Revisiting Washington’s 2000 upset over mighty Miami

It’s impossible to find two power-conference college football programs farther apart geographically than Miami and Washington.

They have faced each other only three times, but the Hurricanes and Huskies have a unique bond. Before they ever squared off, they split the 1991 national title, with 12-0 Miami crowned by the AP poll and 12-0 Washington getting the nod from the coaches poll.

Then, in 1994, Washington traveled to Miami as a 14-point underdog and snapped the Hurricanes’ NCAA-record 58-game home winning streak. The Huskies’ 38-20 win became known as “The Whammy in Miami.”

What no one could’ve imagined when No. 4 Miami visited No. 15 Washington in 2000 was the impact that game would have on both programs, particularly the Hurricanes, who were looking for revenge but maybe got something bigger from the showdown in Seattle.

Marques Tuiasosopo, Washington QB, 1997-2000: I don’t think either side liked sharing the national title. Then, they go to Miami and beat them and end their record home winning streak. From our side of things, we knew they still wanted to make amends for that, and they still had that chip on their shoulder from 1990. It was a big deal.

Larry Tripplett, Washington, DT, 1997-2001: I remember the speech (UW defensive line) coach (Randy) Hart gave before that game. I think it was the Thursday before the game. He talked about the history of Husky football and the tradition. He was coaching back when they had the Whammy in Miami and showed the video of that. I remember feeling like this game was much more than just a game, that it meant a lot for Husky history, that I wasn’t just playing for myself, I was playing for the guys who were in that Whammy in Miami and all the guys who ever wore the purple and gold.

Rick Neuheisel, Washington coach, 1999-2002: Miami was so star-studded. You needed to know where (safety) Ed Reed was at all times. Their corners were fabulous. Their receivers were Reggie Wayne and Santana Moss, and (Jeremy) Shockey was the tight end. Their third-string running back was Clinton Portis. James Jackson was the starter. They had Najeh Davenport, and (Willis) McGahee was the guy who didn’t get to play. They were phenomenal.

Brent Myers, Washington OL coach, 2000-02: They jumped off the film when we watched them, especially (linebacker) Dan Morgan.

Tuiasosopo: We knew it was gonna be tough, but we thought we were good too. I don’t think anyone knew who we were, though. We knew we had to put up a fight. We knew we were gonna have to scratch and claw and be more physical.

Tripplett: Our meeting room was in the tunnel, so when they were coming out pregame, they were barking and yelling and totally disrespectful. This was told to me, and I don’t know if it was actually true, but I’d heard that some of their players had urinated on the middle of our field. The amount of disrespect and swag that they came in there with was off the charts.

Tuiasosopo: They tried to intimidate us. They knew we liked to do a lot of barking. I remember in the pregame, walking down the tunnel, and a couple of their guys were walking up and they would just yelp, like a whupped dog. I just thought, OK, these guys don’t know what they’re walking into. They were making fun of us, and we didn’t like it. That kind of set our jaw a little bit. That pissed us off. We knew they didn’t respect us.

Tripplett: They were very arrogant, but they had every right to feel very confident. But I know this, that before that game, you could look in our guys’ eyes, Tui, Jeremiah Pharms, Pat Conniff — we all had this look like, no words needed to be said. We just knew what we were about to do. I felt that way. One of the beautiful things about football is the team aspect, and we all came together.

Tripplett: It was deafening. Dude, it was so crazy loud. I felt as if Miami was really shell-shocked as far as how loud it was and how aggressively we were playing.

Joaquin Gonzalez, Miami, offensive tackle, 1997-2001: It’s the loudest place I’ve ever played, college and pros. The two overhangs on either side of the stadium, it was just this bellowing and a resonating sound. If you look at the first part of the film, the offensive line was late off the ball. Bryant McKinnie and I were late off the ball quite a bit early on, even though we had practiced a silent count and all of that. It was hard to even get the play calling in from (QB Ken) Dorsey. The very next year, we opened up at Penn State against a record-setting crowd (109,313), and we didn’t freaking bat an eye. That place was pretty freaking loud, but not as loud as that (Husky Stadium).

Mike Rumph, Miami, cornerback, 1998-2001: We had never been to the West Coast before. We all were like, in awe, like, “Holy s—, we’re on West Coast.” We’re like, “All those f—ing mountains in the background.” We never seen no mountains and no hills. They got Mount Rainier, like a f—ing snow cap in the backdrop. So, not saying we weren’t focused, but we were really impressed with the fact that we’re on the West Coast, and we had never been there before. We weren’t fully locked in.

Gonzalez: I didn’t expect the game to be as difficult as it was. Not from a football standpoint, but from all of the other stuff, having to travel the six hours and the time change. The impact of traveling out there, the stadium conditions in terms of the noise and stuff. You live and you learn.

Tuiasosopo: Husky Stadium was electric that day. When our defense was on the field, it was like an earthquake.

Rumph: It’s my top five loudest places, honestly. And I played against the Seattle Seahawks as a Niner.

Tripplett: I probably had a very ignorant confidence. When I played in Husky Stadium, I used to feel like Superman. I’m gonna be honest, I felt invincible there, so I was not intimidated by them at all. That’s just the ignorance of youth I guess.

Rich Alexis, Washington, running back, 2000-03: Neuheisel was just cool. He was just being Neuheisel. Very encouraging. Just smiling. He’s got a pretty smile, nice hair, he was just ready. He felt confident. I don’t know why. He probably knew something we didn’t know. We took his lead, and then everybody was just calm and cool. Because if the coach would have spazzed out or freaked out, I think everybody would have got that message too. But that day, he was just chill.

Tuiasosopo: One of our guys puts his helmet on the ball, and Santana Moss coughed it up. Then, we went down and scored. We were gonna need plays like that, and it happened.

Alexis: There was a bad rep about the West Coast teams — that we were soft, weren’t physical enough. That fumble on the punt return set the tone.

Tuiasosopo: Coach Gilbertson made sure that we had a wrinkle to take advantage of. We put that weakside mid-line option in. I think we held that back for them.

Myers: We were an I-option offense. They weren’t overly multiple on defense. They were so athletic, they didn’t have to play many defenses. Greg Schiano was their DC. Miami’s had always been known as a 4-3, quarters team, but Schiano had some good third-down blitz packages. He’s a really good defensive coach. But they didn’t face many option teams. Back then, Syracuse was an option team, a little like us. We studied them quite a bit.

Myers: We did a lot of motion from the backfield to empty and threw the ball on them because we knew what they would check to. Our empty passing game was really effective in that game. We knew they would check to two-deep, so we threw option routes to Jerramy Stevens and Joe Collier and Willie Hurst, our tailback, who would be a slot receiver in our formation. It was very effective for us. I didn’t recall seeing Miami play against much empty back in those days.

Neuheisel: We hit a touchdown on an unbalanced scheme, and we had post-post-wheel and hit the wheel. It was good stuff.

Rumph: They kept running the speed option. They found the wrinkle. They ran the speed option weak against us, and we couldn’t figure it out because they kept pulling the guard with the twist. We were one man short a lot. I remember that adjustment.

Tripplett: Tui was doing Tui Magic. He just makes stuff happen. And he was our leader. He was the type of leader that everybody on the team would run through a wall for. That year, we just knew as long as Tui was out there, we had a chance to win, and it proved to be true because we had some crazy comebacks that year.

Alexis: The guy just had swagger about him. Just calm, cool. It doesn’t matter what the moment was like. He would just be himself, calm, cool, just a born leader out there. He’d make sure everybody was not nervous. He was like that consistently all year. Those Samoan boys are different, man.

Rumph: He was a real good quarterback. He could run, he could throw. He was physical.

Gonzalez: We basically played like s— for a half. Santana fumbled, Dorsey fumbled. One of our other running backs fumbled as well. We had a field goal blocked. We definitely didn’t start great.

Alexis: I didn’t even know if I was gonna get in the game or not, but Neuheisel told me he wanted to just throw me in the game so my parents could see that I’m doing well. He threw me in the game, and I’m looking at Dan Morgan. I’m like, dang, everybody I looked up to was against me.

I wanted to be a Hurricane all along. It came down to Miami and Washington. Neuheisel told me if I came out there, I’d play running back. He needed a big running back. Miami was already loaded at running back. You got James Jackson and Clinton Portis. Me and Willis McGahee were in the same recruiting class. Greg Schiano wanted me to play safety. The only thing I knew how to do is just run the football.

Myers: We called 43-veer. That meant offensive tackle Elliot Silvers was to release inside and veer through to the first backer in the box, which would be the weakside backer, and they had taken their defensive ends and put them head up on the tackles. On the second or third series, we went to that arc option part of the scheme (reading Miami’s defensive end) so that we could get their defensive end to tackle (fullback) Pat Conniff. And, if he didn’t, then Conniff was to get the ball in the option, and we wouldn’t end up pitching the ball. Elliot is a really, really smart kid. Their guy was really squeezing down. Elliot and (guard) Chad Ward said to me, “Coach, we need to arc this stuff because we can’t get through.” We ended up optioning the safety, the corner was being blocked and we went right down the sideline. It was awesome.

Tuiasosopo: The option kept them on their heels and off-guard. It was gonna be a quick pitch. I got nailed. I was lying on the ground, but I saw him get around the corner and make that first guy miss, and I looked at their end who was on top of me and I smiled. “That’s a touchdown!”

Alexis: I really didn’t think he was going to pitch it. I went to the left with him, till he dove in with a quick dive, and he just pitched it to me, and I just took off. I couldn’t believe I made the touchdown. I mean, I was just in shock. You watch the replay, I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I was holding onto the ball. I didn’t even know how to celebrate. I just ran by Mike (Rumph), the late Al Blades, I saw all these guys, and I couldn’t believe I just scored. I was just so overwhelmed with joy.

Neuheisel: We ended up beating them because we played some slight of hand with some option and had some decent concepts to trick them in the red zone. We were able to run the ball against them some, which not very many people could.

Gonzalez: I think if we have probably eight to 10 more seconds at the end of that game, we win it. There was a moment in that game where things kind of just started clicking.

Rumph: They had like 800 recruits there, and their head coach looks at us as we’re leaving the field, and he goes, “You don’t want to go play there. You want to play here. You don’t want to go to Miami. Play here.” I vividly remember that. And as we exited through that tunnel, their players were barking at us. We were actually trying to fight them a little bit, but they were barking.

Gonzalez: It was just a s—-y situation to start the season. When you start off the season, you have all of these hopes and aspirations for all of these big things that you’re going to do. You never want to start off, in any sport — no matter if you’re playing Pee Wee or whatever — you never want to start off 1-1. More so in college sports at that time, one loss in any part of your season meant that you weren’t a contender anymore for the national championship. You fast forward to the end of the year, and we get screwed, even after beating Florida State head to head. Because of us, really, that’s why they changed the BCS.

Delvin Brown, Miami, DB, 1997-2000: What happened that year that people don’t remember is Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech had a game that was canceled because of lightning. Lee Corso’s car got struck by lightning, and because Virginia Tech didn’t play Georgia Tech, our strength of schedule was actually weak. If we would have had a stronger strength of schedule, even despite our loss to Washington, we would have played in the national championship game. The good news is we still got to put a spanking on Florida (in the Sugar Bowl) that year. That was the year we fought them on Bourbon Street. Alex Brown ended up being a first-round pick for Chicago. We beat him up in the bar. He was in the postgame with a black eye.

Gonzalez: I remember walking out this white painted tunnel with pictures of Washington greats all around, in pain with my f—ing ribs, and just f—ing sitting there and saying, “All this f—ing work wasted.” But I think that sparked the fire in us.

To get slapped in the f—ing face the way that we did by Washington, it could have been very easy for us to go the other way. How did that become the turning point? It’s hard for me to kind of verbalize. I just think that we had all worked so hard that we weren’t going to let that define us. We really busted our ass that summer. UM had always had the offseason workouts. The test for stamina was always 16 110s. That’s what you had to run to make sure that you were ready for the season. If you didn’t, you had to run it every day until you passed it. But that offseason was the first offseason that the guys on the team said, “No, 16, is not good enough. We gotta run 20 110s now.” Then, my senior year, we said, “It’s not 20 anymore. It’s 24 110s.”

Neuheisel: We had just beaten Washington State. We were beat up. We were 8-2. I told (Washington AD) Barbara (Hedges), “Barbara, just tell them that we’ll do it another year. We don’t need to go.” She said, “Oh, we have to.”

I said, “No, we don’t. Other people have turned it down. We’ll play ’em another year.” We went and got waxed.

Myers: I can remember sitting in the staff room and Rick was adamant about not playing that game because we didn’t need to. A lot of people around the country weren’t replaying that game they’d missed early in the season because of 9/11. Rick was not happy about it.

Myers: As soon as we got down there to the Orange Bowl parking lot, they were throwing oranges at our bus. The fans were ready for us. That was crazy.

Tripplett: They were throwing oranges at us. Little kids were giving us the finger. They were really pissed at us.

Myers: From then on, we didn’t move the ball hardly at all. It was like we poked the bear. They just bludgeoned us after that. We couldn’t move the big man from the Patriots, (Vince) Wilfork, at all.

Gonzalez: We beat them up and down every f—ing which way, and every facet, every metric that you could imagine in the f—ing game. And I remember that the athletic director for Washington said that they would never play us again. I do remember Larry Coker calling a timeout only to allow the seniors to come out of the game because we’re already winning by a lot. And I do have a beautiful picture of me and (offensive lineman Martin) Bibla in the center of the Orange Bowl with our helmets up, walking off the field in the middle of the fourth quarter, whatever it was.

But I do remember at some point in that game, I don’t know when that was in the second or the third quarter, I remember standing up on top of the bench and calling the whole team together and (saying), “Don’t you ever f—ing forget what these guys did to us last year. You f—ing shove it down their f—ing throat and you f—ing make them feel the f—ing pain that we felt last year.” Those were the exact words that I used. I remember that. My hands are shaking. I’m ready to f—ing run through a f—ing wall right now. I remember telling the guys that.”

Tripplett: I don’t know if they felt this way or not, that cross-country flight is a beast. That was a challenge. I’m not using that as an excuse, but it definitely plays a role, and I wonder if it played a role at their end as well. They had a different mindset. They were trying to beat us down, and that’s exactly what they did. We were not ready. We had Cody Pickett, he was young. Reggie Williams was a freshman. This was not the Tui-led Huskies in that game.

Rumph: Damien Lewis, Dan Morgan, feel bad for those guys. I mean, the 2000 team was probably just as good or better than the 2001 team. But we lost that game.

Tripplett: I remember when I got into the league, I played with Reggie Wayne (with the Colts), and I’d joke that they were basically an all-star team. They had so many first-rounders (15) and the only first-rounder we had was our tight end, Jerramy Stevens.

Alexis: It was a full circle moment because we had a lot of people amongst our family who are Canes at heart. Now, you got one that’s actually going to be a Cane. We got one, at least.