Jimmy was handed a clean and solid program that Howard saved and built. Jimmy handed over a renegade program to Dennis Erickson.
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The program Howard left behind was solid but they had a ton of luck in thier championship year including the win over the Cornhuskers. He left a solid foundation. Jimmy had a tough first season with the Maryland come back and the hail Flute BS
but then when on to dominate college football for years to come.
Johnson started with a shaky 8–5 record his first season, which included a game in which Johnson's Hurricanes blew a 31–0 halftime lead in a loss to Maryland with Frank Reich as its QB and also included a 47–45 loss toBoston College immortalized by Doug Flutie's "Hail Mary" touchdown pass on the game's final play. But Johnson developed the Hurricanes into a football program that came to be known as "The Decade of Dominance." In his five years at Miami, Johnson compiled a 52–9 record, appeared in five New Year's Day bowl games, winning one national championship (1987) and losing one to the Penn State Nittany Lions (1986).
Johnson created a free-wheeling atmosphere where he allowed, and at times encouraged, his players to showboat, trash-talk, and run up the score. The criticism they received from other teams caused the media to deem them the "Bad Boys of College Football," a moniker Johnson openly accepted.
Johnson's Hurricanes would post the school's first undefeated regular season in 1986, only to lose the National Championship Game that year to #2 Penn State. The loss, along with losses in Miami's prior two bowl games, began to raise questions about whether Johnson was capable of winning major games. In the ensuing 1987 season, however, the Hurricanes went undefeated in the regular season yet again, and won the school's second National Title by defeating Oklahoma for the third season in a row.