COLLEGE FOOTBALL SPOTLIGHT

A MAJOR PAIN

That Pittsburgh was beaten, 42-10, by Syracuse on Saturday was not even the worst part of Coach Johnny Majors’ week.

The week began with the Panthers’ top two quarterbacks, John Ryan and Pete Gonzalez, injured, forcing Majors to start redshirt freshman Matt Lytle, who had thrown only four passes all season.

Then, as he was driving home from practice Thursday, Majors’ car was broadsided by a speeding driver during a police chase. Majors was not hurt, but the crash caused a seven-car, chain-reaction pileup.

FATHER THROWS BEST

It was Parents’ Day at Michigan and, finally, Bob Griese wangled a day off from ABC-TV to watch his son, Brian, play quarterback for the Wolverines against Purdue. The elder Griese had never attended one of Brian’s college games because of his job.

What he saw might have caused him chills, if the miserable weather hadn’t done that already. Brian Griese had one of his worst days, missing open receivers in completing 11 of 24 passes for 101 yards with one interception. Griese said his hands were numb from the cold.

Griese said afterward he was proud of Brian, whose performance did not remind anyone of the former Purdue great in the 5-0 defeat. Griese is enshrined in both the college and pro football halls of fame. Griese led the Boilermakers to three victories over Michigan.

The last time Purdue won at Ann Arbor was in 1966, with Griese at quarterback.

STREAK SNAPPED, BENTLEY BUMMED

Division II Bentley College had its 30-game winning streak, the longest current streak in college football, snapped with a 39-36 loss to Stonehill College at Waltham, Mass.

Dan Field threw three touchdown passes for Stonehill, which ended Bentley’s three-year reign as Eastern Collegiate Football Conference champions.

Bentley had also won its last 37 regular-season games. Senior quarterback Mike Rymsha lost for the first time in 26 career starts.

ON THE OTHER HAND . . .

Jackson State defeated Prairie View A&M;, 68-0, extending college football’s all-time record losing streak to 57 games.

Prairie View (0-11) hasn’t won since beating Mississippi Valley State, 21-12, on Oct. 28, 1989.

GOOD MOVE

Saturday’s game between Virginia Tech and Temple was originally scheduled as a home date for Temple, but the school’s athletic department sold the rights to a Virginia-based promoter. With the Owls averaging only a few thousand fans per game at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, the promoter moved the game to RFK Stadium in Washington, where it drew a partisan Virginia Tech crowd of 20,371.

PROOF POSITIVE

As if there wasn’t enough statistical evidence showing how dominant Nebraska has been in recent years, the Big Eight research staff has come up with another fact to throw on the pile. If Nebraska finishes this season undefeated through its bowl game, it will post a three-year record of 36-1-0, becoming the first team with 36 victories in a three-year period.

Only two teams have won 35 games in three years--Toledo, which went 35-0 from 1969-71, and Brigham Young, with a 35-4 mark from 1983-85.

AT LEAST NEW PRIZE IS MUCH LOWER IN FAT

The Minnesota Golden Gophers and Wisconsin Badgers play each other for the usual reasons, but most important, for the 49th consecutive year, they played for “Paul Bunyan’s Ax.”

It’s a lovely tradition, but it wasn’t always so. The schools, who met for the 105th time Saturday in Minneapolis, previously fought for the “Slab of Bacon,” which was carved out of wood, and featured a football with an “M” or “W” inscribed on top of it, depending which way the trophy was held.

The idea was that the winner of the game would “bring home the bacon.” Alas, the Slab of Bacon was a casualty of a post-game melee in the early 1940s, and the ax became the series trophy in 1946.

ADD RIVALRY UPDATE

The Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry is the nation’s longest, although Auburn and Georgia, who also played Saturday, aren’t far behind.

The teams have met 98 times, which ranks as the nation’s eighth-oldest rivalry. Auburn leads the series 47-44-8, though one of the eight ties is disputed. The 1899 game was called because of darkness with Auburn leading 11-6, but the referee officially declared a 0-0 tie. An Auburn protest was upheld, but the official records still show a 0-0 tie.

ARMY, NAVY BOMBED BY AIR FORCE

With its 38-20 victory over Army, Air Force won that most important of battles. Because the Falcons beat Navy earlier in the season, they will make their eighth trip to Washington, D.C., in 13 seasons under Coach Fisher DeBerry to claim the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy.

Hail to the Falcons.

FAREWELL TO FOLIAGE

Saturday’s Auburn-Georgia game was the last played at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga., before the famed hedges ringing the field are removed to make room for the Olympic soccer field.

PLAYING CHICAGO DENTAL WAS LIKE PULLING TEETH

With Darnell Autry getting 100 rushing yards for the 11th consecutive time, fifth-ranked Northwestern remained in the Rose Bowl race by beating old nemesis Iowa, 31-20, for its best showing in 92 years.

The team’s schedule has shown a marked upgrade since the Wildcats’ last stellar season. That came in 1903, when Northwestern went 9-2-3 and had the likes of Division High School and Chicago Dental on the schedule.

CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER

Depending on where you were, Saturday was an awful day to be out of doors in knee-length polyester pants.

At the Northwestern-Iowa game at Evanston, Ill., the game-time temperature was 26 degrees with a one-degree wind chill and wind gusting at 30 m.p.h. Plows had to roll a slight snow cover off the artificial turf before the game.

It was snowing at kickoff for the Michigan State-Indiana game at Memorial Stadium. The temperature fell below freezing and the wind gusted to 45 m.p.h. The wind-chill factor was sub-zero.

At Chapel Hill, N.C., things were balmier, but not calmer. Florida State and North Carolina played the first half in a driving rainstorm, under a tornado watch and to a half-empty stadium.

WHAT’S DONE IS DONE

“This hurts,” said Chris Finch, San Diego State’s senior offensive lineman.

“I was kind of numb, to tell you the truth,” Wyoming Coach Joe Tiller said.

The player and coach were talking about Wyoming’s 34-31 upset victory over the No. 25 Aztecs.

But they could have been referring to San Diego State’s George Jones, who rushed for 133 yards and one touchdown on 27 carries although playing with a broken jaw. Jones, the country’s No. 3 rusher, has 1,591 yards this season and is 40 shy of Marshall Faulk’s single-season school record of 1,630 set in 1992.

Jones broke his jaw last week and had it wired shut on Monday. His helmet was fitted with a bigger, heavier facemask that covered the ear holes.

“We should’ve passed more, but that’s in the past now,” he said.

NOTEWORTHY

Oklahoma State ended 19 years of frustration against Oklahoma with a 12-0 victory. It was Oklahoma State’s first victory against its in-state rival since 1976, and it marked the first time since a 10-0 loss to Missouri in 1983 that Oklahoma had been shut out. The loss ensures the Sooners their first losing record in the conference since 1965. . . . Purdue Coach Jim Coletto got a gash under his right eye when a Boilermaker player’s cleat scraped his face while being tackled out of bounds after an interception return. . . . Kentucky’s Moe Williams equaled his school record with 40 carries in a game while establishing season marks with 264 carries for 1,449 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns. Mark Higgs set the rushing record with 1,278 yards in 1987. . . . Freshman running back Jaime Blake ran for 170 yards and three touchdowns to lead Colorado State to a 22-0 victory over Hawaii in the Western Athletic Conference. It was Colorado State’s first shutout in 28 seasons and 145 games at Hughes Stadium. . . . Eddie George ran for a school-record 314 yards and two touchdowns as Ohio State routed Illinois. George had 36 carries and broke the mark of 274 yards set by Keith Byars against Illinois in 1984. The 300-yard effort was the sixth in Big Ten history and the first since Indiana’s Anthony Thompson gained a conference-record 377 yards on Nov. 11, 1989. . . . Chris Perry set an NCAA Division II record with his 21st touchdown reception this season, helping Adams State to a 36-26 victory over New Mexico Highlands at Las Vegas, N.M.

QUOTEBOOK

Senior defensive end Hank Coleman, after Virginia Tech, which has beaten both contenders, Miami and Syracuse, clinched only a share of the Big East title with a 38-16 rout of Temple:

“It’s not a bad thing, college football. We don’t understand it, we just play it.”

Air Force’s Fisher DeBerry, borrowing a page from ‘70s rock group Bachman-Turner Overdrive:

“If we take care of business, business will take care of itself.” --Compiled by Julie Cart, Bob Cuomo and Emilio Garcia-Ruiz.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TOP PERFORMERS

PASSING

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Player Comp. Att. Yds. TD ARELLANES, Fresno St. 22 31 412 5 KING, Tulane 23 47 372 2 SAUTER, Minnesota 20 36 355 3 BROWN, Texas 21 35 338 4 BUTTERFIELD, Stanford 19 31 320 3 BENNETT, Nevada 21 35 315 2 DELHOMME, SW Louisiana 24 43 311 2 WUERFFEL, Florida 19 24 304 5 SARKISIAN, BYU 18 27 303 2

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RUSHING

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Player Carries Yards TD GEORGE, Ohio St. 36 314 2 WILLIAMS. Kentucky 40 272 3 PRIESTER, Clemson 32 263 1 WILSON, Utah St. 29 251 3 TALLEY, Northern Illinois 37 251 0 WALKER, Arkansas St. 34 212 1 ABDULLAH, Pacific 35 190 4 HOPKINS, Arizona St. 30 187 2 BLAKE, Colorado St. 27 170 3

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RECEIVING

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Player No. Yards TD VAN DYKE, Nevada 11 163 2 ALEXANDER, Utah St. 11 107 0 STOKLEY, SW Louisiana 9 125 1 JONES, Fresno St. 8 244 4 ATWELL, Minnesota 8 148 1 MANNING, Stanford 8 125 1 BATTAGLIA, Rutgers 8 102 2 BENJAMIN, California 7 103 1 McLEMORE, Texas 6 161 2

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