Ex-Canes dotted many Super Bowl rosters, but not this one
Former University of Miami center K.C. Jones’ finest Super Bowl moment didn’t come during Super Bowl 33 in 1999 at Pro Player Stadium. It came at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach the week leading to the game.
Twice that week, Jones, an Associated Press first-team UM All-American as a senior in
1996, brought Denver Broncos teammates to the iconic restaurant because he “was the University of Miami guy’’ and therefore “unofficial host that week in Miami.’’
Jones brought the quarterbacks one night — John Elway, Bubby Brister and Jeff Lewis — and the offensive linemen, among nearly two dozen players, the other. The diners at
Joe’s froze with their utensils mid-air as the 300-pounders strode single-file to their table.
“It was like Caesar returning to Rome,’’ said Jones, who proceeded to inhale what he refers to as his “death-row meal: stone crabs, fried sweet potatoes, creamed spinach and key lime pie.’’
This week, there will be no such parade of former Hurricanes playing in Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers at Hard Rock Stadium. For the first time in 13 years, the Miami Hurricanes will go unrepresented in a Super Bowl.
This will be the 54th Super Bowl — the first in 1967. And according to UM records, every one but seven were represented by at least one Hurricane — usually more. That’s 47 of 54 Super Bowls with a Hurricanes player on the game-day roster.
The numbers are equally impressive in South Florida’s Super Bowls. Of the 10 Super Bowls already played here — five in the Orange Bowl and
five at the current Hard Rock Stadium when it was called Joe Robbie Stadium (twice), Pro Player (once), Dolphin (once) and Sun Life (once) — seven have had Hurricanes, including Jones’ 1999 game against the Atlanta Falcons, which Denver won 34-19 in Elway’s final game.
Since that first Super Bowl (AFL-NFL World Championship Game) with the Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers, former Hurricanes have graced the active rosters 114 times. Several of them, such as Ted Hendricks, Jim Kelly, Michael Irvin and Reggie Wayne among them, played in the Super Bowl multiple times.
“It doesn’t surprise me how many UM players we’ve had in the Super Bowl when you understand the tradition and talent at that place and how we prepared for the NFL,’’ said Jones, now 45 and a financial advisor living in Denver. “It’s a tribute to, and reflective of the culture that I was fortunate enough to enjoy at Miami.
“My Tuesdays at Greentree Practice Field were spent lining up against Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis and Kevin Patrick and Kenny Holmes. You either got good or got gone.’’
Jones was also part of the Broncos squad that played in the 1998 Super Bowl victory against the Packers, though he didn’t get into either of the games.
Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker and former Hurricanes defensive end Hendricks got into plenty of Super
Bowls, and won every one of them. A terrorizing UM pass rusher who grew up in Miami Lakes, graduated from Hialeah High and is Miami’s only threetime All-American, Hendricks didn’t flinch when told how many Hurricanes have been part of Super Bowls.
“Not surprising,’’ Hendricks told the Miami Herald. “So many great athletes have come out of that school.’’
Hendricks, 72, won all four of his Super Bowls, including his first in Super Bowl 5 at the Orange Bowl. His Baltimore Colts defeated the Dallas Cowboys 16-13.
“My biggest memory from that Super Bowl was having Johnny Unitas as our quarterback,’’ Hendricks said last week. “He was the general out there, but he was fun to be around.’’
Unitas got knocked out of that game with a rib injury, and future Miami Dolphin Earl Morrall led the team to victory.
Hendricks said he also loved practicing for his first Super Bowl at UM’s Greentree Field. “It was unique,’’ he said. “I knew everything. The Orange Bowl and Greentree were my home.’’
Hendricks, who spent most of his NFL career with the Oakland Raiders, lives outside of Chicago in Arlington Heights but will be back Sunday when he is honored as part of the NFL 100 All-Time Team — along with fellow former Canes safety Ed Reed, center Jim Otto and return specialist Devin Hester.
Hester, longtime Canes fans will recall, became the only player in Super Bowl history to run back an opening kickoff for a Chicago Bears touchdown in Super Bowl 41 in 2007 at Dolphin Stadium. His 92-yard beauty took 14 seconds, the fastest score in Super Bowl history.
Then, another Hurricane performed some first-quarter wizardry — this time for the Indianapolis Colts. Receiver Reggie Wayne scored the game’s next touchdown on a 53-yard catch from Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning.
The Colts won 29-17, with former UM cornerback Tanard Davis (Colts) and former UM linebacker Darrell McClover (Bears) also on the rosters.
“We got a lot of guys in this league from the University of Miami, and everyone can do something with the ball,’’ Wayne, then 28, said after the game.
Of course, Wayne isn’t the only Canes legendary receiver who played in a Super Bowl in Miami. Miami native Eddie Brown, now 57, played for the Cincinnati Bengals against the 49ers in the 1989 Super Bowl at Joe Robbie Stadium. Former defensive end teammates Kevin Fagan and Dan Stubbs played against Brown for the 49ers, who won 20-16.
Brown, the 1985 NFL Rookie of the Year, was part of UM’s first national title team in 1983. He became the first Hurricane to surpass 1,000 yards in a season in 1984 and set the UM singlegame receiving yardage record with 220 yards on 10 catches in the famous “Hail Flutie” game against Boston College.
“There wasn’t a lot of noise among us after the game,’’ Brown, who grew up in Overtown and graduated from Miami High in 1981, said of Fagan and Stubbs. “Stubbs came to play with me in Cincinnati for a while after that. We all had pride in being Hurricanes. To come home and play a Super Bowl in Miami, it was something I treasured.’’
Brown still lives in Miami and works for his former agent Jim Ferraro, a lawyer. He said he will watch the game on TV with his friends. He’s picking Kansas City “because of that young gun [quarterback Patrick Mahomes] they have. He’s exciting, and he has what it takes.’’
UM Sports Hall of Fame member Gary Dunn, who won two Super Bowls as a defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, helped beat the Cowboys 35-31 in Super Bowl 13 in 1979 at the Orange Bowl. Dunn lives in the Florida Keys on Tavernier and owns Ocean View and Sports Pub in Islamorada, a seven-room motel that is “basically a sports pub,’’ he said.
Dunn, now 66, bought the Ocean View with former Canes teammate Dennis Harrah in 1996 before Harrah three years later “moved back to California.’’
Dunn was born and raised in Coral Gables and is the grandson of Bowman Foster Ashe, the founding president of the University of Miami. His father, Eddie Dunn, is considered one of UM’s all-time great running backs and coached Hurricanes football and baseball.
In Dunn’s first of his two Super Bowls at the Orange Bowl in 1979, he bought his entire allotment of 20 tickets. “I came back home and my mom and dad had given away all 20 tickets,’’ he said. “They said they’d pay me, but heck ... I was only making $32,000 that season.’’
So, Dunn somehow managed to obtain 20 more tickets and “went right to a travel agency that bought them from me and packaged them with a trip to the Super Bowl. I made up the money I spent but never told my parents.’’
Dunn, who also played in the 1980 Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl against his UM roommate and future business partner Harrah, an offensive lineman with the Los Angeles Rams, graduated from UM in 1976. Like K.C. Jones, he brought his Steelers teammates to his hangouts in South Florida, including The Ludway, at Ludlam Road and Coral Way, “where the mainstay was good cheeseburgers and cold beer.’’
Dunn thinks “it’s amazing’’ that so many former Hurricanes have competed in the Super Bowl. “There are a lot of college players out there,’’ he said. “To make it to the final game, that’s a small population.”
Dunn recalls getting nervous in his Miami Super Bowl because “the score got kind of tight,’’ but the Steelers, led by MVP quarterback Terry Bradshaw, scored two touchdowns within 19 seconds in the final quarter to secure the victory.
“It’s always exciting to make it to the big game,’’ Dunn said, “but you gotta win the damn thing.’’
He still likes to “bust the chops’’ of people who “only” earned a league championship ring, such as former Cane Harrah.
“People would always walk up to Dennis and say, ‘Hey, what that? A Super Bowl ring, right?’
“I’d say, ‘No, that’s what you get when you lose the game. This is what you get when you win it.’’’
SOUTH FLORIDA SUPER BOWLS WITH FORMER MIAMI HURRICANES
Super Bowl 2: Jan. 14, 1968, Orange Bowl:
Green Bay Packers 33, Oakland Raiders (Pete Banaszak, HB; Dan Conners, LB; Bill Miller, DL; Jim Otto, C) 14.
Super Bowl 5: Jan. 17, 1971, Orange Bowl: Baltimore Colts (Ted Hendricks, LB) 16, Dallas Cowboys 13.
Super Bowl 13: Jan. 21, 1979, Orange Bowl: Pittsburgh Steelers (Gary Dunn, DT) 35, Dallas Cowboys 31.
Super Bowl 23: Jan. 22, 1989, Joe Robbie Stadium: San Francisco
49ers (Kevin Fagan, DE; Daniel Stubbs, DE) 20, Cincinnati Bengals (Eddie Brown, WR) 16.
Super Bowl 33: Jan. 31, 1999, Pro Player Stadium: Denver Broncos (K.C. Jones, C) 34, Atlanta Falcons 19.
Super Bowl 41: Feb. 4, 2007, Dolphin Stadium: Indianapolis Colts (Tanard Davis, DB; Reggie Wayne, WR) 29, Chicago Bears (Devin Hester, KR; Darrell McClover,
LB) 17.
Super Bowl 44: Feb. 7, 2010, Sun Life Stadium: New Orleans Saints (Glenn Sharpe, CB; Jeremy Shockey, TE; Jonathan Vilma, LB) 31, Indianapolis Colts (Reggie Wayne) 17.
Susan Miller Degnan: 305-376-3366, @smillerdegnan