Voters Formally Slight Wildcats

Success in sport can often be measured by the number of times you need to swing by the dry cleaners in a given week.

Michael Jordan knows.

And so, now, does Northwestern Coach Gary Barnett.

“No question,” Barnett says by phone from mania headquarters in Evanston, Ill. “I wore the tux 17 times in the off-season.”

The NCAA doesn’t keep statistics for most black-tie affairs attended, but let’s go out on a limb and make Barnett the record holder.

The whirlwind that was Northwestern’s 1995 season? It blew right into the 1996 off-season.

Cue the slide projector:

Click: Here’s Barnett picking up his ESPY from Northwestern alumna Ann-Margret.

Click: Here’s the coach throwing out the first pitch at Wrigley Field, and then, click, singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with Harry Caray.

Click: OK, here we have Barnett holding a box of Wheaties adorned with Northwestern helmets.

Click: Focus please, ah yes, here’s the dazed coach picking up one of his 17 coach-of-the-year awards. Not sure he knows which award this one is.

Click: Check out the escort the coach needs here to get through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

Click: Oh, this is the coach’s wife, Mary, tending to the hundreds of roses fans left on the Barnetts’ porch last fall after the team clinched its first Rose Bowl trip in 47 years.

Click: Here’s the coach blowing out candles at his 50th birthday party in May.

Click: There’s Barnett in his office, reading one of the several preseason guides picking Northwestern to finish fifth in the 11-team Big Ten this season.

Click: Finally, here’s Barnett pouring lighter fluid on the magazine and tossing it into his barbecue.

What’s wrong with this picture show?

How is it that Northwestern and Barnett, the team and coach that gave us the decade’s most enthralling rags-to-roses stories, could be so summarily dismissed eight months after the commotion.

You could understand it if the Wildcats had lost half their 1995 roster from last year’s 10-2 team.

Hardly the case. Northwestern, only the second team in history to defeat Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State in the same season, returns largely intact. Eight of 11 starters return on offense. It was nine before fullback Matt Hartl was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and was lost for the season.

Every name player off last year’s team--quarterback Steve Schnur, running back Darnell Autry, receiver D’Wayne Bates--is returning.

Northwestern lost seven defensive starters, but returns seven players with starting experience, including All-American linebacker Pat Fitzgerald, who sat out

the last two games because of a broken

leg.

All told, Northwestern got back 16 seniors, including six fifth-year seniors on the offensive line.

Even after Northwestern’s 41-32 loss to USC in the Rose Bowl, Northwestern finished seventh in the final USA Today/coaches poll and eighth in the Associated Press poll.

Yet, essentially the same team returned from summer vacation to discover it had fallen to 19th in the preseason coaches’ poll, 18th in AP.

“I guess we haven’t changed that many opinions,” Barnett says. “That isn’t up to me.”

The taking down of Northwestern is mystifying.

You know where people are coming from, that this is Wisconsin redux. A one-year wonder. Barry Alvarez shook a doormat Badger team to the Rose Bowl in 1993, then returned it to mediocrity.

But there are differences. Alvarez lost most of his staff after that season. Barnett returns with the same 10 assistants for the fourth season in a row.

Last year wasn’t a fluke, it was the culmination of a game plan.

In Barnett’s first season, 1992, his defense finished last in the nation in scoring defense.

Last season, Northwestern finished first (12.7 points per game).

“Same concept, same terminology, same coaches,” Barnett says.

Last year wasn’t a joke, it was a new beginning, one reason Barnett turned down more money from UCLA to stay and finish the job.

Northwestern didn’t win with mirrors, it won with brain and brawn. Autry fumbled one time in 387 carries. Schnur was intercepted six times in 257 attempts.

Barnett is taking the preseason projections in stride.

“To tell you the truth,” he says, “we’ve never been picked to finish in the middle of the pack. That’s a compliment. When you get picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten, that’s a show of respect.”

If anything, Northwestern’s route is easier this year.

Gone from the schedule is that pesky Notre Dame squad that gave the Wildcats a scare in last year’s opener.

Check out this year’s back-to-school schedule: at Wake Forest (Saturday), at Duke, Ohio, and at Indiana.

If Northwestern isn’t 4-0 heading into

its Oct. 5 home showdown against Michigan, maybe the Wildcats will finish fifth.

When Barnett took the job in 1992, he looked at the 1996 schedule and breathed a sigh.

“This is the year that we’ll win six games,” he told himself.

How expectations have changed.

Barnett doesn’t take much stock in predictions.

At the Big Ten media day, in fact, he conducted his own survey.

“You don’t get hired and fired based on predictions,” he told the assembled media. “Am I right? Anyone get fired last year because they picked us 79th?”

Seventy-ninth? Ah, that would have been Sports Illustrated, which coughed up a make-up call in this year’s preview issue by picking Northwestern to win the Big Ten.

Sports Illustrated is the exception. The magazine rule has been this: ESPN College Football (fourth), Sporting News College Football Yearbook (fifth), Bob Griese’s College Football (fourth), Athlon (fifth) and College Sports (fifth).

So what if the Wildcats posted their first winning season since 1971? Kick ‘em when they’re down, kick ‘em when they’re up.

“I think everyone would like to

knock us back to where we belong,” Barnett said.

LONG LIVE THE KLING?

That was some season Brigham Young quarterback Steve Sarkisian had . . . in August.

While other top quarterbacks are still itching to throw their first pass--Donovan McNabb (Syracuse), Scott Frost (Nebraska), Jake Plummer (Arizona State), Schnur--Sarkisian got a jump-start on the field by throwing for 795 yards and 10 touchdowns in August victories over Texas A&M; and Arkansas State.

At this pace, the NCAA record book will need rebinding.

With the addition of the Pigskin Classic and the Western Athletic Conference title game to the mix, BYU could play 15 games this season.

At his current pace--remember, BYU has yet to dig into that stat-gushing

WAC schedule--Sarkisian would finish with 5,962 passing yards and 75

touchdown passes.

The marks would obliterate NCAA records in both categories, with the appropriate asterisks.

The current NCAA passing-yardage mark for a 12-game season is 5,188, set by BYU quarterback Ty Detmer in 1990.

The same season, Houston’s David Klingler threw for 5,140 yards in 11

games.

Klingler, also in 1990, tossed an NCAA-record 54 touchdown passes.

Sarkisian’s yardage pace would not surpass Detmer or Klingler’s marks through 11 or 12 games, but he is ahead of Klingler’s NCAA season-record average of 4.9 touchdowns-per-game.

HUT ONE, HUT TWO

Wasn’t Conference USA supposed to be a basketball league that tolerated football in non-basketball months?

So how to explain last weekend, when it went 2-0 against the vaunted Southeastern Conference as Louisville beat Kentucky and Southern Mississippi shocked Georgia?

“We hope those won’t be the only upsets happening in the conference this season,” Louisville Coach Ron Cooper said.

Not a bad opening weekend for a first-year, pipsqueak, six-team

league.

But let’s wait and see. Southern Mississippi travels to Alabama this weekend and Louisville plays at Penn State.

“We haven’t even talked about going up and being close,” a confident Cooper said of his team’s daunting date with the Nittany Lions. “We’re talking about going up and winning the game.”

The only Conference USA flop was preseason favorite Cincinnati, which was whacked, 34-14, by Tulane, the team picked to finish last.

The Bearcat defense returned seven starters on a unit that finished 19th in scoring defense last season.

So what happened?

Well, the Bearcats did hire a new defensive coordinator. Name is Rex Ryan, son of Buddy.

HURRY UP OFFENSE

--Your move, Cade. Ryan Fien, who transferred from UCLA to Idaho this season after then-Coach Terry Donahue benched him in 1995 in favor of freshman Cade McNown, threw for a school-record 542 yards in his debut as quarterback for Idaho last weekend in the Vandals’ shootout loss to Wyoming.

Fien, a senior, is not only good, he’s smart. Because he transferred before July 1, when Idaho was upgraded to Division 1-A, Fien did not have to sit out a

year.

Don’t expect record-breaking numbers from McNown this weekend against No. 2 Tennessee.

--Is Clemson a mess or what? The Tigers, coming off a 41-0 loss to Syracuse in the Gator Bowl, opened the season with a 45-0 defeat against North Carolina. In between losses, the program was rocked with off-the-field problems and dissension. Tuesday, Coach Tommy West suspended receiver Tony Horne for allegedly hitting a teammate at a weekend party.

Comment: What, exactly, were Clemson players celebrating?

--Dallas Cowboy Coach Barry Switzer recently left a voice-mail message wishing his former defensive line coach John Blake good luck in his first game as head coach at Oklahoma, which plays host to Texas Christian on Saturday.

Well, wishes are fine, but what the new coach needs are players.

Blake, who played and coached under Switzer during the glory days, is trying to rescue a program that fell flat on its face (5-5-1) last season under Howard Schnellenberger.

“I was part of it when we were very good,” Blake says. “I just want to get my team back where it belongs and get the image of Oklahoma back where it belongs.”

--Observation: If Prairie View A&M; is indeed found guilty of having used illegal players in last weekend’s 42-24 loss to Texas Southern, will the Panthers, losers of 58 consecutive games, be forced to forfeit their last victory on Oct. 28,

1989?