Quarterback Jackson Practices With Irish

Notre Dame quarterback Jarious Jackson went through practice without any problems Saturday, but Coach Bob Davie said it was too soon to tell if he would be able to play in the Gator Bowl.

“He ran and threw, did everything we asked,” Davie said. “Tomorrow will be more telling. We’ll be in full pads, there will be more contact. And we’ll know more as the week progresses.”

Both the No. 17 Irish (9-2) and No. 12 Georgia Tech (9-2) arrived in Jacksonville, Fla., and went through light workouts.

Jackson’s availability is the big question leading up to Friday’s game. He suffered a knee injury Nov. 21 while taking an intentional safety at the close of a 39-36 victory over Louisiana State.

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Ohio State Coach John Cooper won’t be at practice Monday and Tuesday while he attends funeral services for his mother.

Mildred Cooper, of Orlando, Fla., died Thursday. She had battled lung cancer for the past year. She was 88.

“My missing practice won’t affect anything regarding our preparation for the Sugar Bowl,” Cooper said during the Buckeyes’ first workout in New Orleans for Friday’s game against Texas A&M.;

Defensive coordinator Fred Pagac and offensive coordinator Mike Jacobs will run practices in Cooper’s absence.

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Bill Snyder, the Associated Press national coach of the year and architect of what many are calling the greatest turnaround in college football history, was not Kansas State’s first choice.

He wasn’t even number five or six. Unbroken decades of unending futility had turned the place into such a coaching graveyard, university President Jon Wefald and his staff could hardly get an established coach to return their calls, let alone accept their challenge when they went looking for a new man in 1989.

“The conventional wisdom was that the football program was so bad, it was, in historical terms, irreversible,” Wefald said.

What Kansas State and Wefald finally got--six consecutive postseason games, including Tuesday’s matchup against Purdue in the Alamo Bowl--is really not what he had in mind.

“We were dreaming of a halfway decent football team, a competitive team that might go to a bowl every few years,” Wefald said.