College Football : Ducks Turn Out to Be All They’re Quacked Up to Be

As a general lot, football coaches tend toward paranoia, and perhaps their greatest fear is having one of their players disparage an opponent before a game.

Oregon Coach Rich Brooks was sitting in an Iowa City hotel room Friday night when his star running back, Latin Berry, suddenly appeared on the television screen.

While being interviewed, Berry said, “I guess we’ll just have to go out and clobber Iowa.”

Brooks sought out Berry later and asked him why he would say such a thing.

Berry told his coach that he had thought the interview would be televised only in Oregon.

So Brooks sighed and said, “Well, then I guess you’d better go out and clobber ‘em.”

That’s what the Ducks did in routing Iowa, 44-6--the Hawkeyes’ worst home loss in 11 years.

As it turned out, Berry also got clobbered. He suffered a partial ligament tear in his left knee and will be inactive at least three weeks.

Oregon (2-0) could be a factor in the Pacific 10 this season. The Ducks have a favorable conference schedule, since they don’t play USC.

Second-guess Dept.: Michigan trailed Notre Dame, 24-19, with four minutes left and had one timeout remaining when it elected to try an onside kick against the Irish.

It fizzled when the ball went less than five yards and hit a Michigan player. Notre Dame took over in favorable field position and ran out the clock.

Moreover, the Wolverines had to use a substitute kicker, since Gulam Khan suffered a broken arm on Raghib (Rocket) Ismail’s second kickoff return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Michigan Coach Bo Schembechler, on the onside kick: “If I had to do it over again, I would not have short-kicked. But against a ball-possession team, four minutes isn’t much. I figured, ‘Let’s go for the short kick. We need the ball now.’ ”

The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. statistical bureau doesn’t keep records on the success ratio of onside kicks, but obviously the odds are against the kicking team retaining possession after the ball travels 10 yards.

Defusing the Rocket: Michigan State Coach George Perles says he will try to prevent Ismail from breaking a long kickoff return when the Spartans play the Irish Saturday in South Bend, Ind.

“We’ll know where he is and try to make sure, at the expense of giving up early field position, that we’re going to eliminate him from getting the ball,” Perles said.

“As aggressive and stubborn as I think I am, I am just not going to take on the whole world and kick off to the Rocket. I’ve been brought up better than that.”

In hindsight, that’s a strategy that then-Notre Dame Coach Ara Parseghian should have used against USC at the Coliseum in 1972, when Anthony Davis returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.

At the time, when asked why he chose to kick off to Davis for the second time, Parseghian said: “We at Notre Dame have pride in our special teams.”

Didn’t someone once say that pride goeth before a fall?

Lou Holtz, present Notre Dame coach, started worrying about 1989 after winning the national championship and flying to Hawaii for the Hula Bowl in January.

“I sit down and I open up the paper and I read about Michigan. How they ran the football in the Rose Bowl victory over Southern Cal,” he recalled. “We played Southern Cal, and I didn’t think anybody could run the football on them.

“And about how they had 18 starters back, and how their defense dominated Southern Cal in the second half. From that time on, you’re just worried about next year.”

It’s called imagery and it worked for Arizona kicker Doug Pfaff against Oklahoma.

Pfaff, who played for Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, kicked two field goals in a 6-3 win over Oklahoma Saturday night, the last a 40-yard kick with two seconds remaining.

Pfaff rehearsed for his game-winning kick Friday night in deserted Arizona Stadium. “It’s a little visualization that I do every Friday night before a game,” Pfaff said. “I come out here with the punter and holder and we just kind of imagine what we’re going to do in the game . . . imagine that every kick, every punt being a great one, and, hey, it worked out for us.”

Arizona has a reputation for upsetting highly ranked teams, and it began when USC’s Larry Smith was coaching at Arizona.

However, Arizona Coach Dick Tomey doesn’t want a reputation as a giant-killer.

“That’s no good,” he said. “We want the reputation we play our buns off every time somebody walks into the park and we don’t have to look to the other side of the field to see who it is to decide if we’re going to play hard.”

Quote of the week: “There are five Pac-10 teams better than Miami,” said California assistant coach Denny Creehan after the Bears lost to the Hurricanes, 31-3.

Oh.

College Football Notes

USC’s Larry Smith, a Midwestern-born coach, has a 0-6 record against Midwest teams going into Saturday’s game against Ohio State at the Coliseum. . . . Miami hasn’t allowed a touchdown in two games, and has nine quarterback sacks and seven forced turnovers while allowing only 300 total yards. . . . Southern Methodist Coach Forrest Gregg on his team’s 31-30 victory over Connecticut after trailing, 30-14, with five minutes left: “I’ve had a lot of great things happen to me in football, but this is the finest victory I have ever experienced.” Mind you, Gregg played for Vince Lombardi’s two Super Bowl champions. . . . Utah quarterback Scott Mitchell, who completed 26 of 44 passes for 297 yards and four touchdowns in a 42-30 loss to Nebraska, said that he faked an arm injury in the second half. “It was part of the game plan. I wasn’t injured,” Mitchell said, without further explanation. Fake field goals, fake punts and now fake injuries.