NEEDED: IMAGE MAKEOVER

The image dates at least to the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, where several University of Miami stars arrived wearing battle fatigues and combat boots. The Hurricanes lost the game but won a lasting reputation for bad-boy behavior.

Four national championships followed, along with dormitory gun play, allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct, NCAA probation and largely successful efforts by coaches Butch Davis and Larry Coker to clean up the program.

The notorious image persists, however -- not because of recent misdeeds on campus, but because of what’s happening in the NFL.

Former Hurricanes star Sean Taylor is charged with threatening someone with a gun in a dispute over an all-terrain vehicle. Kellen Winslow wrecked his high-powered motorcycle -- and his knee -- and will miss this season. Clinton Portis slyly says he misbehaved during the off-season but “didn’t get caught.”

“To be really good at what you do in this sport, it helps to have a certain mentality, a certain attitude,” says former Hurricanes center Brett Romberg, now with the Jacksonville Jaguars. “And nobody has that attitude like the Miami guys.”

The NFL loves that attitude: In the past 20 years, 43 Hurricanes have been drafted in the first round, far more than any other school. That includes 20 Hurricanes in the past five years, among them Taylor by Washington and Winslow by Cleveland in 2004.

Some ex-Hurricanes consider the school’s image overblown, while others relish it.

“It was always us against the world,” Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Warren Sapp says. “We were always viewed as like the Raiders of college football, something a little renegade or something a little wild.”

When Sapp played for the Hurricanes from 1992-94, they were notorious for brawling, trash-talking and worse. The Convicts vs. Catholics rivalry between Miami and Notre Dame is now a mere memory, and Coker has had fewer recent problems with player conduct than his counterparts at Florida and Florida State.

But while success in the pros is part of the Hurricanes’ reputation, so are the legal problems of Ray Lewis, Michael Irvin, Brian Blades and Tremain Mack after they joined the NFL. And headlines made this year by Taylor, Winslow and Portis have rekindled the old image.

What makes former Hurricanes prone to problems off the field?

“Success has come to them at such an age that it’s sometimes tough for them to handle,” Romberg says. “Right now, there are a few high-profile Miami guys who don’t look like they’re handling it as well as they could. It comes down to who you associate yourself with.

“A lot of the guys who do play at Miami are from Miami,” Romberg adds. “You have to learn how to say no and be able to say, ‘I have a little bit more going right now than doing what I’m doing with you guys.’ ”

There’s no question that highly paid professional athletes become targets. Former Hurricanes defensive end Jerome McDougle, now with the Philadelphia Eagles, was approached by three robbers and shot in Miami last month.

The confrontation involving Taylor also occurred in Miami near his home June 1. The trial is set for Sept. 12, with a minimum sentence of three years a distinct possibility for a conviction.

Winslow wrecked his motorcycle May 1 when he lost control trying a stunt and hit a curb in a parking lot near his home in suburban Cleveland. He was thrown over the handlebars and spent nine days in the hospital.

“Sean made a couple bad decisions,” says former Hurricanes linebacker Jonathan Vilma, now with the New York Jets. “As far as Kellen, he didn’t do anything bad. People seem to confuse the two or mix the two together. Kellen fell off a bike, he didn’t steal a bike or anything like that.

“It’s easy for people to go back and say it’s the Miami of old when you have one person who made a bad decision. You have to look at the tons and tons of other players that came out who had successful careers, who are doing well for themselves, who are playing now and making the Pro Bowl.”

There are indeed an abundance of former Hurricanes doing well in the NFL. Four were chosen to start in the Pro Bowl last season, including Baltimore’s Ed Reed, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year.

With their “us against the world” mind-set, former Miami players describe their group as a brotherhood well-known for its rabid support of the current Hurricanes. It’s common to see a cluster of ex-Hurricanes on the sidelines at games in the Orange Bowl.

“We’ve always said, ‘Forever and a day, you’ll bleed orange and green,” Sapp says. “The purest form of football is college, and I really don’t understand why other programs don’t have that. There are great players at Nebraska, Michigan, Alabama, Auburn and all these great places, but for some reason it’s like they go their own separate ways when they get out of there. We’ve always had a special bond.”

That, too, is part of the Miami image.