Nebraska’s Gdowski Impresses the People Who Count the Most : Fiesta Bowl: Cornhusker quarterback, the coaches’ choice, leads team against Florida State.

Unlike Florida State’s Peter Tom Willis, his lankier counterpart in today’s Fiesta Bowl game, Nebraska quarterback Gerry Gdowski probably won’t attract much attention from NFL scouts.

A year from now, the 6-foot, 190-pound Academic All-American might well be back home in Fremont, Neb., balancing books as an accountant.

Like Willis, though, Gdowski will look back fondly on a senior season in which he was nothing short of spectacular in his only chance to be a collegiate starter, putting up the kind of numbers that made fans and the media wonder where he had been hiding for three years.

According to his coach, Tom Osborne, no Nebraska quarterback has ever played the position any better than Gdowski.

And yet, he remains almost as unknown as he was last August.

An understudy for two years behind All-Big Eight quarterback Steve Taylor, a three-year starter for the Cornhuskers, Gdowski emerged from Taylor’s shadow only to be eclipsed this season by Colorado’s spectacular Darian Hagan, who led the Buffaloes to the Big Eight championship, an unbeaten regular season, an Orange Bowl date against Notre Dame and the top of the polls.

But when it came time for the Big Eight coaches to select an all-conference quarterback, the name they chose was Gerry Gdowski.

The media chose Hagan.

Obviously, the coaches found these numbers hard to ignore:

--While Hagan passed for 1,002 yards and ran for 1,004 to become only the fifth player in major college history to both pass and run for more than 1,000 yards in the same season, Gdowski passed for 1,326 and ran for 925 in 69 fewer attempts than Hagan, averaging 7.9 yards a carry to Hagan’s 5.4.

“When you figure that he’s going to run some quarterback sneaks and he’s going to get sacked a few times, it’s really remarkable for a quarterback to average (almost) eight yards a carry,” Osborne said. “I’d say that’s probably the most significant of his statistics.”

It is not, however, the only one that stands out.

Some others:

--Gdowski averaged 204.6 total yards a game, which was superior to Hagan’s average of 182.4 and established a Cornhusker record.

--While Hagan accounted for 21 touchdowns, including 17 by rushing, Gdowski accounted for 32 total and 19 through the air, one every seven pass attempts and only one short of Vince Ferragamo’s school record.

--Gdowski threw only two interceptions in 136 pass attempts, none in his last 92, and accumulated a passing efficiency rating of 177.3, which would have surpassed Jim McMahon’s NCAA record of 176.9 if Gdowski had attempted the required 15 passes a game instead of only 12.4.

“Amazing,” Kansas Coach Glen Mason said of the numbers.

Still, outside his football-crazed home state and the projection rooms of Cornhusker opponents, Gdowski is widely unrecognized.

Much of the reason for that, it seems, is that despite a 10-1 record and No. 6 national ranking, the Cornhuskers were under-publicized this season, especially for a team that earned its 21st straight bowl bid.

None of Nebraska’s powder-puff nonconference schedule, which included games against Northern Illinois, Utah, Minnesota and Oregon State, was televised by the networks or ESPN. Neither were the Cornhuskers’ Big Eight games against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State because those teams, sanctioned by the NCAA, couldn’t appear on television this season.

And Nebraska hardly made the most of its only national TV appearance, losing to Colorado in a showdown for the Big Eight title.

But even that doesn’t explain Gdowski’s lack of recognition.

While Hagan passed for only 22 yards and ran for 86 and a touchdown, accounting for 108 total yards in Colorado’s 27-21 victory over the Cornhuskers, Gdowski ran for 69 yards in 14 fewer carries and passed for 211 yards and three touchdowns, accounting for 280 total yards against a defense that allowed only 300 yards a game.

It’s understandable, then, that when asked what he hoped to get out of today’s game, Gdowski said: “I guess maybe a little respect.”

Though he averaged 8.2 yards a carry in 35 rushing attempts as a sophomore and junior, Gdowski gave little indication of his passing prowess, throwing for only 72 yards in two seasons after connecting on only 32.6% of his attempts three years ago as a starter on the freshman team.

“I had probably a better year than I could have imagined,” said Gdowski, who would have a year of eligibility remaining if he had redshirted as a sophomore instead of spending the season third on the depth chart.

Obviously, even Gdowski didn’t anticipate his emergence.

“I was going to be the third-team quarterback and I was going to have a chance to play a little bit and travel with the team,” he said of his decision not to redshirt. “Plus, I knew I could graduate in four years. I thought it would be better just to get on with things.

“If I could have looked into the future and known I was going to have a year like this, I would have liked to redshirt. But I’m happy with the way things turned out. I don’t regret anything.”