Where Are They Now? Melvin Bratton

Think of the great running backs for the Miami Hurricanes. Who would you pick as the best receiving back?

As I reminisce through the past few decades, Duke Johnson, Melvin Bratton, Edgerrin James and Willis McGahee pop into my mind.

My favorite, the one I’d want to see get the ball on a swing pass when you’re going for it on fourth-and-four in the national championship game?

Bratton.

I researched media guides to see who holds the record for most receiving yards by a running back. Johnson, who played from 2012-14, is Miami’s leader in all-purpose yardage – rushing, receiving and returns. His career receiving total was 719 yards.

Bratton’s career total: 1,084 yards and 6 touchdowns, on 86 receptions.

As a fifth-year senior in 1987, he was Steve Walsh’s security blanket, so to speak. If Michael Irvin or Brian Blades weren’t open, walsh would dump it off to Bratton, who would dart around or plow through defenders for big yardage.

As the heir to Heisman Trophy winner Vinny Testaverde, Walsh was a sophomore starting his first game in the 1987 opener and the opponent in the Orange Bowl was the Florida Gators and their Heisman hopeful Kerwin Bell.

The Canes’ leading receiver in that 31-4 victory wasn’t Irvin or Perriman or tight end Charles Henry. It was Bratton with 7 catches for 85 yards, including a long of 36 yards.

Miami went on to an undefeated season and second national championship. In the title game against top-ranked Oklahoma, Bratton caught 9 passes for 102 yards, including a 30-yarder for the game’s first touchdown and a six-yarder on fourth-and-four that set up a TD pass to Irvin for a 17-7 lead late in the third quarter.

Shortly after that, Bratton blew out his knee and never fully recovered during a two-year stint with the Denver Broncos.

But Bratton stayed in football as an agent for the NFL and more recently the NBA. After many years living in Atlanta, he is relocating to Miami this summer and is becoming involved in real estate while continuing to be an agent for 15 NFL players.

“I still wanted to be around the game,” Bratton said in an interview with CaneSport.com. “I had played for the Broncos under Dan Reeves. He took a liking to me as a player and as a person. I reached out to him and my first client was Lamar Thomas, then Hurley Brown, and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I got Lamar as a third-round pick and Hurley was undrafted.

“From there I wanted to get into the scouting world, so I reached out to Dan Reeves and told him I know talent because I’ve been watching and evaluating. I met with him and he offered me a job on the spot as an area scout for the West Coast. I went to Cortez Kennedy (third pick in the 1990 draft), who was with Seattle, and he said `Come stay with me until you get situated.’”

Then came the challenges: new territories and evaluating players not as talented as those he played with at UM.

“I scouted Stanford, Cal, Washington, Washington State,” he said, “I was in Boise, you name it. Bozeman, Montana. A Black guy had probably never been there before, and I knew nothing about the area. I enjoyed it and just kind of learned how to evaluate players. But the only thing bad about it was me being spoiled from being at Miami, I evaluated whether they could have played with us. And I got to the point where I rejected everybody! I compared them to our third team and said `This guy couldn’t be on our third team or scout team.’

“So my boss said you can’t reject everybody, they’re not University of Miami guys. If these guys have potential, you can’t reject them. So I had to learn to tone it down a little and look more at the depth.”

For Mario to come back, for a kid who looked up to our class … His brother Luis Cristobal has told stories that Mario would ride his bike when he was in high school just to watch us practice. For him to go to Alabama and learn the Nick Saban way and then to go to Oregon to learn the Phil Knight way, and the combination of his knowing the Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson ways and Howard Schnellenberger, that mixture is a great Hurricane Smoothie.

Melvin Bratton

When Bratton signed with Denver, his agent was the “agent to the stars” Robert Fraley, who died with his good friend golfer Payne Stewart in a plane crash in 1999.

“He signed (UM stars) Jerome Brown and Alonzo Highsmith – two first-rounders in the top 10,” Bratton said. “Me and Tolbert Bain wanted to go with somebody we trust, so Fraley was my guy.

“Tampa was talking to him before the draft and had the fourth pick that year and they told Robert they were going to draft me for five years for $6.5 million. So, I was going to be a millionaire, but that’s nothing like what’s going on now.

“That’s when I went on Bryant Gumbel’s Today show with a linebacker from Oklahoma. He came (to the studio) in an Oklahoma shirt and I came in a business suit, and Bryant said, `You look really dapper for 6 in the morning. Where are you going?’ I said, `Well, Bryant, this is all about business now. After this (national championship) game I’m a business man, so I have to get prepared for my next job.’ He started laughing.”

Everything changed, of course, for Bratton when he suffered the knee injury in the title game.

Bratton was drafted in 1988 by the Dolphins but was cut.

Melvin Torrence Bratton, 57, was born in Miami and earned All-American honors at Northwestern High School under coach Roger Coffey. He also was a Miami Herald Silver Knight Award candidate in drama. He portrayed a slave who used sports competition to gain his freedom in a TV documentary on the history of the black athlete entitled “A Hard Road to Glory.”

At UM he was a business management major with a minor in theater. He redshirted during the 1983 season, played on the scout team and gained notoriety posing as Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill in preparation for the national title game.

As a junior he moved from halfback to fullback, replacing former roommate and running mate Highsmith. And as a 6-foot-1, 223-pound senior in 1987 he started at fullback every game and finished second in rushing with 473 yards and 9 touchdowns, and he was fourth in receiving with 26 for 364 yards and two scores. For his career he is tied for fifth-best running back in touchdowns with Duke Johnson (26).

Now single, he was married and had three children. Daughter Torrencia, 32, is in the pharmaceutical business; daughter Raven, 10, is a track star; and son Solomon, 14, nicknamed Niko, is a 6-foot-3 basketball player in the 8th grade.

“I didn’t want him to go through what I did in football,” Bratton said. “That’s why I got certified as an NBA agent.”

I asked Bratton his thoughts on Mario Cristobal starting his first season as head coach at Miami.

“I’ve always said for this program to get back on the right track we have to have people who actually walked through the Hecht Center and put cleats on and practiced at Greentree,” he said. “The reason why those components are very key is the mindset is a certain psyche of the individual. When they say `It’s A U Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand,’ we all believed in each other, we believed we were not going to lose. The score was 7-0 before the ball got kicked off, no matter who we played.

“For Mario to come back, for a kid who looked up to our class … His brother Luis Cristobal has told stories that Mario would ride his bike when he was in high school just to watch us practice. For him to go to Alabama and learn the Nick Saban way and then to go to Oregon to learn the Phil Knight way, and the combination of his knowing the Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson ways and Howard Schnellenberger, that mixture is a great Hurricane Smoothie.”

Bratton’s thoughts on the NIL (name, image, likeness)?

“I love it,” he said. “I wish we had it in our day for a person like me who blew his knee out and never had a chance at the next level, it would have been a major financial blessing. The Ruiz family, they have changed Miami football (through the NIL) like Texas A&M and Texas and Alabama. They’re bringing that type of environment to Miami. And the Mas brothers as well.

“Those guys, it’s not just about the money, they bleed orange and green, they’re Hurricanes. They were younger than us. John Ruiz was in my accounting class – he’s a lawyer now. What they’re doing from the financial side, guys are being rewarded for all the hard work.”

Living back in Miami, Bratton has come full circle, as has Highsmith.

When UM announced in late May that Highsmith would leave the NFL to be General Manager of Football Operations, Bratton posted congratulations on social media, saying, “Roomie you must finish what we started in 1983. We’ve had soooo many of these private conversations about your dream. Your dream is now a reality!!! Let’s get our program back to National Prominence and nothing less than championships!!!”