College Football / Richard Hoffer : Notre Dame Is 5-0, but Holtz Hopes Irish Don’t Get Dented by Miami

Notre Dame wins its first 5 games, reaches No. 4 in the rankings and resumes its role as a championship contender. And so what’s the prevailing mood in South Bend, Ind.?

How about a bad case of nerves.

Said Coach Lou Holtz: “It’s like working all your life to buy a car and then you’re afraid to drive it, you’ll get a scratch on it.”

Ordinarily you could dismiss Holtz’s self-serving similes. But this time, you can understand his worry. Notre Dame, this car everybody worked so hard to rebuild, must negotiate some heavy traffic Saturday when top-ranked Miami comes to town.

Scratches on Holtz’s shiny new machine? The Hurricanes have a history of taking programs like Notre Dame--and Notre Dame’s in particular--and stripping them for parts, leaving teams sitting on blocks, just junk.

Hard to savor the moment with Miami coming to town. The last team with a similar stint in the sun was Florida State, which began the season ranked No. 1. The Seminoles stayed top-ranked for about 30 seconds, which was how long Miami needed to redress that particular lie.

Scratches? Florida State was compacted and taken away.

Of course Notre Dame hardly needs the example of Florida State to stoke its anxiety. The Hurricanes helped Notre Dame along its slide to mediocrity in 1985, Gerry Faust’s swan song, with a 58-7 ripping. Then they stunted Notre Dame’s climb back to respectability with a 24-0 victory last year. And now this year, with Notre Dame returning to the edge of greatness . . . That, of course, is not Holtz talking. He would have us believe that Notre Dame is just another team, worse than most this particular week because of the loss of four offensive linemen.

“Oh, I wish we had a week off,” he said during a conference call.

That Miami did have a week off is, according to Holtz, “all to their advantage.”

If Holtz has little hope for this game, though, the rest of Notre Dame has great expectations. It’s been a long time since Notre Dame has been 5-0 and that has been celebrated with a deluge of national media, attention it hasn’t enjoyed since before Faust. Students are wearing shirts that proclaim “Unfinished Business” and are just generally in a lather over the prospect of revenge.

There is even national championship talk.

“There must not be an awful lot of things to talk about if there is,” Holtz said. “I guess it’s better than gossip. But to me, you have to wait until the eighth or ninth week to discuss that.”

So we’ll wait. In the meantime, here are some things Holtz did discuss:

--Sportswriters. “Last night on TV, I was watching these Chicago sportswriters. It was quite incredible. An enjoyable 3 hours. I guess it was an hour when I looked at my watch. But they had great insight and I love to listen to them.

“And of course, none of them gave us a chance so I was impressed with their intelligence. They said Miami would win because we run the option and Miami stops the option. Just one thing. Miami doesn’t stop option football. It stops all football. Florida State, a passing team, doesn’t get inside their 30! Stops the option . . . “

--Miami’s Steve Walsh. “He’s the best quarterback Miami’s ever had. Better than Testaverde, better than Bernie Kosar. He won’t be the pro they have been but nobody makes better decisions.

“The fact that he’s willing to throw the ball away, which sometimes should be called grounding, makes him look bad at times and hurts him at the Heisman award. But he does that to avoid the sack. It borders on intentional grounding, but he does it with such great awareness, it doesn’t appear to be that.

“Miami throws the ball so well and never has to pay the price. Never get called for holding, never get sacked, no interceptions. Everybody says you need to blitz him. Florida State tried to blitz, and not a single sack. Everybody says drop back. He’ll pick you apart.”

--Notre Dame tradition. “There is something about playing for the lady on the dome. There are people who come into this stadium and they make mistakes they can’t believe they made.”

--Miami tradition. “Miami players may have talked in the past, but Miami does not talk when the ball is in play. They are different (chuckles), but I’ve never seen a team as well disciplined when that ball is snapped.

“They’re the most different guys I’ve ever seen in my life, but I tell you, they do what the coaches say. And contrary to what you think, Miami players are fine young men. I had three in a bowl game and they were an absolute delight. They were more fun to be around, loose and yet very communicative. They showed respect.”

--Superstition. “I started out writing our game plan on a folder that was indented a certain way. And we win, I indent it the same way. I used to think it was bad luck to get a haircut. Seemed we’d get beat whenever I did. But that way (if he got beat after getting a haircut) I’d at least look good enough to get another job.”

What’s the deal in Westwood? UCLA Coach Terry Donahue, as thin-skinned as they come, apparently came unglued when one of his players second-guessed his staff in The Times. Jim Wahler, the starting nose guard, told Jerry Crowe that he resented being moved from tackle in spring practice. And so Wahler was suspended--suspended!--for the Oregon State game.

Even in the paramilitary world of college football, with the little generals strutting up and down the sidelines, that is an extreme use of authority. Suspended! For talking? How can Donahue, obviously a good coach, be that insecure?

Meanwhile, at Oklahoma, linebacker Kert Kaspar talked all kinds of trash about upcoming Texas, got a half-hearted rebuke from Coach Barry Switzer--”He told me, ‘Keep your fat mouth shut’ “--then in the game returned an interception for a touchdown that took the steam out of Texas. “I guess I can keep talking,” he said afterward.

Here’s what Kaspar learned: You can be or say whatever you want if you can produce the goods. And if you can’t, which is inevitable, you’re that week’s chucklehead and you learn something from that, too.

Wonder what Wahler learned?

Tuscaloosa Trouble: Alabama was upset by Mississippi last week and all hell has broken loose.

The quarterbacks, and there are 3 of them, are squabbling about playing time, somebody threw a rock through Coach Bill Curry’s office window, and the university’s acting president is half-heartedly trying to calm the populace, saying, “I still think we will have a very good season.”

That was Roger Sayers, unfortunately for Curry, not the man who hired him, saying Curry would be there as long as he was.

You can surely understand all the fuss. Alabama is 3-1.