Some Off-Season Developments Were Positively Revolting

If the upcoming season is half as exciting as this past off-season, they can cut off beer sales at the half at games this fall and serve decaffeinated coffee.

You couldn’t sink your toes in the sand in April, May and June, without some lightning bolt knocking the umbrella straw out of your beverage.

FLASH: “WAC Revolt.” On May 22, half the school presidents in the Western Athletic Conference met secretly and mapped out a prison break. It was college football’s version of “Escape From Alcatraz.”

The WAC deserters, no dummies, figured a 16-school conference with a lousy TV contract and schools sprawling from Honolulu to Houston might not be a long-term revenue winner.

The departing schools--Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Nevada Las Vegas, Utah and Wyoming--plan to form their own conference in 1999.

Until then, the WAC stays together one last season . . . for the sake of the kids.

FLASH: “Notre Dame is Peyton Place.”

The university of Rockne, rhetoric and lilting Irish melodies set to Hollywood backdrops took a hellacious public relations hit in July when former offensive line coach Joe Moore won an $86,000 judgment against Notre Dame for age discrimination.

Moore, 66, was fired in December 1996 after Bob Davie succeeded Lou Holtz as Notre Dame coach.

Instead of settling the case--what fun would that have been?--Moore dragged the Irish to court and exposed some deep, dark secrets, notably Davie questioning Holtz’s sanity and Irish players caught spying on cheerleaders having sex through a hotel window in Dublin.

The ordeal put a smudge on the Golden Dome that won’t easily be removed by a household cleaner.

Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Cornhusker players attended classes and sought out charity work.

FLASH! “Katzenmoyer Krisis.” Ohio State linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer, last year’s Butkus Award winner and the key to the Buckeyes’ national title hopes, had to pass three summer school courses to become eligible to play this season.

Relax. One of the classes was “golf.” The sound Coach John Cooper dreaded most as Katzenmoyer’s final exam neared?

“Fore!”

KABOOM! “Weird Science at Florida State.”

Seminole quarterback Dan Kendra almost literally lost face when a home chemistry experiment went awry. Kendra survived the blast, but a knee injury in spring practice will keep him home this fall watching reruns of “Mr. Wizard.”

FLASH! “Computer Geeks Take Over Football”

It wasn’t enough that the Big Ten and Pacific 10 conferences finally joined the bowl alliance and all but assured the top two ranked teams would meet in a season-ending title game.

To nail No. 1 and No. 2 down to the decimal point, conference commissioners unveiled a mind-boggling, four-part mathematical formula that will determine the championship matchup.

Whereas “touchdown” and “tackle” used to be popular college football coinage, the new terms to know are “adjusted deviation” and “quartile rank.”

Questions?

“I hope and pray No. 3 doesn’t go undefeated,” Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden said.

Good point.

Since 1979, when five schools were unbeaten and untied during the regular season, three schools have had perfect regular-season records three times. Under the new formula, No. 3 gets aced out by a computer.

That’s hardly the end of it.

While the USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll has agreed to declare the champion of the newly named “bowl championship series” title game its champion, the Associated Press writers’ poll will remain independent, meaning there could be another split championship.

The first bowl championship series poll won’t be released until midseason, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play along at home on your personal computer.

Playoff?

We’ll say this again. Forget about it. University presidents recently tabled a plan even to consider a plan.

“I think you have to give it a chance,” Penn State Coach Joe Paterno said of the new system. “I think you’ve got to say, ‘Nice going, we appreciate the effort, let’s see how it works.’ If it doesn’t work, I’ll tell them how dumb it is.”

It’s going to be a busy season, so let’s pull up our wristbands and get started.

First, news and notes:

* For the first time in a half century, the winners of the Pac-10 and Big Ten do not want to go to the Rose Bowl. Teams from both conferences with national title aspirations are now vying to finish first or second in the new poll formula and earn a trip to the Jan. 4 Fiesta Bowl, host of this year’s title game.

* A controversial new NCAA rule will allow scholarship athletes to earn as much as $2,000 during the school year. So, if you see UCLA quarterback Cade McNown busing tables in Westwood, you’ll know why.

* The Big Ten is making another run at Notre Dame, and this time the Irish appear willing to listen. The Irish will open talks in November about possibly becoming the Big Ten’s 12th member.

Which leads to the question: If the Big Ten becomes the Big 12, what does the Big 12 become?

Hey, no one said college football was easy.

OK, enough housecleaning.

The best team in the country is . . . ?

The polls say Ohio State.

We say Florida State.

Ohio State has more returning talent than any team in the nation, but until the Buckeyes prove they can beat Michigan, we’re not buying stock in this product.

Bowden, meanwhile, is presiding over one of the most remarkable streaks in sports, his Seminoles having finished ranked fourth or higher in the AP poll for 11 consecutive seasons.

If this were basketball, that makes 11 consecutive Final Fours.

The Seminoles won the national title in 1993 and have flirted with one every year since.

Meanwhile, the blue-chip recruits keep tripping over themselves at the Tallahassee airport baggage carousel.

This is reportedly the fastest Florida State team Bowden has ever fielded.

Florida State getting faster is like Bill Gates getting richer.

The best player is . . . ?

Daunte Culpepper. The Central Florida quarterback is this year’s Randy Moss, a phenom who will be deprived of a serious Heisman shot because he plays at a lower-level program. Mark this down, though. Culpepper will be the first player taken in the NFL draft next spring.

The biggest player is . . . ?

Wisconsin tackle Aaron Gibson.

He’s 6 feet 7, weighs 371 pounds and can do splits a la Mary Lou Retton.

The school on the rise is . . . ?

Southern Mississippi.

Don’t laugh. With September upsets of Penn State and Texas A&M;, the defending Conference USA champion could be in the top 10 by Oct. 1. Southern Mississippi starts the season ranked 21st in both polls.

The most overrated program is . . . ?

Kansas State.

We keep this seat warm annually for the Wildcats. The knock here isn’t on the boffo job Bill Snyder has done in Manhattan with the sad-sack program he took over. This is about the schedule. How can Kansas State be taken seriously as a national title contender with nonconference walkovers against Indiana State, Northern Illinois and Northeast Louisiana?

Meanwhile, Michigan plays Notre Dame and Syracuse in nonconference games, Florida State takes on Florida, USC and Texas A&M;, and Ohio State confronts West Virginia, Toledo and Missouri.

The good news: Kansas State is the school most likely to get burned by the new playoff formula, which considers strength of schedule.

The national title game matchup will be . . . ?

Florida State against Arizona State.

Had the new format been in place two years ago, this would have been the title game matchup in the Sugar Bowl.

Better late than never.

The Heisman Trophy candidates are . . . ?

Cade McNown (UCLA), Ricky Williams (Texas), Tim Couch (Kentucky), Ron Dayne (Wisconsin), Culpepper.

Three predictions you can hang your helmet on.

1: Some major college coach will make a “stand” by suspending players for disciplinary reasons against a school he’d beat by seven touchdowns with the scout team.

What? Florida Coach Steve Spurrier has benched five players for the opener against Citadel?

See?

2: This is the year Prairie View A&M; will win a game. OK, another annual prediction, but you know what?

One of these years it’s going to be right.

This year, you can set the Rose Bowl timekeeper’s watch to it.

For poor Prairie View, the longest losing streak in NCAA football history stands at 77, but we liked the reports coming out of spring practice.

3: Bobby Newcombe will become the best Nebraska quarterback since Tommie Frazier. Newcombe, a sophomore, played wingback last year but moved in quite emphatically as Scott Frost’s successor by dominating the Red-White spring game.

Four dates to mark on your calendar:

Sept. 5: Michigan at Notre Dame: The Irish have played a lot of big games in school history. Dare we say this is one of them? Coming off a 7-6 season and a scandal-plagued spring and summer, the Irish can ill afford a humiliating defeat to open the season.

Sadly, taking on Michigan almost seems like piling on at an Irish wake. Where’s the Navy game when Notre Dame needs it?

Sept. 12: Texas at UCLA. The Longhorns are still seething after last year’s 66-3 loss to the Bruins in Austin. This game also marks an early Heisman showdown between McNown and Williams. Two years ago, remember, Florida’s Danny Wuerffel effectively won the trophy when he bested Tennessee’s Peyton Manning head to head in Knoxville.

Nov. 14: Nebraska at Kansas State. It shapes up as the biggest game in Kansas State football history. Nebraska leads the series, 70-10-2 and has won the last 29. Nebraska wrecked Kansas State’s perfect season in 1997 with a 56-26 rout in Lincoln.

Nov. 21: Michigan at Ohio State. Both schools could be undefeated and playing to determine which advances to the national title game in the Fiesta Bowl. For what it’s worth, Buckeye Coach John Cooper is 1-8-1 against the Wolverines.