College Football / Richard Hoffer : Miami Coach May Run a Down-and-Out Pattern--to the NFL

There seems to be little question that Jimmy Johnson, University of Miami coach, is looking for a way out. The unhappiest 29-8 coach in college football (21-3 the past two seasons), Johnson has begun sounding off about the hypocrisy of the game, how it drives good college coaches (he mentions Ray Perkins) right into the NFL. The lingering hint is that he’d like to be one of them.

Ordinarily, this would be weird talk. His Hurricanes, who have challenged for the national championship the last two seasons, are at least a top-5 team again, certainly bowl bound. It doesn’t seem like the kind of program a coach would want to give up. But Johnson, apparently, doesn’t like the heat that comes with it.

He feels, for one thing, that the intense competition of Florida newspapers has put a light on his team that nobody else in the country plays under. Last season, with assorted acts of arrogance and bad taste, his team was eagerly glorified as a bunch of outlaws and Johnson as their mop-topped leader. Johnson says it spoiled everything. “It’s like we went 5-6 instead of coming within one play of the national championship,” he told the Miami News’ Tom Archdeacon. Sweeping directives have since come from above, and Johnson has spent more time formulating a dress code than a game plan. He’s not happy about that, either.

Johnson, it is said, is also shaking over an as-yet unpublished Sports Illustrated article that may portray his private life in a curious light. It supposedly asks why he is seen so often at Las Vegas ringside for big fights. Johnson is a big fight fan, and has even had Marvelous Marvin Hagler out to Miami practices, but the Las Vegas setting for his off-season forays could be worrisome to high-minded athletic officials.

And so he gives interviews suggesting that his job, overseen by both boosters and school officials, is unworkable. And when reports come out that he wants a job in the NFL, he is unwilling to deny whole-heartedly.

The other thing that hints at his departure is next year’s team. Among the starters, there are only four players he recruited. Everyone else is a fourth-year junior or senior, brought on board by Howard Schnellenberger. Next year’s team will be inexperienced indeed. “I would be shocked if he stays,” said a long-time follower of the team.

Nobody chills Heisman hopes like Miami. Last year the Hurricanes silenced Oklahoma’s Brian Bosworth on national TV. Bosworth was last year’s “Is-this- the-year-a-defensive-player-wins-it?” candidate and although he had a decent game, he was clearly outshone by the annual quarterback candidate, Vinny Testaverde.

This year, in a kind of role reversal, it was Miami’s defense which quelled a hopeful. Florida’s Kerwin Bell, maybe the best returning quarterback in the land, came into the game awash with publicity and a $5,000 poster campaign. Drilled for four quarters, intercepted three times, sacked five more, Bell finally retired to the dressing room in silence, much as Bosworth did last year in the Orange Bowl, his Heisman campaign retired.

Miami’s defense doesn’t get a shot at another “hypeful” until Nov. 28 when it plays Notre Dame at home. Notre Dame’s Tim Brown may be hoping the votes are in by then.

Positively the Last Boz Note of the Year: Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer told The Sporting News that the Boz, the note columnist’s best friend last year, is not around only because of his “National Communists Against Athletes” T-shirt at the Orange Bowl.

Bosworth had failed the steroids test and was reduced to sideline status for the bowl game, although Switzer hadn’t guessed he’d be a punk billboard as well. “If Brian hadn’t done that,” Switzer said, “he probably would be playing for us this season.”

Switzer said he decided on the spot that Bosworth was NFL-bound. He pretended to leave the door open for Bosworth to return only to give his player a negotiating edge.

Dept. of Growing Up Is Hard To Do, the Sequel: Jack Gilliam, 26, will be the starting tight end for American International College when the Springfield (Mass.) school begins its Division II play Saturday. Gilligan, called Gramps, dropped out of Syracuse with bad grades four years ago, sold insurance, worked in a mill, moved furniture and was a bartender. He’s returned to school for a degree in criminal justice . . . Mark Sullivan, 27, who has played in a Rose Bowl for Ohio State, is now playing defensive line for John Carroll, a Division III school in Cleveland . . . Meanwhile, Towson State (Md.) co-captains Randy Morris and Mark Angle will be pacing the sideline with an unusual anxiety. Both are expectant fathers.

Had Troy Aikman remained at Oklahoma, he likely would have hurt two programs--the Sooners by dooming it to a passing game, UCLA by dooming it to more of a running game.

See, until Aikman broke a leg in a 1985 Oklahoma game and allowed Switzer a look at replacement Jamelle Holieway, Oklahoma had intended to throw the ball some 20 times a game--Air Switzer of all things. But anything but the wishbone doesn’t work at Oklahoma (remember the power-I experiment earlier this decade?) and the break--and Holieway’s option play--jolted Switzer back to his senses.

Holieway, a junior, now runs the most-productive offense in the land and Aikman is giving UCLA the passing arm the Bruins need to complement Gaston Green’s legs.

All the same, Switzer has this to say about the two quarterbacks: “I think Aikman will make a great pro quarterback some day. And I doubt that Jamelle will ever play a single minute in the pros, at least not as a quarterback.”

Dept. of Higher Learning: Georgia hoped to present its football program in an academic light by posing super brain / football player Kim Stephens in front of a blackboard with a derivative of the general quadratic equation on it. The picture appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, accompanying a story on the double math major who is playing his fourth season of football while working on a master’s degree.

Only problem, and leave it to rival Georgia Tech to find it, the formula was wrong.

“Shoot,” said Georgia Tech tight end Chris Caudle, “a Georgia player is finally getting a degree and he can’t get the formula right.”

Said Stephens: “I was testing their intelligence.”

Last January’s national championship game between the No. 1 and 2 teams has renewed debate about a playoff system. Division I college football is the only sport without one, preferring the entrenched bowl system, which has more to do with civic pride than determining who’s No. 1. But Erk Russell, whose Georgia Southern team has won the Division I-AA playoffs with 15-game seasons the last two years, wonders if it would be good for the big boys.

“A 16-team playoff means four more games,” he advises, “and injuries pile up. Maybe if you could get it down to a an eight-game playoff, with three more games, they could do it. But there’d be a lot of crying from the teams that didn’t make it. We had a lot of that ourselves and there’s, what, only 80-some schools to choose from.”

Proponents of the playoff system should be reminded of the annual whine-fest that accompanies the NCAA basketball tournament’s selection of 64 teams. And you want to pick eight?