As you may have heard already, the Orange Bowl (the actual place, not the game) is going bye-bye. The final death knell came yesterday when Miami city officials recommended that the Orange Bowl be demolished and its salvageable parts be sold off as memorabilia. Those salvageable parts include the urinals, and what better way to remember the longtime home of the Miami Hurricanes really. A lasting memory of all the times they took a piss on other teams in the figurative sense (and quite possibly in the literal sense).Syracuse fans aren't exactly sad to see the place go. Of ESPN's 30 Greatest Moments in the Orange Bowl's History, Syracuse is mentioned twice. And both times ended badly.
Jan. 1, 1953: Alabama 61, Syracuse 6
The Orange Bowl was nationally televised by CBS for the first time.
Jan. 2, 1999: Orange Bowl Classic returns (Florida 31, Syracuse 10)
The Orange Bowl Classic made a curtain call appearance due to a Dolphins home playoff game with a matchup of two teams who hadn't been in the Orange Bowl in years. The Gators last played there in 1967, while Syracuse went back to 1959. It marked Donovan McNabb's final college game.
Not mentioned was the 1959 Orange Bowl, which Syracuse lost 21-6 to Oklahoma.
I was at that '99 Orange Bowl. I will say I enjoyed the experience for the most part. The stadium was a relic in every sense of the word. It lies smack dab in the middle of a rundown neighborhood where people flag you down and ask for $20 in return for the right to park on their dusty lawns. RVs from the Florida fans engulfed the
entire landscape and we barely made it to the Syracuse tents outside the stadium for some pre-game festivities. In the parking lot, we watched the Arizona Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys in the playoffs, musing that this Plummer kid was gonna be huge someday. I was harassed by two drunk Florida fans who wanted to know what in the hell an Orangeman was. They had already moved on, polishing off their tall cans of Coors Light before I could give them an answer.Oh, and then there was the game itself. Um...let's just move on.
Then there was the Miami (FL) rivalry, if you could call it that. From the time they joined the Big East in 1990, Miami beat the Orange 11 of 13 times, including 5 of 6 at the Orange Bowl. The 33-13 win in 1997 in Miami was a nice vindication but it was a sweetness short lived. Four times in the Orange Bowl, Syracuse failed to score more than 10 points, going scoreless twice.
So we bid you farewell Orange Bowl. We will often think of you in the way Patriot fans must have felt when Drew Bledsoe got run of New England. Sorry to see you go, but than again not really.