Dan Le Batard: NFL Canes never forget their first love

Did you see what they did? The very moment that the world's largest football party officially began in South Florida for the week? Here they were, at the Pro Bowl, the NFL all-star game, about to start player introductions in a sold-out stadium. This was a celebration. Of football. Of accomplishment. Of themselves. And, one by one, as they emerged from the tunnel to have the moment to themselves, to hear their family names echo at the top of their workplace before a national audience, the 11 University of Miami Hurricanes in the game -- 11! -- did something a bit unusual.

They didn't point to the emblem of their NFL employer on a patch, the way Oakland Raiders cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha did. They didn't raise a thumb and jack-hammer it toward the me-me-me name on the back of their jersey, the way Jacksonville running back Maurice Jones-Drew does after touchdowns. No, one by one, as they were introduced and guaranteed all the cameras in the place for perhaps the only time, the Hurricanes put their hands in front of their bodies, thumbs together, and formed a ``U'' to genuflect before their alma mater. Rather literally, they placed their school ahead of themselves.

ROLL CALL
This symbol, as much as football itself, is what connects them, hands together, thumbs together, with the kind of bond unlike any in this sport. And here's one reason it was interesting: Ray Lewis has accomplished some huge things in football. Defensive Player Of The Year, twice. Pro Bowler, 11 times. He has been Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl. He is, it can be argued, the best middle linebacker ever. And he is also very good at celebrating himself, his joyful entrances before games the most famous and emotional in the sport. And here he was, somehow feeling the need to remind everyone where he went to school a full 15 years after attending it.

Why?

Allow Jimmy Johnson to explain.

``Happiest time of my life,'' he says.

Tommy Tuberville likes to tell the story of driving Johnson to the Miami airport the day Johnson would fly off to become a legend with the Dallas Cowboys. Tuberville was a graduate assistant at UM then, and Johnson was in the back seat, having just accepted maybe the most glamorous job in pro football. As they made their way over I-95 to leave Miami, sun sparkling on the water, Johnson suddenly stopped talking and began taking in all he was leaving. And when Tuberville readjusted his rearview mirror, he noticed the car had gone so quiet because his hardened boss was weeping.

``Such a special, special time,'' Johnson said Monday night.

He was the master of ceremonies at a banquet to celebrate UM's greatness and raise money for a program that doesn't have enough of it. It was at the billion-dollar Fontainebleau hotel, and there was something glowing in the middle of the big ballroom like the contents of that briefcase in Pulp Fiction. There, amid the prime rib carving stations and Kobe beef sliders and a suit-wearing Sebastian the Ibis, five championship rings were encased in glass. That little treasure chest contained the single greatest thing we have in South Florida sports, now or ever, and Edgerrin James and Michael Irvin and Andre Johnson and Steve Walsh and Russell Maryland and Greg Olsen and Antrel Rolle and Santana Moss and Ed Reed and Jon Beason and Clinton Portis and Bennie Blades milled around it misty with nostalgia.

It is quite uncommon, this kind of assembly of talent in one place that isn't a football field -- this kind of talent, period, actually -- but it isn't uncommon in these parts at all. It was like a 20-year high school reunion just for champions, a forever fraternity, that glowing box of jewelry the soul at the center of a big local football celebration that was at the center of our biggest national one. The ripples from inside that box can be felt throughout America's most popular sport. It isn't just that a Hurricane has scored a touchdown every NFL week since 2002 -- a ridiculous record of 122 consecutive weeks. It's that South Florida pulsates in this sport like no other area in the country, our ravaged and hungry streets a pipeline of escape that travels straight from our poverty and violence to the kind of football violence that produces NFL wealth.

Consider this: According to the most recent study done by USA Football, Miami has more players in the NFL (34) than any city anywhere. The only other city even in the 20s is Houston. That's not Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach or Belle Glade or Immokalee. That doesn't include Dillard High School. No school in the country had more NFLers than Fort Lauderdale Dillard's six in 2008. Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas are big cities. None of them has produced as many current NFL players as even Fort Lauderdale's 12.

``So many great players made it easy by paving the way,'' Beason said.

Look around this ballroom. Irvin, Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas. Moss, Carol City High. James, Immokalee High. Rolle, South Dade. Johnson, Miami Senior. Beason, Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna. Darrin Smith, Miami Norland. Blades, Sunrise Piper. McGahee, Miami Central. Gore, Coral Gables. They learn in our high schools, grow into men at our college and then graduate to unleash unholy hell upon the pros once they leave home. There is so much pride in that, for them and for us, and they always seem to return here to share it.

Seeing Irvin and Blades hug and smile and whisper to each other, you see brothers bonded the way only shared, shaping experiences can bond two men. If you think about it, that UM huddle never really breaks. Sometimes you will see it on the sidelines of important UM games. Sometimes it'll watch ``The U'' documentary -- the most-watched documentary in the history of ESPN -- at a historic theater in Overtown. Sometimes it gathers around Sean Taylor's casket. Sometimes it will be at the strip club. And sometimes it will be around that glass case on nights like Monday.

``U, take a bow,'' radio voice Don Bailey Jr. said while introducing NFL player after NFL player to the audience.

It is hard to get Jimmy Johnson off that boat in Islamorada, away from the fishing and retirement. His agent can't get him to make speeches for $45,000 a pop. But Johnson will still do just about anything for this school for free. The man despises small talk, but here he was interviewing former players for the audience. And he gave voice to what so many of the players in the room felt. They don't forget. Ever. They talk about their school the way men talk about the first girl they loved. The pros, they say, are frigid. Different. A job. It makes them wealthier, yes, but only in the ways the bank tabulates. It is the difference between business and love. Ask enough of the guys who left after their junior year and they will tell you almost by consensus that a senior season would have been more valuable than even the immediate need to get paid and take care of family and friends.

Andre Johnson, maybe the best wide receiver in the sport, is extraordinarily quiet. Asked why he doesn't celebrate his touchdowns with flash like a true Cane, Johnson laughs and says, ``Dance? You won't see that out of me.'' Three 100-catch seasons? Two 1,500-yard seasons? A shrug of those sculpted shoulders. But ask him about Miami, and his time there, and he won't shut up. He has returned to school to take classes now and says he badly misses the feeling he had while playing at Miami. He shows zero joy while torching NFL opponents, but you should see him watching a UM football game on TV. He'll sprint right out of his house screaming, arms over his head.

Rolle was talking about his Arizona Cardinals when he said, ``We had a long history of no history,'' and the same could be said of UM before 1983. Everything that happened since -- a record 58 straight home victories; a record 14 straight years with a first-round selection; eight national championship games -- produced what was in that glass case. Its value? That's hard to say. In fans and dollars, UM certainly doesn't get the kind of support it would just about anywhere else in the country.

WINNING PAYS
Consider that the University of Texas won for the first time since 1970 in 2006 -- not five championships, just one -- and the result was an avalanche of cash. The $87 million in revenue last year, $65 million of it in profit, was more than a college program had ever made. Even in a recession, Texas has made more money annually since the championship than any school in the country because of that one championship. The Wall Street Journal reported that Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds recently asked a young booster for a $4 million donation. The booster didn't flinch even though he thought he was being asked for $40 million. The money was wired the next day.

That's not quite how it is at Miami, of course. So Monday's auction escalated until that glass case was finally up for bid. It got as high as $20,000, with four fans bidding, so school officials happily stopped it there and promised each fan a collection of rings for that amount. In true U fashion, everyone around the huddle got to feel like a winner. And $20,000 must feel like a bargain when what you get to feel in your hands is priceless.


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(miamiherald.com)
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