My favorite player: Former Miami Hurricanes and Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly

It was a typical Saturday afternoon when a football game popped onto our television.

I remember being a little confused. If it was Saturday, why was there football on? The Dolphins played on Sundays — and occasionally Monday night.

My dad explained that college football teams play their games on Saturday. These weren’t the Miami Dolphins on TV, but the Hurricanes from the University of Miami.

I did not even know my hometown had a college football team.

Hey, give me a break. It was 1979 and I was just a kid. Plus, Miami wasn’t exactly a national power in those days.

Football, thanks to the Dolphins, was my favorite sport, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The Hurricanes were playing at Penn State and looked pretty good. Really good.

Although the announcers (Rick Weaver and Hank Goldberg, who also did Dolphins games on the radio) kept saying how tough Penn State was, the Hurricanes were more than holding their own.

This was my introduction to college football and the Miami Hurricanes. It was also college football’s introduction to a freshman quarterback named Jim Kelly.

Kelly grew up in western Pennsylvania and, ironically, dreamed of playing quarterback for legendary coach Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions.

According to Kelly, just before he planned to sign with Penn State, Paterno informed him that the school was going to offer two other quarterbacks scholarships.

If Kelly wanted to play at Penn State, he still could do so. But Penn State wanted him to give linebacker a try and not play quarterback.

So Kelly, the high school hero from East Brady, Pa., ended up among the palm trees at the University of Miami in Coral Gables.

His first start as a redshirt freshman happened to come in Happy Valley. Coach Howard Schnellenberger said he waited to start Kelly until just the right time, and this game at Penn State felt like the time.

The only chance for Miami to pull off this upset, Schnellenberger later said, was if his young gunslinger was behind center.

Penn State probably did not take the Hurricanes too seriously on this November day. Miami, after all, came into the game 3-4 with losses to such powerhouses as Florida A&M and San Diego State. The Nittany Lions, meanwhile, were ranked 19th in the country.

But if Kelly was nervous, he didn’t look it, at least not once he took the field.

Kelly later admitted to throwing up in the locker room before the game after Schnellenberger told him he was not only going to play against his childhood team but start.

Amazingly, Kelly lit it up, throwing for 278 yards and three touchdowns in leading Miami to a 26-10 victory, a signature upset which would pave the way for much, much more for both Kelly and the Hurricanes.

I was hooked. Not only did I have a new team to root for but a new favorite player in Jim Kelly.

“One of the great victories in the school’s history,” Weaver said as the game concluded. Indeed.

The U of Quarterbacks

Kelly ended up becoming one of the great quarterbacks in Miami history and started what became known as “Quarterback U.”

Bernie Kosar, Vinny Testaverde, Steve Walsh, Craig Erickson and Gino Torretta followed Kelly at quarterback for the Canes in the coming years, as Testaverde and Torretta took home the only two Heisman Trophies in school history.

From that first start at Penn State through a senior year that lasted only three games due to injury, Kelly rewrote the UM passing record book in what amounted to less than three full seasons.

As a sophomore in 1980, Kelly led Miami to a 9-3 record with victories against Houston, Florida and Florida State. He lost 27-12 in his return to Beaver Stadium in the rematch with Penn State.

But Miami won its final four games of the season, and Schnellenberger lobbied hard to get the team invited to the Peach Bowl. Miami beat Virginia Tech 20-10 in the school’s first bowl game since 1967.

As a junior, Kelly passed for a school-record 2,403 yards and 14 touchdowns to lead the Canes to a 9-2 season — which included an upset of the No. 1-ranked Nittany Lions in the Orange Bowl.

Miami ended the season ranked in the top 10.

Kelly’s senior year only lasted three games.

On Sept. 18, 1982, Kelly was hit hard in the fourth quarter of a win at Virginia Tech and separated his shoulder. Despite being a preseason Heisman candidate, Kelly’s injury ended his college career right then and there.

Moving on from Miami

But he still had a lot of football left in him.

That spring, he became part of the famed “Class of 1983” in the NFL Draft.

Kelly was the third of six quarterbacks taken in the first round, selected amid John Elway, Todd Blackledge, Tony Eason, Ken O’Brien and Dan Marino (who was taken by the Dolphins).

But instead of signing with the Buffalo Bills (who took him 14th overall), Kelly opted to sign with the Houston Gamblers of the USFL.

Despite being from Miami, I became a huge fan of the Gamblers. Whenever they came on, running that wide-open run-and-shoot offense, I was watching.

Through two seasons with Houston, Kelly passed for 9,842 yards and threw 53 touchdowns. He was a star of the spring league.

In 1986, Kelly signed one of the biggest contracts in NFL history as he finally joined the Bills and took over a team that had gone 2-14 in its previous two seasons and sat at the bottom of the AFC East.

I still dug Kelly, but now he was a rival to my hometown Dolphins.

But Kelly was quarterbacking the woeful Bills. No threat to Marino and Miami, right?

Wrong.

Kelly helped lead a resurgence in Buffalo, just as he had in Coral Gables and Houston. The Bills quickly became one of the most exciting teams in the NFL and, eventually, the best team in the AFC.

The Bills went to four consecutive Super Bowls from 1991-94. Kelly’s battles with Marino and the Dolphins were legendary, and Kelly won his fair share of them. From 1986-96, Buffalo went 17-8 against the Dolphins.

In 1993, Kelly brought his Bills to Miami for the AFC title game and helped lead Buffalo back to the Super Bowl with a 29-10 rout of the Dolphins. Buffalo was 3-0 against the Dolphins in the playoffs during Kelly’s time.

I was not as big of a Kelly fan then, truth be told. But I never could root against the guy.

Jim Kelly was my favorite player as a kid and the one I remember following from my earliest childhood memories. You do not forget that.

Life after football

Kelly has had his struggles since retirement.

Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002, Kelly has suffered through heartbreak with the death of his son Hunter at the age of 8 in 2005.

Hunter suffered from Krabbe Disease, a rare genetic degenerative disorder of the central and peripheral nervous systems. The Kelly family has raised millions for research in Hunter’s name.

Kelly has had his own health problems, too, battling cancer since he was first diagnosed in 2013.

Kelly, now 60, is cancer-free these days after numerous bouts with radiation and painful surgeries.

“Kelly Strong,” indeed.

What Kelly meant to the Bills is similar to what he meant to Miami in the early 1980s.

It was that win against Penn State back in 1979 that got things going in the right direction. It was one of the biggest wins in the history of Miami’s program, though, at the time, few knew how big it really was.

He may not own many of Miami’s passing records anymore — he has since been surpassed by several of his successors. But for those of a certain age who grew up in Miami and discovered the Hurricanes by accident on a special November day in 1979, Kelly is still the guy we remember for getting it all started.

(Photo: Ronald C. Modra / Getty Images)