Georgia Tech Football: Snarky Preview – Miami

(Note: For bonus points, see if you can find the secret message in this week's preview.)

The year is 2024, which means this is Miami's 21st season in the ACC. As we all know, it was an extremely successful run for the Canes, with countless division/conference titles in the preseason. Honestly, keeping up with all those mythical accolades can be quite an ordeal. Every member of the national college football media seems to enjoy the annual tradition of playing up Miami's chances of winning in a mediocre conference that, as ESPN has often tried to claim, can only be considered a good conference if its linchpins are Miami and Florida State are good.

And then there are the fans.

Knowing how to deal with Miami fans is an art in itself. No fan base – in my book, not even UGA's fan base – is more oppressive and insufferable to be around when their team actually appears to be competitive. Exhaustion is a natural symptom of prolonged contact with people who don't want to keep their mouths shut about THE U and DADE COUNTY and ED REED and THE CULTURE and SWAGGER…but there is a silver lining. At some point, the fate of all Miami fans seems destined to evaporate, because when the Canes implode in the middle of the season – as has been their habit for over 20 years – those fans and that noise always seem to disappear without a trace, leaving only one to be left to stare at Look at the 742 people in attendance at a game against an FCS opponent and ask yourself if all those throngs of fans ever really existed.

Miami constantly exists in a strange place. Absolute confidence radiates in every corner of the program. Recruits see a program that plays up its tremendous history without talking about successes in their own lives. Incredible wealth continues to shower the program, but a closer look reveals its origins Hospital profits from the pandemic period and a lone, loud mega-booster desperately avoiding bankruptcy. The overwhelming pride in the program manifests itself in SWAGGER's eternal fan base, which gets a little more amusing with each passing year since they last won something significant.

Considering Miami is undefeated this year and very likely to make the playoffs thanks to an extremely infuriating combination of incredible talent and incredible luck while facing a ridiculously easy schedule (GT really could be the third best team they play in regular season), let's look at a partial list of teams and organizations that scored at least as many touchdowns in the ACC title game as Miami in November 2024:

• Georgia Tech
• State of Florida
• NC State
• Cal
• Caltech (still undefeated)
• Emory (still undefeated)
• Miami (Ohio)
• Iowa
• Iowa's players
• Those guys at the Iowa-Nebraska game last year who had t-shirts that just said “Punts.”
• Goldberg, the professional wrestler
• Goldberg, the mighty duck
• Alan Shepard, the first American in space
• Commander Shepard
• Shadow the hedgehog
• Shadow, the mischievous black Labrador from my childhood neighborhood, who once casually strolled into our garage, dug a tennis ball out of my father's gym bag and took it home, causing my father to get annoyed that I was 9 years old old for not stopping them (?? ?) and to be fair I was in the driveway but was too amused to watch the game
• Tim Tebow
• Terry Tate, the office linebacker
• “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen
• The guy who fixed the torn up turf during the 2017 Big Ten title game
• The torn up turf from the 2017 Big Ten title game
• Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
• Me, the person writing this
• You, the person reading this
• You, the person reading this secretly over the previous person's shoulder