Giant excavators with powerful hydraulic claws tore it down in 2008, pieces of the steel and concrete structure being recycled or sold to the public at auction.
But demolition crews and their heavy machinery didn’t destroy everything. “It’s the memories that live on forever,” Gerard Loisel, a retired college professor, said of the venerable Orange Bowl, which stood in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood for more than 70 years.
It’s where President John F. Kennedy once spoke, where Bruce Springsteen and Madonna once performed, where some of the Cuban refugees from the Mariel Boatlift were processed, and—most importantly to University of Miami alumni like Loisel—the place where the Miami Hurricanes football team played their home games from 1937 to 2007.
Today, the 65,000-plus seat Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens is the house of the Hurricanes, and this Monday, the squad will play on its home turf for its first national title since 2001, taking on the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers.
The game won’t mark the first time Miami has played for the national championship in its home stadium. The Hurricanes captured three of their five national titles at home, winning the championship at the Orange Bowl Classic for the 1983, 1987, and 1991 seasons—victories all cemented at the Orange Bowl stadium.
Loisel, a 1976 graduate of the U, remembers them all—especially the first.
“It was amazing,” he recalled of the time he sat in the iconic stadium for the 1984 Orange Bowl Classic, where Miami defeated Nebraska 31-30 to become the kings of college football for the ’83 season. “As a young Canes fan at the time, it was hard to describe the excitement of watching Kenny Calhoun deflect a pass during a two-point conversion attempt that, if successful, would have given the Cornhuskers the win.”
Here’s a look back and the three national titles the Hurricanes won in the Orange Bowl.
The Miracle in Miami: 1983 National Championship
The Hurricanes stunned the college football world by defeating the top-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers 31-30 in the 1984 Orange Bowl Classic. The victory was monumental, not only because the Cornhuskers were widely considered to be among the most powerful teams in college football history, but also because it heralded the dawn of a new dynasty in the sport from a program that had been all but dead just a few short years earlier.
Undefeated: 1987 National Championship
Led by wide receiver Michael Irvin and quarterback Steve Walsh, the 1987 Miami Hurricanes won the University’s second national championship and completed its first unbeaten season, defeating the top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners 20-14 in the Orange Bowl Classic. Miami bottled up Oklahoma’s wishbone attack, holding the Sooners to just 179 yards on the ground—OU had come into the game averaging 428.8 yards per game.
The Perfect Storm: 1991 National Championship
The 1991 Hurricanes finished 12-0 and captured the program’s fourth national championship in nine years behind quarterback Gino Torretta and a linebacking corps that featured Jessie Armstead and Micheal Barrow. Miami completed its second perfect season with a 22-0 shutout of No. 11 Nebraska in the 1992 Orange Bowl Classic.
