It Didn’t Make Sense, but It Almost Paid Off

San Diego State tugged on Superman’s cape Saturday afternoon. It spit in Mike Tyson’s face. It played chicken with the Orient Express. It surfed on a tidal wave.

It went ahead and did what no one really thought it made a whole lot of sense to do.

It played Miami in football.

Al Luginbill, the coach, has been saying all along what an opportunity this was. Everyone was laughing at him, of course. The guy would probably jump at a chance to vacation in Baghdad.

No one wants to play football against Miami unless they are from South Bend or Provo or maybe they have Joe Montana at quarterback and Jerry Rice at wide receiver. You don’t want to play Miami unless your defensive line is going straight to the New York Giants without passing go.

But there it was on the schedule.

Dec. 1--Miami vs. San Diego State at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Whoops.

Who put this schedule together?

The Marquis de Sade?

What was San Diego State doing on the same field with the mighty Hurricanes? Gathering autographs? Carrying water? Or just getting trampled?

Should you have been among the 34,201 brave souls who went to this game expecting to see Mission Valley Massacre I, you know the answer.

San Diego State’s Aztecs were on the field because they belonged on that field. They literally and figuratively fought Miami through the sunlight and into the darkness.

That puff of air you felt at about 4:40 was hardly a Hurricane, but rather a sigh of relief.

Miami, you see, was lucky, very lucky, to win.

The final score was 30-28. That’s right . . . 30-28.

San Diego State missed three field goals and set up 10 Miami points with turnovers. Sure, those things are part of football. But reverse just one of them, make just one of those field goals or erase one of those turnovers, and what you have is the biggest upset of the year in college football.

Not to bore you with numbers, but let me pose a few questions.

Guess which team had 28 first downs and guess which had 19.

Guess which team rushed for 153 yards and guess which had 87.

Guess which team passed for 323 yards and guess which team had 284.

Guess which team completed 60.7% of its passes and which team 43.5%.

Guess which team had the ball 33 minutes, 47 seconds and which team 26 minutes, 13 seconds.

If you guessed SDSU was on the long end of all of those numbers, you win a chance to buy season tickets for 1991. You may have guessed by now that you might want them.

“The best team doesn’t always win,” said SDSU quarterback Dan McGwire, who passed for all those yards as well as two touchdowns and a two-point conversion. “We beat them on the field, but they came away with the victory. That’s what counts.”

True enough, but it certainly was hard to tell exactly which team was ranked second or third in the nation and headed for the Cotton Bowl and which team was unranked and headed for hibernation.

In the immediate aftermath, the Aztecs were not an enthusiastic bunch. You would have thought they lost to Cal State Fullerton or Slippery Rock. Believe it or not, they sincerely thought they could win this game. Really.

Patrick Rowe, who set an NCAA record with his ninth consecutive 100-yard receiving game, wasn’t even making an effort to get out of his uniform. He looked like he had lost a winning lottery ticket.

“At no time,” he said, “did we say we just wanted to show we could play with them. I feel like Charlie Joiner. I remember he set an NFL record (for career yardage) and the Chargers lost the game. A win today would have made it special.”

Just in case Patrick is listening, I’ll whisper this.

It was special.

No losses are fun, but this one can have some impact on this program. Fifty recruits in the stands had to be impressed. The 34,201 in the stands had to be impressed. The stay-at-homes with their remote controls frozen on ESPN had to be impressed. I was impressed.

Al Luginbill, for one, seemed perturbed that it took something like this to be noticed.

“We played through all the negatives this community brings to the program,” he said. “I’m specifically talking about people saying San Diego State does not belong in the big time. I’ll never accept that and I’ll never accept that as long as I’m here.”

Settle down, Al, and count your chickens. It looks like they might have hatched.

I mean, your running back, T.C. Wright rushed for more yards than anyone else against a defense ranked third in the nation against the run. He gained 112 yards. The only other runner at 100, exactly, against the Hurricanes was a chap named Raghib Ismail of Notre Dame. We’re talking big time here. And that was on top of McGwire and Company’s passing yards.

What’s more, the excitement of this game and the bitterness that manifested itself in that fourth-period brawl may well have planted the seeds for a rather interesting cross-country rivalry.

San Diego State might not be there yet, but Miami . . . and a few other people . . . know it’s coming. Superman was lucky he didn’t fly home without his cape.