All this happened, more or less. - Kurt Vonnegut

It wasn't supposed to go down this way.

After watching ESPN's latest documentary, The U, I was anxious and inspired to talk about my own memories of the Hurricanes. I may have dug too deep.

I wanted a streamlined article that summed up the movie with a few positive words and a cutesy picture. 500-600 words, max.

That's what it was supposed to be. Short, sweet, and polished. Not this. Nothing like this.

I couldn't find the picture I wanted to put up for this piece. It was of a mural my grandmother had painted on my bedroom wall when I was 9. She'd painted Sebastian the Ibis punching through the drywall, his hand adorned with the four championship rings the 'Canes had amassed at the time. It was the centerpiece of my little sports world.

Somewhere in all of my moves, I lost it. Put it in a box and never saw it again. The mural was painted over when I moved in 1998. My grandmother died in 2002. Worsening neighborhood and Alzheimer's, respectively.

So I've spent the last two nights looking for it in every photo album and shoebox I could find. My mom pitched in. My aunt and uncle pitched in. We never found it, and the centerpiece of my article was lost.


I sat there surrounded by piles and piles of pictures and scraps, and mom and I got to talking. Talking about the Hurricanes. Talking about Miami. We spent the next five hours talking.



"My neighborhood was burning."

Liberty City, 1980. The film begins here, where Miami's racial tensions finally boiled over, and gave all the kids in the 'hood all the reason they needed to get out.

"It was scary as hell," my mom said. "Your father worked down in Coral Gables back then, and had to drive through that neighborhood every morning. I was scared."

I imagine that's how America felt when the 'Canes first hit the national stage. The producers of the film dedicate a segment to the response the people in Coral Gables gave the UM players when they first set foot on campus - with plenty of shots of stuffy Anglo students and Masterpiece Theater-esque music playing in the background. The countering of one stereotype with another was hypocritical, but it didn't stray far from truth. My mother's own comments confirmed that.

"There was Alberto," she said. "He was dark, but Cuban, so they didn't want him anywhere. He'd have to go to Miami-Dade [Community College] speaking like a black man, and come into Hialeah speaking Spanish. He'd come to our house with his hands up shouting, 'don't shoot, carajo, I'm Cuban!'"

My mom told me about how my godfather had been a cocaine cowboy. She talked about how he wanted to get my dad into the business, and how he'd played lookout once or twice before leaving organized crime alone.

"Used to be that the cabinets were filled with two things: Cocaine and money stacks." She said. "There was money and coke and your godmother and I would be in charge of counting the two."

The film does right by capturing this dichotomy of cultures: The Hurricanes had been the liaison between an angry, segregated city and its vices. Oftentimes, the two intertwined. To me, the film succeeds by being the woman in the kitchen separating and sorting the vices from the money flow. The film holds nothing back in accepting this as part of the Miami story.

So too does it accept that these were not morally sound people, no matter the angle they're looked at.



"It wasn't any conspiracy or the media - they didn't do anything. We were bad boys."

The 'Canes were sc.ummy through and through, and instead of shunning that image, The U embraces it, and finally pays tribute to one of the main reasons why Miami was so successful: People love self destruction, especially when it wins.

This was the Miami the guys at Rakontur Productions tried to capture. But how do you capture a time and a place and an attitude and package it just right so as to not scare off or insult those on the outside who had to put up with it?

With slick editing and an undeniable charisma. "Thug U" comes off more like Dennis the Menace than Scarface. Former players joke about stepping up to mafiosos and pranking Brian Bosworth and running amok in skullcaps with cadence. Clips are shown of the Phone Call scandal, the Pell Grant scandal, the fatigues, and the "Catholics v. Convicts" game -- and it's funny.

Leave it to Uncle Luke to tell the story. Leave it to Bennie Blades, and Randal Hill, and Alonzo Highsmith to give you the details. They don't hold back. They talk about hurting people in the 1991 Cotton Bowl. They call a two-time National Champion coach "a substitute teacher." They blame everyone from stadium architects to offensive coordinators to opposing cornerbacks for letting them dance in the tunnels.

"You want a show? Oh we'll put on a show for ya."

It's here where the film really shines. Too many times I've come across people that saw Miami as a roving group of thugs. Finally, the thugs get their time to talk. It gives chaos a face and a voice. It doesn't validate their actions, or even present them in an ethically sound light. If anything, it gives the opposition solid ground to stand on.

It does, however, humanize, and that's what the "Thug U" years had been lacking.

You see a drug lord, I see my godfather. You see a jail cell, I see the Orange Bowl.

When I was 7 I spent an entire quarter of football at the Orange Bowl picking up pieces of loose confetti and storing them in my cap, only to dump it on the head of the woman in front of me. My uncle laughed. My dad smacked my mouth. I'd learned that social norms were meant to be broken.

I was suddenly a hero and a villain (and a right pain in the a**). Such is life. Such is Miami. Such were the Hurricanes.

"And just like that, the party was over."

"So how did everyone get out alive?" I asked my mother.

"Everyone grew up, I guess."

The film ends just as abruptly as the party did. The Orange Bowl is razed, the thrashing at the hands of the Crimson Tide in the 1993 Sugar Bowl is omitted, and the hard work of Butch Davis in rebuilding the program is all but ignored. Davis, instead, is treated like the immigrant janitor left to clean up last night's mess in the VIP room.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. Not like this.

There's a sense of loss now, as if everything I knew is fading away. The older pictures in those boxes are washed out. The Polaroid's have gone blank. What was once a clear landscape shot now resembles a Rorschach blot.

I didn't want it to end like this. It's obvious the players didn't either. Or the city. Or the filmmakers.

But it did.

 For one night only, the Jon Gruden Reunion Tour was back in full swing. Their only stop? A sold-out show at Ricky's Sports Theatre in the San Leandro.

It's gonna take more than the return of JaMarcus Russell, a 21-point loss to the Redskins, and the tearing of both of Bruce Gradkowski's MCL's to dampen the spirits of some of the Raider faithful. For the rest of us, it's gonna take a lot more than a Jon Gruden sighting to forget the atom bomb in the backfield.

The guy dressed like a gorilla, a man with a shield where his head should be and a third with spikes and imitation armor posed for a photo with a familiar smiling face who wore a Raiders visor and a brand new No. 34 Bo Jackson jersey.

Unfortunately, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker could not make the trip.

 

"Look at him,'' one Raiders employee said. "He's still a rock star.''

That's the most insightful thing the Raider front office has said in decades. Any sighting of Gruden near the Bay Area -- in Oakland gear no less -- is nowadays akin to spotting Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney caulking the Royal Albert Hall.

Get it?

That's what separates success from failure. It's the question that has haunted millions before we were born, and will ultimately decide whether the species reaches the stars or winds up as cockroach feed. It's what pigeonholed the high school jock as the prototypical Doomed Male: Impressive in his physique, but unable to adapt mentally.

Football, in that sense, has always served as a microcosm for mankind's ability to survive and come to terms with it's past - if only so it can bury it in move on.

Someone must've left Al Davis out of the meeting on Human Evolution 101.

Seven years removed from the smallest sliver of Glory, Al Davis sits in his suite at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, slumped over in his track suit and high on morphine and memories. But memories won't save this franchise. They won't protect Michael Bush when the O-Line breaks down. They won't add longevity to Darren McFadden's knees. They certainly won't help channel the tenacity of Ken Stabler or the grit of Daryle LaMonica into the team's franchise QB.  At best, they'll serve to remind the team's aging owner of what once was, and keep the denizens of the Raider Nation drunk on what could have been.

Like the high school jock, the Raiders are hell bent on recapturing their former glory through intimidation and ridiculous claims of birthright. Don't blame them - it's the only defense mechanism they have left. Here they sit -far from the biker bars and wild cocaine parties of yore- overweight, undervalued, and covered with needle marks and tattoos that say that not now, but once, we were Kings. Meanwhile, the Manning's and the Brady's and the Roethlisberger's of the League have moved on. Daily, they step over the carcass of the Raider image that sleeps on the sidewalk, blanketed by newspapers filled with headlines preaching the formers' ability to "get it."

The factoids surrounding the Oakland police blotter's all reek of bravado, but miss out on the bigger picture: Success builds image, not the other way around. Because of this, Tom Cable has become the Pariah of the Month in the Bay Area. But we love winners more than we love ethics -always have. Had Cable had been successful in producing a winner despite Davis' antiquated game plans, his past transgressions would've been forgotten and notched up as an addition to the Raider Mystique. The same mystique that swallowed this franchise up years ago.

So what, if anything, can be done to save this team? We live in interesting times, and just as Change was sold to the world a year ago in the form of a presidential candidate, so too can the Advertising Machines sell Change to Oakland. It's time for the Emperor to step aside -or at least realize that no amount of chest-thumping will make up for poor business decisions.

If there's any team that could show Davis the meaning of "Getting it," it's the team that started the Raiders' decent into oblivion: the New England Patriots.

The Patriots didn't reach the mountaintop because of the Tuck Rule Game: They did it because they built a machine that is self-automated, and hired the right people to work that machine. They didn't care if they fit the "Patriot Image," because images are bought and sold and revised and entirely subjective to the Won/Loss column. 

The problem, though, is that no matter how many times this Emperor is told he has no clothes, he's content on strolling through the world bare-assed and frostbitten. The pride he still clings to is the only protection he needs to weather the elements. The only change he's content with are the coins the Brady's and the Manning's and the Roethlisberger's toss into his cup as they pass him by. But it's not enough to win. It'll never be enough to restore any modicum of dignity to this team until Davis realizes that Pride and Poise have stunted this team's ability to move forward.

So, as a Raider fan, I ask that Al consider his options. Learn from your mistakes, Al. Realize that winning, not trailblazing, is the surest way to see another Super Bowl before you expire. Realize that there's no pride in losing -no matter how many "Moral Victories" you chalk up. Realize that Change is the only real way of ever "Getting It."

Most of all, Al: Just win, baby...please.

Backtrack: I work at a restaurant. In between siphoning dead orders, smoking in the beer fridge, and stuffing my trunk with Styrofoam cups, I actually serve tables.

Several weeks ago, when the Raiders played the Jets, I was working at my restaurant and didn't have access to the game (I live in Miami). All day I was scrambling around, trying to find a TV that had ESPN on, hoping that I'd catch the score on the bottom crawl. No luck.

Finally, near closing time, an elder lady came in with a younger woman. They sat at my table, and asked if I knew what the score in the Dolphins/Saints game had been.

Me: "I don't know, ma'am, but I know the Dolphins lost."

At which point she pulls out her iPhone and starts looking up the game highlights.

Me: "Hey, do you think you can check the score in the Raiders/Jets game for me?"

Her: "Sure. Are you a Raiders fan."

Me: "Yes ma'am. Till the day I die."

Then the younger one looks over and says, "So, what do you think about JaMarcus Russell?"

Now, let me explain something about myself: I revel in seedy behavior, but I'm usually very diplomatic about things like this. Asking me what I think about JaMarcus Russell, however, is like asking a Trojan his opinion on wooden equines.

Me: "Well, to be perfectly honest, he sucks. Plain and simple. No heart, no passion, no will to win."

Her: "Well, I'll be sure to tell him you said so. I'm his cousin."

The kicker? She was the only table of the day to leave a 20% tip, which leads me to believe that insults, not good service, is the way to make it in the restaurant biz.

On a follow up, one of my coworkers asked me if I thought she'd really pass along the message. My reply? "If she did, she'd be the only one in the family who could pass anything."