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The 1992 Miami Hurricanes football team was riding a 18-game winning streak and were the preseason #1 team when Hurricane Andrew rolled through Dade County on August 24. As the first game on the schedule neared the team relocated to Dodgertown in Vero Beach to prepare for the September 5 opener at Iowa.

The following is what Hurricane reporter Jason Molinet wrote following the game:

University of Iowa officials were billing it as “A Night to Remember,” the first night game ever at Kinnick Stadium against the top-ranked University of Miami football team.

A number of the 70,397 people who filled the stadium will remember one tackle more than any other from the Hurricanes 24-7 victory over Iowa.

One Iowa fan attempted to take on Miami single handed, or at least UM’s mascot, Sebastian the Ibis. Standing near the end zone following a failed third down conversion late in the first half, Sebastian, portrayed by John Routh since 1984, was tackled from behind.

Recalling the incident later, Routh said, “I suddenly realized I was on the ground. If I would have seen him coming, he would have never had a chance.”

“I saw a guy running up behind [Routh] and I wondered what he was doing, and he just tackled him. I couldn’t believe it,” Zak Sulkes, a UM cheerleader, said. 

Craig Howard was arrested and charged with assault and battery, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness.

Molinet also wrote, “It is believed Howard attacked Sebastian as a result of a wager.”

What we didn’t know at the time is who offered the wager.

Actor Tom Arnold, appearing as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1993, recalled a drunken fan sitting next to him and his then-wife Rosanne Barr, at the game. In order to get rid of the fan, he bet him he wouldn’t go try to tackle the Ibis.

The rest is history.

And for Howard, it was certainly a night to remember.

May 7, 1991, Fenway Park. Twins @ Red Sox, Scott Erickson pitching to Wade Boggs.

30 years ago today a friend and I walked up to the ticket window looking for two. It just happened to be precisely 6pm, and unbeknownst to us it was the time when unused player’s tickets were released to the public. This is well before Stub Hub and “Premium Pricing” existed. We scored two right behind home plate, first row.

I was a poor community college student who had just acquired a 80-200mm lens. I think the body was a Nikon N6006. I had them with me, along with some Fuji 800 film.

I didn’t shoot athletics much at Hillsborough Community College, in fact, I wrote nearly as much as I shot. Plus we only published once every three weeks. My student publications scholarship covered my tuition that year, which at $20 a credit hour was a whopping $600. But it helped me afford that lens.

I consider this to be my first sports photograph. It likely isn’t, but it’s the first one that remains in my archive, which nearing 700,000 images online, and likely another 200,000 images in “analog storage.”

After getting my AA, I transferred to Miami, and eventually became their contract photographer. In my first year, Miami baseball went to the College World Series, where the infamous Warren Morris ended our championship dreams with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. Our shortstop was so devastated after we lost he laid on the ground for what seemed an eternity.

That shortstop now occupies the dugout to the right side of this image. He is the manager of the Boston Red Sox.

Life is a crazy ride.

With the recent popularity of smartphone app “Instagram,” I have experimented with re-creating the look of the iconic square images using images from my Miami Hurricanes Archive.

I started by making “Canestagrams” out of studio poses of our Volleyball team.

Recently I started working on making “Canestagrams” from my ‘Canes football action archive.

I hope you enjoy the first series of 49. You can view them all individually on the mother site. A square composite print (shown above) is also available.