Best Ways To Spend Your Off-Season As A Canes Fan

As a football fan, the off-season truly is the worst. You wait all year long for the season to start, and then in a matter of months, a snap of the finger, and it’s gone. You have to wait out the rest of winter (unless you live in Miami), you suffer through the dog days of summer that seem to go on forever. You get excited for spring practice, and then in 3 weeks it’s over, which then you wait another 3 ¹⁄₂ months until fall camp.

Yes, it’s brutal. However, I've come up with some ways on how Miami Hurricanes fans can spend their off-seasons. It won't make time go faster, but that’s life.

1. Rewatch old Canes games

What a timeless tradition. I can’t tell you how many times in my life, during the off-season on a random day, bored out of my mind, I just turn on YouTube and look up a classic Miami game. If you’re itching for something, some kind of football, it’s one of the best cures I know.

Before Miami played Florida in 2019, I can’t tell you how many times I rewatched the 2003 Canes-Gators game. By the end of the off-season, I nearly memorized all of Brad Nessler’s quotes from that classic.

So go ahead, turn on the 1989 Miami-Notre Dame. Are you bored on a Wednesday night? Search for the 2001 thrashing of Washington, or the 2017 beatdown of Notre Dame. Are you off work and it’s Tuesday at noon? Grab a Bud Light, rewatch the Wide Left game from 2002, and I promise you’ll still gets chills during Willis McGahee’s screen pass.

2. Interact with Canes fans on social media

Ah yes, the combining powers of Canes fans and social media, what a beautiful thing. Whether it’s on Facebook or my preferred Twitter, any day of the week, anytime of the day, you’ll see somebody on your timeline talking about Miami football.

Whether it’s about the upcoming season, recruiting, or having a debate on what would have happened if Butch Davis never left, Hurricanes fans don’t stop.

You’ll also have, pretty frequently actually, endless arguments between Miami and FSU fans, or Miami and UF fans, or Miami and UCF fans, or Miami and any other schools fans. The argument will go on for days, and you’ll start to get pretty sick of having to respond, but it’s entertainment nevertheless. And I will say, it’s a good feeling to prove a rival teams fan wrong in a debate.

3. Try and stay up with recruiting

Recruiting is.....exhausting, if I'm being completely honest. 2020 was the first full year I started to pay attention to it, so I could write about it and talk about it, and it’s a never ending saga. The off-season is the perfect time to get caught up on who the Canes are recruiting, who they should be recruiting and of course, and watching plenty of Hudl highlight films.

You’ll find yourself checking often if there’s been any crystal ball picks, responding with Miami gifs when a recruit tweets anything, waiting for eyeball emojis to flash on the timeline, it’s rough. But then, when a recruit does finally commit to Miami, it sends off a celebration that’ll last a couple hours and it makes you happy. And everytime someone commits to UM, you say things like “he’s going to be the steal of this class,” or “this is the class that’s going to bring us back.”

Summer of 2020 was exactly that. In the span of a couple months, Miami landed Elijah Arroyo, James Williams, Kamren Kinchens, Brashard Smith, and it was a blast.

4. Tailgate at home for the spring game

This is something I've done several times throughout the years, and it’s one of my favorite “traditions.” We all love tailgating, and we all miss tailgating, especially now since we haven’t been able to do it since the 2019 season. So what’s a way to somewhat fill that void? Canes spring game, tailgate at home!

Pull out the grill, call your friends, get out the cooler, play some music, bust out the corn hole, it’s one of the best ways to get over the off-season blues. And then, you can watch a scrimmage!

5. Wait.

The off-season isn’t fun, and these things I've listed does make some days go by faster, but at the end of the day, you’ll wake up in March or April, and realize you have a long time before football season starts again. It also makes you appreciate the season more though, at least I think so.

Just remember, we’re all in this together. We’re all suffering, counting down the days, predicting a 10 win season, naming our breakout players. When it comes down to it, we’re waiting. But before you know, July will turn into fall, practice will start again, and it’ll almost be time.