page_title: Miami Hurricanes football
section_title: Butch Davis era (1995–2000)
hierarchical_section_title: Miami Hurricanes football / History / Butch Davis era (1995–2000)
caption_attribution_description: English: UNC head football coach Butch Davis at the 2007 ACC Football kickoff. Picture by sports photographer Gene Galin for the Butch Davis article.
context_page_description: The Miami Hurricanes football team represents the University of Miami in the sport of American football. The Hurricanes compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and the Coastal Division of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The program began in 1926 and has won five AP national championships. The Miami Hurricanes are among the most storied and decorated football programs in NCAA history. Miami is ranked fourth on the list of All-time Associated Press National Poll Championships, tied with Southern California and Ohio State and behind Alabama, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma.
  Miami also holds a number of NFL Draft records, including most first-round selections in a single draft and most consecutive drafts with at least one first-round selection. Two Hurricanes have won the Heisman Trophy and nine have been inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame. The team plays its home games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. The Hurricanes' head coach is Manny Diaz.
context_section_description: Following Erickson's departure, Miami initially pursued former UM defensive coordinator and then-Colorado State head coach Sonny Lubick; however, he withdrew from consideration and opted to remain with the Rams. Eventually, Miami settled on another former Hurricanes defensive assistant coach, then-Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Butch Davis.
  The Hurricanes finished Davis's first season with a record of 8–3. However, on December 20, 1995, the NCAA announced that Miami would be subject to severe sanctions for numerous infractions within the athletic department. The Hurricanes were forced to sit out postseason play for the first time since 1982 and docked 31 scholarships from 1996 to 1998. Miami had actually self-reported the violations in 1991. However, when the Department of Education got word that school officials helped athletes fraudulently obtain Pell Grants, it asked Miami to stop its own investigation while it conducted its own. Ultimately, 60 athletes were implicated, but all of them avoided criminal charges after being sent through a pretrial diversion program. In 1994, Tony Russell, a former UM academic advisor, pleaded guilty to helping more than 80 student athletes, 57 of whom were football players, falsify Pell Grant applications in exchange for kickbacks from the players themselves. The scandal dated all the way back to 1989 and secured more than $220,000 in federal grant money. Federal officials later said that Russell had engineered "perhaps the largest centralized fraud ... ever committed" in the history of the Pell Grant program. In late 1995, the NCAA concluded that, in addition to the fraudulent Pell Grants facilitated by Russell, the university had also provided or allowed over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Miami football players. The NCAA also found that the university had failed to wholly implement its drug testing program, and permitted three football student-athletes to compete without being subject to the required disciplinary measures specified in the policy. The NCAA found that this was evidence that school officials didn't have adequate control over the football program.  Miami docked itself seven scholarships as part of a self-imposed sanction in 1995, and the NCAA took away another 24 scholarships over the next two years. As a result of the scandal, Sports Illustrated's Alexander Wolff wrote a cover story that Miami should at least temporarily shut down its football program. Further, On June 21, 1996, Miami football players broke into the apartment of the captain of Miami's track team and struck him repeatedly. In response, Davis suspended three key players for the coming 1996 season, in which the Hurricanes finished 9–3. Davis also suspended two other players who were involved in separate violent incidents.
  The low point for Miami came in 1997 when they posted a 5–6 record, the first losing season since Howard Schnellenberger's first year in 1979. The 1997 season saw the Hurricanes suffer one of the program's most humiliating losses, a 47–0 beating at the hands of in-state rival Florida State. The Hurricanes began to reassert themselves in 1998, when they finished 9–3. In late September, Miami was forced to postpone their game with UCLA due to Hurricane Georges. The game was rescheduled for December 5 and for the number 2-ranked Bruins, a trip to the National Championship game was at stake. The Hurricanes rebounded from a 66–13 "caning" at the hands of Syracuse quarterback and Donovan McNabb to put up over 600 yards of total offense against UCLA en route to a stunning 49–45 victory for the Hurricanes.
  The following season carried high hopes and expectations for the Hurricanes. They opened the year with a 23–12 win over Ohio State in East Rutherford. Early success, however, was tempered by tough losses to Penn State and Florida State during a three-game losing streak. The Hurricanes rebounded to win their last four games including a 28–13 win over Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl. In 2000, Miami was shut out of the BCS National Championship Game. Despite beating Florida Sta
caption: Butch Davis
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