Before you scream at me, no, this isn’t a piece about attendance and tickets to the National Championship Game. It’s about a quirk of scheduling and seeding for the Miami Hurricanes.
As you all surely know, the Miami Hurricanes will play in the National Championship Game on Monday Night at Hard Rock Stadium. While this is Miami’s home stadium, and they’re well familiar with the venue, the Hurricanes will play a role here that they’ve never played before:
The road team.
In the CFP bracket, Miami is seeded
10th and their opponent, the Indiana Hoosiers are seeded 1st. The Hoosiers are the only undefeated team in the country this year, and have earned the right to be the home team throughout the playoffs. As such, Miami is the away team in the CFP bracket. So, the Canes will have a bit of opposite day syndrome at HRS on Monday night as the away team in their own stadium.
What does that mean? It means a different locker room. A different sideline. A different post-game interview room. A different side of the field for warmups. Same stadium, but the Miami side is flipped from a normal game.
I know people are going to make a big deal about this, and I’m writing about it for the site, but this is really a minor detail to the proceedings. Miami has been the road game in the last 5 games of the year, on the road at Virginia Tech and Pitt, and in the CFP at Texas A&M, in the Cotton Bowl against Ohio State, and in the Fiesta Bowl against Ole Miss. They’ve won every single one.
The road game operations are well honed at this point, as are the home game operations. Miami has gone 14-1 at Hard Rock Stadium over the last 2 years, so they’re very familiar and incredibly productive at this venue. This should be nothing more than a “oh hey, turn right, not left” when walking to the locker room type of thing, and less of an existential identity crisis and reason for a system failure type of thing.
I know it’s weird, since Miami has earned the distinction of playing a National Championship Game in their home stadium, but it’s fine. Based upon the rankings, Miami would have been the away team in the CFP Championship Game against anyone other than James Madison (the only team ranked lower than Miami who they could have possibly seen in the National Championship Game), in any stadium. If the Championship Game was in the Rose Bowl, or Houston, or New Orleans, or Atlanta, or anywhere else, this wouldn’t be an issue. Miami would continue to be the road team, same as they’ve been since the 3rd week of November. So, other than mentioning it and knowing it’s the case, let’s not make it an issue now, either.
Regardless of which locker room the equipment is in, which jersey they’re wearing, and which sideline the team stands on, Miami is playing their best football of the year, and stands just 60 minutes away from a championship. I promise you, the last thing that they’ll let stand in their way is standing on the north sideline instead of the south sideline during the game.
We’ll have more on the X’s and O’s for the Canes’ first National Championship Game since 2002, but I just wanted to get this out here now so you have time to process it before Monday Night.
Miami will be the road team in a game played at HRS. So be it.
Lace your boots.
Spot the ball.
