Wish upon the stars

Sporting News, The, August 19, 1996 by Ivan Maisel

There is much to look forward to this football season, and much to hope for, too

We don't ask for much out of this life. A plane ticket to a college game on a fall Saturday, enough expense money to buy a bag of peanuts, a pregame walk through campus. That's about it. Nevertheless, if anyone wants to know what would make us really happy, it would be any one of the following. Just one:

* An Army-Navy game that meant something to someone not in the Army or the Navy.

* A third consecutive Nebraska national championship. (Admit it: You miss the Green Bay Packers, too.)

* An important game in Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night in Baton Rouge.

* A school from outside the Big Ten or the Pac-10 in the Rose Bowl (all right, so it may happen in two years). Alabama has played in six Rose Bowls, Pittsburgh four, and Duke and Tennessee have played in two apiece.

* A school from outside Gainesville winning the Southeastern Conference.

Pop Quiz: Nebraska, Florida State and Alabama rank 1-2-3 in active players with national championship rings. What schools ranks fourth?

A: Mississippi. Senior tight end Kris Mangum played special teams for Alabama in 1992 before transferring.

* More quarterbacks throwing like Peyton Manning.

* More quarterbacks thinking like Peyton Manning.

* More quarterbacks acting like Peyton Manning.

* A coach with a real nickname. Ever notice that guys named Bear and Pop rank near the top in wins? Who do we have out there now outside of Spike?

* Bill Curry's Kentucky team winning at Alabama. Call it justice.

* Peyton Manning's Tennessee team losing to Ole Miss. Ditto.

* A Nebraska player not doing anything that should get him kicked off the team (No one has in 10 months. Congratulations.).

* The return of the Little Brown Stein. Idaho went I-A and dumped its Big Sky rivalries, such as the one with Montana. The Little Brown Stein dates to 1938. The Vandals won the last one, beating the Grizzlies last season.

* Eddie Robinson's Grambling State Tigers bouncing back.

* A Kickoff Classic in which the losing team scores a touchdown.

* A national championship game that lives up to its billing.

* Chris Schenkel calling one more game (kids, ask your dad).

* Bill Flemming hosting one more Sunday morning highlight show (ditto).

* Bobby Bowden speechless.

* Terry Bowden speechless.

* Any Bowden speechless.

* Someone, anyone, giving Northwestern credit for last season.

* Open locker rooms.

* No more Saturday morning kickoffs (tailgating at breakfast just doesn't cut it).

* Band uniforms that don't look like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Pop Quiz: Name the Granddaddy of Them All:

A) The Rose Bowl.

B) Joe Paterno.

* A cold beverage in the Esso Club parking lot an hour before the Clemson game. And a fill-up, of course.

* A sub-freezing morning in Ann Arbor on gameday.

* Any game from the stands.

Y'all don't know how lucky you are.

Secret service

No one is more competitive than a college football coach. But coaches are a remarkably open group. Every spring, when recruiting is done and spring practice hasn't begun, assistants fan out across the country to learn from their peers. The goal is to learn new schemes or drills and also to keep from being too inbred.

Just last spring, for instance, Alabama's defensive and strength coaches went to Nebraska. (Reason: Which team in Alabama's league did Nebraska manhandle in the Fiesta Bowl?)

Colorado's offensive coaches went to Florida State. So did the defensive coaches from Baylor.

Other schools bring in top assistants to talk and answer questions. Ohio State offensive coordinator Joe Hollis went to North Carolina and to Florida State. While in North Carolina, he spoke at a high school coaching clinic. Hollis pointed out that not merely anyone is invited anywhere. "You get a feeling whether you're welcome or not," he said. "We don't play Florida State. That's one of the reasons I was invited. We rarely recruit against them. We don't play them, and we're successful offensively."

Some coaches are less willing to share their information. John Jenkins, the run-and-shoot guru, once went to a high school clinic and spent 90 minutes discussing the center snap. Needless to say, he didn't exactly recruit well. Houston still is trying to recover from his tenure.

Steve Spurrier has built a similar closed-mouth reputation among his peers. Let's just say he's selective. When Colorado's Rick Neuheisel went to Gainesville in the spring of 1995, Spurrier opened up for him. Don Lindsey, the veteran defensive coordinator now at Hawaii, doesn't do tutorials, either.

Rocky II? Or just rocky?

It doesn't take the second coming of Woody Hayes to figure out that a defending Big Ten champion with 16 returning starters and a locker room wall full of seniors has a pretty good chance to win it again.

Then again, we're talking about Northwestern, where respect, evidently, can be earned only a season at a time. The Wildcats have all the qualifications mentioned above, yet the Big Ten media failed to pick the team in the top three. For all the long memories of North-western's history of losing, the memory of last year's 10-2 team has evaporated.