Book Review: 'Cane Mutiny by Bruce Feldman

Summary: ‘Cane Mutiny (© 2005) tells the story of the rise of Miami football from an independent doormat in the late 1970’s to a football powerhouse in the early parts of the 21st century. The book covers Miami’s coaches, players, perception, and games during that time period.

Pluses: In an entertaining and easy read, Bruce Feldman gives insight on how the Miami Hurricane football program is different than your typical modern day college football powerhouse. He discusses how the team’s Thug U reputation came about and how that has even helped the program on the field.

Minuses: At times the narrative moves so fast that important issues often get passed up. Many of the early seasons get passed up altogether. During the early part of the book, Feldman does well in presenting an unbiased view, but as the narrative slows down in the later parts of the book a pro-Miami bias shows itself. Throughout the book Feldman would occasionally go off on rants that had little to do with the book’s premise. For example, he spends too much time discussing Miami integrating southern football, former University of Pittsburgh player Antonio Bryant’s growing up and playing high school football in Miami, and a too in depth look at the situation surrounding prized recruit Willie Williams’ off the field problems.

Commentary:
Feldman discusses the challenges Miami has from a public relations standpoint due to their checkered image. He claims that it is very difficult for Miami to escape negative publicity even in times when the program’s reputation does not ring true. While I feel Feldman is accurate in this assessment, similarly, Miami’s on field image and expectations often exceeds reality due to their past reputation, something Feldman ignores. Feldman casts Modern day Miami football as an unstoppable dynasty, something that we’ve seen in the short time since printing not to be true.

Perhaps one of the more unique things about the Miami program is how former players, often times current NFL players, stay connected with the program. Feldman gives that aspect and the mentality it brings much credit for the success of the program. On the contrary, Feldman misses another aspect of the Miami program that is very unique from other powerhouses and that is its poor fan support. Feldman ignores the fact that Miami, despite all their success, still struggles to sell out the Orange Bowl. A discussion as to the causes for Miami’s poor fan support would have been interesting and was very much needed in this book.

Lastly, Feldman does a good job of discussing how the cocky and flamboyant mentality came about and how the early coaches handled it. Howard Schnellenberger ran a very tight ship at Miami in terms of practice routines and off the field discipline, but allowed for the players to be themselves on the field. Jimmy Johnson used the Miami on field swagger as an intimidation ploy and helped it win football games. Johnson was cognizant of keeping that swagger to on field behavior. Dennis Erickson came into a program with an on-field attitude that he most likely wouldn’t have fostered, but allowed to remain. Feldman is critical of how Erickson half heartedly tried to address problems and allowed for it to develop into a major problem. Feldman accurately shows that Miami can play with their famous attitude without it being a problem when the team is winning, but egos collide and problems develop when the team struggles.