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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > May > 26 > Entry
Kellen Winslow to Miami vice — the city that continues to amaze
MIAMI — Over the years in Miami — living and working there through the 1970s and 1980s and visiting almost every year since — I’ve seen some things that surprised me.
Back when Miami vice was often a way of life — not just a TV show — two luxury sports cars collided in an intersection right near my house.
Before the cops got there, both drivers pulled themselves from their battered cars and ran…away.
One car was stolen, the other was packed with kilos of cocaine.
In the sports world, two you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it moments come to mind. I covered the NFL game now dubbed The Epic in Miami. It was an 1982 AFC Divisional Play-Off game between San Diego and the Dolphins in the steamy Orange Bowl and it’s considered one of the greatest games in NFL history.
The show that Kellen Winslow — now the Central State athletics director, but then the Chargers’ tight end — put on that day wasn’t just surprising. It was unbelievable.
Although he endured a pinched nerve. dehydration, debilitating cramps and a gashed lip that needed to be stitched up, he carried the Chargers to the 41-38 overtime victory by catching 13 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown and blocking Uwe von Schamann’s winning field goal attempt with four seconds left in regulation.
The photo of him with a towel draped over his head, being helped off the field after the game by two teammates is an enduring image of the NFL.
I was covering the Miami Hurricanes game with Boston College in 1984 — in fact I standing right at the edge of the end zone — when a scrambling Doug Flutie heaved a Hail Mary pass from close to mid-field with time running out and somehow BC’s Gerard Phelan gathered in the ball against three Miami defenders to give the Eagles a stunning 47-45 victory.
And yet, what my wife and I saw at the Fontainebleau Hotel this weekend still surprised me.
It turned supermodel Cheryl Tiegs into a wall flower. Popular actor Matt Damon became little more than an afterthought and even 6-foot-10 NBA star Alonzo Mourning was dwarfed.
It became some of the fodder for the story I wrote that appears both in today’s newspaper and elsewhere on this web page.
It’s about boxing’s future and the past coming together Friday night at the fabled Miami Beach Hotel. And with legends Roberto Duran and Jake LaMotta in the crowd and four trumpeted Cuban defectors — led by two-time Olympic gold medal winner Guillermo Rigondeaux — up in the ring, the fight crowd showered its affection on nothing else.
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By Tom
May 27, 2009 1:12 PM | Link to this
Miami’s become a big, bustling place with all the immigrants. And that traffic is almost as bad as Manhattan.