COLLEGE FOOTBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : Sorry, ‘Husker Haters: Loss of Phillips Might Not Hurt

It’s a tossup as to what’s more red--Nebraska’s uniforms or the faces of embarrassed Cornhusker officials and fans, who suddenly find their beloved team No. 2 in the polls but No. 1 in the Lincoln police blotter.

Riley Washington, a reserve wide receiver, will stand trial for attempted second-degree murder. Lawrence Phillips, a Heisman Trophy favorite until Sunday morning, will stand trial on charges of misdemeanor assault. And Damon Benning, Nebraska’s No. 2 I-back, might still be charged with misdemeanor assault.

First, the serious problems:

--Coach Tom Osborne said he was worried “I might never see [Phillips] again” after he kicked the star junior running back off the team. “I was afraid of what he might do to himself because I knew he thought he’d blown it,” Osborne said.

--Phillips, who has pleaded not guilty, is suspended indefinitely, not “dismissed,” as Osborne first said after the alleged weekend assault against the player’s former girlfriend.

--According to Nebraska officials, Phillips was under a three-strikes-and-you’re-out edict. The alleged assault was the third and supposedly last chance.

Now the not-so-serious stuff:

--The consensus among one Big Ten Conference and four Big Eight Conference coaches is that Osborne’s dismissal/suspension/glorified grounding won’t hurt Nebraska a bit.

Said Michigan State’s Nick Saban, whose Spartans were beaten by the Cornhuskers, 50-10, Saturday: “The real strength of the team is the three, four outstanding tailbacks they have. In the fourth quarter, when they were shuttling in their other backs, they actually looked good or better than the other guys. There’s just no falloff in the talent level.”

GET WELL, LOU

As Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz, 58, recovers from Tuesday’s disk surgery--he’s out for at least three weeks--the Irish are trying to pretend as if the little guy is still there.

“I don’t want to show any panic, I don’t want to show anything different, I don’t want to do anything different to upset anyone’s normal routine,” said Bob Davie, Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator and interim head coach. “We’re going to try to conduct things business as usual.”

Good luck.

For starters, the Irish seniors called a players-only meeting. Cornerback Shawn Wooden is talking about winning one for Holtz. Davie, who tossed and turned most of the night he was named Holtz’s temporary replacement, has never been a head coach. Offensive coordinator Dave Roberts will move from the coaches’ box to the sideline to call plays. And the Irish face Vanderbilt, followed by No. 15 Texas, No. 10 Ohio State and No. 18 Washington.

Other than that, everything’s normal.

There is one small potential benefit to Holtz’s absence: a trick play from the more daring Roberts.

“I talked to [Davie],” Roberts joked, “and I thought a double-reverse pass and [then] a throwback to the quarterback with a screen. . . . But then with Coach Holtz, we don’t want to set [his recovery] back five years.”

LONGEST-RUNNING SHOW? IT’S E.R.

The countdown continues for the one coaching record that might never be broken: 400 victories.

Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, already the all-time leader in victories, needs only two more to reach the incredible milestone. The Division I-AA Tigers face Hampton on Saturday at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and then return home for a Sept. 23 game against Central State and, if all goes well, a date with destiny.

“No. 1, 400 wins is mind boggling,” Penn State Coach Joe Paterno said. “It’s just an amazing feat. I know everyone is caught up in Cal Ripken’s 2,131 consecutive starts and that’s an amazing record. But I think Eddie Robinson’s record is even more amazing. To win 400 games in college is almost unbelievable.”

Some perspective: Paterno, the winningest active coach in Division I-A (270 victories in 29-plus seasons), has coached in fewer games than Robinson has won (342-398). And when Robinson does reach the 400-victory barrier, he’ll have 77 more victories than Bear Bryant of Alabama.

“He just keeps on going,” said Pete Dosher, a longtime Grambling sports information official who came out of retirement just to follow Robinson’s quest. “I don’t know if 400 will make any difference to him or not. I think he’s afraid he’ll wind up like the Bear. The Bear quit and was gone less than a month later.”

Robinson, 76, entering his 54th season at Grambling, was in New York on Sunday pumping the Hampton game. He even threw out the first ball at a Yankee-Red Sox game. The “catcher” was Yankee outfielder Gerald Williams, who played at Grambling.

THE RURAL RUMBLE

The battle for Iowa officially begins Saturday as the University of Iowa Hawkeyes travel to Iowa State for a game that is as important as the annual wheat crop.

At stake is Hawkeye Coach Hayden Fry’s 14-year stranglehold on the state’s allegiances, to say nothing of the best recruits. Former Cyclone coach Jim Walden was a wonderful guy and one of the best quotes in the business, but he never beat Fry in eight seasons. In fact, Iowa State has lost 12 of the last 12. Meanwhile, Fry keeps stockpiling Iowa high school players like corn in a silo.

Now comes new Iowa State Coach Dan McCarney, who was born and raised in Iowa, played at Iowa, coached at Iowa for 11 years under Fry and, in polite but firm terms, has vowed to establish Ames, not Iowa City, as the football center of the state.

“I believe we’ll recruit good regardless of what happens this Saturday,” he said. “Win or lose, we’re going to recruit good at Iowa State. I’m convinced of that. I know that. I’ve been here long enough, 10 months, to know we’ve got a great thing to sell.”

How serious is McCarney? He hired four native Iowans for his staff and two others who played at Iowa.

None of this has gone unnoticed at Iowa, where Fry wasted little time adding former Iowa All-American quarterback Chuck Long to his staff this season. Long, who finished second in the 1985 Heisman Trophy balloting and is considered something of a legend in the state, just happens to be in charge of recruiting two of the Hawkeye’s most prized areas: Iowa and Chicago.

As for the game itself, Fry suggested that McCarney’s 11-year inside look at the Hawkeyes might backfire.

“Sometimes their knowledge of what we do can be very beneficial to them,” Fry said. “Sometimes it can turn against them.”

THE REST

It was a regular lovefest in the Southwest Conference this week. When the moderator for the weekly coaches’ teleconference asked if reporters had any more questions for Texas Tech’s Spike Dykes, non-journalist R.C. Slocum jumped on the line and offered his condolences for the Red Raiders’ one-point loss to Penn State at Happy Valley. “Hey, Spike, this is R.C.,” the Texas A&M; coach drawled. “Great game. Shoot, my heart broke for you. You played hard, you played well.” Said Dykes: “ ‘Preciate it, R.C.” . . . Pittsburgh Coach Johnny Majors was a few minutes late for his weekly news conference, but he had a good reason: He was attending an on-campus reception for Vice President Al Gore and, said the coach, “I didn’t want to interrupt his comments.” . . . Give new Oklahoma State Coach Bob Simmons points for honesty. Asked if Saturday’s 24-23 loss to Tulsa (when Oklahoma State blew a 20-point lead) was the result of his team’s inexperience, Simmons said: “I think it was a sign of poor coaching. I have to take responsibility for the outcome of the ballgame.” . . . Penn State’s Paterno was taking the fall for the upset that almost was. “I really didn’t feel good about how I prepared the team,” he said. “I was uptight about a lot of things.” Poor Temple. The Owls play at State College on Saturday, which is too bad since Paterno says, “I feel good about the team this week.”

Ever since Northwestern’s stunning upset at Notre Dame, it has taken Wildcat Coach Gary Barnett about two hours each day to wade through his mail. Most of the letters come from fans of other Big Ten schools who simply want to congratulate him on the victory. Barnett, whose program is ranked in the top 25 for the first time in 24 years and, with a victory Saturday over Miami of Ohio, could go 2-0 for the first time since 1975, said it was just as well that Northwestern didn’t have a game last week. “I could not have prepared a team,” he said. “If you could have seen us practice last Friday, nobody would have put us in the top 25.”

Strange, but true: Nebraska’s Osborne appears in a Burger King commercial and sings the school fight song. “It was one of those things that didn’t evolve quite the way I had planned it,” he said. . . . Illinois, our longshot choice for national champion, is 0-2 and could be 0-4 by the time it resumes its Big Ten schedule Oct. 7. No wonder that Coach Lou Tepper is pushing for a change in bowl eligibility requirements. Right now, it takes six victories over Division I-A programs to qualify. “In terms of fairness, I think the only way we can get around that is not having wins-losses as a criteria for bowl games, but strength of schedule,” he said. Tepper isn’t exactly an impartial observer. Illinois’ first four games: No. 9 Michigan (loss), at No. 20 Oregon (loss), No. 17 Arizona (Saturday), East Carolina (Sept. 23). . . . Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, criticized for running up the score in a 70-26 victory against Duke in the season opener, said he has sent a letter of apology to Blue Devil Coach Fred Goldsmith. . . . Baylor, which hasn’t played since a Sept. 2 opening victory against Tulsa, keeps creeping closer to the top 25 in the coaches’ poll. “I guess if we don’t play we can just keep moving up,” Coach Chuck Reedy said.

Top 10

As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

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No. Team Record 1. Nebraska 2-0 2. Florida State 2-0 3. Florida 2-0 4. Texas A&M; 1-0 5. Auburn 2-0 6. Michigan 3-0 7. Tennessee 2-0 8. Ohio State 1-0 9. Colorado 2-0 10. UCLA 2-0

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Waiting list: 11. USC (1-0); 12. Penn State (1-0); 13. Oklahoma (1-0); 14. Texas (1-0); 15. Alabama (2-0); 16. Arizona (2-0); 17. Washington (1-0); 18. Virginia (2-1); 19. Air Force (2-0); 20. Oregon (2-0); 21. Kansas State (2-0); 22. Boston College (1-1); 23. Miami (1-1); 24. Northwestern (1-0); 25. Notre Dame (1-1).