Post by FLHoya on Dec 13, 2009 21:14:28 GMT -5
Unsurprisingly, I'm a huge fan of the latest installment of ESPN's 30 for 30 series, "The U" by director Billy Corben about the Miami Hurricanes college football dynasty between 1983-1991. I grew up in South Florida and I've been a Canes fan my entire life. I was too young to experience/remember in person anything before the Dennis Erickson years, although I've seen almost every significant game from 1983-1988 on ESPN Classic or otherwise. I don't root for a single pro team from Miami and never have--to me, the Miami program IS South Florida for better or worse, and I embraced that wholeheartedly.
So this was obviously in my wheelhouse. I'm curious though what others thought of the film.
(AND...for the Georgetown angle skip to the bottom if you don't want to read my thoughts on the film)
I rented Billy Corben's most notable documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" and watched it a couple days ago. It deals with the rise of the cocaine epidemic and drug wars in late 1970s/early 1980s Miami. Highly recommended if you're into the subject matter. Part of the reason I wanted to see it though was because whenever I see a doc/TV show about some defined period in time, I want to know everything about that period...all the context. It's fascinating to sort of parallel the very nasty state of the drug trade and crime in early 80s Miami with, at the same time, this interesting sports story unfolding at the Orange Bowl.
There are several very obvious storytelling parallels (to say nothing of stylistic parallels, since it's the same director) between Cocaine Cowboys and The U:
--They both open with archival footage of sleepy old 1950/60s Miami, a backwater full of old people with little going for it culturally. But THEN they focus in on negative events--the 1979 Dadeland Mall shootings and the Mariel boatlift in CC and the early 1980s Liberty City/Overtown riots in The U--to serve as the catalyst for a new tumultuous era, and the story goes from there.
--Both are incredibly personality driven. The core interview subjects are unbelievably compelling--CC has a drug plane pilot, distributor, and hit man as its core subjects, while The U focuses on Blades, Bratton, Irvin (whatever you think of them, they are certainly larger than life personalities) and coaches Schnellenberger, Johnson, and Erickson among others. The standard interview/footage doc format isn't always interesting unless the people involved are compelling, and they are here IMO.
--Playing up just how brazen everyone was...whether it's drug runners blatantly flouting law enforcement, kingpins and their conspicuous consumption of luxury goods to the max, or assassins performing hits in broad daylight...or the excessive celebration of UM players, taunting and brawling with opponents (how many brawls are in this film?!?!?), and the litany of petty crimes attributed to players (one player claims to have seen teammates with ski masks/hoods on headed out to, ahem, acquire a car stereo).
--The combination of authority--FBI and DEA stepping up their game and disrupting networks, Miami's AD and President calling Jimmy Johnson (after the "fatigues game" in 1986) and then Dennis Erickson (after the infamous 1990 Cotton Bowl) to the carpet and demanding the team clean up their act--and then brazenness/recklessness--drug kingpin rivals eventually going after each other or going too far with killings, Miami losing the 1990 opener to BYU and getting called out after the Cotton Bowl, THEN having the "pay for play" and Pell Grant scandals come out--finally sealing their decline.
--The same question arises in the final act of both films: was it worth it? There's a great interview with a local Miami reporter from the 1980s as her and other subjects are pointing out that all the drug money coming into Miami and the demand for housing, etc. basically BUILT the modern Miami city skyline through a huge 1980s construction boom. Same deal with The U--applications went up, money came pouring into the school and buildings shot up on campus, and the school had a recognizable identity. But was it "blood money" to use an inartful term? I got the sense there was a lot more remorse in CC than The U.
Other things I enjoyed about the film:
1. Corben nailed the opening act, which talks about how Howard Schnellenberger's greatest accomplishment was being one of the first to recruit in the inner city of Miami even as a funky looking white dude with a pipe, and how UM made the "State of Miami" their exclusive recruiting ground in the 1980s and built the program with local talent...one of the reasons South Florida so closely identifies with the Hurricanes. Also nailed the importance of youth/HS football to the culture in South Florida.
2. All of the random over the top stories--UM players calling Brian Bosworth's hotel room the night before a game (I've heard that one many times), a player being restrained b/c he wanted to punch FSU's horse, everything involving Randal Hill, the Ibis being arrested (they didn't tell the story but showed a picture of it...he was fixing to take a fire extinguisher to the FSU flaming spear in Tallahassee), the coin toss before the Oklahoma game in Miami (why they don't mic coin tosses in college aside from the official any more), how the NCAA's new guideline video on excessive celebration was essentially a Miami highlight film, and the entire Cotton Bowl.
3. That Luther Campbell was prominently involved. Dan LeBatard pointed out in Bill Simmons' podcast that the idea of having a prominent rapper on the sideline or so closely associated with a program was unheard of at the time, but seems passe now. ESPECIALLY such a controversial figure at the time as Mr. "Me So Horny".
4. Luther Campbell's s*it-eating grin when he (completely unconvincingly) denied any knowledge of the "pay for play" scandal.
5. The fact that this film is going to make 95% of college football fans remember just how much they despised Hurricanes football and everything it stood for back then.
Things I didn't like:
1. UM blocked Corben from interviewing Randy Shannon, who played in the 1980s and now coaches the Canes. Shannon would have been a fascinating subject because he was from inner city Miami and had just an unbelievably rough life growing up before he came to UM--he's the poster child for the kind of local kid Miami was taking and embracing back then.
But maybe more unbelievable--it comes out late in the film, according to LeBatard, that Randy Shannon was the guy holding/distributing the hit money in the pay for play arrangement!
2. Last act dealing with UM's fall from grace was too short--went straight from 1991 Natl Title too...wellllllll, there was this pay for play thing, oh by the way they were defrauding the crap out of Pell Grants and went on probation, yada yada yada cure clips of UM getting wrecked in the mid-1990s in about 5 mins tops.
They NEVER mentioned a hugely important moment in the downfall--the 1992 Sugar Bowl loss to Alabama, which was the first time in that dynasty that in a big game UM had gotten flat out destroyed...and it comes with the image of Lamar Thomas getting stripped from behind on a long pass play.
Corben overplayed how UM Prez telling the team to clean up its act affected things. Only hinted at how carelessness/over-confidence (see BYU loss) started to creep in, which Alabama game would have shown.
3. The "National Champs to National Chumps" pot-shot at Butch Davis. That was based on a banner that was hung in the Orange Bowl one year when UM was mediocre/bad, but the film implies Davis was basically the evil dean/UM prez in disguise and wrecked the dynasty...when it reality IMO Dennis Erickson's lack of control (film calls him a substitute teacher, which is pretty accurate) and the loss of scholarships b/c of UM's probation from Pell Grant scandal set the school back all those years. Davis eventually rebuilt the thing from the depths and created a National Title team for substitute teacher #2 Larry Coker.
4. Should have come back to the State of Miami thing and pointed out how other schools eventually broke through and now the talent goes all over CFB. Alluded to it a little when talking about FSU.
I'll say this--I loved those Miami teams from the 80s/90s and will unabashedly say I loved that they were hated and unquestionably immoral to the max. I fully expect most CFB fans thought they were evil and a bunch of thugs and will only be reminded of this with the film (no love on Villanova boards for The U) Sometimes you just want to root for the Evil Empire. There wasn''t a program like that before and there hasn't been since...nor will there ever be again, CFB is just too corporate and recruiting too diverse. You know who are the "hated" teams/players are now? It's Duke basketball, Notre Dame football and it's not Michael Irvin or Jerome Brown, it's Tim Tebow and Tyler Hansbrough...they're hated BECAUSE THEY'RE SO NICE or fawned over by media. Just weird.
As for the GU basketball angle...
Here's my question: at the exact same time as Miami was rising to prominence in football, so was Georgetown in basketball. Obviously there are differences--Miami's outlaw image was far more grounded in, ya know, actual breaking of laws for one thing--but both programs essentially created a new identity you didn't see before in their sports. It was intimidating, it was mean, it was larger than life, it was...well, African American. GU players obviously took a fair amount of abuse from fans, and were the "hated" Evil Empire team alongside Miami football for the same era.
Does this affect how GU basketball fans from the 1980s view Miami? Or were they different enough (or Miami over the top enough) that it was apples and oranges?
So this was obviously in my wheelhouse. I'm curious though what others thought of the film.
(AND...for the Georgetown angle skip to the bottom if you don't want to read my thoughts on the film)
I rented Billy Corben's most notable documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" and watched it a couple days ago. It deals with the rise of the cocaine epidemic and drug wars in late 1970s/early 1980s Miami. Highly recommended if you're into the subject matter. Part of the reason I wanted to see it though was because whenever I see a doc/TV show about some defined period in time, I want to know everything about that period...all the context. It's fascinating to sort of parallel the very nasty state of the drug trade and crime in early 80s Miami with, at the same time, this interesting sports story unfolding at the Orange Bowl.
There are several very obvious storytelling parallels (to say nothing of stylistic parallels, since it's the same director) between Cocaine Cowboys and The U:
--They both open with archival footage of sleepy old 1950/60s Miami, a backwater full of old people with little going for it culturally. But THEN they focus in on negative events--the 1979 Dadeland Mall shootings and the Mariel boatlift in CC and the early 1980s Liberty City/Overtown riots in The U--to serve as the catalyst for a new tumultuous era, and the story goes from there.
--Both are incredibly personality driven. The core interview subjects are unbelievably compelling--CC has a drug plane pilot, distributor, and hit man as its core subjects, while The U focuses on Blades, Bratton, Irvin (whatever you think of them, they are certainly larger than life personalities) and coaches Schnellenberger, Johnson, and Erickson among others. The standard interview/footage doc format isn't always interesting unless the people involved are compelling, and they are here IMO.
--Playing up just how brazen everyone was...whether it's drug runners blatantly flouting law enforcement, kingpins and their conspicuous consumption of luxury goods to the max, or assassins performing hits in broad daylight...or the excessive celebration of UM players, taunting and brawling with opponents (how many brawls are in this film?!?!?), and the litany of petty crimes attributed to players (one player claims to have seen teammates with ski masks/hoods on headed out to, ahem, acquire a car stereo).
--The combination of authority--FBI and DEA stepping up their game and disrupting networks, Miami's AD and President calling Jimmy Johnson (after the "fatigues game" in 1986) and then Dennis Erickson (after the infamous 1990 Cotton Bowl) to the carpet and demanding the team clean up their act--and then brazenness/recklessness--drug kingpin rivals eventually going after each other or going too far with killings, Miami losing the 1990 opener to BYU and getting called out after the Cotton Bowl, THEN having the "pay for play" and Pell Grant scandals come out--finally sealing their decline.
--The same question arises in the final act of both films: was it worth it? There's a great interview with a local Miami reporter from the 1980s as her and other subjects are pointing out that all the drug money coming into Miami and the demand for housing, etc. basically BUILT the modern Miami city skyline through a huge 1980s construction boom. Same deal with The U--applications went up, money came pouring into the school and buildings shot up on campus, and the school had a recognizable identity. But was it "blood money" to use an inartful term? I got the sense there was a lot more remorse in CC than The U.
Other things I enjoyed about the film:
1. Corben nailed the opening act, which talks about how Howard Schnellenberger's greatest accomplishment was being one of the first to recruit in the inner city of Miami even as a funky looking white dude with a pipe, and how UM made the "State of Miami" their exclusive recruiting ground in the 1980s and built the program with local talent...one of the reasons South Florida so closely identifies with the Hurricanes. Also nailed the importance of youth/HS football to the culture in South Florida.
2. All of the random over the top stories--UM players calling Brian Bosworth's hotel room the night before a game (I've heard that one many times), a player being restrained b/c he wanted to punch FSU's horse, everything involving Randal Hill, the Ibis being arrested (they didn't tell the story but showed a picture of it...he was fixing to take a fire extinguisher to the FSU flaming spear in Tallahassee), the coin toss before the Oklahoma game in Miami (why they don't mic coin tosses in college aside from the official any more), how the NCAA's new guideline video on excessive celebration was essentially a Miami highlight film, and the entire Cotton Bowl.
3. That Luther Campbell was prominently involved. Dan LeBatard pointed out in Bill Simmons' podcast that the idea of having a prominent rapper on the sideline or so closely associated with a program was unheard of at the time, but seems passe now. ESPECIALLY such a controversial figure at the time as Mr. "Me So Horny".
4. Luther Campbell's s*it-eating grin when he (completely unconvincingly) denied any knowledge of the "pay for play" scandal.
5. The fact that this film is going to make 95% of college football fans remember just how much they despised Hurricanes football and everything it stood for back then.
Things I didn't like:
1. UM blocked Corben from interviewing Randy Shannon, who played in the 1980s and now coaches the Canes. Shannon would have been a fascinating subject because he was from inner city Miami and had just an unbelievably rough life growing up before he came to UM--he's the poster child for the kind of local kid Miami was taking and embracing back then.
But maybe more unbelievable--it comes out late in the film, according to LeBatard, that Randy Shannon was the guy holding/distributing the hit money in the pay for play arrangement!
2. Last act dealing with UM's fall from grace was too short--went straight from 1991 Natl Title too...wellllllll, there was this pay for play thing, oh by the way they were defrauding the crap out of Pell Grants and went on probation, yada yada yada cure clips of UM getting wrecked in the mid-1990s in about 5 mins tops.
They NEVER mentioned a hugely important moment in the downfall--the 1992 Sugar Bowl loss to Alabama, which was the first time in that dynasty that in a big game UM had gotten flat out destroyed...and it comes with the image of Lamar Thomas getting stripped from behind on a long pass play.
Corben overplayed how UM Prez telling the team to clean up its act affected things. Only hinted at how carelessness/over-confidence (see BYU loss) started to creep in, which Alabama game would have shown.
3. The "National Champs to National Chumps" pot-shot at Butch Davis. That was based on a banner that was hung in the Orange Bowl one year when UM was mediocre/bad, but the film implies Davis was basically the evil dean/UM prez in disguise and wrecked the dynasty...when it reality IMO Dennis Erickson's lack of control (film calls him a substitute teacher, which is pretty accurate) and the loss of scholarships b/c of UM's probation from Pell Grant scandal set the school back all those years. Davis eventually rebuilt the thing from the depths and created a National Title team for substitute teacher #2 Larry Coker.
4. Should have come back to the State of Miami thing and pointed out how other schools eventually broke through and now the talent goes all over CFB. Alluded to it a little when talking about FSU.
I'll say this--I loved those Miami teams from the 80s/90s and will unabashedly say I loved that they were hated and unquestionably immoral to the max. I fully expect most CFB fans thought they were evil and a bunch of thugs and will only be reminded of this with the film (no love on Villanova boards for The U) Sometimes you just want to root for the Evil Empire. There wasn''t a program like that before and there hasn't been since...nor will there ever be again, CFB is just too corporate and recruiting too diverse. You know who are the "hated" teams/players are now? It's Duke basketball, Notre Dame football and it's not Michael Irvin or Jerome Brown, it's Tim Tebow and Tyler Hansbrough...they're hated BECAUSE THEY'RE SO NICE or fawned over by media. Just weird.
As for the GU basketball angle...
Here's my question: at the exact same time as Miami was rising to prominence in football, so was Georgetown in basketball. Obviously there are differences--Miami's outlaw image was far more grounded in, ya know, actual breaking of laws for one thing--but both programs essentially created a new identity you didn't see before in their sports. It was intimidating, it was mean, it was larger than life, it was...well, African American. GU players obviously took a fair amount of abuse from fans, and were the "hated" Evil Empire team alongside Miami football for the same era.
Does this affect how GU basketball fans from the 1980s view Miami? Or were they different enough (or Miami over the top enough) that it was apples and oranges?
