Tempe Kid Gambles and Wins

Listen! Do you like those guys who take the rent money and bet the next card will be an ace?

You like people who say, “Hit me!” when they’re standing on 18? Guys who say, “You’re faded!” when they got holes in their shoes? Guys who press the bet even though they’ve just hit in the water?

You can have all the 9-to-5 guys, the fellows who fold two pair, who say, “I pass,” or who lay up on par 5s. I like guys who go in the corner in life, who say, “It’s only money,” who bump the raise, who climb out on ledges.

I don’t say Jeff Van Raaphorst, the quarterback for the Arizona State football team, is Nick the Greek, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo or answers to the name “Slick” or wears a gold watch and a pinchbeck suit.

I just say that, on second down and goal to go on the other team’s one-yard line, there aren’t five quarterbacks or coaches in the country in college ball who would do anything but run the ball.

I mean, passing the ball in that situation is like walking up to a table full of guys with scars on their cheeks and scowls on their faces and Colt .45s on their hips and saying, “Is this a private game or can anybody play?”

It so happens that Jeff Van Raaphorst in that situation--second and goal on the one--threw a bullet pass to his flanker, Bruce Hill, on the end zone line that barely eluded a Michigan interceptor’s hands and settled in Hill’s hands for what was really the 1987 Rose Bowl game.

The ace came up, the dice rolled 7. The play took Michigan completely by surprise--to say nothing of every paid-up member of the American football coaches’ union.

You’re supposed to play safe in that situation. This is the time when the guy who’s worried about his pension, car payments, bills and rent says, “Not me, I’m a married man.” This is the time when the chicken-hearted say, “I’m not going up in that for anybody!” This is when non-winning jockeys take their mounts outside traffic into the stretch and leave the hole on the rail to the cowboys.

Van Raaphorst isn’t exactly your two-gun outlaw, but it is a fact that the third-quarter touchdown wasn’t the first time he had dared the percentages in the game.

In the second quarter, with the score Michigan 15, Arizona State 3, he had the ball, second and three on the Michigan 10-yard line. His fullback had just gained seven yards on a running play. Van Raaphorst ignored the book, went for the whole pot. This time, it didn’t really work. He threw two incomplete passes and had to settle for a field goal.

The betting was, he (and the coach) had learned their lesson.

Guess again. With 44 seconds to play and Arizona State on the Michigan five-yard line, second down and goal to go, Van Raaphorst tried to throw twice. He hit Bruce Hill in the end zone this time, too. He pulled Arizona State within two points, 15-13.

On still another occasion, with ASU on the Michigan 20, second down and nine, early in the second quarter, down by eight points, Van Raaphorst went to the pass again.

In a way, it was the story of the 1987 Rose Bowl game. Not the whole story. It was probably another case of the Big 10 team being bigger, and the West Coast (if Arizona can be considered West Coast) being quicker.

Michigan Coach Bo Schembechler who is going home in a barrel again, put his finger on it in postgame interviews. “It always appears when we’re playing on artificial surfaces and they’re playing on grass as if our speed is the same,” he said. “But as soon as we both get on grass then it seems we’re a step slower.”

In the second half of the New Year’s game, it didn’t matter anyway. Michigan didn’t get the ball enough in the second half to know what color it was. It’s pretty hard to win a crapshoot if you never get the dice.

One more victory and the West Coast should get permanent possession of Michigan--or the Rose Bowl.

A lot of people thought Arizona State was not a true representative of a tradition that sent the likes of an O.J. Simpson, Anthony Davis, Bobby Grayson, Ernie Nevers, Cotton Warburton, Jim Plunkett, Doyle Nave to a Rose Bowl to represent the West.

Jeff Van Raaphorst stands as tall as any of them.

Jeff Van Raaphorst didn’t go to ASU to have a nice safe career handing off to running backs and throwing short on third-down situations. He enrolled, in fact, under the tutelage of the ex-coach, Darryl Rogers, who had as profound a confidence in the forward pass as a weapon as Van Raaphorst did.

When Rogers left, Van Raaphorst and Rogers’ successor, John Cooper, were hardly a mating to write poems about. It was a little like Laurel and Hardy, in fact. Actually, this season, when undermanned Washington State caught as many of Van Raaphorst’s passes (5) as his own team did, the coach’s reaction was, “Another fine mess you’ve got us in!” and he benched his gambling quarterback before he could wipe out the team’s life savings.

Some place between that afternoon and Jan. 1, Coach Cooper seemed to figure he should let his quarterback bet the blue chips on the come, after all--that was the way to the Rose Bowl.

Why did they take such chances in the 73rd Rose Bowl game? “We had our computer printout on what their tendencies are and what we thought we could do to throw them off balance with passes in unpredictable situations,” explained Van Raaphorst, the Tempe Kid with his own deck.

Arnold Rothstein or a guy dealing faro in a carnival couldn’t have expressed it better. If you do what’s expected of you, the other guy rakes in the pot. It’s when the doubt comes in the other guy’s eyes that you say, “I’ll see your raise and up you twice.” It tends to take him out of his game. It’s what happened to Michigan. They peeled back to defend against the pass in the second half because they knew the down and distance was of minimal interest to Van Raaphorst. Arizona State was all but able to bury the football like a dog with a bone in the backyard. The Sun Devils ran off 81 plays to Michigan’s 52, and most of Michigan’s were in the first half.

Van Raaphorst won more than the game. He got the trophy as the most valuable player in it, probably a big pro contract--and he won the coach over to his philosophy. Because, even though he threw the ball a record 55 times in a losing cause against Arizona in the final game of the season, Coach Cooper was not of an “I’ll play these” mind on New Year’s Day, either. Throwing only on predictable downs is like betting only when you have a full house. You’ll win very few high stakes games that way. And a Rose Bowl is the highest roll there is. No place for ribbon clerks. It’s for guys who will make you fold, make you shake your head and say, “I thought you had ‘em.”