Flying high: Inside the two-year banner campaign to fire Al Golden

— -- The thread appeared at 8:01 p.m. on a Thursday. "CLEMSON BANNER(S) LINK," it read. The poster called himself OzarCaneSaw, a member of the message board WestEndZone.com and organizer of its righteous and pissed-off horde. His link led fellow Miami fans to a GoFundMe page, which asked for $585. The money would pay for an airplane, and the airplane would carry a banner, and the banner would broadcast another variation of the same idea OzarCaneSaw and his crew had been sending all season. The message had appeared on six game days, 1,500 feet above the Canes at various stadiums, a public proclamation of their simple and singular dream.

Alfred James Golden Jr. was the head football coach at the University of Miami. They would prefer he be unemployed.

They were close. They knew it. The Hurricanes had just lost two straight. Calls for Golden's head had filtered inward from the fringe. Influential bloggers wanted him gone. So did former players. Like every banner week before, once OzarCaneSaw and the message boarders raised the money, they would finalize their ideas. They were groping toward the past, flying to resurrect a version of their team and of themselves that they feared might never return.

"Burn the s--- down fellas, if need be," OzarCaneSaw wrote. "Burn it down."