Carson Beck\u2019s college career set to end when Miami faces Indiana in College Football Playoff finale<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWe love the Jacksonville community. It\u2019s a wonderful place to live, and there\u2019s a lot of IU alumni fans here,\u201d said Leslie Zimmerman, who helped organize the Indiana watch party.<\/p>\n
For recent graduates like Elyse Appelblatt, class of 2018, the championship appearance marks a dramatic turnaround for the program. \u201cWent through some bad years of Indiana football but always knew we\u2019d be here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The gathering represented more than just a viewing party for the Indiana faithful. \u201cIt\u2019s really wonderful being able to get together with fans from the school that we graduated from and cheer on our team to victory,\u201d Zimmerman said.<\/p>\n
Across town at the Ale House in Orange Park, Miami Hurricane supporters packed the venue with a sea of orange and green. The watch party continued a three-decade tradition of Miami fan gatherings in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful because it feels like we\u2019re in Miami and these people have become family to me because a lot of them have been coming for 30 years,\u201d said Shelli Maroe, who has been organizing Hurricane watch parties in Jacksonville for 30 years.<\/p>\n
For Miami fans, the championship game offered a chance to reclaim past glory. \u201cAre you kidding? We\u2019re overdue. We\u2019re way overdue,\u201d Maroe said about the possibility of a championship victory.<\/p>\n
The championship game brought together two passionate fan bases, each maintaining their collegiate traditions and community ties hundreds of miles from their home campuses.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 From Southside to Orange Park, Jacksonville\u2019s sports bars transformed into spirited outposts of college football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[143,116,118,117,5079],"class_list":["post-124484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-college-football","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-miami-hurricanes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}