The suspension helmet era was ending, yet another head coach was leaving, and the future of football at Miami was in jeopardy. The hiring of veteran coach Lou Saban for the 1977  season did little to restore the confidence of fans that the Hurricane program would survive but to Saban's credit, he recruited Florida, especially the Miami area and south Florida hard and well. He first put his stamp on the program by tweaking the previous year's helmet design with a reversal of the stripe pattern, placing the one-inch forest green stripe in the center between two 1/2-inch flanking burnt orange stripes. The Miami "U" was left as it had been in forest green and burnt orange.  Saban played a lot of freshman in 1977, had twenty-six players leave the program for academic or other reasons, and suffered through a 3-8 season. Immediately after the season ended, Saban and his assistants blitzed the entire East Coast and the state of Florida, selling their program to athletes that Miami normally would not have been able to sign.

If interested in any of these Miami helmets please click on the photos below.