PHOENIX -- Saw the Fiesta Bowl trophy today. You can't miss it. The thing is as tall as Larry Coker and looks as if it were made by someone with access to a welding torch and an opium den. Put a coat of white frosting on it and you could serve it at the Sapperstein wedding.

Let's see, there's some type of kitchen counter-type base, followed by four guys doing a clean-and-press, followed by a smaller secondary base, followed by four guys in a John Blutarsky-outside-the-Faber College-administration building-crouch, followed by some sort of mini-Renaissance drapery, followed by something stolen from the Vatican, followed by a Fiesta Bowl football ornament. Anyway, whoever designed this had a hell of a hangover the next day.

	Ken Dorsey and Miami have always taken the high road to the anti-Miami bias that's sweeping the nation.

Of course, Miami or Ohio State will be happy to lug the thing back home. You can never have enough national championship trophies, even if this one looks like an Antiques Roadshow reject. The Hurricanes have five, the Buckeyes have between four and six, depending on what you consider a legitimate national championship. The point is, there's some football pedigree here.

And yet, the more you talk to Miami's players, the more you sense that they feel their accomplishments -- both past and present -- haven't been properly acknowledged. The Hurricanes don't come right out and say it -- that would be bad form. Instead, they'll pause for a moment, compose themselves, and then deliver a calm, reasoned response.

The truth is, there does exist an anti-Miami bias of sorts. Perhaps it began here in the Valley of the Sun nearly 16 years ago, when the No. 1-ranked Hurricanes arrived at Fiesta Bowl festivities wearing battle fatigues. I can't remember for sure, but that might have been when the late, great Jerome Brown, bless his soul, said something to the effect that the Japanese didn't share a dinner table with Pearl Harbor residents before the bombing, so why should the Hurricanes act civil toward Penn State?

By the way, Pearl Harbor won the 1987 Fiesta, 14-10.

Miami also didn't help its warm-and-fuzzy quotient in 1991, when it vogued its way to a 46-3 win against Texas. Later, there were NCAA violations, scholarship reductions, assorted PR gaffes. Miami's finest hour, it wasn't.

It was easier to dislike the UM program then. You had the arrogance of Jimmy Johnson. You had the taunting, preening performances at the '91 Cotton Bowl. You had the NCAA investigation and findings. There was some meat on the bone.

But this latest backlash is more subtle, more discreet. Think about it: Taken as separate pieces, Miami is a program to admire.