A Rush of Nostalgia in Evanston

The two most exciting offenses in football today are operated by the St. Louis Rams and . . . the Northwestern Wildcats?

Yep, cat scratch fever is back, so much so that all you sportswriters who graduated from Northwestern may have to pose for another group photo in the Rose Bowl press box.

There will never be another 1995, the year the lovable losers from Evanston won the Big Ten title, tugged at America’s heart, filled scrapbooks with purple prose and fulfilled every dream in Pasadena short of actually winning the Rose Bowl game.

Northwestern won the Big Ten crown again in 1996 and went to the Citrus Bowl before going into a 5-7, 3-9, 3-8 slide that has made this year’s rerun for the roses almost as compelling.

Do not adjust your sports page. You read it right. Northwestern is 3-0 in the Big Ten and Wisconsin is 0-3.

As it was in 1995, Northwestern’s moon is in the seventh house.

As it was in 1995, and 1996, Northwestern doesn’t play powerhouse Ohio State thanks to the Big Ten’s lottery-ball, screwball, random-draw schedule format.

After winning one Big Ten game the last two years, No. 17 Northwestern has already disposed of Wisconsin, Michigan State and Indiana and looks to add No. 22 Purdue to the list Saturday when the teams meet in Evanston.

It’s not too early to start crunching numbers.

If Northwestern (5-1 overall) and Ohio State (5-0) win out, the Buckeyes claim the Big Ten based on overall record, but that scenario would likely send Ohio State to the Orange Bowl to play for the national title.

And that scenario would leave Northwestern bound for Pasadena (the Rose Bowl is not obligated to take a Big Ten team if it loses Ohio State to the bowl championship series title game, but a 10-1 Northwestern would be a lead-pipe cinch).

Should Ohio State lose a Big Ten game and Northwestern wins out, the Wildcats take the conference outright and get the Rose Bowl bid.

These, of course, are not your older brother’s ‘Cats.

Gary Barnett, architect of the ’95 miracle run, sold his restaurant and moved on to Colorado, where he presides over a 1-4 team.

Northwestern hired Miami of Ohio’s Randy Walker, who took Barnett’s leftovers and limped to a 3-8 finish last year, leaving no worldly inkling the 2000 edition Wildcats would go combustible with an offense capable of hanging half-a-hundred points on Indiana and amassing 544 yards against Wisconsin.

Northwestern, which averaged a league-low 12.8 points a game in 1999, has averaged 37.7 points through six games this year. The Wildcats rank 10th nationally in total offense.

Walker and his staff have pulled off one of the great con jobs in recent memory. There’s no denying the St. Louis Rams’ offensive influences on Northwestern. In the off-season, Walker dispatched Kevin Wilson, his offensive coordinator, to Ram headquarters to study the nuances of St. Louis’ unstoppable force.

This was no master stroke.

“We inherited a program here that coming into this season would have no tight ends or fullbacks in the program,” Walker said. “There were none.”

Walker had no choice but to go to four- and five-receiver sets.

“The no-huddle just seemed like a good idea, we thought we could change the tempo a bit,” he said.

As Big Ten coaches are discovering, the spread formation is a ruse. It only looks like the Rams’ offense. In fact, Northwestern uses the hurry-up, no-huddle scheme to set up its running game.

Opposing coaches, you might want to jot this down: Northwestern ranks 81st in the nation in passing this week and No. 8 in rushing.

Damien Anderson, the junior tailback, is the man to stop. Anderson has rushed for 200 yards or more in consecutive weeks and carried 36 times last week against Indiana.

After Anderson rushed for 292 yards last week, the lightbulb went off in Indiana Coach Cam Cameron’s head. He realized he was trying to plug the wrong hole in the dam.

“See if they can beat you throwing the football,” Cameron offered as advice his week. “They haven’t had to do that yet.”

You figure the Big Ten is going to eventually catch on.

“What’s probably going to happen is that after the season people are going to sit down and try to figure out what they’re doing,” Michigan State Coach Bobby Williams said.

Until then, Northwestern might be able to steal another trip to Pasadena.

GOING OVER THE BOOKS

You have to take the good with the bad in the crystal ball business.

Last week, your humble soothsayer formed one of the most foretelling paragraphs of his career when he wrote in advance of the Florida State-Miami game:

“Wide Right III? It could happen. With Sebastian Janikowski now kicking for the Oakland Raiders, Bowden is back to biting his fingernails over his kicker, Matt Munyon . . . “

Thank you very much.

On the same day, unfortunately, Oklahoma put a 63-14 whammy on Texas, my preseason No. 1.

Mind you, I attached more conditions on that pick than a Donald Trump prenuptial, foremost being Coach Mack Brown’s ability to diffuse a potential tinder box at quarterback.

Well, sure enough, Brown botched the Chris Simms-Major Applewhite situation more than we thought possible, starting Simms when Applewhite, last year’s Big 12 offensive player of the year, clearly deserved the job from Day One.

We’re convinced there must have been a play-me-or-else deal cut when Simms opted out of his Tennessee commitment to attend Texas. There is simply no other explanation.

You know who knew the platoon system wouldn’t fly all along?

Simms.

“I can’t see it going through the season,” Simms said in August. “I don’t think it could work. It creates too much turmoil for a team. It just never works. . . . Quarterback is the ultimate feel position. You need that rhythm of the game.”

Simms was right. Unfortunately, Simms is the guy who needs to sit.

It appears Brown will junk the platoon system this week when Texas (3-2) plays at Colorado.

Nice move.

Too late.

MORE ON QUARTERBACKS

The best way to solve a quarterback controversy is to pick one guy and stick with him, but that doesn’t always play well in a recruit’s living room.

“It’s very difficult,” Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti says. “Each of those kids want to play. Their parents and friends want them to play.”

Three years ago, Bellotti alternated Akili Smith and Jason Maas with success and last year he juggled Joey Harrington and A.J. Feeley at the spot.

This season, though, Bellotti has gone exclusively with Harrington over Feeley.

Harrington won the job in the spring and secured it during fall practices when Feeley injured an abdominal muscle.

What a surprise. Without the platoon, Oregon is 4-1 and No. 9 in the nation.

“When you have guys who do the same thing and have guys that are going to run the same offense, to bring kids in at quarterback is tough,” Bellotti acknowledges. “It does to a degree become disconcerting to the rest of the kids, or can hurt your continuity.”

Bellotti says platoons work best if you can rotate a pocket passer and a running quarterback to keep opposing defenses off balance.

Feeley is back to 100%, and Bellotti no doubt will be tempted to get him some snaps.

“Both have proven they can play and win at the Division I level,” Bellotti said. “It’s very difficult not to allow both to play.”

Speaking to this dilemma, we offer three words of advice:

Don’t do it.

HURRY-UP OFFENSE

It was a bad omen for Texas last Saturday when a woman at the Cotton Bowl press gate stopped an old man who was fumbling to find his credential.

The man was Darrell Royal, the legendary Longhorn coach.

According to the Dallas Morning News, a security guard recognized Royal and pulled the coach out of the rain.

“This is Coach Royal,” the guard told the woman.

“Coach who?” she said.

The issue was settled when the guard showed the woman a picture of Royal. He was on the cover of the game program.

The first official BCS rankings won’t be released until Oct. 23, but with all eight BCS computers now in operation, the Internet math wizards can keep us abreast. According to Jerry Palm, who accurately reproduced last year’s BCS ratings, Nebraska and Virginia Tech would play in the Orange Bowl if it was held today. In a system in which the lowest two point totals win, Nebraska leads with 3.23 points followed by Virginia Tech at 7.10. Kansas State, No. 2 in the Associated Press poll, is No. 5 in the BCS. Our locals? Well, UCLA checks in at No. 15 with a total of 30.30 while No. 32 USC is a tad off the Orange Bowl pace with 69.10 points.

With Nebraska and Kansas State 1-2 in the AP poll and Oklahoma at No. 8, the Big 12 may have at last become the “super conference” it promised to be when the league was forged five years ago. The Big 12 still has some work to do to match the best year of the old Big 8, 1971, when Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado finished 1-2-3 in the final AP poll.

It’s also been a banner year for the Big East, which has two teams ranked in the top five for the first time since the conference formed in 1991.