Matt Porter| Palm Beach Post
“Woah! The ball is on the ground, it’s an incomplete forward pass and Tamarick Vanover will not get up. Micheal Barrow separatedhim from his senses.”
— Keith Jackson, ABC play-by-play announcer, calling Micheal Barrow’s hit in the 1992 Miami-Florida State game
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Hits that leave a player in that dazed position are going away, and given what we now know about concussions, not a momenttoo soon. The game will adapt, hopefully. Ideally, players will be better for it. It will take time.
But let the record show that, whileMicheal Barrow may have causedTamarick Vanover lasting damage, a long-ago casualty of a brutal sport currently reckoning with itself, he didn’t head-hunt. He plowed throughhis chest, a city bus flattening an unsuspecting pedestrian, as clean and thunderous and loud as possible.
As Vanover lay prone, Barrow rose and prowled, one fist raised, arm extended as if dangling his opponent’s stolen soul. Joltsof energy overcame him. As trainers and staff huddled around Vanover, Barrow convulsed both arms skyward four times. He stoppedshort and crisply saluted a teammate.
“Wow! I haven’t seen a defensive football game like this in a long time.”
The hit was 25 years ago Wednesday: Oct. 3, 1992 in the Orange Bowl, one of the most memorable plays in one of the best Miami-FloridaState games. The second-ranked Hurricanes beat the third-ranked Seminoles 19-16, in a game known as “Wide Right II.” FSU kickerDan Mowrey missed a 39-yard field goal on the final play.
But the hit is the play that resonates, then and now.
When Barrow sent Vanover flying, a 10-year-old from West Kendall namedJonathan Vilmawas watching. He jumped out of his seat, forever changed. He wanted to be a linebacker. No other occupation would do.
“Wow, that’s awesome — he didn’t get in trouble for hitting people,” Vilma, a now-retired three-time Pro Bowler, recalledin March. “This is awesome. I want to do that. That’s where it started.”
It remains fresh in the mind of Barrow, who left his post as UM’s linebackers coach in Aug. 2014 and, after the season, tookthe same job with Seattle Seahawks. His players, likeDenzel Perryman, watched it to get fired up for games. Fans on the street would share their memories regularly.
“When I was coaching down there, once a week somebody would ask me about it,” Barrow, 47, said in a March interview. “Wheneverpeople meet me, they ask me. You learn to embrace it. I’d be out there recruiting, I’d be teasing guys and they’d tell me,‘Coach, you can’t hit nobody.’
“I’d just say, ‘YouTube it. Tell me what you think.'”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpDNr-2JIDw&w=640&h=390]
Vanover got up and trotted off the field, though he was invisible after that. He later played six years in the NFL, five withthe Kansas City Chiefsin the mid-to-late-’90s. That’s when Barrow,who had a 13-year career, saw him. He hasn’t seen him since.
“We’re cool,” Barrow said. “First time I saw him off the field you could tell he was very uncomfortable, almost like you gotinto a fight with somebody and they don’t know what to do — do they fight you again, or do they run? It was kind of like that.”
Barrow said he didn’t think Vanover wanted to take a swing at him, and the ice was easily broken.
“Just saying, ‘What’s up, man?’ He’s a cool dude,” Barrow said. “It was nothing personal. Just competing on the field. Hekilled us earlier in the game with that kickoff return. He was a beast.”
That day, Vanover had the speed to cut left against the Miami coverage and return the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown.Barrow recalls wanting to “get this guy” after that.
“When I was in high school, my brother taught me the importance of watching film,” Barrow said. “When I watched games, I’dsay, if they run that play right there, I’m gonna kill him, you know? You pick your spots. You see clues likeSherlock Holmes. Every time an offense breaks a huddle, they’re leaving clues about what they might be doing.”
With Miami leading FSU 17-16 with less than seven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, the Seminoles were driving nearmidfield. Defensive tacklePat Riley blew through an inexperienced FSU line and hauled down quarterbackCharlie Ward for a seven-yard loss. At the 35, Ward dropped back to set up a screen.
Barrow was ready. He remembered, from film study, that Vanover would try to cut back toward the middle of the field. His assignmentwas to flow left, but he sprinted right. Just as he practiced during the week.
“It’s so ironic because the following week, we played Penn State, and Penn State was killing everybody with the same play,”Barrow said. “They hadO.J. McDuffie. He waskilling them. When I saw the film, I was like, ‘They’ve got the same play!’ I was like, I’m gonna get ’em again.
“In the course of the game, me and O.J. were talking — we used to call [Penn State coachJoe]Paterno ‘The Rat’ — I said, ‘Tell ‘The Rat’ to call that play. O.J was like, ‘Man, you crazy. You ain’t getting me killed.’ Theydidn’t run it.”
He had some huge hits in his 13-year NFL career, but perhaps none so vicious. It was a perfect storm of inspiration and preparationand physical force. Barrow, a Homestead native, always dreamed about connecting like that.
His current team, the Seahawks,in 2014 adopted rugby-style tackling, a method that tries to take the head out of the equation. Players are essentially taught to lead withthe shoulder, strike the midsection, and wrap the knees. The Hurricanes, under defensive coordinatorManny Diaz, teach their players the same way.
The game, by rule, cannot be anything but violent. Nearly every play begins with 10 large men fighting, and ends with slightlysmaller players pummeling someone else. To enjoy football is to accept this, and in the case of this writer, to contend witha nagging wish for the game to damage the brains and bodies of its players on a less-frequent basis. We know too much now.
In Barrow’s younger days, they didn’t know much. Helmets were mainly used to stop skull fractures, and the devastating effectsof CTE were decades from being discovered.In recalling the players who inspired him to play the game, Barrow name-checkeddefenders who created carnage:Jack Tatum, Ronnie Lott, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Singletary, Wilber Marshall, and someone he saw on a highlight show the season before.
“I remember this guy,Quentin Coryatt,the middle linebacker at Texas A&M,” Barrow said. “He had this hit where he just folded this guy up like a suitcase. I’m a football junkie and it’s like, ‘That’s what I want. Man, I want to get a hit like that.”
Barrow had another powerful force inspiring him: Hurricane Andrew, whichhammered South Florida six weeks before the game and flattened much of Homestead. At the2-hour mark of this video, ABC’s halftime show aired a taped report from Barrow’s ailing neighborhood. The 22-year-old linebacker took the reporter,the camera, and a national audience inside his family’s storm-ravaged home and through the streets, explaining the loss hiscommunity suffered.
“It feels like a ghost town,” Barrow said, as cameras showed an abundance of abandonment. “There’s no spirit. There’s no lifehere. … The hurricane took a lot away from them. … Everywhere you look, you see frustration.”
Barrow, part of the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ withJesse ArmsteadandDarrin Smith,was already a fan favorite for his part in Miami’s success under coachDennis Erickson. For those in South Florida suffering after Andrew, he became theface of the team, asymbol of resilience.
“I saw something my mother work for all her life destroyed in one day,” Barrowsaid later that year. “That was incredible. I don’t take this game for granted anymore. I play every game like it’s my last.”
That hit, born of frustration and film study, will be lasting.
And yes,Shaq Quarterman,Michael PinckneyandZach McCloudhave seen the clip.
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