1984 Orange Bowl - Legacy

Legacy

The game has widely been listed among the most memorable college football games by various sources, including ABC Sports Online's five "classic Orange Bowl moments". An ESPN survey once voted this as the greatest college football game ever played.

The game almost overnight established the University of Miami as a football power, and it would go on to win two more national championships before the end of the decade, under coaches Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. The school would win a fourth with Erickson in 1991, and would again beat Nebraska for a fifth in 2001 under Larry Coker.

Nebraska coach Tom Osborne eventually would win three national championships of his own (he defeated Miami in the 1995 Orange Bowl for his first), and retire in 1997 as one of the winningest coaches in college football history. But it would be his decision to go for the win, rather than to tie, and his willingness to risk the national championship on one play which has come to define his legacy more than any single achievement.

It has become a textbook case in game theory. A simple extra point conversion would have tied the game and arguably given Nebraska the national championship. Economist Avinash Dixit and Business Strategy Expert Barry Nalebuff argue that Osborne would have had more options had he gone for two earlier in the fourth quarter: "Tom Osborne would have done better to first try the two-point attempt (at the score of 31-23), and then if it succeeded go for the one-point, while if it failed attempt a second two-pointer."

The game was placed in NCAA Football video games as a "College Classic", challenging players to recreate the ending. The scenario begins with Nebraska with the ball, with the decision to either go for the tie or the win entirely up to the player. Due to the game using modern rules when it was developed, it is entirely possible to take the game into overtime.