The Miami football team is looking for some redemption following an embarrassing defeat in Atlanta. Can the Hurricanes get it against App State?
Opening up your season by duking it out with the Alabama Crimson Tide is never recommended in the world of college football. However, such stigma failed to stop the Miami football team from taking on the challenge. But oh, what a challenge it was.
Said challenge was less about winning the game and more about keeping it within five scores. In that regard, the Canes were successful. By the conclusion of the massacre, they had fallen to the Tide by only 31 points, with the final tally reading 44-13 in Bama’s favor. So I guess congratulations are in order.
But in all seriousness, those who refuse to judge Miami’s performance last weekend solely because “Alabama is good” are missing the bigger picture: Miami is a Power 5 team, and not just any Power 5 team, but one that has been one of the league’s biggest names over the span of the last 35 years or so.
Not only that, but the Hurricanes consistently produce NFL talent on both sides of the ball. Therefore, Miami is good as well. They entered the season as a top-15 team for a reason, after all.
Now Alabama was expected to walk out of their “battle” with the Hurricanes victorious, so them doing just that is not the issue.
Rather, it is the fact that the “U” appeared almost completely out of its element; it felt less like a fair fight and more like a sick joke. If that is how spectators view a program of Miami football’s importance, then they are playing at a level so inferior that it is borderline unacceptable.
But alas, all of this pain can go away (well, maybe not all of it). All that needs to happen this upcoming weekend is a Hurricanes win over the Appalachian State Mountaineers, preferably by a wide margin.
What Miami football needs to do vs App State
Realistically speaking, Miami should do to App State what Bama did to Miami. However, that should not be expected of them; they are coming off of a literal beatdown, and the Mountaineers have cemented themselves as a top-tier Group of 5 team as of late.
But still, considering the sizable gap between the sizes of their programs, along with the fact that the game will be unfolding in Miami, the Canes should take this one by a margin of around 20 points. That all sounds like the perfect setup for snatching a statement win.
Upon doing so, they would don a record of 1-1, with a loss to the defending champ/current No.1 team in the country, alongside a convincing victory over an impactful “little guy.” College football seasons have certainly started off worse.