As I watched replays of the Melee in Miami on Saturday night between Florida International and University of Miami, I heard commentators use words like stunning, unbelievable, and shocking.To these commentators I ask the following question:where have you been for the past twenty years?

Miami has long been the renegade college program that was more like an NFL minor league system than a body of student athletes.They were players who gave no respect to any opponent.The Miami teams, in fact, generally did the exact opposite.They’d taunt, dance, and beam for the television cameras.Those Miami teams weren’t happy with simply beating their gridiron rivals; they wanted to intimidate them, embarrass them, and basically strip the opponent of its manhood.

While most schools talked to incoming high school players about the great school traditions and rivalries, Miami would promise incoming players that they would get noticed.Players didn’t go to Miami to get an education, they went there to get to the NFL and have as much fun as they could along the way.Soon, Miami became destination number one for any high school football stud that thought of college as just a necessary stop on the way to the NFL.

By the late 1980’s, Miami was as much of a college football power as any other school in the country.The players there had developed an “us against the world” mentality that simply helped the players grow into their own fraternity.Miami alumni like Michael Irvin would call their old dorm rooms and talk trash with whichever player happened to be staying in the room at that time.Senior Hurricane defenders would keep beating on the younger players until they got good and mean.Every football practice was such a war that Miami players joked that game day was a cinch compared to playing against themselves.

Unfortunately, things eventually spun out of control.Once coach Jimmy Johnson left Miami for the NFL and brought most of his coaching staff with him, there was no built-in authority figure to hold down the proverbial hurricane that was blowing in the locker room.When new coach Dennis Erickson took over at Miami, he was only there in name.It was clear to the rest of the nation that the inmates were running the asylum.

There were whispers throughout college football circles about how ridiculous things were getting at Miami, yet the NCAA failed to bring the hammer down on the Hurricane program.This is the same organization that gave the dreaded “death penalty” to Southern Methodist University in 1987 for multiple rule violations, literally destroying the school’s football program.There were two major reasons why the NCAA stayed away from investigating the Miami program.

First of all, Miami wasn’t in a major conference at the time, so there were no rival schools to whistle blow on the Hurricane program.When SMU got crushed by the NCAA, the school alumni decided to bring down the entire Southwest conference by tipping off NCAA investigators about rule violations (real or not) at rival schools like Texas A&M and University of Houston.The result was multiple NCAA sanctions against these schools and the eventual disintegration of the Southwest Conference.

Secondly, the NCAA would never purposefully ruin the money-making machine that was the Miami Hurricane football program.As bad as the ‘Canes were off of the field, they were that good on it, posting an unbelievable 66-4 record between 1987 and 1992 with three national championships.No matter how reviled the Hurricanes were, they always sold out games because every fan wanted to see their team take down the evil Miami juggernaut. The ‘Canes may have been hated, but they were never ignored.

The NCAA, however, did need to investigate the Hurricane program because it was spiraling out of control.For every major win Miami had, they marred it with awful behavior on and off the field.The Hurricanes had multiple on-field brawls with the likes of Notre Dame and Colorado. Before bowl games, Miami players could be found raising hell at all hours of the night and often picking fights with opposing players.The Miami team showed up for a traditional sportsmanship dinner with Penn State before the 1988 Fiesta Bowl in army fatigues.After everyone had been seated, one of the Miami players said, “Did the Japanese eat dinner with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them?”The Miami players then promptly got up and walked out on a stunned Penn State squad.

Perhaps the best example of both Miami’s greatness and ghoulishness during this era came in the 1991 Cotton Bowl Classic.Miami destroyed Texas 46-3 in that game, but what most fans will remember is the Bowl record 206 penalty yards assessed to the Hurricanes for mostly late hits and un-sportsmanlike conduct calls and the team-wide dancing and taunting that led to the NCAA redefining the rules against taunting (nicknamed the “Miami Rule”).

Eventually the NCAA did step in and investigate the Miami program, but only after multiple player arrests, news of cash bounties given to Hurricane players who injured opposing stars, and even a couple of rapes and murders linked to Miami players.Things had gotten so bad that Sports Illustrated published and article entitled “Why the University of Miami Should Drop Football.”Inside, the magazine listed incredibly severe violations of the NCAA rules and the law.

Finally, by the mid 1990’s the NCAA did punish the University of Miami football program, but there was no death penalty.Somehow, the NCAA deemed that the multiple massive rule infractions did not warrant the same penalty that SMU got less than a decade before (insert dollar signs here).

The current groups of Hurricane football players aren’t nearly the same problem children as their predecessors were, but during the Hurricane heyday of the late 80’s and early 90’s, the Miami program created an image for itself.While current coaches claim that they run a clean program devoid of rule breakers, the players who are in the Miami program were children during the rule-breaking era.There might be a reason why these players wanted to come to Miami.

Meanwhile, former thuggish players like Lamar Thomas (the analyst for Hurricane television who cheered on Saturday’s ugly brawl, then promptly lost his job for his behavior) still have contact with these college players.While coaches talk to these players about behaving and carrying themselves with dignity, Thomas—also known for assaulting his pregnant girlfriend—and other former Hurricanes have multiple National Championship rings to show off.The message for new Miami players is mixed, but the former Hurricanes have jewelry to prove their way worked.

Until Miami completely shuns its past method to success and starts fresh, it will never fully escape its outlaw shadow. That is why fans should not be surprised when the occasional brawl occurs on Miami Hurricane football turf.