COLLEGE FOOTBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : Seminoles’ Road to Title Goes Through South Bend

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden might have the best team in the country, but he doesn’t have the best chance for a national championship. Alabama has that, thanks to a schedule as soft as the Sta-Puff Marshmallow man.

The Seminoles’ murderers’ row: No. 15 Virginia (5-0), two gimmes against Wake Forest and Maryland, then No. 3 Notre Dame (6-0) at South Bend, North Carolina State (3-2) and No. 4 Florida (5-0) at Gainesville.

The Crimson Tide’s road to 11-0: No. 10 Tennessee (5-1) at Birmingham, four gimmes against Mississippi, Southern Mississippi, Louisiana State and Mississippi State (combined records: 7-14) and No. 19 Auburn (6-0) at Auburn. Then comes a likely matchup against Florida in the Southeastern Conference championship game, which just happens to be played at Birmingham, site of three regular-season Crimson Tide contests.

Said Bowden: “The thing I told my alumni in the spring was, ‘If your primary goal is to win a national championship, then we shouldn’t be playing Notre Dame, or Miami, probably. Or Florida.’ If my president told me, ‘Bobby, you ain’t keeping that job unless you win a national championship,’ hey, man, I’d start a campaign to get rid of Notre Dame, get Miami off our schedule and get Florida off unless they played at Tallahassee every year. I’d get rid of all of them. I’d get me a national championship schedule.”

Instead, Bowden jumped at an offer to play Notre Dame this year. At South Bend. In the middle of November.

Alabama would have picked up Boise State.

“There’s just hardly no circumstances I would turn down to play Notre Dame,” Bowden said. “I’d try to drop other teams before I’d drop Notre Dame.

“Our schedule is such that we’ve got eight Atlantic Coast Conference games. We’re always going to play Florida. We’re always going to play Miami--darn it. So that gives us one school. Now we’ve got to go national, and you just can’t do more for your program than to have Notre Dame on your schedule.”

The Seminoles play the Irish in Orlando next year and then resume the series in Tallahassee in 2002. In between, Florida State picks up USC (1997-98) and then Nebraska (1999-2000), among others.

But for now, the Nov. 13 date with Notre Dame looms as the Seminoles’ second Game of the Century this season.

“Notre Dame is good enough to beat us without the weather,” Bowden said. “But I don’t know how my boys will do in 15-degree weather or snow.”

No dummies, those Notre Damers. The Irish will have two weeks to prepare for Florida State.

IS THERE A MUZZLE IN THE HOUSE?

If we needed to win one game for the national championship and could hire any coach, Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz would be among our five finalists. But if we needed an honest answer to a simple question, Holtz wouldn’t even be considered.

Holtz has become Ron Ziegler with a whistle. Convinced that his weekly opponents have the collective IQ of Beavis and Butt-head, Holtz acts as if the undefeated Irish couldn’t beat St. Mary’s College, the all-girls’ school located across the road from Notre Dame.

A sampling of Holtz’s recent gems:

--”This game against Pitt is as important as any football game I’ve coached.”

Sure, Lou. Final score: Notre Dame 44, Pittsburgh 0.

--”You look at a game and you say you need so many points to win and I don’t see us getting that number unless Stanford leaves the field with three minutes to go in the third quarter.”

Uh, huh. Final score: Notre Dame 48, Stanford 20. And by the way, with three minutes remaining in the third quarter and Stanford’s players still on the field, the Irish led, 34-20, and were on their way to another touchdown.

A footnote: This was also the game that Holtz threatened to junk his beloved series of option plays. It never happened.

As for this week’s game against Brigham Young--the Cougars were just beaten by UCLA, 68-14--Holtz is at it again.

“You don’t want to play someone who has a tradition of winning like BYU does after they’ve lost,” he said. “I can’t think of a worse scenario for us. We are going to get an angry cougar.”

Holtz must have his angry cougars mixed up. Tradition of winning after losses? BYU lost to San Diego State last year and promptly proceeded to lose the next week to UCLA and the week after to Hawaii. And in 1991, BYU opened the season with a defeat against Florida State and then lost consecutive games to UCLA and Penn State.

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY WAS . . .

Despite a television sound bite that indicates otherwise, Arkansas Coach Danny Ford now says his sideline comments in the waning moments of last Saturday’s 28-14 loss to Tennessee were misinterpreted.

A Jefferson-Pilot TV crew captured Ford as he blurted out: “I hope they tear a knee up right there.” At the time, Tennessee had reached Arkansas’ 11-yard line. Less than a minute was left in the game, but Volunteer starting quarterback Heath Shuler still was in the lineup. On the next play, Shuler touched his knee to the ground and ran out the clock.

When contacted later in the day by David Climer of the Nashville Tennessean, Ford scrambled for cover.

“Did I say that? I don’t know,” he said. “I hope I said, ‘I hope they take a knee and run the clock out.’ If I didn’t say that, I hope I was talking about our kid, Henry Ford, who’s got a bad knee. I told our defensive line coach, ‘Let’s don’t keep him in there. Let’s don’t tear his knee up.’ ”

Unfortunately for Ford, this isn’t a multiple-answer test.

Much worse, of course, was the tragic news that Arkansas linebacker Shannon Wright, a fifth-year senior starter, was found dead Wednesday, the apparent victim of suicide. Ford has closed practices and announced that all players are off-limits to the media until after Saturday’s game against Ole Miss.

Wright was last seen by Andy Cox, an Arkansas graduate assistant, who went to a movie with the Razorback player Tuesday evening.

THE REST

When Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne recorded his 200th victory--one of only three active Division I-A coaches to do so--last Thursday against Oklahoma State, he received a surprise postgame visit from none other than Barry Switzer, who was forced out at Oklahoma five years ago. “I just turned around and there he was,” Osborne said. “It was fun to see him. I’ve always enjoyed Barry.” Not on Saturdays, he didn’t. Osborne was 5-11 against Switzer. . . . Freshman quarterback Ron Powlus, who probably would have been Notre Dame’s starting quarterback if he had not broken his right collarbone in fall practice, is throwing again. He began Sunday and is allowed to soft toss for about 15 minutes each day. If all goes well, Powlus could make his first appearance for the Oct. 30 game against Navy. . . . We’ll give Holtz credit for one truth: Weeks ago, he said George Perles’ Michigan State team “was probably the best football team that’s been up there the last couple of years. No doubt about it.” Sure enough, the Spartans upset Michigan last Saturday. Of course, Holtz needs to work on school names. He called the East Lansing campus “the University of Michigan State.” . . . After Kansas State defeated Kansas, 10-9, at Manhattan last Saturday, sparking a postgame celebration that saw the goal posts torn down by victory-starved Wildcat fans, Kansas State Coach Bill Snyder asked opposing Coach Glen Mason if he could address the Jayhawks. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Mason said. Later, though, Mason stopped by the Kansas State locker room and offered his congratulations to the Wildcats, who are 5-0 for the first time since 1931. Enjoy it while it lasts. Kansas State’s next three games are against Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma. . . . Nebraska beat the Wildcats by 14 last year in Tokyo. “I’ve always said, if I had to play Nebraska, I’d rather play them as far away from the continent as I could,” Snyder said. Will Lincoln do?

Arkansas players are predicting that if Tennessee plays the same way against Alabama on Saturday as it did against the Razorbacks, the Volunteers will lose by 30. Tennessee hasn’t beaten the Crimson Tide in its last seven tries. “I hope we can start doing our part to make this a rivalry like it used to be,” Volunteer Coach Phillip Fulmer said. . . . That sure was nice of Penn State Coach Joe Paterno to mention publicly that quarterback John Sacca not only quit the team but that he had academic difficulties as well. . . . Five of the eight Southwest Conference teams have no more than one victory. . . . The Liberty Bowl was feeling pretty good about itself until Army and Navy started winning games. Now it might be stuck with a service academy, after all. Army is 4-1 and could fulfill the Liberty Bowl requirements--seven victories (six of them against Division I-A teams) and ownership of the Commander-in-Chief trophy--as could Navy, which is 3-2 and already has beaten Air Force. In the Liberty’s favor is the schedule of both schools. Army and Navy each has to win four of their next five I-A games, which won’t be easy. Army has the best chance, but will have to beat either Rutgers on Saturday or Boston College the next week to pull it off. If the service academies fade, look for the Liberty to invite either Louisville or Memphis State to face the Big Ten Conference fifth-place team, meaning probably Iowa, Michigan, Indiana or Michigan State. . . . An elderly Auburn fan recently wrote a letter to Tiger Coach Terry Bowden and chided him on his continued use of the word ain’t . The poor grammar didn’t reflect well on the university, wrote the woman. Bowden, perhaps a bit giddy over Auburn’s unexpected fast start, wrote back: “Ain’t it great to be 5-0?” Make that 6-0 after last Saturday’s victory over Mississippi State.

Top 10

As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

No. Team Record 1. Florida State 6-0 2. Alabama 5-0 3. Notre Dame 6-0 4. Ohio State 5-0 5. Penn State 5-0 6. Miami 4-1 7. Florida 5-0 8. Oklahoma 5-0 9. Tennessee 5-1 10. Nebraska 5-0

Waiting list: North Carolina (6-1), Arizona (5-0), Texas A&M; (4-1), UCLA (3-2).