Miami Too Good for Words : Cotton Bowl: Hurricanes’ pregame silence proves golden as they storm past talkative Texas, 46-3.

As Miami and Texas prepared for the Cotton Bowl, the Hurricanes maintained an unusually low profile.

Coach Dennis Erickson closed practices, and his players closed their mouths. No taunts. No battle fatigues.

Merely another college football team getting ready to play another game, right?

Hardly.

The Hurricanes checked the choirboy routine at the dressing room door Tuesday, routing the Longhorns, 46-3, in a game in which Miami was assessed nearly as many yards in penalties (16 for 202 yards, both Cotton Bowl records) as Texas gained in total offense (205).

And when the long afternoon was over, the Hurricanes took the wraps off their feelings for their opponent.

“Fully expected it,” Miami offensive tackle Mike Sullivan said of the outcome. “Now that the game is over, I can say I fully expected it.”

Texas (10-2) entered the game with a No. 3 ranking and the hope of vaulting into the No. 1 spot with a victory over the fourth-ranked Hurricanes (10-2).

But the Longhorns, making their first Cotton Bowl appearance in seven years, self-destructed in the face of a defense that sacked sophomore Peter Gardere eight times and caused him to turn the ball over five times--all five leading to Miami scores.

Miami defensive tackle Russell Maryland, the Outland Trophy winner, was credited with three sacks, all during a first half in which the Hurricanes opened a 19-3 lead. He stripped the ball from Gardere at the Texas eight-yard line, setting up Miami’s first touchdown.

Offensively, the Hurricanes got all they needed from quarterback Craig Erickson, who, seeing little pressure from Texas’ defensive front, had a field day with the Longhorns’ man-for-man coverage.

He completed 17 of 26 passes for 272 yards and four touchdowns, a Cotton Bowl record, two going to wide receiver Wesley Carroll. Erickson threw no interceptions.

And yet as well as the Hurricanes played, by halftime they had been penalized 10 times for 132 yards, breaking the Cotton Bowl’s record for penalty yardage in a game by 42 yards.

Two personal fouls caused Miami to begin its first series first and 40 at its 19. And the Hurricanes were penalized twice for excessive celebration. One of the demonstrations that drew a flag was a “bunny hop” dance by three defenders after Maryland forced Gardere’s fumble at the Texas eight.

Not surprisingly, Miami coaches wrote on the blackboard in the Hurricanes’ dressing room at halftime: “No more penalties. Control emotions. Show the country why we’re the best.”

“What did we have, something like 130 yards in penalties the first half? We were really lucky the way the score ended up,” Miami defensive tackle Shane Curry said. “I don’t know what the score would have been without the penalties. We were doing a lot of silly things, just being over-aggressive. . . . All the talking got us fired up. We get burned sometimes. But, all in all . . . Hey, 46-3.”

For this game, the mouth that roared belonged to Texas offensive tackle Stan Thomas, who called the Hurricanes “gangster-looking guys” and predicted that Texas would win, 28-10.

Thomas, a senior who has blossomed into a potential first-round NFL draft pick, had gotten away with jabbing other Texas opponents during the season. But Miami proved to be a different story.

“Maybe Stan Thomas will learn when to shoot his mouth off,” Curry said. “Russell got three sacks on him and that guard (Jeff Boyd).”

Said Maryland: “We had an added incentive with all the talk they were doing. Actions speak louder than words. We let our actions speak.”

Thomas, however, wasn’t toning down his words after the game.

“They talked a lot of noise and tried to get me to retaliate,” he said of the Hurricanes. “But it hurt them with all the penalties they got. I drove some of their linemen down and pancaked them. It embarrassed them so bad that they got penalties.”

Texas’ best chance to make the game competitive came in the final seconds of the first half, when the Longhorns, who had failed to get a first down in their first five possessions, put together a drive that took them inside the Miami 10.

Facing fourth down at the three with 22 seconds to play, Texas Coach David McWilliams, his team trailing by 16 points, decided against a field goal and called a fade route for tight end Kerry Cash, a play that had worked well all season.

This time, however, it didn’t pan out. Cash was unable to get Gardere’s pass and come down in bounds. And that was that for the first half.

On their first possession of the third quarter, disaster struck the Longhorns when Miami linebacker Darrin Smith stepped in front of flanker Keith Cash to intercept a weak sideline pass by Gardere and sprint untouched 34 yards. Miami quickly had a 26-3 lead.

Of Gardere, Miami cornerback Robert Bailey said: “His throws don’t have the speed and power behind them. But he’s a good scrambler. We knew we had to rattle him, and Russell got to him early--just kind of a gift to Stan Thomas.”

The Hurricanes put the game away with 6:09 remaining in the third quarter when Erickson threw a 48-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Randal Hill, who blew past Texas’ Willie Mack Garza on a fly pattern and sprinted straight up the Cotton Bowl tunnel after scoring.

“It was an expression,” Hill said of his run up the tunnel, “to show I could take it all the way if I wanted. If the gate had been open, I probably would have gone on out.”

Texas came into the game with a highly regarded secondary led by all-America safety Stanley Richard. The Longhorns’ man-for-man scheme had worked in shutting down Houston’s run-and-shoot passing attack, but, without a pass rush, it was not the answer against Miami.

Laughing in the dressing room later, Hurricane wide receiver Lamar Thomas said of Richard: “He ranks up there with the defensive backs we saw from Boston College or maybe Texas Tech. I wish we could play (Texas) again. Then he could show me his all-America status.”

The Hurricanes left the field knowing that second-ranked Georgia Tech had beaten Nebraska in the Citrus Bowl, pretty much ending their remote hopes of winning a third national championship in four years. But they also left with the swagger that made them famous during those championship seasons.

“We might not have another ring on our fingers,” Sullivan said. “But I think everyone around the country knows we’re one of the best teams around. I’ll go buy my own ring.”