FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : It Was a Feast for Eyes on Three-Day Weekend

On the first of three enthralling holiday football days Friday, NFL and college employers learned a thing or two about their game.

--Lesson 1: If you’re a college administrator with a coaching vacancy, try to find someone with an NFL background, such as Gene Stallings or Bill Walsh.

Against Miami in the Sugar Bowl at New Orleans on Friday night, Alabama’s Stallings became one of the first coaches to win a national championship with a 10-man team. His quarterback, Jay Barker, can run a little, but he completed only four short passes for 18 yards. And he didn’t look that good, dealing two interceptions.

How do you win a game of such importance when you can’t pass, and when the opponent must know you can’t?

Stallings did it by surprising Miami on almost every play, offensive and defensive. His game plan was plainly based on hitting the Hurricanes with the unexpected on nearly every snap, alternately confusing Miami’s offensive and defensive players.

In the years when Stallings served Tom Landry at Dallas, the Cowboys, when they had to, did it that way.

--Lesson 2: If you’re an NFL scout, don’t waste any more time evaluating the Miami and Alabama quarterbacks, Gino Torretta and Barker.

It defies belief that Torretta could win the Heisman Trophy in any year that San Diego State’s Marshall Faulk played as many as five or six games.

On the second day of one of football’s best weekends, the Minnesota Vikings tumbled out of the playoffs, losing at home, and the San Diego Chargers continued to perform with the flair of a team of destiny, winning at home.

Here’s what can be said about the Vikings: They weren’t quite ready for the big time this season, but under new Coach Dennis Green they seem to be on their way. They don’t have to change quarterbacks to move upward. They will be able to win with Sean Salisbury next year--provided they teach him how to pass on the run.

That is one of Joe Montana’s many strengths.

Although Salisbury will never throw a running pass with Montana’s deftness, he can, with sound coaching, improve.

Do the Vikings need the original? There are reports that they are interested in Montana. But there are also doubts whether Montana’s particular skills are transferable to another team.

As for the Chargers, their reward for beating a first-round playoff team that can’t pass is a trip to Miami for a second-round appearance next Sunday against a team that can.

The Chargers’ real problem, though, isn’t Dan Marino. It’s playoff pressure. The Dolphins are old hands at that. Although the Chargers aren’t, there’s no time like the present to see what it’s like.

On the third day of 1993, the nation’s sports fans saw a thriller that illustrated, among other things, the vitality of the intangibles in football.

It probably can’t be said that because the Buffalo Bills came back to win in overtime, 41-38, they are a better team than the Houston Oilers.

If Warren Moon and Frank Reich met again this week in a sequel to their eight-touchdown-pass game Sunday--when Moon threw four for Houston and Reich four for Buffalo--the Oilers would be favored.

The Bills, however, had the edge Sunday in three intangibles: poise, self-confidence and luck.

When the Oilers lost their poise and confidence, they were on their way to a beating. And later in the day, against the Philadelphia Eagles, the same thing happened to the New Orleans Saints.

Luck was also a factor both times, as, in closely contested sports events, it often is. The Oilers, for instance, blew an easy fourth-quarter field goal that probably would have made them a three-point winner in regulation.

They blew it, no doubt, because they lost their poise. More often than not, among near equals, the ability to play with poise is what wins.