Table Manners

Hours before they make their final push for a national championship, one of the best offensive lines in college football will convene in the team hotel for a vitally important meeting.

On the docket: the left tackle wears his T-shirts way too tight; the right tackle is a hopeless momma’s boy; and the pretty-boy center jumps every time his girlfriend snaps her fingers.

The session is called the “round table,” and it’s a pregame tradition at the University of Miami. The linemen get together for a late-night snack before each game and wind up gnawing on one another’s nerves. They say it’s therapeutic.

“Anything goes,” guard Sherko Haji-Rasouli said. “Girlfriends, moms, nothing’s off limits. The only thing we don’t talk about is who’s getting playing time. That’s below the belt.”

Teammates eavesdrop from a distance, taking care not to venture too close to the cross-fire.

“We’ve driven people almost to tears,” guard Martin Bibla said. “You’ve got to get in the game or get away from the table. We’ve shut people up for weeks at a time.”

And shut them down. Miami’s line, anchored by Outland Trophy-winning tackle Bryant McKinnie, provided a hermetically sealed pass pocket for quarterback Ken Dorsey this season and pushed open a personal highway for running back Clinton Portis, who gained at least 100 yards in eight of 11 games.

Dorsey, who finished third in Heisman Trophy voting, was sacked four times this season, although the offensive line was responsible for only two of those. The Hurricanes (11-0) averaged 204.6 yards rushing and 242.5 passing.

The line went 12 regular-season games--the last five of the 2000 season and first seven this season--without giving up a sack.

McKinnie, so dominant at left tackle many observers saw him as a Heisman Trophy candidate, has never given up a sack in a practice or game. He’s sure to be one of the first picks in the upcoming NFL draft, considering his freakish combination of size (6 feet 9, 335 pounds), speed and agility.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever coach a kid with that kind of athletic ability again. Ever,” said Art Kehoe, a former Hurricane guard who has coached his alma mater’s offensive line since 1985.

That said, the team’s most valuable lineman might be right guard Bibla, a barrel-chested senior who grew up lifting weights the way other kids vegetated in front of the TV. He had reason to lift; his older brother, Tommy, was an aspiring bodybuilder who relied on a novel motivational tool.

“He used to whip me with a jump rope if I didn’t come lift with him,” said Bibla, whose parents immigrated from Poland and taught their sons fluent Polish.

Martin and Tommy Bibla, reared in Mountaintop, Pa., worked out so feverishly that the local Gold’s Gym gave them keys to the place so they could pump iron at all hours. That dedication has not faded. Bibla sprints between drills at practice, and fairly darts back to the huddle in games. The guys on the team call him “golden boy” for the way Kehoe constantly points to him as an example in pep talks.

As examples go, Joaquin Gonzalez isn’t shabby. He’s one of the best right tackles in football and an Academic All-American, a guy who turned down Harvard to join the Hurricanes as a walk-on with an academic scholarship. A first-generation American whose parents are Cuban, Gonzalez lives in the Miami home in which he was reared. His mother cooks his meals and does his laundry. And the fellows at the round table know all about it.

“We were wondering how his umbilical cord stretches all the way from the stands to the field,” said Brett Romberg, the unofficial moderator of the round table who dishes out as much playful abuse as anyone.

Romberg can take it too. Yes, he’s was a finalist for the Rimington Award, given to the nation’s best center, but he’s also the self-proclaimed “female of the line,” fastidious about keeping his apartment tidy and forever determined to keep his hair looking just so. He grew up in Windsor, Canada, a 10-minute drive from Detroit, and sang in a rock band. Sometimes, he slicks back his hair, checks out his reflection and lip syncs his way through an entire concert.

“I spend a lot of time in front of the mirror,” he said.

And his appraisal?

“As soon as this game’s over, it’s diet time.”

Romberg, a junior, is a reporter’s dream. Unlike a lot of linemen, who embrace anonymity, he loves the spotlight. He and Bibla recently made a guest appearance on the Miami ABC affiliate before a “Monday Night Football” game. They plan to hit the “Tonight Show” this week, and a special taping of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” They field more interview requests than most quarterbacks.

Another Canadian, Haji-Rasouli, started the first six games at left guard before suffering a season-ending knee injury. He was born in Iran and spent a lot of time after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks explaining the principles of Islam to his teammates. He speaks three languages--English, Farsi and Spanish--and is among the team’s most popular and toughest players.

He can laugh at himself too. He recently let his teammates shave him from head to toe for $50--with the video camera rolling, of course. (“Fifty bucks is a lot of money,” he said, shrugging.)

Haji-Rasouli’s replacement, Ed Wilkins, recently had corrective surgery for sleep apnea and was having problems staying awake during meetings.

Bad news for him. Good news for the round table.

“There are no secrets between us,” Romberg said. “And if there are, I’ll find out about them. We’re like 300-pound parasites. We just dig and dig and dig until we find something worthy.”