Quarterback U. was the given name all those years ago, and it once was a good and marketable name to showcase University of Miami football. But to those on the inside it’s always been something more than just a neat name.
“It’s a club,” Gino Torretta said.
It’s a closed club, too, one you can’t talk or buy or get voted in. You have to earn your way in by winning like all the big names before you did.
“I think that’s how all of us feel,” Torretta said. “It’s an honor to part of that club.”
Listing them all can be a feat of generational memory, like reciting U.S. Presidents. The easier way is to read their names off the stadium’s ring of honor. George Mira. Jim Kelly. Bernie Kosar. Vinny Testaverde. Steve Walsh. Craig Erickson. Ken Dorsey.
“We’d gone through many of the same experiences as a Miami quarterback, and then you get to know each other after you’re done playing through the years,” Torretta said.
At a time they’re their Hurricanes, the one playing Texas A&M in the college playoffs next Saturday, it’s been a tough time for their club of late. Kelly’s cancer is gone in the manner they all cheered for. But Kosar had a liver transplant a few weeks ago, and was back in the Cleveland hospital with issues.
“Doctors are in with me now,” he texted Saturday morning. “Next steps being taken.”
Quarterback U lost a member this past week, too, when George Mira died at 83. He was “The Original”, as they sometimes called him, pre-dating all the others as a two-time All-America quarterback in 1962 and 1963.
Mira had all the door prizes of fame in his era: A “Matador” nickname for his scrambling ways; the first UM player and only Key West native on the cover of Sports Illustrated under the headline, “One Wonderful Conch Is This Mira”; and His No. 10 jersey was retired.
Mira was older, from a different era. The other Miami quarterbacks got to know each other in organic fashion. Walsh came back to watch video with Dorsey. Kosar and Torretta once stood by the team bench and saw the same hole in the Florida State defense they always saw from its great defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews.
Kosar wanted to tell Dorsey, who was playing that game.
“You can’t, Bernie,” Toretta said.
“I’ve got to,” Kosar said.
He approached Dorsey. “The middle’s open,” Kosar said.
It was, too. Dorsey began attacking it. Stories like that always separated Miami from other programs for football generations. It’s what coach Mario Cristobal has tapped into this season by having players like Michael Irvin on the sideline.
These relationships among quarterbacks have always been good but different with Mira. His NFL career had long played out, from being the 15th pick of San Francisco in 1965 to being Bob Griese’s backup in the Miami Dolphins’ Super Bowl season in 1971.
By the time Quarterback U was named, Mira was operating a food stand, Native Conch, at the Fairchild Botanical Garden in Coral Gables. He’d bring conch fritters to the other quarterbacks, too, when they’d meet at UM reunions or an annual golf tournament for Quarterback U. that was thrown by former team chaplain Leo Armbrust for more than a decade.
Most quarterbacks showed up every year, too. No wonder, considering the stakes: The Bishop Cup.
“They were fundraisers for Catholic charities,” Armbrust said. “We ended up building a church through those golf tournaments.”
Armbrust even collected all the game-worn jerseys from the quarterbacks of Quarterback U., and gave them to Torretta for safekeeping when he left the university a few decades ago. Sounds like a future fund-raiser.
After Dorsey left in 2003 and Miami’s fortunes soon began to drift, Quarterback U. began to be less of a name because its quarterbacks were often less of a thing.
Now it’s a different era in college football. Cam Ward was as good as any Miami quarterback, but only played a year in Coral Gables before going to the NFL. Carson Beck will only play a year, too. It’s hard to build a friendship on the run like that.
Quarterback U. has faded from view in some respect, too. But it’s still a club to those in it. Torretta was in New York signing 300 football trophies on Friday like every other former Heisman Trophy winner on the weekend the newest winner is announced.
Amid it all, he thought his club at Quarterback U., saying, “We lost a great man.”
