Miami didn’t become “The U” until long after Kevin Fagan was gone.

The Hurricanes, in their heyday, were a brazen, smack-talking and super-gifted perennial title contender, but in Fagan’s early days as a defensive end there, Miami was just another also-ran. A no-name, no-tradition private school from South Florida led by an impossible-to-please perfectionist of a head coach named Howard Schnellenberger.

“An amazing man,” is how Fagan describes Schnellenberger.

“He was a hard, hard man,” Fagan said. “He always said ‘you’ll have one thing in common, you’ll hate me.’ There were times when we did hate him, but we knew he instilled that work ethic where we knew the other team didn’t deserve to win.”

Fagan and his teammates carried that sense of quiet certainty into the Orange Bowl on the night of Jan. 2, 1984.

A couple of upsets earlier that day left No. 5 Miami as the last team standing with a shot at dethroning an undefeated No. 1 Nebraska team that had averaged 52 points a game. Miami, on the other hand, had a lineup filled with untested sophomores and a wiry freshman quarterback named Bernie Kosar at the helm.

The Cornhuskers were named 10 1/2-point favorites.

“You gotta understand, Nebraska had been beating teams like 80-6,” Fagan recalled. “They were just smashing people.”

Source:  Andy Marks - ocala.com


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When I was a kid his twin brother Kerry was my next door neighbor. Kevin is a really nice guy, he would bring us stuff from the 49'ers when they were in the Super Bowl and play pick up football games in the street. He's a local boy growing up in Lake Worth off Lantana and Jog.