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Miami dropped 856 total yards on Florida A&M Thursday night, a new ACC record, and that’s after the two sides agreed to cut the fourth quarter down to just 10 minutes. The final score, 77-7, tells you most of what you need to know about a Power Four vs. FCS matchup that existed mainly to pad the Hurricanes’ stat sheet and fatten Florida A&M’s bank account.
That check for the Rattlers came out to $720,000, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Not bad money for taking a historic beating, especially considering Florida A&M had only three days to recover from a Sunday loss to South Carolina State. That game cost them their starting quarterback and starting center to injury, too.
Those injuries, paired with almost no rest, left the Rattlers in no shape to hang with a Miami team that opened as a 59.5-point favorite. The Hurricanes covered easily, tying a school scoring record and setting a new mark for first downs with 42.
An UNREAL touchdown grab for Vance Spafford! 🙌 📺: @accnetwork https://t.co/1DZU5OgXjZ— Miami Hurricanes Football (@CanesFootball) September 11, 2026
Florida A&M finished with just four first downs total. Per Sports Reference data, that’s the first time in the modern era an FBS team has posted a first-down margin of 40-5 or better in a single game. The Rattlers’ lone touchdown came on a 72-yard fumble return with 6:40 left, coming right as Miami was driving for what could’ve been an 80-plus point lead. Miami’s offense, for what it’s worth, faced only three third downs the entire night.
Awkward ending
Miami didn’t ease off even after agreeing to shorten that final quarter. With the ball near midfield, a 77-7 lead, and under a minute on the clock, the Hurricanes kept their foot down.
Third-string quarterback Dereon Coleman handed it off to reserve back Jack Whitehouse on back-to-back plays, and Whitehouse ripped off another 26 yards. That was enough to break the previous ACC total offense record of 845 yards, set by Louisville back in 2016.
Florida A&M’s first-year coach, Quinn Gray, had seen enough. He called a timeout after Whitehouse stepped out of bounds with 14 seconds on the clock, clearly frustrated Miami wouldn’t just let the game end quietly. It didn’t matter. Miami ran Whitehouse again after the timeout for another 10 yards. What followed looked like a tense exchange between Gray and Miami’s Mario Cristobal once the clock hit zero.
It made for an uncomfortable finish to what amounted to a glorified scrimmage. Miami now turns to ACC play, opening at Wake Forest next Friday.
What Miami gets out of these games
Cristobal tried to explain the value in Miami’s long-running habit of paying FCS programs big money to show up and absorb a blowout.
“We had an opportunity to play a lot of guys to see how they fit in and what their roles can be moving forward,” Cristobal said. “Nowadays in college football, that’s invaluable. You have to play guys and you really can’t look at the clock and the scoreboard. You just have to continue developing your roster, which I think we attempted to do that tonight.”
Most of Miami’s starters were pulled by halftime, when the score already read 49-0. By the time it ended, three different quarterbacks had thrown at least six passes each. Six running backs got carries. Sixteen receivers caught passes. On defense, 26 different Hurricanes showed up in the stat sheet, and plenty more saw the field beyond that.
Dre is the way 🤝🔥 📺: @accnetwork https://t.co/Azdmp7TyDl— Miami Hurricanes Football (@CanesFootball) September 11, 2026
“You would love to have another quarter of football and not even worry about the scoreboard,” Cristobal said. “I adamantly support playing players deep into games that have to be developed. Those guys that played tonight, they work just as hard as everybody else. Those guys are itching for time.”
Aside from the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Miami has played an FCS opponent every single year going back to 2007. They’re hardly alone in that. Buy games like this one happen all over the sport every September, and they’re often a financial lifeline for the FCS side. Still, it’s worth asking: is this actually a good deal for a program like Miami?
The case against FCS buy games
In an era where college football revenue gets funneled straight into paying players, the argument against scheduling FCS teams keeps getting stronger. Start with the cost. On top of the $720,000 that went to Florida A&M, Miami also paid another $40,000 just to fly in the Rattlers’ band, per the Tallahassee Democrat.
There’s also the season-ticket problem. Scheduling FCS opponents waters down home slates and league TV inventory, both of which matter a lot financially. It hurts strength of schedule, too, and that’s an area where Miami really can’t afford to take shortcuts. This is a program that snuck into last year’s College Football Playoff (CFP) with two losses, by the thinnest of margins.
Miami’s ACC schedule isn’t doing them many favors either. Their only game against a currently ranked opponent is a Nov. 7 date with No. 3 Notre Dame. Lose that one, slip up anywhere else, and Miami’s probably looking at missing the playoff cutoff again, unless they win the ACC title outright. So what’s the case for a two-loss Miami team without a marquee win or an automatic bid?
Why not swap the FCS game for another Power Four matchup? Even a solid Group of Six team would help.
It’d also help if the CFP were clearer about how its so-called “record strength” metric actually works, and how much weight it really carries in selection. When that metric was announced last year, the idea was that it would reward wins over good teams and discount wins over bad ones.
If that’s genuinely how it works, then scheduling FCS teams should be less appealing than ever, especially for ACC and Big 12 programs chasing playoff spots. If those conferences want their schedule strength to look anything like the Big Ten’s or SEC’s, they need to drop the FCS filler and start scheduling real nonconference opponents.
Instead, here we are: Miami playing Florida A&M a week after BYU and Texas Tech both opened against FCS teams, and a day before Louisville hosts Villanova.
Coaches like Cristobal want reps for their backups in low-stakes games. Fine. But in a sport constantly hunting for new ways to make money, why not just move these games to the preseason? Pay the local FCS team to show up, break up practice monotony, sell tickets, and put the stream behind a paywall on the athletic department’s site.
Coaches are too paranoid about giving away schematic secrets to actually go for it.
Everything else in college sports is getting rebuilt from the ground up right now. These lopsided matchups between elite programs and FCS teams should be next on the list.
