself, people who need it, and what is righteous. Those fucking kids betrayed my good nature. We were all lucky to get out of it alive and without long prison terms.

As August arrived, I knew preseason would be starting shortly, but Coach Mark didn’t call and I balked at the idea of calling him. Perhaps file it under ‘wasn’t meant to be’, but when UM preseason started, I was still in NY.

On August 19th, myself and friend since 3rd grade Ben who had redone his senior year of SHS and was going to be my roommate at UM, drove to Miami towing a U-Haul. Even though I had a semester under my belt, it didn’t count academically. Yet, I wasn’t seen as a freshman either. Out of synch again, but Like Jazz, it works for me. Ben had to be there early for orientation. I would join the football team a week late into preseason. I didn’t like this, but I would have five years with the team. I was just getting started.

We got to Miami on August 22nd, and because the dorms weren't open till the next day, we stayed with Ronnie on Brickell Ave. Ben wasn’t exactly happy that I brought him to stay with a “drug dealer”. Taking up the majority of Ronnie’s studio were dozens of foot-and-a-half tall cannabis plants in hydroponic pots. All the gear for the grow system was scattered about. Ronnie had to hand ‘feed’ each plant with a mister. He would draw his blinds and curtains during the day for six hours and illuminate the plants with growlights propped up on bar stools. It was an unholy mess in there, and hot. I saw nothing wrong with the situation, but, in hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the best way for a person to be introduced to their freshman year of college.

And maybe the massive hurricane churning just off the coast threatening to destroy the city probably wasn’t such a good way to begin it either.

Out in the Atlantic spun Hurricane Andrew like a buzz-saw. The morning of the 23rd, the entire freshman class was moving into the dorms. A radio played nonstop updates about the impending doom. Late in the morning I broke away from the move and went over to the football complex. The NOAA had just given the almost 100%-certainty that the hurricane would be hitting Miami square in the face in less than 20 hours. The decision had already been made to move the entire football operation 100-miles north to Vero Beach where the LA Dodgers held Spring Training. The program was in evacuation mode. I found Coach Mark. As expected, he was frazzled like everyone else. The season opener was in two weeks, an away night game against Iowa on Sept 5th to be nationally televised. There’d be 90,000 filling the stadium. Iowa was preseason ranked #12, UM #1. It would not be a cakewalk.

The best Mark could offer was for me to just show up at the Vero Beach facility in a few days. We’d see about getting me to join the team then. Back at the dorm frantic parents were moving their children into college under most unique and uncertain circumstances. Danger was in the air.

The University of Miami had been born in 1923…only to be totally leveled three years later by a storm simply known as The Great Miami Hurricane (they didn’t name storms till the 1950s). Once they rebuilt campus, it was decided the new name of sports teams would be…The Hurricanes. Before that, believe it or not, the school sports teams were named after a rotating assortment of local fauna until a suitable one was to be found; like The Bougainvilleas and The Royal Ponicianas. Some of this plant-power is still around, as evidenced by the school’s colors: orange/green/white representing the orange tree and it’s blossoms.

Ben and I didn’t have our parents there freaking out, so we just kicked it and drank beer. As afternoon arrived, word began to spread that the campus would be going into lockdown. It was chaos. No one knew what to do. Were the 14-story towers going to stand up to Andrew’s 195mph gusts? What about food and water? Would the cars be okay? Around 5pm, my friend and I dropped off the U-Haul trailer (the place we dropped it off near Kendall was later wiped off the map). We’d be heading north to West Palm Beach where my father was at his condo and hunker down there.

Like two jackasses, we drive to Miami Beach and look at the darkness coming in from the Atlantic. The Beach was deserted. We drove slowly through the abandoned streets; swirling sky a million shades of grey; 45-knot wind already chugging. On the way west to I-95, a Florida Highway Patrol Officer pulled us over. He read us the riot-act. How stupid are you?! he demanded. Very, was the only right answer.

Night was coming fast and with it stronger winds. Leaving Miami it felt like the storm was right on our tail (and it was). By the time we made it to West Palm 65 miles north, the rain was whipping and wind topped 60 knots. We lost power around 11pm and winds hit 80knots, 75 miles from Andrew’s eye. The tall apartment building swayed and creaked. The sliding glass doors bowed and flexed.

When morning broke, my friend and I were on the road down to Miami. I-95 runs right though the city. It honestly didn’t look so bad…until 95 ended and we hit US-1.

In an epic grace of fortune for the city, Andrew ducked south just before landfall. The dirty, nasty teeth of the north-eastern quadrant (which is the worst part of a hurricane) bored hard into South Miami instead of the main city 15-miles to the north. Places like Homestead and Kendall took the worst beating. As we hit US-1, which I-95 dumps directly into and runs all the way south to the beginning of the Keys, the destruction was massive. Trees were everywhere. Only a narrow path through the six-lane road could be navigated. There was zero, I mean zero police presence. Of course there was no electricity either. Power-lines and snapped poles littered the streets. Every traffic light lay in a heap. Some stores had been looted, others, like Publix were just letting people take pretty much whatever they wanted. Millions were without power. The UM campus had been smashed, but the buildings were still intact even though unsecured dumpsters had been flying around campus all night smashing into buildings.

Word spread fast that school had been canceled for more than two weeks. Everyone had to leave campus immediately. The university was helping people fly out of the city. I visited some girls I knew in an off-campus apartment complex. Steel doors had been bent and ripped off their hinges. Ben got on a flight that night from West Palm.

The next day I went to Dodger Town to check in with the team. It was business as usual on the outside, but inside many players were hurting. At least half the team was from areas severely affected like Homestead. The fates of their families and homes was unknown. I showed up for practice the next day with my shoulder pads ready to take part. Finding me a helmet and pants took some time (unlike during Spring football where all the helmets were white, now I had orange and green stripes on mine, and…the legendary U on each side). I commuted from West Palm to Vero, 40 minutes each way, to practice for seven days straight.

The Miami Hurricanes went on to beat Iowa 24-7 in a very emotional game. Afterwards, the team moved back to campus and I with them, as the dorms had reopened, though not officially. It would still be another week before full campus functions returned. There was a bye between the next opponent and Iowa, so the team had time to lick its wounds. Life was getting back to normal.

12

Scout Team—made up of red-shirt freshmen (scholarship freshmen who would not be playing in games and thus would have five years of eligibility) and walk ons—this little understood and important aspect of football comes with no glory, no greatness, but it’s where young guys learn to play at the college level and make a name for themselves within the team. If you’re really good right out of high school, and you get to preseason and prove you can contribute right away, you go right onto the depth chart, don’t get red-shirted, and never see a minute of scout team. Your eligibility clock starts ticking. Instead of five years, you now only have four. It was pretty rare back then.

Every day during the season, the majority of practice was centered around starting offense and defense running full-on live plays against a scout team defense and offense. When it came to scout defense, we could not hit the QB; and running backs, once they were outside the tackle-box, were not to be bought to the ground (but you could still hit them hard). All the blocking was 100% full-go until the whistle. And the pace of everything was game-speed. I would finally get my taste of what it was like to play on this level.

In the beginning of my time back, I was still doing everything with the LBs, even getting some reps on scout team at the position. After practice one day a particular set of hard conditioning came up. I was not in as good of shape as everyone else. These were 52-yard sprints, touch line, then sprint back the 52-yards…25 of them. We ran them by position on a nonstop cycle. Though I was trying my absolute best, the LBs I ran with all possessed 4.70 speed. (Those tenths of a second bewtwen my 4.95 and their 4.75might not look like a lot, but they mean EVERYTHING in football. A guy running a 4.3 is elite speed. First Round Draft Pick speed. A guy running 5.0+ is never gonna make it unless he’s a 6’5 350lb offensive linemen.) Anyway, it looked like I was dogging it, coming in far last every sprint.

Hey, if you can’t keep up with the LBs run with the linemen!! screamed the toughest guy on the team.

His name: Rusty Medearis.

Rusty played defensive end. At 6-3 and 260 and from the Ozarks, he wasn’t the biggest guy, but he was one of the team leaders, and no one, I mean no one fucked with Rusty (I’m sure when he was a freshman someone did, and paid the price). When he told you to do something, you did it. No questions asked. When Rusty wanted to listen to Garth Brooks in the weight-room, we listened to Garth Brooks. He was ‘country strong’. From there on out I would run with the D-linemen.

Over the next few practices I started filling in at defensive line when one of the redshirt scholarship guys wanted a break. Before the snap we’d get a crude play (but which was still lightyears beyond anything I did at SHS). I did what I was shown to do, and did what I knew how to do without question: play defensive line. Get the guy with the ball. Crack some heads.

Miami ran a Pro-Style offense. This means passing. We were not a ‘grind it’ kind of team. We could run, but our QB, Geno Torretta, could really air it out to the bevy of talented WRs around him. Because we were Pro-Style, the offensive linemen weren’t hulking behemoths found at run-oriented programs like BIG 10 schools. Instead, our O-linemen were crafty, quick, and smart (the center was the one exception, an unmovable force of squat 350lbs, his legs and butt the largest on the team). A guard who I went against when I moved into tackle or Nose, was Kipp Vickers. At 6’2 280 he wasn’t popping off the charts, but he went onto a long and successful NFL career with the Colts. No matter their size, those guys could hit. They worked well as a unit, and most of all, they had an amazing coach.

Art Kehoe.

Coach Kehoe played for UM in the early 80s, has been around the program for four decades, and put many guys in the NFL. Loud (one of the loudest voices I’ve ever heard) and brash, Coach Kehoe was the most respected and liked coach hands down. He was the unofficial liaison between the staff and the players. Great motivator and honest with his praise, he could also verbally bodyslam a player if he wasn’t performing.

Great players, great coaching. This was the real deal. It was a test unlike any other to not get blown out of the water every play and prove to myself that I could play at the highest level.

So the scout team pretends like it’s the upcoming opponent. Most teams we would play employed a 4-3-4 defense (four linemen, three linebackers and four defensive backs). There were two redshirted scholarship players at D-tackle, and two ends who were looking to get noticed, one of which was Kenny Holmes, a future All-American and big time NFL player.

Because there were seven linebackers (two who were walk-ons) for three positions, if I wanted to get in there, I’d have to play line. It might seem strange to you hearing about a guy wanting to get ‘time’ on the scout team. Truth be told, I wasn’t out there thinking one day I could be playing D-line in a game for the Canes. I just wanted to contribute, help the team win, and not stand there all day doing nothing. My entire sports life no matter what I played, I was always a starter. Not that I’m a super great athlete or anything, but I try hard, give it my all, and hate losing more than I like winning.

What is a good athlete anyway? In my life, I’ve had moments of such athletic greatness it’s hard to believe. People who have witnessed these brilliant flashes of ability have been astonished by them, and I would be too if I wasn’t use to it. Just flashes, though. Flashes. Fashes faster than lightning. So don’t get too excited, okay, not saying I’m some kind of Decathlete.

I’ve hit PGA-quality shots on the golf course—65-yards away from pin, 8-iron, and in the cup with one bounce on a Par-4. But then driving on the next hole, I dribble the ball barely past the Ladies Tees and shoot a 134 for the day. I’ve cleared tables in pool only to scratch on the 8 ball. Hit two 50-point bullseyes in a row playing cricket, then nearly take someones eye out with an errant third throw. In 8th grade I smacked a baseball to right field further than anyone had ever seen against my future co-captain Doug Knopp, who was the league’s best pitcher. Maybe at Yankee stadium it would’ve been over the wall and a home run, but our field didn’t have a fence. On my way to the first home run in our little league history, I tripped over 2nd base, eating it hard around short stop. And I mean hard. The wind was knocked out of me. I banged my head. My lips and elbows bled. I scrapped my face. I peeled myself up off the infield and lumbered towards 3rd and rounded it on my way home. The ball had finally come in and the catcher caught it, forcing me back to 3rd. That same year I put my hand above the rim on a standard hoop and hung there by my fingers for two seconds. How’d I do it? Never again would I get even close. Once, a friend threw my apartment keys 20 yards down a NYC block, at night, on a downward slope. In the shadows I shot up my right hand and picked them out of the darkness without looking. And thought it might not be a sport, in my first and only poker tournament (I had to brush up what a Flush was beforehand), out of 145 players, I made it to the last table, last five people, and lost due to not paying attention. Distracted by my girlfriend asking me what I wanted to drink, I misheard the dealer and showed my cards. I still almost won but couldn’t come back from the devastating mistake. (The guy who won it all, a professional poker player who I had been beating all night, told me flat out I was the most formidable opponent he’d played in a long time. I didn’t tell him that I barely knew what a Straight was). And at Miami, I’d swat my man to the side and bat down a pass by Torretta, then the next play get buried so deeply by a pulling guard, I thought I’d never see the light of day again.

Classes finally started and now I was in the Sociology/Criminal Justice Department, because, drumroll please: I wanted to become a homicide detective.

Prerequisites are one of the worst things about college. When you think about it, half your college years are spent taking courses you can’t stand like you’re in 10th grade all over again. One of the prerequisites I didn’t hate was English 101. Mr. Fishser was my first introduction to that classic college professor. He treated us like adults. I loved his class, but after writing him a short essay the first week, he asked to meet in private.

I think you need remedial English, and not my class, he said.

No way, Professor, no more skills classes for me.

The only reason he let me stay in the class was that he saw something special in my writing. It might have been in all caps and done on a dot-matrix printer, but he told me the foundation of good writing was there. Then he told me some dirty jokes.

As for Ricky and Ronnie, their father rented them a small home in Coral Gables. In truth, their father didn’t want Ronnie anywhere near the house, but the father wasn’t around to police the situation, and with three big bedrooms, it was going to be impossible keeping him out of that house. I spent the majority of my time at the house. We’d smoke three-foot bongs, watch MTV and infomercials, and play John Madden on SEGA till the wee hours of the morning. And, of course, there were plants, lots of them. A full-on grow op. More on that to come.

Up next for the mighty Hurricanes was Florida A&M. It was a blowout, but they had the best band and the game turned into a charity event for the hurricane-bruised city. A month after the storm, there were still many areas to the south still without power. It was the Dark Ages just 12-miles from the UM campus. This was also my first experience suiting up for a college football game. I wore an orange jersey with with #42 on it. No nameplate. It was a night game, and the entire team was bussed to the stadium together (typically for home games, the traveling team, which consisted of around 70 guys who were eligible to play, stayed at a hotel the night before). This was my first police escort. I really enjoyed little things like that. Lining our walk to the Orange Bowl locker room was a gauntlet of fans. The city needed its Miami Hurricanes back. This was the National Champion’s first home game since winning the title.

The Orange Bowl. Another 1930s behemoth like Mt Vernon’s Memorial Field. The place oozed character. A relic. Over the years so much happened there, it was hands down the most important stadium in pro and college football. Built straight up and down with steep isles and orange bench seats, the U-shaped stadium could be a deafening deathtrap for teams. In fact, to this day, the Miami Hurricanes record 56-game home winning streak stands firm. That’s 10 years without losing a home game. Incredible.

After the game, players were allowed to go off with family, friends, girlfriends instead of getting back on the team busses. I ended up hanging out and getting a ride home with one of the reserve O-linemen, his girlfriend and her friend. While the couple made out in the front seat, the girl and I sat in the back like two awkward teens. She made a move but I clammed up. Not my type. So it goes.

Our next opponent at home was the then unknown Arizona Wildcats. They’d been a basement dweller in the Pac-10 for decades. But there was some buzz that they were pretty good all of a sudden. Their defense was to be feared. It was by far our hardest practice week yet. During one goal line situation, I beat the left tackle and could’ve sacked Torretta. Coach Kehoe went berserk. Back in our huddle, Grad Assistant coach Randy Shannon congratulated me and drilled it into my head that under no circumstances were we to go anything but 100%. There were many times when the starting offense couldn’t do anything against the scout defense. Head Coach Erickson hated it. On the next play after the mock sack, I hit the edge hard again, but the offensive tackle Mario Chirstobol locked it down. He had me in a neck hold. My legs came out from under me and we went down in a heap. I thought for a second my neck was broken. I think the coaches did too. Another play I batted down a pass. This was all a big deal for me. I was beating guys who were bigger, stronger, and faster than me….and on full-rides to the best team in college football.

I didn’t suit up for the Arizona game which was a 12pm kickoff. Instead, I sat in the stands with the players’ families.

Our #1 offense hit a wall; a defensive wall which would be good enough to earn a nickname: Desert Swarm.

By the third quarter, the score was 8-7 with us in the lead. AZ had the ball around mid-field. On a play that many would call one of the cheapest shots ever, our team leader, a man who you’d say about: ‘If I were ever in a foxhole, I’d want this guy next to me’, suffered one of the worst non-paralyzing football injuries in college history.

Rusty Medearis got hit high by the tackle and tightend, held up, and then one of the AZ guards intentionally came at Rusty’s left knee with all his massive frame. Instantly the stadium knew it was bad. Rusty was the most popular player among fans. Many people wore #98 jerseys. He was one of the best defensive ends in the history of college football.

As they carted Medearis off the field, he tried to get up from the cart. He could walk it off, we hoped. This was all just a precaution, we said. The team doctor frantically ran over and stopped Rusty from moving. The injury was horrific. Total dislocation of the knee joint. The kind of injury seen in a high-speed motorcycle accident. Surgery lasted 13-hours as doctors battled to save his leg. Yes, the injury was so bad amputation was a very real possibility. Nerves were stretched, an artery ruptured, ligaments and cartilage completely ripped to shreds. Like I said, the worst, non-paralyzing injury a player could suffer. It was a terrible blow to the team’s morale, but we had a game to win.

It came down to AZ getting a shot at a 38-yard field goal with no time left on the clock. It was make it, or lose. By now I was on the field, on my knees and holding hands with other players.

The kick went wide left. We won.

There was no celebration.

Word spread quickly about how bad Medearis was injured. The next day we got booted out of the #1 ranking. On top of all this, our opponent at home in six days was none other than the Florida State Seminoles who were ranked #3.

13

Every Monday before practice, the entire team met in the conference room for updates and lecture about the upcoming week (we also did this every Thursday). The room had stadium seating with comfy leather chairs and desk space in front of each row of seats. This room also doubled as the study hall. Before the other coaches came in, Coach Rolle gave a speech about toughness and the will to win. One player, Lamar Thomas, starting WR and future NFL star, got up like it was a Baptist revival and had the whole room laughing, including Rolle.

The Canes weren’t into the funeral atmosphere hanging over the football complex. Yes, we escaped with our lives from a game we were highly favored to win, and we lost a team leader, but what were we supposed to do, cry? Things quieted down and in walked a few coaches. Grim-faced; there was little doubt they had been chewed out by Erickson. Position coaches came up one by one and spoke until finally defensive line coach Ed Orgeron took the podium.

When I say he put the fear of God in us, I am not exaggerating. If I though Coach Pal’s halftime speech in the 1989 bowl game was bone rattling, this speech tweaked my atoms. Orgeron screeched as only a Cajun could. Red-faced, angry, enraged. By my estimation, a fuming angry Cajun is the angriest person in the world. He charged around the room. Stomped, slammed his fists; his high-pitched voice making us squirm. Some unfortunate soul cracked a smile. In front of the whole team, Orgeron got in his face and verbally pummeled him.

Erickson came in and said little. He was a coach of few words.

That week my sister came to visit. She attended practice one day. Coach Rolle came up and said: Hey, Mertoz, how a big ugly guy like you have such a pretty sister. Do you think she’ll go on a date with me?

The practices were completely open before the biggest game of the year (nowadays, every practice is closed tight). There was very little security back then. Anyone could come and check things out.

Practice was extra intense and hard. We ran more conditioning than we had all season. On Thursday, I took my sister to the hot local bar called ‘Coaches’. One of the bouncers was a former player. I told him I was on the team and we got in without waiting.

Sometimes before practice, a few asshole players would pick on walk-ons, berating them for being there, saying they’d never get to play, so why waste their time and health? It happened to me once and I just ignored them. Another player, we’ll call him Akeem (not real name), would sometimes come up to me huffing and angry.

Your ancestors had my family as slaves, he’d growl.

Bro, my ancestors were coal miners in Wales and occupied by the Turks in Greece for 400 years, I’d respond.

Akeem wasn’t one of the assholes and he was just messing with me, always smiled when I told him things like that, and would burst into laughter.

The next day I told my sister I couldn’t hang out because I had curfew. That was a lie.

Ricky, Ronnie, and I packed up the first large dog crate filled with stubby marijuana plants at midnight. By now I had been fully hooked by Ronnie and his grandiose visions. He found out I liked motorcycles, in fact was obsessed with the Harley Fatboy (thanks to Terminator 2). He guaranteed me that in eight months I’d be able to buy one with cash. All I had to do was move the last batch of plants, help set up the grow op, and then help sell the pounds of weed we would grow. He also designated me the security officer of the operation. We even went out and bought two pistol-grip shotguns. Supposedly, some enemies of Ronnie were going to try to steal the plants. The attack could come at any time. It was, of course, just paranoid delusion mixed with more manipulation. As for the big grow operation, it was set up in the house’s spare bedroom. The brothers would tell their father that I was subletting the room if he came to visit. The room would be closed off with several padlocks.

From the Bricklle studio to Coral Gables house was 15mins no traffic. With my 4Runners windows tinted, no one could see in, and if they did, they’d see a big white dog crate covered by a sheet. If further inspected they’d find 20 plants in there. I don’t remember being scared or nervous. We just went about our business. Three morons driving the slick streets transporting drugs like thousands had before us. This was Miami, after all. A city built by cocaine money. Yes, it’s true. All the high-rise banks which sprung up in the 1980s didn’t appear because there were a lot of old laddies looking for a place to put their fixed income. It’s called institutionalized money laundering. It still goes on to this day all over the world. Over a trillion dollars a year in drug cash can’t all be kept in floor safes.

So the Chump Time Express made 10 trips that night. When we were done, it was 4am. I finally made it to bed at my dorm just before 5am. I had to be at the Hecht Athletic Center to catch the bus to the Orange Bowl at 9:45am.

I made it just in time. A few of the guys were drinking beer from cans hidden in paper bags. There were about 35 of us not on the traveling team, plus another four busses full of family, support staff, and boosters. Our State Highway Patrol escorts cleared a smooth path to the Orange Bowl. We hardly slowed down.

Unlike many universities, the Miami Hurricanes have always played off campus. The Orange Bowl sat smack in the middle of Little Havana and right in the middle of the city. The east endzone, shaded by towering palms, opened up to look out at Down Town Miami. It was pure magic. A ring of grass parking surrounded the stadium. This was where the tailgating happened. Driving into the stadium, thousands of fans mobbed the slow-moving busses, rocking them like the Beatles were inside. We were greeted by the most rowdy fans I’d ever been around. Most were already well in the bag.

The home locker room at the Orange Bowl was barely big enough to fit the team. It’s amazing to think the Miami Dolphins used that stark, aging place for decades. I can only imagine how tiny and antiquated the visiting locker room was. But the charter of the stadium, the vibe, the history, blows away any stadium I’ve ever been in except for the old Yankee Stadium. Just before the team piled up in the tunnel to burst through the ‘smoke’ (in case you didn’t know, Miami was the original team to enter the field through clouds of white smoke produced by industrial strength fire extinguishers), a priest named Father Leo gave a prayer. Then a Rabbi gave one (there were a few jewish guys on the team). As the men of faith spoke, smelling salts were passed around. An offensive linemen next to me sounded like he was going to die after inhaling one too deeply. I tried a little but it was like taking a bath in turpentine.

The locker-room was right under the stands and just off the field. The stadium rocked. Everyone was very pumped up. The Orange Bowl was known to have the loudest PA system in football. The stadium’s play-by-play guy and his droning, steady voice, could be heard for half a mile in every direction. Inside that bowl, his voice was deafening. I’ve also heard there were microphones strategically placed around the stadium to pick up crowd noise and pump it out through speakers.

Waiting in that tunnel, holding the shoulder pads in front of me, head down, helmet stuck to the player in front of me, was just one of those special unique moments in this world. Then, all of a sudden, the line starts moving and you are pulled and pushed out the tunnel until you explode through the smoke into a stadium packed with 85,000 rabid people.

During the light, pre-game drills, Rohan Marley smashed into me and took me to the ground. He was huffing and drooling. Coach Tuberville asked: Rohan, did you take that stuff again?

What stuff? I had no idea. Maybe it was just caffeine pills, maybe something stronger. I don’t judge.

For this game I wore #93 as did a redshirt freshman scholarship D-lineman (I don’t remember his name, but it was this player who I was 100% better than, and he was on a full-ride to UM. We were practically the same size, and when we ran sprints, I would beat him. I was stronger, quicker, worked harder, and just a better football player. I just couldn’t understand how he got there on a scholarship. There were a bunch of guys like him. Total throwaway scholarships. This guy never did anything at UM).

I was the only one on the sidelines suited up without a name on the back of my jersey. I was a little self-conscious about it, but at the same time at least I was allowed to be suited up. That was an honor not afforded to all walk-ons. In the open endzone there were removable bleachers brought in to fit an extra 12,000 fans for big games. Warming up before the kickoff, some FSU fan kept yelling my number and telling me we were going to lose. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he went on and on. Of all the players to yell at, he picked me. Very strange.

This game is a fucking battle. 90% of players on both teams are from Florida.

Ok here we go. KICKOFF!

Rock you like a Hurricane, by The Scorpions is blearing from the giant speakers. The stadium shakes. LETS GO!!!!

…and Tamerick Vanover of FSU takes the opening kickoff 95yrds to the house. It’s one of the rarest occurrences in sports to take the opening kickoff for a TD.

The 1st Quarter was filled with turnovers and FSU blocked a long FG attempt by us. We blocked one of theirs. The FSU QB, 1993 Heisman Trophy Winner Charlie Ward, was having a terrible game. Our QB Torretta, who would win the 1992 Heisman, was 1-14 passing mid 3rd quarter. Our defense was stifling, but so was FSU’s. The hitting was furious. It was the first time I heard the FSU war-chant. The bands battled. Rumbling from the PA came the Imperial March from Star Wars. And it was hot, I mean above 90˙ and humid. Sun beating down on us. Going into halftime it was 10-10.

The 3rd Quarter was a defensive standoff. The stadium was beyond tense going into the 4th.

After watching the game for the first time ever while writing this, I have to give big props to the guy who stepped in for Rusty Medearis. His name: Kevin Patrick. He had 4.5 sacks, numerous pressures, and made some HUGE run stops, one of which helped win the game. That’s how it went at Miami. Big time guy goes down, big time guy steps up.

With five-minutes left in the game, FSU makes an unthinkable mistake on a punt return—a safety—and now Canes are up 19-16. Game in the bag, right? Nope.

We can not run the ball. Period. Our leading rusher in the game is Geno Torretta and he’s a ridiculously non-mobile QB. Because we can’t move the ball on the ground, we can’t run out the clock. So we punt, giving FSU one last shot with under 2-minutes left.

The game has been going on for almost 4.5 hours when Charlie Ward finally becomes good and FSU marches down the field to set up a game-tying field goal attempt. Back then there could be ties, so the Noles were playing for a tie, not the win. In my mind, playing for a tie is one of the least noble things a team can do, but the rules were bad, and a tie was better than a loss in Coach Bobby Bowden’s mind and the minds of the bowl committee.

The FSU kicker shanks the 35-yard FG.

Wide Right 2! the game was called (the year before FSU sent the game-winning kick wide right as well). Fans charged the field. As for the team, we wouldn’t have any time to rest. The next opponent in seven days is the Penn State Nittany Lions at their field. They’re ranked #7, while the Canes take back the #1 spot.

17-14, UM beats PSU. Another gritty performance. Defensive end Darrin Krien deflects a pass and returns it for a TD, sealing the victory. Incredible play.

UM 45-10 over TCU. Finally a breather.

Virginia Tech @ home, night game. The Orange Bowl is a drunken orgy. Fights break out all over the stands. 43-23 UM.

By now the plants in Ronnie’s grow room had sprouted huge buds. He might have been a maniac, but he could grow cannabis. This was of course the first time I had ever seen anything like this. The lone window in the room had been boarded up so no light could get in or out. Walls were covered in super-reflective mylar. In the corner was a huge canister of CO2 pumping out the gas into the room every few hours. Above swung two sets of grow lights on steady rotations. And, below…the green.

The system was fully automated and hydroponic. The only thing we had to do was add nutrients to the water tank. Each plant, growing in a a hydroponic cup, had its own little watering tube. Excess water would pool below in big white plastic bins and be mixed back into the holding tank. The AC pumped 24/7. The smell was amazing. A green lizard lived in there and I took pictures of it hanging out on a Christmas Tree bud, developed it at a shady camera store, sent it to High Times, but never saw if it got printed (yeah, this was before email and years before anyone even heard of a digital camera).

Ronnie exclusively slept on the futon in the den because his room was glowing white-hot 10-hours a day keeping baby clone plants happy which would replace the fully grown ones after the first harvest. We joked that it looked like an alien lived in there.

One day at the Hecht Center, someone from compliance came up to me.

I had to take a drug test tomorrow.

This came out of left field and I was floored. While I did think it was odd that I hadn’t been asked to take a test before joining the team, I never thought they’d just spring it on me half way through the season. That night at the house I ate three giant salads made with super vinegary dressing that I made myself. Ronnie insisted vinegar could cloak pot on a drug test.

I pissed in a cup and didn’t hear anything about it so I assumed/prayed I passed.

The reality was we’d have about 18 ounces harvested by Thanksgiving. I never really believed I’d try to sell to anyone on team, but I did ask around. I actually asked someone: Do any of you guys smoke weed?

He laughed and laughed.

These were college-age guys, the answer was obvious.

Rohan Marley was featured in an article in Sports Illustrated. He had been getting a lot of playing time. He was fast and good in coverage. SI asked him about smoking marijuana, and went on about how it was so intertwined with his father’s name. Rohan said he didn’t smoke, but maybe if he were in Jamaica he would think about it.

I think it’s certain he more than ‘thought about it’ all the time.

Football players and other athletes like to smoke weed because it calms the muscles and central nervous system which allows for healing to occur. Plus it mellows the mind. This is why Arnold Schwarzenegger can be seen puffing on huge joints in Pumping Iron.

For me, cannabis got me out of the binge-drinking mode. In fact, I never had another terrible drunken puking mess of a night since the Sugar Bowl and you’ll hear about that soon.

In school, I was slacking as usual. That semester I learned how to type and used the Macs in the dorm computer room to write papers. For Professors Singer’s English class, I wrote a story about how my mother and I saw a UFO one night driving in upstate NY. He loved it and read it to all his classes. People would stop and ask me about it. Who knows…

There was a redshirt freshman offensive linemen in that English class. Let’s call him Jason. Jason was 6-3 and 275. From South Dakota or Montana. What he was doing in Miami was a mystery. He had hands like overstuffed sausages. Big meaty paws. He drooled and snorted a lot. His head was a cinderblock. He took too much Ritalin and often offered me some. I kinda considered him a friend. We joked around. He was weird. He was like my Troy Gordon from SHS.

Two days before the West Virginia game, when I was sitting in an orange vinyl sectional couch in front of my locker, just in my football pants after a hard practice, Jason came up behind me, put me in a crushing headlock, and lifted me up off the couch. Before I knew it, he was pummeling me. He was ‘trying’ me. We locked up and I held my own, but he had sneakers on, I was barefoot. He tried swinging me into a locker but couldn’t. He tried lifting me again but I countered. Finally he succeeded in getting me off balacne. I managed to catch myself by sticking out my right leg but my hip jacked up into my body. The pain was terrible. I spun around and looked into Jason’s eyes. He was gone. Just a shell of a human. He backed off and I limped to my locker. The small crowd dispersed and that was that. I blunted his attack, but hobbled around for three days.

I saw many fights at UM. Both on and off the field. Once during field goal practice, someone tried to gouge the long-snapper’s eyes out. Tom came off the field looking bewildered and mad. Across his cheeks were three ugly welts. He had a black eye for a month. Our long snapper, whose backup could barely get the ball back without bouncing it, and me, as unofficial 3rd-string snapper who either dribbled it back or sent it to the moon, would then move up to 2nd-string (on the bright side, if Tom got hurt at least I’d get to travel). Anyway, Tom was an irreplaceable guy who never missed a snap, and someone is trying to injure him so badly he’ll never play football again?

The concept of fighting with your teammates was totally foreign to me. No such thing had EVER happened at SHS in any capacity. It’s very different in college. The fierce competition never lets anyone, even starters, get comfortable. The team is fractured and at the same time together. Players aren’t all friendly to each other. The only rule seemed to be that conflicts must be left at the football complex.

I don’t know, but if someone tried to blind me, I might find it hard to be within 100 yards of that person and not want to beat them with a war hammer.

Practice was much of the same as it had been. The scout team beat up on the offense and the coaches would be endlessly pissed. I deflected a pass, intercepted it, ran it back for a mock TD (though no one was chasing me) and spiked the ball. Coach Erickson cursed me out. I think he was mostly mad that some walk-on was beating his first team O-line. Or maybe it was my showboating? Probably both.

Another time I chased down and held back the 2nd-string QB before he would’ve scored on a bootleg (I’d seen that play before) and Erickson yelled some more. The team’s biggest player, reserve offensive tackle Ricky Perry (6’8 340) and I had some battles. Once after a play he pulled up my facemask and repeatedly slugged me in the chin and throat. I swung widely at his head and together we stood there toe-to-toe fighting. All I heard in the background was Erikson shrieking in that slicing voice of his ‘AH, COME ON! STOP WASTING OUR FUCKING TIME!!’

The West Virginia practice week was when I learned that I had a nasty knee problem. A torn and frayed patellar tendon; aka, tendonitis. Very, very painful, but not something to stop you from playing. For the West Virginia game we’d be running a lot of screen passes. The offensive lineman’s duty, when it’s a screen pass, is to sell the pass by letting the D-lineman advance, then just when he thinks he’s going to make a big play, you yank down on his jersey when the short pass comes. It was perfectly legal. Every time Kipp Vickers yanked the front of my jersey down, I stepped out and caught myself with my right leg. Every time that happened a burning hot rod worked its way into my kneecap. That’s what it felt like. This happened 15-times a practice. It was miserable. The good news was that the pain was calmed with ice and sleep. I had it checked out by the team doctor. He said surgery would fix it but would require 4-6 months down time.

My hip hurt. My thumbs were sprained. Right wrist sprained. Right ankle always swollen. I had a pinched nerve in my neck due to Vickers pulling on a trap play and slamming me into a blitzing LB and then RB came through the gap with the ball and a big pileup occurred with me at the bottom.

West Virginia was closer than the 35-23 score showed.

Temple at home was a blowout 48-0 and was our last home game of the season as the next two would be away against Syracuse and San Diego State. Even though I asked very nicely for Bobby the equipment Smurf to put my name on the jersey for Temple, even writing down the correct spelling, I was again the only one out there without a nameplate for the last home game.

Monday after the Temple win, with the whole team in the meeting room, Coach Kehoe was talking. Spacing out, suddenly I hear my name.

Alexi?

Then a second time. I snap out of my daydream fantasy about scoring the wining TD in the National Championship game.

Alexi, where are you? He asks.

All eyes on me as I raise my hand. My first thought is that someone finally pronounced my name right! Second: oh god…The drug test! Yes, I failed and they are going to call me out in front of everyone!

Kehoe says: ‘Jay Ina is hurt so we’re going to need you to step it up big time this week. You’ll be playing NoseGuard. The guy at Syracuse is an All-American.’

I mumbled acknowledgment. Someone behind me patted my shoulder. Jay Ina was a scholarship, redshirt-freshman scout team lineman. With only four lineman available, I’d have to play the whole practice (they picked me to play NG over that #93 kid I talked about earlier, cementing the fact that I was a better player than him).

The ‘Cuse NoseGuard and I were almost the same size. I watched a video of him. We played very similarly. He even ran how I ran. He was almost unstoppable. My practice jersey was changed to his No. 50 and we began the most intense practice week yet.

By now we were the #1 team in the nation again and a shoe-in for the National Championship game to be played in New Orleans Jan 1st, 1993. There were two games still to play, but only one team would be a challenge.

Syracuse at the Carrier Dome was not a game to be taken lightly. This was a classic stumbling-block game. We could get snake-bit if caught looking ahead to New Orleans. The staff warned us again and again. Coach Kehole came up to me before we began our daily scrimmage against the offense, telling me to go hard every play. Don’t let up for anything.

That’s what I did.

The Syracuse week was my shining moment at UM. To some people it might not seem like a big deal, and in many ways it wasn’t, but on a personal level, I had arrived. All I wanted to do was contribute and I was contributing. I was helping my team win, which was all I ever really cared about when I put on a helmet. Winning…ok and hitting.

Every day that week, the offensive line and scout defensive line went at 110% speed. One play, and I think if I could distill the whole experience down to one moment it was this play.

On a pass play, I ripped and swam through a double team by the center and guard which such speed and power, I was in Torretta’s face in 1.5 seconds (I wrapped him up and Erikson threw down his hat like he was prone to do in utter frustration but he didn’t yell at me). Coach Kehoe stopped practice. He came in there and congratulated me, in his voice was some amazement. His eyes wide and intense, voice a 120db. Okay, okay, good. Good job! He’ll come hard like that all day. Keep it up!

I had become the Nose Guard from Syracuse, better yet…I had become me again. Playing my game. Doing what came natural. Nothing pretty, but…I just knew how to play the game from a three-point-stance.

At our Thursday meeting, Coach Kehoe stood and personally congratulated me in front of the entire team and staff: Alexi, where are you? He looked me right in the eyes. Hell of a practice this week. We needed you. You came through. Good job.

Many in the room gave me their praise. After the meeting, some of the senior starters congratulated and thanked me.

I didn’t play in a game or even get close, but for that week, the Miami Hurricanes needed me and I rose to the occasion. And by now you know I was seeking praise when it came to football, something I had been starved of at SHS. To finally get it at UM, it felt good, so good. Not for narcissistic reasons, but because I worked hard to help the team win. For this work to be acknowledged was a great honor. Being singled out like that in front of everyone was reserved only for big time starters who helped win games. During my time with the Hurricanes, no other walk-on’s name had ever been close to being muttered by one of the coaches in a team meeting.

As we lined up for our last practice of the week (Friday the traveling team flew to their destination) the center and guards I had played so hard against all week, extended their hands and we congratulated each other on the best practice of the season. To get recognized by your coaches is nice and all, but to be respected by your teammates matters more. There is a scared bond between offensive and deffesinve linemen. It’s not talked about, and the rest of the positions know nothing about it, but it exists.

We won the game 16-10. ‘Cuse almost won in the last minute, but LB Michael Barrow intercepted a pass on our 20-yard line at the end to seal the deal. I watched it at Ronnie’s and Ricky’s house. Before the game, some non-traveling guys on the team invited me to hang out and watch the game with them. Bring a 12-pack, they told me. I didn't go.

14

The next week was Thanksgiving. At first I debated going back north, but I couldn’t miss Thanksgiving and give up the chance to tell everyone about my experiences at UM. I had to go home and be the Big Shot. Plus, I missed my friends. The only issue was that I would miss one practice on Wednesday (Thursday there would be a team meal and no practice and Friday was travel day). So I just skipped out. I had to do it. My destiny was to go home.

Before I left, Ronnie and I decided to harvest some buds. I’d bring two-ounces back to NY to sell. Carry them onto the airplane taped to my ankles inside my Timberlands (which I started wearing again as the weather changed).

Security patted me down, but stopped just above my ankles. True story. It was a VERY close call. I then casually went to the bathroom, untaped the bags of smelly bud, and just tossed them in my backpack.

Wednesday night I hit the bar where a lot of my friends were. We were all under 21 still, but many bars in New Rochelle were easy on the carding (I had a fake ID anyway), especially when a former SHS alum was working the door. A crowd formed around me as I retold tales of my football adventures down in Miami. On Friday, my dear friend Matt Rossi made me a fake ticket to go see the band Phish for my first time at the Capital Theater in Port Chester, NY. He made it on his Apple IIe with a dot matrix printer. Good times. On Saturday at a house party we all watched UM vs. San Diego State. Canes win 63-17.

The Miami Hurricanes were consensus #1 and heading to the National Championship. I had little luck selling those ounces. Hometown football star and weed dealer, some combination. My price was $250 an ounce. This was prime Miami chronic. I turned out to be one of the worst pot dealers of all time as I had to unload one ounce to a friend for $120 and take the other back to Miami. Thankfully, that was my one and only foray into dealing, and not because I wanted out or anything, but because I would be forced out.

When I showed up for practice on Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend, more than a few players asked me where I was. I was very surprised anyone cared. Had to go home, I told them. A few coaches asked where I was. They got the same response. It was a very light practice week. Saturday we found out who our opponent in the USF&G Sugar Bowl National Championship game would be: The Alabama Crimson Tide. Then that night our QB Geno Torretta won the Heisman Trophy.

Ronnie didn’t really care that I couldn’t sell the weed. And what difference did it make since we were about to be flush with herb and cash. I promised him that I’d get my act together. I’d sell to dorm kids and everything would work out. Through this, Ricky was a very passive player in the business. He liked smoking the product, but wasn’t really into the whole Kingpin idea. By now the grow room was bursting with vibrant green buds shiny with tricombs. It was actually a beautiful sight. There’d be a full harvest when we got back from Winter Break, yielding, we believed, around 2 pounds dried cannabis. For our first try, the yield and quality was impressive. My cut was somwhere in the neighborhood of $1500. At that rate, the Harley Fatboy would take a year or more to obtain. I decided that maybe I could start out with a much more affordable Sportster.

The semester let out mid December. There were no finals due to the Hurricane Andrew debacle a few months earlier. Preparations for the Crimson Tide were now in full swing. Tons of press showed up at the athletic center daily. I signed many autographs. No one cared who I was, they just wanted a signature of a real life Miami Hurricane. We were on our way to a repeat that would solidify the program as a true dynasty with five national championships in 10 years (two more potential championships were left on the table in close losses). That is what domination looks like.

My dorm closed for recess and I was homeless. I ended up staying at the grow house. Ricky had gone back north for break so I had his room. I slept with the windows open, that fine soft December Miami weather lulling me to sleep. The campus was silent. I loved riding my new bike around it. No class, just football. Was a peaceful time.

Because school had let out, the NCAA permitted the football program to take the team out for dinner every night. The football team stayed on campus for six days of practice until going home for five days for Christmas break. Every night, the team piled into busses to go for dinner at some local eatery. Sometimes there were phat buffets at swank country clubs, other times total food debauchery at places like Fudruckers. They shut the restaurant down for us. The burger eating competition was epic. I must’ve consumed half a gallon of liquid cheese atop a mountain of french fries that night.

I felt more a part of the team now than ever, and yet, I didn’t really have any friends on the team. Guido was my closet friend, but he had a serious girlfriend, and since he was from Miami, spent a lot of time away from school. There was a lot of ‘hey, what’s up, bro’ when I crossed paths with guys on the team outside the football complex, but that was pretty much it. One guy I had a lot of respect for was LB Robert Bass. Just a great guy. Once, we ran into each other outside the UM library. Some kids (there were always kids passing through that open campus) asked if he played football. They asked for his autograph when he said yes. Bass told the kids I played too. They swarmed me and begged for my autograph. What a nice, classy individual he was.

The last practice before the team split up for break arrived, and finally we’d play the much anticipated Toilet Bowl.

The Toilet Bowl pitted scout team offense vs. scout team defense in a 100% live scrimmage (you could even hit the QB, in fact, it was encouraged). Erickson and his staff backed away, letting the players run the asylum. The MVP got a plunger trophy festooned with rolls of toilet paper and a hand-written plaque on cardboard. There was also the same trophy for best hit of the game. The three graduate assistant coaches would be calling the plays. Before the scrimmage, some of the starters gave their jerseys to guys playing in the TB. We were being hazed and pushed around when Warren Sapp grabs me, You’re my man, I’m giving you my jersey! Next thing I know I’m wearing Sapp’s No. 76 orange practice jersey.

Standing there on the sidelines watching the two scout teams go at it, and not being in the mix, was infuriating. Coach Mark was the ring leader of the whole thing and he had spent the entire practice year with scout team offense. He totally ignored me as if I hadn’t been busting my ass all year against the first team offense. When I asked if I could go in, he told me he didn’t want me to get hurt.

Are you fucking kidding me?! Do I look like a goddam waif!!??

Finally he grabbed me by the facemask and yelled at me to get out there as a defensive tackle and if I got hurt it wasn’t his fault. Every play was a big hit. The team was going nuts. The defense was crushing the offense. Kenny Holmes was unstoppable (he won MVP).

When the offense trotted up to the ball I looked across and there was Jason, snorting and looking particularly deranged. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes.

Suddenly I was transported back to SHS. The ball was snapped and I beat Jason and was in on the tackle to my left. Next play was a run outside and I beat him on that one too but an LB made the tackle. On three consecutive pass plays, I beat Jason so badly, in desperation he held me worse than anyone ever had. So obvious the holdings were, that a coach bawled him out, telling him he’d just cost his team 15-yards and a TD. This was the best I had ever played. Fast, quick, strong; I was seeing the field in a new way. The game had slowed down for me and a fluidness carried me forth.

On one play, I tussled with future All-American and NFL player center K.C. Jones. Unlike Jason, he was good. Very good. When he doubled up on me with Jason on a run, they succeeded in pushing me out of the play, but I wasn’t buried or anything like that. I held my own.

Another pass. Another terrible hold.

Fuck you, Jay, stop holding me! I yelled.

A relentless fury of punches to my helmet and facemask was Jay’s response. The crowd went wild. Those giant, Ritalin-fueled meatpaws pummeled me. I had to create some space…so, I…drop-kicked Jason in the chest. He was shocked.                  

Oooooooooooooooooo! went the crowd. The grad assistant coaches were laughing. My kick ended the assault.

On my tenth play in the game, I got decked, dropped, de-cleated.

This time when I beat Jason on the pass play, he didn’t hold, or didn’t get the chance to hold, since I swam around him with snapping speed. He stood there, knees bent, head down and feet planted, hands in front of his face like he’d let a ghost slip by. I was in the backfield, free and clear. Not even an RB around to pick me off. The QB’s blindside was five-yards away due to a rollout pass. I saw the whole event unfold in my mindseye seconds before impact: Epic sack, fumble, pick up fumble, return for TD and get MVP. Maybe I’d even get the best hit too. The potential was that great. A crosshair appeared on the QB’s back. I’m chugging full speed. My finest sack, no question about—

             —

             …

             ..

             .

Out of nowhere, and when I say that, I mean I was the one blindsided, K.C. Jones hits me. (Blindsided means You have NO IDEA AT ALL you are about to be hit. None. Zero.)

K.C. Jones, from Perriman in Texas, you know ‘Friday Night Lights’, a future All-American center and Denver Bronco, knew how to pass block. I didn’t see him hanging out ready to pick off a rusher who had beaten their man, so I think Jones slid off another block to get me. I was coming full-on hard, and remember, in those short distances I was as fast as about anyone, so when Jones jacked me in the left shoulder pad area, I didn’t just hit the ground, I flew horizontal, literally flew sideways four-feet off the ground and four-yards into Coach Erickson and his staff who were camped behind the offense. I took a few of them out but the Erikson was able to slip out of the way. I had no control over where I went or where I landed.

The funny thing, it wasn’t a ‘hard hit’ in the sense that it knocked me out or gave me a concussion. I was more astonished than anything. Never had I gotten worked so badly on the football field. Never. The feeling of flying through the air in complete loss of control was both unsettling and fun. This was what it was like to go against a top-tier player. Jones would go on to start four years at UM, be the only one who could block Ray Lewis who showed up next season, and get inducted into the school’s hall of fame.

It goes without saying that the players went wild. Hands down it was the hit of the game. Sapp ran over, picked me up off the field, and pulled his jersey off me. He was going on and on about how I couldn’t represent his jersey anymore because I’d got my ass handed to me so badly. It was all in jest and funny. I was too woozy to protest. Everyone was laughing. It was all good. I wasn’t humiliated or anything. I got bested by a great player. No problem there. And the whole event—seeing the epic sack in my mind and then getting blindsided myself in front of everyone—I think in many ways is even a better story than if I had scored a TD. The opportunity of personal greatness got replaced with folly enjoyed by everyone. Folly makes people more happy than triumph. I think it was a good trade.

I guess I’m more a jester than a master. The Fool. Jokers Wild. Good news is, The Fool can ‘ape’ any role, meaning be the master when it’s needed without being locked into the role of master, get it?

At the end of practice, Erickson gave a little speech, just basic admin stuff and how we’ve got to practice better and keep improving. He closed with: “Don’t be stupid on your time off, there could be random drug tests at the Sugar Bowl so plan accordingly.” That was it.

When I walked into the travel secretary’s office and told her my name, she said, “Oh, you’re the walk-on…” She seemed happy to meet me. (UM payed for roundtrip flight from NYC to NO.)

That night, Ronnie and I hung out and smoked all night playing Madden. I said byebye to the plants, which were perfect and beautiful, and counted the cash in my head. Ronnie and I parted ways with promises of great things to come. He said he’d be watching the game. That was the last time I ever saw him.

As soon as I got home, I realized how much I hated Winter. Living in FL, you realize Winter is optional. Almost all the great civilizations that have sprung up over the eons were in warm climates. I’m not saying Winter doesn’t have its good points, but to live in it full time? That trip home made me realize how attached to Florida I’d become. How attached to the sun, warmth, waves, palms I now was. I made the most of it by being the first guy in SHS history who was going to the college football National Championship game. I wore my ugly tweed blazer that was now too small, everywhere, including on the airplane down to New Orleans Dec 26th. I thought as a traveling football team, we should dress up a little. In my suitcase I brought another blazer and a maroon tie and khakis.

Other than the coaches, and some support staff, only myself and a few other players brought a blazer. I actually got mistaken for an Alabama player several times because the entire Crimson Tide wore tweed and maroon ties.

Early afternoon when the whole team had arrived in NO, we had a team meeting. Staying at the La Meridian on Canal street only a block from the beginning of Bourbon, we would have only four and a half days of full team practice. On the 31st, the day before the game, the traveling team would split off with most of the coaches and spend the night an hour away in Mississippi to get some separation from the hype and madness. The team would reunite around 4pm at the Superdome on January 1st, 1993 for an 8pm kickoff.

During those four days of practice we’d get the Superdome for two days, then practice outside at some turf high school stadium. As for the first day, we’d split time with Alabama and each get a quick practice in at the Superdome.

At the Superdome, the non-traveling team had a separate lockerroom from the traveling which wasn’t a surprise. Also, we were the ‘visiting’ team and wearing our away white for some reason even though we were the #1 team.

In my locker I found a crimson practice jersey with No. 94 on it.

You’re going to be John Copeland, I was told. He was the Crimson Tide’s All American DT. I had a big job to do and I was ecstatic that the coaches chose me to play #94 on scout team. Me…the walk-on playing the All American instead of some scholarship guy. I was the one starting every practice out there wearing #94. (While I had similar dimensions to the Cuse NoseGuard, Copeland was 6’4, 280, yet I played with similar intensity, my motor like his, I was told.)

In the locker was a duffle bag full of SWAG. Hats, two warmup suits (one black), wind breaker, magazines, collared shirts, hats, an orange card that said we were guests of the city and members of the UM Football team. If you needed anything or got in trouble, you showed the card to a police officer. It felt like a ‘get out of jail free card’. We’d also be getting a cash stipend of $750 in two payments, which was a great and unexpected windfall. This cash we could spend on anything, and since all meals were covered, this was basically cash to party with and buy stuff. Guido, myself, and another walk on roomed together. We were on one of the higher floors of the tower. That first night we ate a casual catered meal with many Cajun specialties in a big 5th floor conference room. We were then free to explore the French Quarter that night with no curfew. None.

Walking down Bourbon like kings with the whole team, we came upon the Crimson Tide. They were all buttoned up in their white shirts, crimson ties and tweed jackets. Like two gangs meeting on Main St., we squared off, taking up the entirety of the famous road. Words and some pushes were exchanged. Coaches appeared out of no where to break it up. It was almost 11pm and Alabama had a strict curfew even for the first night, while the Hurricanes were just hitting the Quarter for a night of partying.

Ever drink a neon-blue Skylab at Pat O’Brian’s? That old bar, as aged as the Quarter itself? That classic place? I put back no less than nine of them that first night along with an unknown number of beers. The Skylabs were just so sweet and tasty. The manager kept feeding them to us. Me and about 30 UM players were there, but I got the most drunk; helped along down Bourbon St. between two big guys who were kinda wasted too; lean over and puke in the gutter drunk; bed spins and puke all night in the bathtub drunk.

Guido recorded the whole thing for posterity. I’m there losing my dinner all over the place and he’s making a documentary. People who have seen the tape claim it is hilarious as I also dance around and say some ridiculous things during the interview segment. I vividly remember puking up little, totally undigested crawfish till 5am as Guido filmed.

The only thing good about the morning was that it was a late one. We didn’t load the busses for the Superdome until after 12pm. We would dress at the dome and be bussed to the outdoor practice fields, then bussed back to lockerroom, then bused to the hotel. That night would be our first organized event held by USF&G.

I’d never practiced hung over. It was as bad as you can imagine. Sheer will carried me through the day. Also, it was cold, gray, and misty out. A hot day would’ve been the end of me. This practice was not one of my finest moments. And I wasn’t the only one badly hungover. Half the team had gotten hammered the night before, including many coaches. There were some wild stories and I wasn’t the only one carried home. Meanwhile, our opponent was tucked in and counting sheep by 12am.

For dinner, the team was loaded up again into four busses and led by police escort to the horse track where we had a good meal and placed fake bets on fake races while sitting in the VIP grandstand. Again, we had no curfew. Even though I was tired and still hurting, I went out and partied till 3am. For a minute I considered the wisdom of not having a curfew, but this was how Miami had always operated, who was I to question it.

Our first real practice in the Supedome was special. That building has a spirit. Being out there on that NFL field, whistles echoing off the dark empty stands, the soft turf beneath my feet, the overall ‘bigness’ of the moment, I found myself often just settling in and soaking up the feels.

When we ran our scout team vs offense I was lining up midfield feeling like I was in the Big Game. I superenposed 75,000 people in the stands. I played really well. Doing the things #94 on Bama would do. My couches were pleased with my effort. Erikson was pissed as usual that a scout team walk-on was besting his starting offensive line. I batted down a swing pass and he yelled in my direction. Another play I wrapped up Torretta that would’ve been a sack in a game. More cursing. All I could do was smile when I got back to our huddle.

As good and hard as our Syracuse practice week was, prep for Alabama was overall sluggish and soft. It was like the steam in our engine had burst through a frayed gasket and was leaking. The team was very healthy going into the big game, but there was something missing. We weren’t confident or cocky, not worried or scared. The term ‘flat’ I think describes it, while at the same time, we gave Alabama 0% respect. Even our coaches didn’t seem like they thought very much of Bama. Most people in the media were certain it would be a blowout. Some guys on the team openly talked about how it would look to have two championship rings on one hand. I liked the idea of having one. How perfect, I thought, for my story, to get a ring so quickly. It all made sense. I could’ve gone to Bama. The ‘universe’ made sure I would be in the big game no matter what choice I made, and the Miami Hurricanes would win the game. It was all meant to be.

Playing on the nice new turf made the game much quicker. I felt fast and clean. And don’t get me wrong, we still worked hard, and the gameplan seemed solid. We’d use our talent to just overwhelm The Crimson Tide. They would not be able to hang with us. Some thought the Tide didn’t even belong in the game (even though they were undefeated). Many wanted Texas A&M in the game instead.

That night we had a country hoedown dinner at some banquet hall near the Quarter that looked like the Bayou. There was square-dancing and games, but most guys left early. Erickson’s style was hands-off, laid-back-West Coast, treat us like men. I appreciated it, and it had worked for him so far, but some structure was needed. Like the fact there was no dress code. I thought at minimum we should’ve been required to wear a blazer for formal events. The football program should’ve supplied the jacket. Alabama all looked the same, and though I understood that Miami was a polar-opposite mentality, the outlaw city-kids attitude had worn a little thin for the program. If I had a say in things, the philosophy would’ve been business with flair, toughness, and togetherness. Instead, we were all over the place. There was little cohesion to anything we did.

Out there on the sawdust-covered dance floor were 25 Saintsations—New Orleans Saints version of cheerleaders. With not many guys left to square-dance with, and everyone else shy and not wanting to look like idiots, a coach ordered myself and 15 other redshirt guys get onto the dance floor.

We ended up having a great time.

The girls loved us. They told us we were much cooler than the Bama guys who had been there the night before. One of the dancers took a liking to me. Let’s call her Sarah. She had pencil-straight black hair, big brown eyes, a great figure and a southern twang. The dancers wore their tiny gold and black uniforms. We hoedowned for 45 minutes and then she sat at a table with me where we talked about life and football. She was probably 24. I was a bit terrified and also pretty happy about the situation. She kissed me lightly on the lips as we were leaving and told me she would see me again tomorrow night. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

Across the street from our hotel was a Popeye’s restaurant. Anyone who knows anything, knows Popeye’s is in a class by itself when it comes to franchise fried chicken. Every night, most of us would load up with buckets of chicken for a late night snack.

After the night’s partying and chicken run, a bunch of players packed into an elevator, at least 10 buckets between us. When the door opened for the 7th floor, we were immediately bombarded with fried chicken. A food fight.

The La Meridian was built with the elevators and stairs in the middle with a ring of rooms around. We all emptied out (even though this wasn’t my floor) and had a wild fried chicken fight. It was terrible and fun and exceedingly immature. The hotel hated us. We were out of control. I don’t think I’ll ever get to see someone almost get knocked out by a chicken leg again. The walls were smeared with grease and fat. Floors covered in meat.

Another stupid thing I think THE ENTIRE TEAM DID to the hotel, was yank out the wires in the cable box and reattach them in such a way that ALL PAY-PER-VIEW was now free, including porn. It was a surprisingly simple thing to do. No maids ever came close to cleaning our room after the first day. The only thing they’d do was drop towels outside the door and take garbage if we left it. It was a disgusting disaster in the room with white styrofoam to-go containers and empty fried chicken buckets stacked in the corner.

Third day of practice we were back outside. The weather was dreary and it drizzled nonstop. While the team was having fun in New Orleans, we were not having fun at practice, especially when outside. The focus was not on the game, but all the other activities…and girls. There were girls everywhere. The hotel lobby was filled with girls looking to hang out with UM players. At the end of practice on the field, Erickson told us a curfew of 1am was now in effect. Anyone who missed it, would be sent home, no questions asked. Bed checks would begin at 115am to make sure everyone was home and there weren’t any ‘guests’ in the rooms.

Football felt like an after thought. We only practiced for 2.5 hours a day. We weren’t working out or even running very much after practice. Maybe some guys were watching film in one of the conference rooms in preparation, but overall it didn’t feel like we had a huge game to play in a few days.

That night we had another catered dinner at some venue. Sarah the Saintsation showed up in street clothes…to see me (I never found out how she figured out where to find the team). Guys wondered what I had goin’ on to attract this very hot cheerleader. I still wonder. Maybe she was attracted to my aloofness? My accidental wit? She asked where we were going after the event and offered to drive me and three of my teammates there.

At the bar, we ran into a few dozen Bama fans. They were loud, ignorant, and diehard. One of them tried to start a fight with us.

When it comes to fanbase, Miami is far behind many of the big name teams. Since UM is a private school of less than 15,000, it lacks the 300,000+ alumni of schools like FSU, Michigan, or OSU. UM fans were outnumbered 8-1. Our fans ended up taking over three connected bars towards the east end of Bourbon, but soon Bama fans, who were showing up by the busload every hour, took them over too. It was past 1130pm and I told Sara I wanted to go home. She offered to drive me.

Sitting in her car outside the hotel, we talked and listened to music. Then, she asked if she could come upstairs with me. WHAT! When I regained my composure, I managed to say ‘yes’ and suddenly I’m walking through the La Meridian lobby holding hands with a professional cheerleader going up to my room, which was certainly empty since I had just left my two roommates at the bar, and there was no way they were coming home early.

The room was a mess, but she didn’t care. Sarah was a very mellow, agreeable person. We sat on the bed and talked more. Now, as you know already, I had no moves back then unless a girl held up a traffic light showing green while waving landing flags. With Sarah, the flags were flapping and the light bright green, she even turned the lights off, and I was going to make a move…but at the last second I balked and eneded up just petting her perfect straight hair. Most guys dream of just getting the attention of a pretty, southern, professional cheerleader, but to have her in your hotel room in the dark? Laying on your bed? It’s the stuff of fantasy.

After five minutes of sitting there in mostly awkward silence with me petting her head, Sarah stood, said she would be back soon, and left.

I said ok, Take it easy.

She didn’t come back.

The next day I overheard guys talking how this walk-on named Joe had slept with this incredibly hot cheerleader named Sarah. I’d seen her and him talking at the bar the night before, but only when I wasn’t paying attention to her did she talk to other guys. I guess she had his room number. I was her first choice, he was her second. So it goes. (You might be glad to know a year later I met an FSU cheerleader and we shared a very nice evening together and I didn’t balk at the moment of truth.)

Our last full team practice was in the Superdome. It was also team photography day. In our lockers were the shiny orange pants and white jersey we’d be wearing for the game, and yes, to my everlasting delight, my last name was finally on the jersey (but, as Guido put it regarding the jerseys they gave us walk-ons: Looks like these assholes just went down to All-Sports and pulled these off the rack! And sold our official game jerseys!).

It was true. Our walk-on jerseys were cheap copies of the ones worn by scholarship players and the several veteran walk-ons who had been with the team a few years. Apparently, a walk-on didn’t get perks like a real jersey until they’d been on the team three years, which I kinda understood, but also thought was bullshit. Bottom line: for the bowl game we should’ve gotten real jerseys.

Not having my name on my jersey all season wasn’t some coaching directive from up top. This was all done by the equipment guys. Again, in some ways I understand their reasoning, in others I will always see them as petty little chumps. They were very low men on the totem pole and they tried to make walk-ons below them. I’d be very surprised if any of those guys had ever played in a football game above 5th grade if at all. In no way am I saying equipment guys aren’t important, and they did a great job at UM, and these guys had been there for years while I was a new flash in the pan, but they didn’t have to be such petty assholes. That’s my point. You’d try to be nice to them, and it was like us players were inmates, and the equipment guys, behind their fence, were prisoners too, but the prisoners who ran the commissary. Little chumps with no authority in the real world, but when behind that gate they had power. They could make your life hell or smooth.

The good news was at least I wouldn’t be the only guy without a nameplate. That was a big victory in itself. Another good thing: I wouldn’t be sharing my No. 70 with anyone else.

Professional photographers took thousands of pictures, none of which I have ever seen. Our team picture, taken outside on the steps of the Superdome, took almost an hour to set up.

Finally we suited up and got to the last practice. I flat-out loved being in that cavern. Everything felt so under control. Sometimes the lights would dim and most the field would go dark. We’d have to wait while engineers got the lights working again. We’d just lay there on the soft, clean turf i semi-darkness watching the ceiling several hundred feet above.

We finally had a good practice. I worked hard and I loved playing next to Kenny Holmes. He made me better. We’d do stunts and ‘games’ to fool the offensive linemen. On one stunt, I blew past the guard and was in the backfield unabated. I threw my arms up and batted down the pass with my forearm. From the elbow down I could hardly feel anything for an hour. Coach Erickson yelled that I was wasting everyone’s time (for the tenth time this season). He was very angry and agitated. Coach Kehoe kept telling me to go 110%, so I did. Maybe I should’ve kept my arms down, but it was an instinct. I think in Erickson’s head he was certain that we weren’t ready for the game. He knew something wasn’t right. I mean, if Kenny Holmes and I were pretty much unstoppable, Bama All-American linemen Curry and Copeland would be 20-times worse.

Moments after Erickson gave his last full team speech at the end of practice, one of the seniors named Mark Cesar, a round and formidable defensive tackle, said there’d be a team-only meeting at 4:30pm in one of the conference rooms. When I asked someone what the meeting was about, he laughed and said: It’s a talent show.

The entire team is stuffed into the 5th-floor conference room. All the first-year players, including walk-ons, are herded to a little stage at one end. Chairs are stacked and pushed away. A narrow path forms through the guys in front of the stage. Caesar, acting as MC, tells us what is happening.

This is a bowl tradition at Miami. All the new guys have to sing a song on the stage. If they sucked, which they certainly would, they’d get booed off and have to run through a gauntlet where they’d get pummeled. The thing was, everyone was going to get booed no matter what and have to run the gauntlet. You could go on stage by yourself or with two others.

The only song I could think of the words to in the moment, was, oddly enough, Tears Of A Clown by Smokey Robinson. In my head I sang it over and over as the first two guys got booed and sent for their beatdown.

When I say that the punches, forearm hits to the head, and body blocks were brutal and 100% full speed, I mean it. Those first guys got hurt. One got clocked in the head real bad. Their shirts were ripped. The room was so packed, Guido and I had to stand on chairs against the wall giving us a perfect view down into the mayhem. Another group went and suffered the fate of the gauntlet. I watched as everyone lining the path tried to get a shot in. Knuckle punches, knees to the thigh, it was brutal.

Two more groups went…same result, but when the last guy of that group went through, Rohan Marley stepped out and flat out decked him. The redshirt freshman was a small guy. He slowly tried to get up while Rohan gloated over him. Mark Caesar confronted Rohan, telling him that he’d gone too far and he better calm the fuck down.

The guys who had been through the gauntlet congregated at the back of the room, licking their wounds. Next up a group of three hit the stage. I decided I would go next, alone. I’d run with my head down, hands covering head, and deal out punishment if anyone stepped in for a cheap-shot.

Again, fate was on my side.

When the first guy of the threesome ran the gauntlet, he was blindsided by Marley.

Mark Cesar charged in.

He pushed Rohan. Rohan went crazy and attacked Cesar. Cesar, bigger and stronger, body-slammed Rohan to the ground. All Rohan’s linebacker buddies went to defend him as the defensive linemen went to defend Cesar. Instantly it was a full on brawl. Mark Cesar threw a chair so hard and fast at Rohan it looked comical. Rohan bushed off the attack and threw punches. Guido, who was filming the entire event, and I had the perfect view from atop the chairs. This wasn’t our fight. The best we could do was stay out of it. I wondered if someone was going to get thrown out a window. Chairs bounced off the walls near our heads. Real punches and kicks. A total scrum. Everyone was yelling…then the entire coaching staff along with team security charged into the room. It took ten minutes to get the situation under control.

This event, on December 30th, two days before the National Championship game, made me realize that the Miami Hurricanes were in trouble. There was no way the choirboys over at Bama were brawling like this. They were saving it for the game. Our team was all over the place emotionally and mentally. We were not ready to play in such a big game. No way.

That night I put on my tweed sport coat as the team, staff, and top-tier boosters boarded busses for a joint banquet with Alabama. There were over 800 people in the hall as Bama had brought their boosters and staff too. Every guy on Alabama wore the same tweed jacket, white shirt, and maroon tie. As for the UM formal uniform? Some guys wore ripped t-shirts while only 20 of us looked like we’d put on a blazer once in our lives. The majority looked like they’d just rolled out of bed. A small percentage looked like orphans. This was an embarrassment. I don’t blame the players for not having the money to wear something decent. This embarrassment fell on head coach Erickson for not instituting some kind of discipline in his team (but again, this reckless, unorganized way had worked for many years. This was the Hurricanes, albeit with a different coach, who in 1986 wore camouflage all week when they played Penn State in the National Championship…and lost).

Like most other teams in those days (and currently almost EVERY big time college team provides a formal uniform) our head coach should’ve insisted the university pony up some cash and get these guys something decent to wear. This might sound like a small thing to you, and I’m not going to lecture here, but college is a time to evolve beyond being a teenager. Some people I’ve talked to in the past about this claim that maybe it was a cultural thing; tuff inner-city kids not wanting to let go of the Hood and their hard-won individualism. Who knows, but there’s nothing soft about looking dapper instead of like a lazy 14-year-old.

Look good in whatever way satisfies your cultural upbringing, have some class and self-respect. A cohesive team that is disciplined off the field and on, will win. So far UM had gotten by on talent, luck, and stubborn will that would not let us lose. As the Navy SEALs say: We found an excuse to win.

But to beat Bama, we’d need more than an ‘excuse’, we’d need to come together like never before. Instead, we were coming apart.

Like every night, half the team was gone the second they were allowed to. However, not one player from Alabama had left when the MC of the event called for a dance-off. We had five guys, they had five guys. Alabama won because they had more people clapping and hollering when the MC asked the crowd to decide who wins. I got really drunk that night and almost missed curfew. When I got back to the room, it was pandemonium. Girls were running through the halls, hiding in different rooms as coaches did room checks. I walked into our bathroom and found two pretty black girls giggling in the bathtub hiding behind the shower curtain, hidden there by one of the defensive starters. It was like a Benny Hill episode till 2am on our floor. I was drunk in bed, belligerently yelling about the lack of security. I threw things at the door when one of the low-totem pole coaches came to check the room for a third time. Everyone was rowdy.

After a late breakfast, the traveling team left for Mississippi, leaving behind about 45 of us with three grad-assistants and four strength coaches. Also, injured players had showed up the day before. Two of them missed curfew and were sent right back home in the morning. Those of us left behind would have the day to do whatever we wanted. It was also…New Years Eve.   

14

Our curfew for NYE was set for 12:30am. Just when everyone would be raging, us players would be hustling home. We were given a stern warning that the curfew would be zero-tolerance. One minute late and you didn’t get to go to the game which would be played the next day at 7:30pm, January 1st.

The French Quarter on NYE is like they all the people in Times Square were smashed into a place 1/8th the size and with narrow streets. Toss in the Big Game, and the atmosphere wasn’t crackling, it was one continuous exploding chain reaction. Myself and ten guys planted ourselves in Pat O’Brian’s early. We got the full VIP treatment (well, as VIP as that dank place will allow). I wouldn’t even look at one of those blue SkyLabs. Instead I drank some orange mixture in a green souvenir plastic grenade cup. By 10:30 the place was packed and crazy. I had my eye on my watch. There was no way I would miss curfew. Even the mere prospect made me shudder. At 11:15, I made the call that we should start making our way back to the hotel to be safe. By now my group had found a bunch of girls who enjoyed our free drinks and status. Pushing our way out of the bar was no small feat, and while holding hands in a line, we hit the street.

The crush of humanity was something I had never even come close to experiencing and something I pray to never experience again. Morphing and pulsing, the mass of bodies had a life of its own. Movement came in waves. After the crest, you couldn’t really do anything other than just stay right where you were. At times, the crush was so intense, I was picked up off my feet and suspended between a wall of bodies. I could not hold the hand of the girl in back of me or the player in front. The wave carried me south on St. Peter’s street away from Bourbon.

The police barricaded almost all the side streets. Only the ends of Bourbon and a few major streets bisecting it were open, and since O’Brian’s was only six blocks from Canal and the western end of Bourbon, there were no exit streets between me and my hotel. It was 11:35.

I started to panic a little. Six blocks from home, 800,000 people in my way. You do the math.

Suddenly, there was the very real possibility that I wouldn’t be able to make it back in time to the hotel. And the guys I got separated from? They’d be screwed too. Then I remembered something…the orange ‘get out of jail’ free card. Instead of trying to swim to Bourbon and somehow make it through the throngs in 55-minutes, I let the wave carry me to the police barricade. It took 15-minutes to travel about a hundred feet. I peeled myself out of the crowd, found an officer, and held out the card.

“I play for the Hurricanes and I need to get back to my hotel to make curfew, can you help me?”

Without a question the officer waved me through the barricade and told me to show the card to anyone who stopped me. Walking west on Royal Street and parallel to Bourbon was actually a nice and peaceful experience. I felt like I was ‘behind the scenes’ as I was all alone except for the occasional mounted patrol, person getting loaded into a paddy-wagon, or checkpoint where I just had to flash the card. The madness one block to my right, full of color and thunderous noise, was in stark contrast to the dark barren street I casually walked. I made it to Canal and stopped at where else but Popeye’s. With some homeless people and severely drunk kids, I spent NYE in the restaurant watching the Ball Drop on TV while eating some fried chicken and biscuits.

I stepped foot in the lobby eight minutes before curfew. Coach Rolle was out there checking names off a list. He yelled at me for almost missing curfew as I was the second to last guy to walk in. Everyone made it back in time. We had a late wake up, and the banquet hall where we ate breakfast felt terribly empty without the whole team there.

I spent the day laying around watching bowl games. None of us were playing so of course we were loose and relaxed. As 3pm got close, which was when we were to board the busses, a game atmosphere took over. We all got serious. The hotel was filled with UM fans and the lobby was all orange and white. The fans sent us off like the game rested on our shoulders. Must’ve been a thousand of them. The rowdy UM crowd outside the hotel sent us straight into gamemode. As football players, we were all use to that headspace. Focused. Feelin’ it. Ready to win.

As usual, there was a good 25-minutes between when we loaded the buses and actually left. Sitting there waiting to drive to the stadium, a shocking rumor made its way to us. John Routh, the man who played our mascot Sebastian The Ibis, the most famous mascot in college football the past 10 years, had been shot and killed on NYE…or he was shot and badly wounded…or shot and okay. No one knew for sure, but something bad happened. Remember, there weren’t any smartphones, tablets, email, laptops. This was all B.I. (Before Internet) with 1995 and beyond being A.I. (After Internet). We were in the darkness. Unless it was some global event, information trickled down.

The prospect of our beloved mascot being dead was a heavy load to contemplate. When we arrived at the stadium almost three hours before kickoff, still, no one could confirm Sebastian’s fate. The orange and white ibis costume sat in open duffle bags two lockers over from me awaiting the man to fill it.

All of us in the dim auxiliary lockerroom just sat there, dressed and waiting for the rest of the team to arrive. Our helmets had been polished and new decals were applied. Minutes after the traveling team showed up, John Routh walked into our locker room.

The story went like this: partying on Bourbon street, Routh was shot in the face by someone firing a celebratory round from the street below. The bullet grazed the left side of his face. A seven-inch streak went from his lower jaw to the top of his head. 1/300th a millimeter difference in trajectory and he’d be dead. Brown blood caked the bandages. He had spent all night in the hospital, but Routh suited up and got ready to work the next eight hours in that stifling costume.

Someone said: That is one blessed mutha fuckin nigga right there.

The team got suited up and we hit the field for pre-drills an hour before kickoff.

The Superdome had been transformed. Gone was that dark cavernous place. Replacing it a bright, bustling environment with painted end zones and corporate imagery everywhere, and people, lots of people. Last minute details were being taken care of and 80% of the stands had yet to be filled. The lights were blinding. This was truly the ‘Big Stage’.

Leaving the field I took notice that UM fans, already assured to be outnumbered, would be even more so than we originally thought. This was going to be a home game for Bama.

In the lockerroom, we heard the crowd roar grow by the minute. The walls and ceiling shook. The muffled rumble of people singing in unison rattled the room. Probably some Bama fight song, I thought. When Erickson gave his pre-game speech, I was in the hall and couldn’t hear a word he said. Then the whole team walked slowly two-by-two towards our grand entrance.

An avalanche of boooes hit us as we sprinted out onto the field. 40-seconds later a tsunami of cheers overcame us when The Crimson Tide came charging out of their tunnel. 90% of the stadium wore crimson, waving pompoms, and holding up homemade signs made with rolls of toilet paper and boxes of Tide detergent…Roll Tide, get it?

Even though we were in the lion’s den, the team wasn’t rattled or even phased. This wasn’t the first hostile territory they’d jumped into (but it was my first). We were behind enemy lines, there was no doubt. Our fans took up a sliver in the end zone with other Canes peppered throughout the stadium. I’d say there were 8000 UM fans in attendance.

Alabama’s offense was one dimensional: they ran the ball, and then they ran it some more, and then to finish you, they ran again. Their defense was ranked #1 in almost all categories. Our offense was up and down all season depending on how good our opponent was. Our defense was #2. As Bama took the field on offense for the first time, and I looked up on the big screen to see the names of their starters, I recognized someone. Holy shit fucking shit!

Derrick Lassic (now going by Lassic-Owens) from North Rockland, was Alabama’s starting TB as a 5th year senior. I couldn’t believe it. Loki was laughing.

I remember Guido loolking at me and asked whats wrong. Oh, nothing………

The first quarter started shaky, and it looked like Bama would score a TD first, but our defense held them to an FG. Then Bama held us to a FG. We traded fumbles and interceptions. Torretta was already having a bad game. He was off-target and under pressure. We had -15 rushing yards going into the 2nd Quarter. Yes, that is a ‘minus’. Bama was running well but hadn’t completed a pass. The score was 3-3.

To start the 2nd, Lassic reeled off a 35-yard run, putting Bama in striking range again. The speed of each play made an impact on me. This was fast football on a new level. Bama was disciplined, as I expected they’d be, and very hard-nosed, blue-collared. Though they had some All-Americans, I don’t think they had a ‘star’ on the team (while Miami was full of them).

Even though we held Bama to another FG, you felt The Tide starting to roll. Our defense was getting pushed around. The sideline had lost some swagger. In football, you can feel it when one team has brought its ‘A-Game’ and the other hasn’t. It’s a very obvious thing.

Our next offensive series was, well, offensive. I was used to this of course from my SHS days.

Just think, if I was beating our offensive line all week, imagine what the real #94 was doing. It was ugly. Torretta had no time. The crowd fed off of every big Bama play. Every time Torretta had to call a timeout due to confusion and noise, the stadium rocked harder. Geno threw a terrible interception and Bama ran it back to our 31. The Miami Hurricanes were in trouble.

Lassic already had 107 yards and Bama scored a walk-in TD making it 13-3.

UM hadn’t been down 10 points all season. We couldn’t convert on 3rd down (sure sign things aren’t going good). Our defense was getting run over. Team moral was cracking. Torretta again couldn’t do anything, and with the 2nd Quarter almost over, we struggled to cross mid-field but managed a FG as time ran out, making the score 13-6. The half disappeared into a puff of smoke. Was so fleeting.

We were only down by seven, which was a lot for Miami, but also nothing we couldn’t handle…and yet, the mood was muted. Guys were acting like they were pumped-up and ready to kickass, but it seemed like they were just going through the motions, acting like they thought they were supposed to act. In the lockerroom there was a lot of talk about how much better than Bama we were. All we had to do was start playing like it. We’d win. No problem. Going out for the 2nd Half, Rohan Marley jumped up and smashed a fist through a row of florescent lights above. A shower of glass and sparks rained down on me as I was right behind him. It was a move about as tuff as crushing a plastic cup.

On our first series (after stuffing Bama when they got the ball first to start the half) we had great field position. I saw the whole thing play out in my head. We would score a TD and own the second half. It would be a rout.

Instead…Torretta threw another INT that was returned inside our 30. Was just a terrible pass.

Geno was suffering from major Hiesmanitis. Derrick Lassic scored on a gritty three-yard run and The Tide were up 20-6. The crowd noise was deafening. The Bama band was so loud I couldn’t hear Guido trying to tell me something right next to me.

Okay, okay, everyone calm down, we got this.

The next drive began on our 25 with Torretta throwing an INT which the great Alabama DB George Teague ran back for an easy touchdown.

27-6 and the 3rd Quarter had only just begun. This was the most Miami had been down in five years.

We weren’t ready to give up, no, not yet.

Next series first play Torretta finally threw a strike to Lamar Thomas who sprinted down the sidelines for what appeared to be a 90-yard TD. In what would become a famous play that happened right in front of my eyes, George Teague chased down Thomas and easily took the ball from him. No one could believe it. How could that happen? A defensive offsides called the play back, but that was a sure and quick TD we desperately needed.    

We traded punts and then drove deep into Bama territory but failed to convert a 4th down. The 3rd Quarter ended. Alabama had 18-yards passing. We had 11-yards rushing and 4 turnovers which Bama scored 3 TDs off of.

Minutes into the 4th, our Kevin Williams (who would go on to be a great NFL player and win two Super Bowls with the Cowboys) ran back a punt for a TD. The score was now 27-13. Suddenly the sidelines came alive. Two touchdowns and we’d be tied. UM could score two TDs in minutes. Don’t panic was the message going around the bench area. We’re still in this!

Alabama got the ball and chewed up 8:50 on the clock with a grinding drive done completely on the ground. Derrick Lassic scored on an easy run and we were down 34-13 (he had 135-yards on the night and two TDs). Alabama started celebrating. With 6:25 left, Torretta kept laying eggs. He could barely complete a 10-yard pass. It was ugly and sad.

Final score: 34-13. Derrick Lassic was named MVP.

Leaving the field, Bama fans were cursing us out. Very classy. The lockerroom was silent. It was all over. In the hotel lobby fans congratulated us but they seemed even more miserable than us. I piled into an elevator with eight guys.

PLAYERS ONLY! growled Mark Cesar when other people tried to get in. One of them was a scrawny defensive back walk-on who came to barely half the practices all year. Cesar said he couldn’t come in. The walk-on said he was on the team.

YOU AIN’T A FUCKING PLAYER!

The kid wormed his way in anyway. When the doors shut, Cesar spun around and started strangling the walk-on. The kids face was bright red. He was in shock. I held back but two defensive linemen saved the kid’s life by prying Cesar away. That night we didn’t have curfew, but I don’t think anyone left their room.

15

When I got back home I laid low for the 10 days I’d be there before starting 2nd Semester. I’d talked a lot of smack before leaving for the Sugar Bowl, and now, defeated, I didn’t feel like hearing about it. Mostly, I was just happy the season was over.

Returning to Miami, the first thing I did was drive to Ricky’s and Ronnie’s. I’d called many times over break and hadn’t heard from either of them.

The house was locked up and no cars were in the drive. Ronnie was always home. Something was wrong.

It took a week to find out what happened: their father had entered the home over Christmas Break, broken down the door to the grow room, and with the help of a few friends, destroyed all the plants and equipment.

I was beside myself.

Ricky’s parents demanded he not talk to me, and as for Ronnie, as I said, never saw him again.

Unlike high school, college football never ends. By late January we were back to a five-day a week lifting and conditioning schedule. Had to be on the field by 3:30pm ready to run. For the first three weeks, I worked hard, even completing the dreaded 16 x 110-yard sprint death run. But as the workouts carried on, I missed more and more.

One day during team conditioning, Rohan Marley showed up and drove his brand new Kawasaki Ninja on the field. With him were three other bikers. Nobody had seen him for days. Word spread that he had won a big court case which meant he’d be included in the Marley Family Trust (while Rohan’s mother was not Rita Marley, he was the only child Bob had with another woman who would be included in the family trust and considered to be a legitimate son of The Reggae Prophet, but he had to fight a legal battle to get this right). To put it bluntly: Rohan was now rich, very rich. Also, Rohan was, how do I say this, not very fond of school? In fact, I’d never seen him on campus. Not once. I don’t think anyone had. As I understand it, Marley quit the team not soon after the motorcycle incident.

Then it was March and the first day of Spring football arrived. I was going through the motions. I didn’t care anymore. There was no excitement. Before Spring ball started, sometimes at night I’d go sneak onto the fields to mediate and just be alone. I’d think deeply about if I wanted to continue playing football. What were my goals? Should I focus on the long-snapping gig? The honest truth was I’d probably not see the field any other way. When a program gives a scholarship to someone, it’s an investment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That kid has to play. He may not start, but he has to see the field by playing special teams. Why put a walk-on in a special teams position (unless he’s really fast and you are low on manpower) that a scholarship player could do just as well? Maybe if given the chance I could become a wrecking ball on kickoff. But there were already 35 other wrecking balls. Maybe I would be content just being part of the team, take pride in that, become one of those very rare walk-ons who hang around for five years and gets on the field once on punt coverage in a blow-out.

Then there’s the injury debate. Should I continue to risk serious injury just to fill in on scout team? My right knee was now in constant pain. The pinched nerve in my neck wouldn’t go away.

For that first practice, sitting in my locker, instead of an orange practice jersey, was a blue one.

All the walk-ons were given blue jerseys. I’m sure this was done by the equipment staff as a slap in the face. It’s like, okay, don’t put my name on my jersey, don’t give me a mouthpiece or cup or good equipment, lose my laundry bag once a week so I have to search all over and almost be late to practice, but don’t do this. To this day, I’d have trouble not smacking each one of those equipment punks upside the head.

Out there on the field, separated like some unwanted cousins, were 14 of us walk-ons in blue jerseys. The only vivid memory of the practice, was during a drill the coaches called for some ‘blue jerseys’ to go against each other. I half-heartedly went through the drill. It was a live tackling drill. The one thing I loved about football my entire life…but I didn’t love it any more. I got blocked out of the play. I didn’t even bother trying to go again. That was a sign.

At the end of practice, Erickson said: Let’s get these guys out of the blue jerseys.

That meant a lot to me, but it didn’t matter, my mind was made up.

I left all my stuff in my locker (even the shoulder pads which I owned) and didn’t look back. I didn’t tell anyone that I was done. I just faded away. Gone. A scaolarship player could never do that. When you are on a fullride you sign a contract. It’s binding. Back then to get out of a scholarship and transfer was almost unheard of. The team in a sense owned you. If you were injured you rehabbed and got back on the field.

But I could just…walk away.

I was done…playing football…for good. (Three months later I had knee surgery to end the seething pain in my patellar tendon, which the doctor told me would’ve kept me on the sidelines for the season).

Relief was the biggest emotion. The game had been such a major part of my life for so long, to suddenly be free of it, the feeling was encompassing. I didn’t know how I would tell my mother or friends back home, but I would never call it ‘quitting’. I didn’t ‘quit’ the football team.

No, I’d never quit football. I simply…stopped playing because I was done. The circle was complete. The journey over. I felt victorious. I’d climbed to the top and stayed around long enough to enjoy the view.

And just what did I see up there?

Life and football, it’s all woven together. The drama can’t be separated. Just a game? Do we say that about life? Just a life?

No.

What we do matters in the great and crazy tale that is our individual story. Does this mean nothing is small and everything is big? Maybe. Or maybe it’s about scale. Playing at Dean Field with the SHS Raiders meant everything to me and my teammates. Sure, there weren’t thousands of people there, but it was our prefect and dramatic little world. Real life. Real.

Would the Canes have reached that Alabama game without me? Almost 100% assured, but you never know, for if that Syracuse NoseGuard hadn’t been shut down by our offensive line due to that great week of practice I had, maybe he sacks Torretta and the Canes lose that very close game…

About the scale of things.

To me, wearing that #94 jersey for the Sugar Bowl meant the world. No one else cared. But that doesn’t matter. It’s about our own life, our own story, our own drama. For all we know, every second is a miracle of time and space.

17

The last time I played organized football of any kind was the day after Thanksgiving awhile ago. It was a building tradition for alumni of SHS to meet up on Dean Field and play a very rough tackle football game. It was the first time I’d stepped foot onto that field in many years. Was a typical late Autumn day: damp, drizzling, cool. Guys of all ages showed up. This was my first year playing in the game. The night before had been full of partying and I stayed the night at a friends house. This game had become notorious over the years for people getting hurt. Guys who played for years with no injuries ended up with torn ligaments, broken bones, concussions. Being in football-shape can’t be faked.

A backhand to the groin, sprained ankle, fat lip, lump on my head from banging craniums with some idiot who thought we were wearing helmets, and soreness which lasted 10 days, made me vow I’d never play football again without being in shape and wearing a jockstrap.

Over the years I’ve considered joining a ‘minor league’ football team. Florida has loads of them. Every time, though, I’ve balked. It really comes down to just wanting to hit something, so recently I decided to buy a tackling dummy and attack it in my backyard when I’m feeling football aggression.

That works for me.

Maybe that’s what it all comes down to, life I mean. It’s about making it work for us. What do I do for a living? I live. What is life? An evolutionary, user-created, optimal-experience machine. It’s about living the life you want to live while not being an asshole. About being a nice person while not being a pushover. Being loved and also a little feared. About going forward into this world—living how you want to live—and watching how this mad, beautiful reality rewards that courage.

Be full of cunning, humor, joy, and thoughtfulness. Be kind, be a kind warrior. Be nice to animals. Do something with the gifts you’ve been given. Remember, our minds are mini versions of the universe, and realize that great aid to humanity can be given simply by just accepting who and what we are. Learn. Love. Live. Evolve.

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Raider For Life!

Go Canes!

Thanks for reading.