Dennis Dodd over at CBS Sports was giving some solid props to our Baby Canes this week, but he appeared to have some concerns about the lack of a sell out at Land Shark Stadium. Actually, he wasn’t just concerned, he was obsessed by it.

“Now if they could only sell out the place.”

“Miami had just completed the best 3-1 start in, maybe, its history and a few thousand empty seats stared down from Land Shark Stadium.

“judging by Saturday night’s victory over Oklahoma at not-quite sold out Land Shark…”

“Maybe by January it can sell out its own stadium for what would then be the Orange Bowl.”

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate any props the national media wants to throw at these Hurricanes, but harping on the amount of fans that attend the game, just shows that after nearly 30 years of “The U” the media still doesn’t get it.

The Miami Hurricanes have never been about the fans. It’s never been about us. It’s never been about me. We’re not Ohio State. We’re not Tennessee. We’re not the Florida Gators and we don’t want to be.They sell out giant stadiums with fans all wearing the same color clothes. Very Cute.

We win championships.

Listen, it’s great that those schools can bring in one-hundred thousand people to watch them crush Toledo. More power to them, but that’s not what Miami is about.

The Canes have produced more National Championships over the last 30 years than any other school, but they didn’t do it for the fans, they didn’t do for a coach (four different coaches won those titles), they didn’t even do it for the school or the city.

These players did it for themselves. The Miami fraternity is a family. Where else can a current player walk into the team’s gym and find former greats like Ray Lewis or Edgerrin James hogging the weights? What other team’s players are constantly being mentored by former champions like Bernie Kosar and Michael Irvin?

A few…maybe, but it seems like every past Hurricane takes pride in the next generation.

And that’s sort of how I cheer for my team. It’s not important to surround myself with other Hurricane fans (for the record I live in NYC now). You get that way growing up a fan in the state of Florida. Almost everyone I knew back then was either a Gator or a Seminole fan. You quickly take pride in being the standout, the lonely Canes fan.

Yet, for as long as I’ve been a fan, people have been writing about Miami’s game attendance.

Just last year, USA TODAY chimed in.

The University of Miami has a new football home, but that doesn’t mean the Hurricanes are drawing a lot of new fans. Dolphin Stadium is bigger and cleaner and has more amenities than the Orange Bowl. But, like its predecessor, it’s normally a little more than half full.

For the fourth season in a row, the Hurricanes’ average home attendance will be in the 40,000-plus range. The Hurricanes would have to draw more than 69,000 fans Thursday against Virginia Tech to average 50,000 for the season. The last time Miami got a crowd that big against anyone other than Florida or Florida State was five years ago against Tennessee.

Since it’s such an important subject to everyone else, let’s go ahead and break it down. Why have the Hurricanes struggled to sell out, even when they were on top of the world?

1. NO ON-CAMPUS STADIUM

The biggest excuse everyone has pitched the last year and a half — the move from the Orange Bowl to Land Shark Stadium — has cost us fans. The statement is true, but it’s not THE issue. While Dolphins stadium is a damn fine block of cement and the OB was a piece of crap, it was our piece of crap and I’ll always miss it. There was nothing better than watching a game with the open end zone, littered with palm trees.

Anyhow, yes the new stadium is costing some fans (It’s a good 40 minute drive away from UM), but lets not kid ourselves. Miami has never been a fill-the-seats type of team. Let’s not waste another moment on this stadium issue get to the meat and potatoes of this conversation.

2. SMALL PRIVATE SCHOOL
Miami has won five national titles in the last 26 years. When you’re talking about modern football powers, The U is no different than the Ohio State’s and USC’s of the world. In reality though, the schools are completely different. The U is a private school; a small private school. How small? My high school had more students than the University of Miami. Around 15,000 students attend Miami (only 1,000 more than Duke). Compare that to other big-time schools (USC 33,000, Ohio State 52,000, Florida 53,000) and you see how small of a school it is. So even if every single student attended a game, they would fill up roughly 20% of the stadium.

Both the Orange Bowl and Dolphins Stadium seat over 70,000. A tiny private school’s football team has no business playing in a stadium this big. While schools like OSU, Tennessee, Michigan, Florida and others could fill a 100,000-seat stadium on a Monday morning against Arkansas A&M, most schools around the nation play in stadiums that seat between 45-60,000. If Miami had an on-campus stadium that sat around 55,000, then this would never be an issue.

3. FLORIDA, A HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Obviously a team’s fan base is not solely students. I didn’t go to Miami (wasn’t smart enough), I went to the University of South Florida. I’m a fan because I was born in Miami. This makes me special (at least more special than I already am). In fact, a majority of people who live in Florida now were not born in Florida.

When these people showed up in the Sunshine State from places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, they come in as Buckeyes or Lion fans. While I’m sure some fans find a special place in their heart for the local team, most people remain loyal to the team they grew up with. Think I’m wrong? Just go to a Devil Rays game when the Yankees are in town or better yet, go to a Dolphins game when the Jets swing on by. You’ll know what I’m talking about.

However, this rule applies just to the coast and cities like; Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville (you can include Orlando too since it’s a tourist town). Teams just don’t do well here. The exception of course is the middle of the state, where one can find Florida State and the University of Florida (more on that below).

No 4. CITY OF MIAMI, PART ONE
No place highlights this transplant society better than South Florida and Miami. The typical resident arrived from the Midwest or Northeast. Most are old, very old, retirees. The area is not called the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for nothing. Old people, God bless ‘em, but attending sporting events in the hot sun is just not their thing.

No 5 CITY OF MIAMI, PART TWO
Also, Mami is Cuban country. In fact, a stunning 51% of Miami residents are foreign born, most from Cuba and Latin America. Anyone who attended a Miami game at the Orange Bowl and had to park on one of the many lawns surrounding the OB, knows this all to well. It’s called North Havana for a reason.

Now, the first generation of Cubans who arrived in Miami were not football fans, but their kids are. However,  it takes time to create a dedicated fan base. Notre Dame fans are Notre Dame fans because the devotion has been passed down from generation to generation to generation over many decades. It will take more than one generation in Miami for a loyal fan base to grow.

No 6 GATORS AND SEMINOLES, OH MY
There are hundreds of thousands of residents in the South Florida area, some have to love college football, right? Yep, there are plenty of Florida residents who love college football. However, the ones who go to college or know someone who did go to college landed at the state schools; Florida State or the University of Florida. Again, UM is a private school.

These local residents go off to college and return four years later as fans of those schools. They get jobs, get married, have kids and those kids cheer along with Dad, rooting for his former school.

No 7 HISTORY
With Miami’s success, it’s easy to forget how new this football program is. Sure, they’ve been around for over 50 years, but they were really bad for a long time. It wasn’t until the arrival of Schnellenberger in 1979 that the team finally became a powerhouse program. Teams like OSU, Penn State and Tennessee, the teams that can sell 100,000 seats to a game against Temple, have been around forever. Like I already said, it takes decades, not just years to build a fanatical fan base. It takes generations to develop this kind of enthusiasm.

No 8 RIVALS-LESS
The Hurricanes started off as an independent, back when it was cool to be one (not just Notre Dame). Florida State was an independent, and so was Penn State. When Miami started to get good, their rule was, we’ll play anyone anywhere. Eventually though, people became less willing to play solid independents.

Schools like PSU, FSU and eventually Miami were forced to join a conference. While FSU went into the ACC, Miami joined the Big East. Suddenly we were asked to care about games with BC, Temple, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Syracuse, to name a few.

In reality, I cared more about the non-conference games (mostly Florida State). Sure when a Syracuse or a Va Tech got good, it was fun for a few years, but there was no passion.

Then the Canes moved to the ACC and again, we suddenly had to start caring about Georgia Tech, Virginia and Duke.

Schools that play in the Big Ten, Big 12 or the SEC benefit because all the schools are situated in the same region. When Florida and Georgia play, it’s not just a football game, it’s a border war. You can feel the hatred. Any Michigan fan can probably tell you about a game in 1951 against Ohio State because their grandfather told them about it three dozen times.

Again, it takes decades to build a solid rivalry like these. Miami’s played Virginia like five times — ever. For residents in South Florida, they first have to figure out what state Clemson plays in before they can hate them.

When the ACC had a chance to build up some regional rivalries, they failed. Because of the basketball tradition (not willing to break up UNC, Duke and NC State), they came up with this insane Atlantic and Coastal division, putting Florida State in one division and Miami in the other. Stupid. They should have created a ‘South’ Division and a ‘North’ Division.

South: Miami, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, NC State
North: Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Maryland, Duke, UNC

Those are my eight…I’m sure there are more. However, the great irony is, while Miami can’t sell out at home, they’re one of the more popular teams nationally on television. It’s a simple formula…put the Canes on and people will watch. There is a reason why three of Miami’s first four games were on Prime time.

My theory on this, and it’s only a theory, is…Miami benefited from the simple fact that they became great right when college football and cable television merged. In fact, I truly believe if Miami made a deal with Fox (like Notre Dame’s deal with NBC), they’d do great.

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