Etheridge Fully Content Despite Auburn’s Ban From Bowl Games : College football: Former Hart High kicker points out 11-0 record, victories over Alabama and Florida.

It’s won’t be a formal party, but Auburn kicker Scott Etheridge has invited anybody who happens to be in the neighborhood to stop by on New Year’s Day. Just open the door and come on in.

Etheridge will be the guy sitting in front of a TV set with a smile on his face, remote control in hand and his strong kicking leg propped up on the coffee table.

“I joked around with the press here,” Etheridge said. “I said, ‘If any of you want to come over to the house on New Year’s Day, I’ll have plenty of popcorn and Coke.’ ”

Etheridge said he and his Auburn teammates harbor no bitterness at having to watch other teams play Jan. 1--despite finishing 11-0.

The team is on probation and was denied a chance to play for the national championship.

Yet the Auburn players believe they already played their bowl game--and won.

“When you beat Alabama here,” said Etheridge, a senior from Hart High, “it’s like the only thing that will matter the rest of your life. That’s how big it is.”

After Auburn defeated Alabama, 22-14, on Nov. 20 to finish unbeaten--the best record in 102 years of Tiger football--who would care about New Year’s Day?

“In a sense, that was our bowl game,” Etheridge said. “They were defending national champions. We’re so satisfied with what we’ve accomplished that it completely overrides the feeling that we’re missing something.”

Of course, Etheridge can feel content for reasons other than team success. The 5-foot-11, 148-pound two-year starter was named to the All-Southeastern Conference team this month and played in the Christmas Day Blue Gray All-Star game.

He could get an invitation to an NFL combine workout in February. The consensus around Auburn is that Etheridge will be in an NFL camp this summer.

A walk-on at Auburn in 1989, Etheridge didn’t win the kicking job until 1992 but has since set several school records. His 79.1% success rate on field-goal attempts (34 of 43) broke the record set by Win Lyle (76.3%), the kicker when Etheridge arrived. Etheridge’s record for accuracy on extra-point kicks will never be broken. He was 65 for 65.

“I was a fourth-year junior before I actually had a chance to compete for the job, and I won it,” he said. “I’ll walk away here owning eight of 11 kicking records. The only ones I don’t own are career points, career extra points and career field goals, because I only kicked two years.”

Etheridge gets to enjoy his accomplishments while speculating on his favorite topic: college football.

During the season, he spent much of his Saturday nights watching games that he taped during the day. He’ll be planted in front of a TV set watching the bowl games live, but he already knows who will be No. 1 in the final polls.

“Florida State is by far the best team in the nation,” he said. “But I don’t think people realize how good Florida is. Florida State made Florida look slow, and Florida is one of the fastest teams in the nation. When we played Florida, Florida was just running up and down the field.”

Until Etheridge kicked the biggest field goal of his career--a 41-yarder in the rain with 1 minute 21 seconds to play to help Auburn beat Florida, 38-35, in front of 85,214 at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium.

That’s when people started saying what a shame it was that Auburn couldn’t play in a bowl.

“Sure, we’d love to go play Florida State or Nebraska or West Virginia,” he said. “In fact, I think we’d go play Florida State because there’s no way the Bowl Coalition would turn down Bowden versus Bowden. It would be too big of a deal.”

Seminoles Coach Bobby Bowden in a showdown for No. 1 against his son, Terry Bowden (Auburn’s first-year coach who has been selected coach of the year by several publications) would be an intriguing match-up.

“I’m betting Florida State would kill us,” Etheridge said. “But I think we’ll probably end up being the only undefeated team in the nation--and that will make it even more satisfying.”

Anyone stopping by Etheridge’s place Jan. 1 should be prepared to hear how Auburn’s kicker proposes to untangle the No. 1 controversy in the future. He calls for an eight-team playoff system, with the national championship game alternating among the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl.

“Shoot, why not have it?” he said. “Don’t think TV won’t finance the whole dang thing. And don’t think the fans aren’t going to (make the) road trip. We’ll get what everybody wants.”

Etheridge’s opinion about the fans might have been influenced last month by the Tiger-Crimson Tide throng that formed a gridlock on campus. It was a wild scene that Etheridge spent the better part of the week recording with 35-millimeter snapshots.

“Usually for a big game, people show up on campus on Thursday or Friday,” he said. “But for the Alabama game, trailers started pulling in on Monday. For a week it was a cocktail party. We took our TV ban this year, so we had 100,000 people outside the stadium camping out and listening on radio.

“It’s exciting, but I think it’s absolutely crazy. The whole state just stops.”

The Auburn-Alabama game filled more than one stadium. Jordan-Hare was filled to capacity (85,214). In Tuscaloosa, about 45,000 paid $10 a ticket to watch the game on a big screen. TRZ, a pay-per-listen radio company, had a system failure during the Auburn-Alabama game because it couldn’t handle the more than 59,000 customers who tapped into the broadcast via telephone lines.

Of course, it would have been a different story had the NCAA not levied sanctions on the Auburn program shortly before the season. Investigators found evidence that boosters made illegal payments to former defensive back Eric Ramsey and cited the university for a lack of institutional control. The penalty included a loss of scholarships, no bowl appearances for two years and a one-year television blackout that Auburn elected to take this season.

“We didn’t really think we’d be in a position for a bowl game,” Etheridge said. “We had gone through two losing seasons. So when we got the sanctions the week before the season, we didn’t care.

“It’s been a two-year ordeal, from the time all the allegations came out, to the time the official investigation started, to the time the investigation ended, to the time they came out with the decision. It demoralized our program.

“But we proved that you can’t deny us. We had every reason to quit. Especially the seniors.”

Etheridge wasn’t going to quit under any circumstances. He was just starting.

His first three seasons at Auburn taxed his patience. He practiced every day. He was given a uniform, but little more. Auburn publicists did not even identify him as a kicker on the team’s all-time letterman roster, listing him as a manager.

His senior year at Hart (he had played only soccer previously) was not impressive enough to gain a scholarship offer: a long field goal of 42 yards, 26 of 26 on extra points.

When he walked on at Auburn, there were two kickers ahead of him: Lyle, who holds the record for most career field goals (45) and Jim Von Wyl.

“I’ve always had big shoes to fill,” Etheridge said. “But I’ve always been able to fill them and maybe widen them a little more.”

He kicked 22 field goals in 1992--a single-season record at Auburn. And his 86 points, a team record for kickers, ranked 14th in the nation in scoring. He is three for three when called on to kick late, game-deciding field goals. But his hallmark is consistency.

“I figured it out,” Etheridge said. “I stepped on the field 108 times and I made 99 of them.

“I never missed anything shorter than 35 yards and I’ve never missed two kicks in a row--and that’s probably what I pride myself on the most. And I’ve never missed to cost us a game. Down here, that’s detrimental.

“This is a pressure-packed conference. People notice if you’re breathing wrong down here. If I don’t hit all those game-winning kicks, I still could be the most accurate kicker in Auburn history, with all the records. But I wouldn’t be considered a very good kicker.”

Etheridge has heard he’s one of the NFL’s top-five kicking prospects, and he’ll be meeting with an agent in Los Angeles next month.

“The way he works, I just know he’ll work his way to kicking for somebody,” said Auburn assistant Joe Whitt, who coaches defensive ends and the kickoff coverage team. “He kicked a lot of clutch field goals. I put him in the same category as Al Del Greco (the Houston Oiler kicker who played at Auburn from 1980-83). All he needs is an opportunity.”