COMMENTARY : New Year’s Madness: There’s a Better Way

On the headachy morning of New Year’s Day, a suffering soul sprinkles aspirin over his corn flakes and straps his hand to the TV zapper. He then sees a Rose Bowl parade of six kajillion roses arranged in the shape of Idaho. He wants to take a shotgun to that ratzenfratzing battery bunny marching through the Bermuda Triangle. By midnight of a long, happy, hallucinatory day, the poor headachy football fool has seen 1,179 student-athletes do 8,759 celebrations. He also has seen Alabama’s mighty men tickle Gino Torretta. What a day.

Through 912 hours of college football, we see Lou Holtz pacing a rut on the sideline. We see Bobby Bowden in the rain and Bill Walsh in the sunshine. Michigan wins and Ohio State loses and as if seeing a ghost, we see Woody Hayes on videotape. We see next year’s best team, Georgia, and we see Florida State’s wonderful quarterback, Charlie Ward, who should have won the Heisman Trophy..

Strapped to the TV zapper, we leave ABC for NBCTBSESPNCBS, all of it a blur, we poor souls loving every minute of it, especially those minutes when Alabama’s irrepressible Tidesmen are tickling Gino Torretta behind the ears. We see an apparition in a hound’s-tooth cap, Bear Bryant on tape, the ghost of greatness whispering into Gene Stallings’ ear. What a day.

College football can be disturbing and often is. We see Washington’s Huskies in the Rose Bowl and wonder exactly why someone “loaned” quarterback Billy Joe Hobert $50,000 and what did that someone expect in return? TV is all day from sea to shining sea and we see stadiums filled with screamers and we figure this is big business with hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands. But the players who are the show don’t get a nickel. We see that and yet we see the players happy making memories and we forget about the unfairness of it because it’s more fun, surely, to watch Alabama tickle Gino Torretta in the ribs.

Poor Gino.

It’s not his fault.

It’s not his fault the Heisman voters gave him the trophy.

Here’s a thick-legged quarterback who moves better than the trophy, but not so you’d notice. About half the time he throws off his back foot, putting up unanswerable prayers, which is why pro scouts make him the fifth- or sixth-best quarterback in this year’s draft. Yet the Heisman voters, blinded by Miami’s glitter, named him the nation’s best player.

Seldom has a Heisman mistake been revealed sooner or more definitively. Poor Gino: 24 of 56 for 278 yards with three killing interceptions in Miami’s 34-13 loss to Alabama. And it was worse than that. A passer with no agility needs good judgment and good mechanics. Torretta had neither. A vote on New Year’s Day, at the season’s true conclusion, would have given the Heisman to Garrison Hearst of Georgia. Maybe the Heisman folks should consider waiting, as the poll-takers do.

What Alabama did to Miami surprised no one who believes the gospel as first preached by Walter Camp, polished by Zuppke and Rockne and practiced by Neyland, Bryant, Lombardi, Landry, Gibbs. You win by knocking the other guy down before he knocks you down.

Look at two plays in Alabama’s victory over Miami. Two plays changed a close game into a 34-13 victory. Both were defensive plays. Both were simple. Both were fundamental football. Both were the result of good coaching and instinct so basic its roots reach back to dirt lots where kids first feel a football.

As it happens, both plays were made by the same Alabama defender, a defensive back named George Teague. First he chased down a Miami pass receiver some 50 yards downfield and, at full speed, swept his right arm down across the ball in the receiver’s right hand. Defenders are taught to scrape at the ball that way, which is why runners are taught to switch the ball away from pressure. Miami’s Lamar Thomas did the wrong thing keeping it in his right hand and Teague did the right thing by scraping at it.

Not only did the ball come loose, but also Teague took it right off the Miami man’s arm. Right there on a simple defensive play done perfectly to take advantage of a tiny offensive mistake, George Teague cut out Miami’s heart.

Then the Alabama defender made it a three-touchdown lead with another simple little play. Against a blitz, Torretta looked for a receiver cutting across the middle. He didn’t see Teague but Teague saw him. And even while watching Torretta, Teague hand-checked the receiver. The check knocked Jonathan Harris back a step. So Torretta’s pass flew directly to Teague, who took the interception 31 yards for the first touchdown of his career.

Teague had worked so much by instinct there, bumping the man even as he looked into the quarterback’s eyes, that he didn’t remember touching the receiver. Again, a little offensive mistake. The receiver has to make that move cleanly. Again, a little defensive play. Two plays, one taking a probable touchdown from Miami, one giving Alabama a touchdown--and instead of a seven-point game, it’s a 21-pointer.

Giving Alabama the national championship is an inarguable no-brainer. Even so, the bowl system is flawed because the games exist in a vacuum with no relationship to each other. Except for the arbitrary 1-2 matchup done by pollsters (who, remember, gave us Gino Torretta as the Heisman winner), the games meant nothing.

It didn’t matter who won the Orange or Citrus or Cotton. Now, answer this: If Florida State, Georgia and Notre Dame had won the right to join Alabama in a four-team playoff for the national championship, wouldn’t that be fun?