Alliance Is No. 1 Public Enemy

Jan. 2, 1997.

ALLIANCE HELL, U.S.A.--No. 1 Florida State will not meet No. 2 Arizona State at the Superdome today for the national championship in a battle of the nation’s only 11-0 teams.

The mayors of Tallahassee and Tempe will not bet a bucket of gumbo on the outcome; coaches Bobby Bowden and Bruce Snyder will not exchange handshakes at midfield; Arizona State quarterback Jake Plummer will not test his arm against Florida State’s No. 1 defense.

The game you were dying to see will not be played.

*

Yep, they screwed it up again.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Plummer said this week. “We’ve got to go out and take care of Ohio State and do what we can to win that game. If it’s left up to the poll people, regardless of how it comes out, I know going undefeated at any time, in any sport, especially college football, and with the Pac-10 schedule we have, we can say we’re the national champs.”

Another fine year, another fine mess.

Instead of getting a clear-cut champion, America gets No. 1 Florida State against likely No. 3 Nebraska in the Sugar Bowl and No. 2 Arizona State against No. 5 Ohio State in the Rose.

Then what?

If Nebraska beats Florida State and Arizona State loses, Nebraska probably will claim its third consecutive national championship, despite the fact Nebraska and Arizona State each will have finished 11-1 and that the Cornhuskers’ loss was to the Sun Devils.

Or?

If Florida State and Arizona State win, the Seminoles probably will claim their second title under Bowden despite the fact the Sun Devils also would have gone 12-0 and defeated No. 12 Washington, Nebraska and Ohio State en route.

The joke of the latter scenario is that the national title will have been decided by a preseason poll of writers and coaches who obviously had no clue Arizona State was this good.

Florida State started the season ranked third in both the Associated Press and USA Today/CNN coaches’ polls. The Seminoles moved to No. 2 in the AP after Ohio State lost to Michigan and to No. 1 when they beat Florida.

For Arizona State, it has been a glacial climb.

The Sun Devils began the season unranked in the coaches’ poll and No. 20 in AP. Arizona State moved from 17th to sixth in the AP after upsetting Nebraska, 19-0, on Sept. 21, and held the No. 4 spot from Oct. 6 to Nov. 17. The Sun Devils were bumped to No. 3 after Ohio State lost and to No. 2 after Florida’s loss.

If Florida State and Arizona State finish 12-0, the Sun Devils will have lost the national title not on Jan. 2, but on Aug. 25.

This is a pretty good argument for not allowing football polls to begin until mid-October.

Son to his father: “Daddy, why can’t Florida State just play Arizona State for the national title?”

Well, sonny, wouldn’t that be nice.

The teams can’t play, of course, because the Big Ten and Pacific 10 conferences did not originally join the bowl coalition, which became the alliance in 1995, which had formed in an attempt to pair the nation’s top teams each year.

The alliance doesn’t work if a team from either the Big Ten or Pac-10 finishes ranked first or second.

Naturally, that has happened twice in the last three years, with No. 2 Penn State in the 1994 season and Arizona State this season.

Good news! The Big Ten and Pac-10 have agreed to join the alliance.

Bad news! The deal does not kick in until 1998. And mark these words: The year it happens, no team from the Big Ten or Pac-10 will finish No. 1 or No. 2 for 15 years.

The alliance--alliance people say--is the best answer short of a college playoff, but it is obviously flawed: Think about it. Should 12-0 Arizona State get short shrift because coaches weren’t smart enough to rank the Sun Devils in August?

Bowden, not surprisingly, has no problem with the current setup.

“I’ll take people voting,” he said. “Last year I thought it was 1 versus 2. I thought Florida-Nebraska was accurate. This year, us and somebody in my opinion will be accurate. It won’t be with Arizona State. They won’t feel that way. But I think we’re as close as we’re going to get.”

Meanwhile, Plummer can only dream about Florida State.

Plummer: “It would be fun to just go and play them, to show that, hey, we deserve to get some of the respect we’re getting.”

ENVELOPES . . .

HEY, WHAT’S THE HURRY?

Any Heisman Trophy voter who returned his/her ballot before last Saturday’s Florida-Florida State showdown--you know who you are--should either have his or her privileges revoked or be locked in a room for three hours with Lee Corso.

The thinking: The trophy has been Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel’s to lose since he won his tete-a-tete with Tennessee’s Peyton Manning on Sept. 21 in Knoxville.

Wuerffel had done nothing since to warrant being dropped as the front-runner.

Until Saturday.

Wuerffel showed guile and guts in a three-touchdown, three-interception performance against Florida State, but his team lost.

And now, respectfully, the Heisman should be awarded to . . .

Plummer.

From what I’ve seen, Plummer is the best player on the best team in the country. He is the only quarterback to have beaten Nebraska since Charlie Ward did it in the 1994 Orange Bowl.

The Cornhuskers have gone 36-1 since.

Plummer is the 1.

The sad fact is Plummer’s incredible performance came during a night game in Tempe, long after many East Coast Heisman voters had stumbled off to bed.

Voting before Saturday also would have denied one last look at Florida State tailback Warrick Dunn, who proved with his 185-yard rushing effort against Florida why statistics are for bookkeepers.

I’m now satisfied that Plummer and Dunn are the two most valuable players in the country.

Hey, what do you know? Both play for 11-0 teams.

Heisman ballots are due Dec. 12, with the winner to be announced Dec. 14.

If Wuerffel wins, you might want to check the postmarks.

BOWL POLITICS

Those nutty Miami Hurricanes, thinking they could bowl the Gator Bowl over with such trivial selling points as those four national titles and this year’s conference tri-championship in the Big East.

The fact that Miami finished 8-3, walloped Syracuse last weekend and beat West Virginia at Morgantown meant little in the Gator Bowl’s decision to snub the Hurricanes and take West Virginia.

The most important numbers to bowl jackets are in the stands, not on the field.

Miami averaged 41,611 fans for six home games, only 34,751 if you throw out the 75,913 for the Florida State game.

West Virginia averaged 55,696 fans. And, as they say in the bowl business, “They travel well.”

Miami Coach Butch Davis said it would be a “travesty” if the Gator Bowl took West Virginia instead of his team.

The Gator Bowl took West Virginia.

Miami’s going to the Carquest.

Vroom, vroom.

SWING AND A MYTH

Florida State gets ripped about twice weekly for playing football in a basketball conference. And, the truth is, the Seminoles have gone 39-1 since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference five years ago.

But in that same time period, Florida is 40-4 against the so-called superior Southeastern Conference.

How would Florida State fare in the SEC?

In their last 21 games against SEC schools, the Seminoles are 17-3-1, with stellar records against Auburn (3-1), Florida (7-2-1) and Louisiana State (3-0).

HURRY-UP OFFENSE

--The name of the guy who voted Nebraska No. 1 in this week’s Associated Press poll is Bob Barry Sr. He works for KFOR-TV in Norman, Okla. Figures.

--With Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz, Pittsburgh’s Johnny Majors and Alabama’s Gene Stallings resigning, there are only five coaches left in Division I who have won national championships: Nebraska’s Tom Osborne, Florida State’s Bowden, BYU’s LaVell Edwards, Penn State’s Joe Paterno and USC’s John Robinson.

Good thing USC beat Notre Dame, or it could have been four.

--Crimson Tide defensive coordinator Mike Dubose is odds-on favorite to succeed Stallings at Alabama. Dubose played for Bear Bryant and coached the defensive line on the 1992 national title team.

Note: They have not been using the term “odds-on” in references to the search for the new Boston College coach.

--No problem here with the Tallahassee Democrat’s apocalyptic “WAR” headline to preview Saturday’s Florida State-Florida showdown, although the graphic depicting splattered blood in the masthead might have been a bit much.

Even the pregame notes in the Florida-Florida State series have an edge. It was reported in the Florida State notes that rival Florida had not won a nonconference game on the road (excluding neutral-site bowl games) since Steve Spurrier took over as coach in 1990. The Gators were 0-3-1 in such games. Make that 0-4-1.

--More on Bowden: The 67-year-old coach says he needs about a 15-minute nap every afternoon to recharge his batteries. Last Saturday’s noon start in Tallahassee forced Bowden to improvise. “I dozed in the third quarter,” he said.

Add Bowden: He is in the first year of a new five-year contract at Florida State, with a unique stipulation. “At the end of it, it’s not a rollover, but I can tell them if I want to come back. I tell them. Now, I don’t know how that works. I figure I’ll be 71, who cares?”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Path to Glory

Six teams could still win the national title. Here’s how:

* 1--FLORIDA STATE (11-0)

Needs to: win Sugar Bowl.

Also needs: nothing else.

* 2--ARIZONA STATE (11-0)

Needs to: win Rose Bowl.

Also needs: Florida State loss in Sugar Bowl.

* 3--NEBRASKA (10-1)

Needs to: win Sugar Bowl.

Also needs: Arizona State loss in Rose Bowl.

* 4--FLORIDA (10-1)

Needs to: beat Alabama in SEC title game and win a Sugar Bowl rematch with Florida State. Also needs: Nebraska loss to Texas in Big 12 title game, Arizona State loss in Rose Bowl.

* 5--OHIO STATE (10-1)

Needs to: win Rose Bowl convincingly. Also needs: Nebraska loss in Big 12 title game, Florida loss in SEC title game, Florida State loss in Sugar Bowl.

* 6--BRIGHAM YOUNG (12-1)

Needs to: win WAC title game, win an alliance game convincingly. Also needs: Nebraska and Florida to lose conference title games, an unimpressive Ohio State victory in Rose Bowl.