What If Wednesday: Butch Davis and The U Dynasty

The coming college football season marks the 20th anniversary of the most talented roster in the sport’s history marching to an undefeated national championship.

Whether or not the 2001 Miami Hurricanes are the greatest team is up for debate; but no team had more talent as bore out by NFL production. The running back room alone featured Clinton Portis, Frank Gore, Najeh Davenport and Willis McGahee, while Ed Reed and Jonathan Vilma anchored the defense.

Miami boasted a mind-blowing collection of playmakers, altogether forming a team that wasn’t just in a class of its own, but also appointment television.

My friends and I tuned into The U every fall 2001 Saturday despite having no affiliation with the program. We appreciated that we were witnessing greatness in the moment, but did not nor could not have known we were following the collapse of a dynasty in real-time.

As much time has lapsed since the unofficial-yet-clear end of the Miami dynasty — the loss in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl — as the reign of the Hurricanes lasted: 19 years.

Those 19 years preceding that fateful, January night in Tempe were not exclusively the dominion of Miami football. Last summer, I took a deep dive into the Whammy in Miami, the 1994 loss to Washington that ended The U’s aura of invincibility at the Orange Bowl and came amid a flurry of turmoil for the program. It’s a 5,000-plus-word piece, so pack a lunch when you venture over to Patreon to read it.

Despite that dip, however, it was a brief blip amid a run that, beginning with Howard Schnellenberger’s national championship in 1983, saw Miami consistently at or near the top of college football.

Since losing out on back-to-back national championships with the ‘03 Fiesta Bowl defeat, Miami’s only had the brief flirtation with its past glory in 2017. And even that was the somewhat manufactured desire of those who couldn’t wait to watch The U in the ‘80s, early ‘90s or — like my friends and me — the turn of the millennium.

No single event caused Miami to backslide to the two-decade malaise in which it’s languished since 2002. The demolition of the Orange Bowl following the 2007 season is more than just a metaphor for the program’s decline, but rather a contributing factor. Moving off campus to play in the Miami Dolphins’ ever-revolving corporate-sponsor-named stadium some 45 minutes away stripped The U of its soul and gave the Hurricanes a second-rate feel.

The NCAA sanctions instituted at a glacial pace after self-imposed sanctions put Miami behind the proverbial chains to start last decade. Coupled with the immediate resistance Al Golden faced upon his hire from Hurricane boosters like Uncle Luke, The U spent nearly a half-decade in a weird holding pattern — which reached a full decade following alum Mark Richt’s abrupt retirement following the 2018 season.

However, a decision made during Miami’s return to prominence at the turn of the millennium arguably began the tailspin from which the Hurricanes have never recovered: Butch Davis’ exit following the 2000 season.

Davis took over at Miami during its nadir in the mid-1990s, inheriting the rebuild left at the end of Dennis Erickson’s tenure. Despite enduring a 5-6 finish in 1997, Davis’ team won nine games in three of his five seasons, then made the jump to The U standards in 2000 with an 11-1 finish — and a decent claim to have been the best team in the nation by season’s end.

Davis interviewing for and accepting an opening with the Cleveland Browns engendered some harsh feelings that are perhaps best reflected in the dismissive way Billy Corben’s 30-for-30 documentary It’s All About The U covers the Davis era.

But Davis aggressively and successfully recruited Miami and surrounding areas, employing the strategy that launched the program under Schnellenberger and established it as a powerhouse under Jimmy Johnson. The undefeated national champions of 2001 and the 2002 squad that should have completed a back-to-back unbeaten run were the result of the Davis era.

Once the last vestiges of his tenure were gone, the downfall began immediately.

Successor Larry Coker appears on the current College Football Hall of Fame ballot, an honor Schnellenberger can never receive — barring the Hall altering its rules to allow exceptions for the career win-percentage benchmark. Buoying Coker’s career record, accounting for just six seasons at Miami and the first five years of UTSA football’s existence, are his first three years coaching the Davis-built roster with diminishing returns.

Had Davis remained at Miami after the 2000 season, the prospect of Coker being a Hall of Famer is the most obvious reality altered in our hypothetical timeline. More up for debate is just how much better the Hurricanes could have been in the years to come, and how it may have changed college football.

Jim Tressel was firmly established as a coaching legend before ever leading Ohio State, dominating Div. I-AA throughout the ‘90s at Youngstown State. That doesn’t change if the Buckeyes fail to pull off the stunning upset of Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, but The Sweater Vest becomes more of a college football Marv Levy with what would have been three national championship game losses in six seasons.

And would Miami have beaten Ohio State in Tempe? The Press Break says absolutely. The Hurricanes had far more talent than the Buckeyes, but Tressel out-coached Coker to an extent I don’t feel he would have Davis.

Look to the 2000 season to support the point. While dominant, the 2001 Hurricanes sometimes looked disinterested — enough so, that it played nail-biters against Boston College and Virginia Tech.

Tom O’Brien and Frank Beamer were the class of Big East coaches then, and their teams played the Hurricanes to 18-7 and 26-24 final scores in the last month of the season. November through January is when a great team needs to be at its peak, as the Hurricanes were in 2000.

After playing a lackluster game against Louisiana Tech, the Y2K Hurricanes proceeded to blast second-ranked Virginia Tech by three touchdowns; rout Pitt, 35-7; blank Syracuse, 26-0; decimate Boston College, 56-7; and claim the mythical State Championship with a 37-20 rout of Florida in the Sugar Bowl.

Miami was markedly better down the stretch, improved even upon the squad that beat top-ranked Florida State in the first-half of the campaign. And, yes, I firmly believe the Hurricanes should have played Oklahoma for the 2000 season BCS Championship, which would turn this exercise into a potential three-peat title-winner and possible four-peat program.

But that’s a whole other What If on bad BCS decisions (look for that later this summer.

With a second straight, undefeated national championship, Miami would have entered 2003 the clear juggernaut of college football in the same vein as Alabama today — or, as USC came to be starting with 2003.

The Trojans split the ‘03 championship with LSU (bad BCS decisions What If, coming soon!), beginning a three-year run that came a fourth-down stop from a three-peat.

Perhaps that doesn’t change, even in a timeline where 2003 Miami avoids being badly outprepared and outplayed by another Frank Beamer-coached before no-showing offensively against Tennessee. Despite ESPN dedicating countless hours ahead of the 2006 Rose Bowl Game asking if the 2005 Trojans were the greatest college football team ever, I genuinely believe USC’s 2003 and 2004 squads were superior.

The ‘03 offense was ridiculous, featuring a three-headed backfield monster of LenDale White, Reggie Bush and pre-injury Hershel Dennis. Mike Williams was the best of USC dynasty receivers, a group also including Steve Smith and Dwayne Jarrett, and he had perhaps the best wingman in Keary Colbert.

USC’s ‘04 defense was significantly better than the ‘05 version, as well. On that front, the historically dominant 2008 defense — and a much stronger Pac-10 that season than in 2005 — also makes the ‘08 Trojans superior to the ‘05 squad.

All that is to say, USC in 2003 and 2004 had the talent and the culture to stack up with the teams Davis built in Miami. The Hurricanes winning more titles after 2002 is hardly a given, but their pursuit of immortality opposite USC ranks among the more disappointing What If scenarios college football fans never got to see.

Oklahoma’s lineups were stacked with NFL-caliber talent in the early 2000s, and Bob Stoops earned his place among the most respected coaches of modern times. But the Sooners just lacked an ingredient to compete in those BCS Championship Games.

The 2005 Orange Bowl opposite USC in particular was a laugher, more memorable for Ashlee Simpson’s lustily booed halftime performance than the game itself.

While that season marked the first severe downturn of the Coker era, with the Hurricanes finishing 9-3 and No. 11 in the final AP Poll, the talent to compete at a championship level remained.

Here are just some of the names from the ‘04 Hurricanes:

RB - Frank Gore

WR - Devin Hester

WR - Roscoe Parrish

WR - Sinorice Moss

TE - Greg Olsen

DB - Brandon Meriweather

DB - Antrel Rolle

LB - Jon Beason

Yeah…that’s still a squad. Coker and his staff continued to recruit at an elite level, signing no worse than a No. 8-ranked class through 2004. Even through Coker’s final two years and into Randy Shannon’s initial seasons, Miami never signed worse than a No. 13-ranked class, and even led the nation in 2008.

A lack of blue-chip talent isn’t the cause of Miami malaise. The U just hasn’t had whatever that special characteristic — call it “swagger” if you want, but that’s too simplistic — since the last traces of Davis disappeared.