I think the University of Miami set back its greatest-team-in-college-football-history pursuit a few notches Saturday with an extremely fortunate 28-27 win over Florida State, coming from 13 down to do it. I talked to a few people around the league in the past few days about the top barstool question in the land: Could the best college team in a given year beat the worst pro team?
In other words, could the Hurricanes beat the Bengals? No pro guy said yes, even before the shaky game Saturday. The general consensus was that Dick LeBeau would run Corey Dillon 45 times for about 270 yards against Miami, control the clock about 43 minutes to 17, and overcome the badness of Jon Kitna to win.
Picking up the blitzes would be overwhelming for the Miami linemen.I talked to former Bengals offensive line coach Jim McNally, now coaching the line with the Giants, during the FSU-Miami game. “No way would Miami win. No way,” he said. “That question is so far-fetched it’s stupid. That’s like asking if you could take the best little league football team in the country and beat a high school team. Or asking if the USC baseball team, with four All-Americans, could beat a major-league team in a series. Picking up the blitzes would be overwhelming for the Miami linemen.”