Remember, These Are Games

The major college season resumes tonight-South Carolina at Mississippi State, Rice at Nebraska-with the following last-minute flip-card changes. The tenor of the sport, once so over-the-top enjoyable, will have to be somewhat muted for now. The volume needs to be turned down-the hype, hyperbole, all those high notes emanating from Lee Corso’s larynx.

Football still can be a hoot, a genuine form of escapism, but it has to be tempered. For how long?

That’s difficult to say. To borrow a favorite coaching cliche, let’s take it one game at a time. For now, though, the lexicon and body language of the sport must be reconsidered.

Florida Coach Steve Spurrier has to think twice about flinging his headset to the ground the next time Rex Grossman misses an open receiver. Thinking three times wouldn’t hurt.

There is hanging in my home office a laminated front-page cover of Tallahassee Democrat dated Nov. 30, 1996. The banner proclaims “WAR” in type size larger than any newspaper headline I saw last week. The page previewed a football game between Florida and Florida State at Doak Campbell Stadium. It was a big game, for sure, with a national title bid in the balance.

The sub-headline, “D-Day at Doak,” was set against a backdrop of dripping red ink, meant to be blood. I kept the front page as a souvenir to remind me of how far the boundaries of sports can be stretched and exaggerated. It was comical then; reprehensible now.

Times have changed, and some ground rules probably need to be established for at least the rest of this season. We need to can the football-as-war talk. No bombs, no aerial assaults, no “Hail Mary” passes.

Please, no teams crossing into enemy territory.

“It’s going to be a little bit more tempered,” Washington State Coach Mike Price said of the rhetoric. “Hopefully, we will have a little more tact, and sportsmanship and fellowship in our games, maybe not so much ‘me, me, me’ and ‘I, I, I’ from our players.”

There should be no excessive complaining about:

* Officiating. You know what? That blown pass-interference call that may cost your team a trip to the Bluebonnet-Weed Whacker Bowl doesn’t amount to a hill of Boston College baked beans.

* Coaches. There is an Internet site called https://fireyourcoach.com . Paul Hackett had a link last year. Well, they should pull the plug on it. Terry Allen is in trouble at Kansas. Who cares? Tom Holmoe is on the hot seat at California. Yeah, so?

* Schedules: Last weekend’s postponements are going to affect schools in different ways, not all of them fairly. No one argues Georgia Tech would have been much better off playing Florida State last weekend instead of Dec. 1. The postponement now gives Florida State and its young quarterback, Chris Rix, weeks to grow and develop.

“It’s just the draw of the straw that you got,” Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden said Wednesday. “Some people came out good, some people didn’t come out so good.”

Maybe Florida didn’t come out so good when last Saturday’s game against Tennessee in Gainesville was rescheduled for Dec. 1. Florida, a contender for the national championship, now faces a gantlet in which it plays at South Carolina on Nov. 10, hosts Florida State on Nov. 17, Tennessee on Dec. 1 and then, with any luck, the Southeastern Conference title game on Dec. 8.

Who can say what impact Northwestern’s canceled game against Navy will have on the national title picture? Northwestern was facing the prospect of a 10-game season until it found Bowling Green to fill out its dance card Nov. 17. Maybe Washington caught a break in not having to play at No. 1 Miami last weekend with a new quarterback, Cody Pickett.

Or, maybe Washington has it tougher now, having to play at Oregon State on Nov. 10, Washington State on Nov. 17 and then the makeup game at Miami on Nov. 24. Bottom line: None of it matters. On this subject, coaches, players and athletic directors should remain mum.

In 1998, UCLA likely would have defeated an inexperienced Miami team in September. Instead, a hurricane forced the postponement of the contest and it was rescheduled for December. By then, Miami had matured into a formidable foe and beat UCLA in a thriller, knocking the Bruins out of the national title game. It was nobody’s fault. File it under “Act of God.” What happened Sept. 11 was nobody in college football’s fault, so let’s adjust and move on.

“As far as advantage or disadvantage, it really is of no consequence,” Washington Coach Rick Neuheisel said this week of the rescheduling. “It might make for some good conversation in a staff room, but publicly, I don’t think that would read very well.”

There will come a time when it will be OK for Corso to plant one of those ridiculous-looking headdresses around his cranium, but it can wait until next week.

Vantage Points

Hawaii Coach June Jones viewed events of Sept. 11 from Honolulu, backdrop to the last attack on American soil.

“When I first heard it, I was just sick to my stomach,” Jones said.

Over the years, Jones has spoken to many islanders who watched Pearl Harbor being bombed on Dec. 7, 1941.

“That event is probably the only event even close to what happened last week,” Jones said.

The difference?

“When Pearl Harbor was attacked, they had newspaper and radio reports, but as we live now, we saw and witnessed everything, time and time and time again, on CNN, on television. It was a very, very moving and tragic time in our lives, something none of us will ever forget.”

Army Coach Todd Berry lived through Sept. 11 at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. He watched his players join cadets for a candlelight vigil to honor the dead. There was a rendition of “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes, the playing of taps, a 21-gun salute. Berry looked out over Trophy Point and the Hudson River and knew he’d seen a loss of innocence.

Berry called his team together Sept. 11, looked in his players’ eyes and solicited questions.

“The freshman class asked, ‘what does this mean?”’ Berry recalled. “The sophomore, junior and senior class asked, ‘What can we do?”’

Bookkeeping

The rescheduling stories continue to roll in. Some reworkings went smoother than others. Michigan did not want to reschedule last Saturday’s game against Western Michigan on Dec. 1, the only common open date available for both schools, because Michigan was adamant about ending its regular season against Ohio State on Nov. 24.

What to do?

This week’s Michigan-Illinois game was moved to Sept. 29. Illinois will play its makeup game against Louisville on Saturday, and Michigan will host Western Michigan.

Feelings got bruised in the Western Athletic Conference (What did we just say about making a big deal out of this?).

San Jose State is miffed at WAC Commissioner Karl Benson for moving Saturday’s home game against Nevada to Nov. 10, giving San Jose State two consecutive postponed Saturdays. Last week’s game against Stanford was moved to Dec. 1. Hawaii and Nevada, originally scheduled for last Saturday, will play this weekend.

Benson said he moved the San Jose State-Nevada game to Nov. 10 because both teams had an open date. He did not want to move Hawaii and Nevada to Dec. 8 because it might hurt the schools’ bowl chances, although the regular season was effectively extended to Dec. 8 this week when the SEC moved its title game to that date and its postponements to Dec. 1.

As it turns out, San Jose State now will go six weeks and four games before playing its first home game. San Jose State’s next two games are at Arizona State on Sept. 29 and at Louisiana Tech on Oct. 6.

Hurry-Up Offense

Super Saturday in college football is now Dec. 1, the date on which a handful of postponed games have been moved to join a day that already offered the Big 12 title game, Miami at Virginia Tech and Oregon State at Oregon.

Now, add to the list: Tennessee at Florida, Georgia Tech at Florida State, Arizona State at UCLA and Notre Dame at Purdue. The SEC title game, originally to be played Dec. 1, has been pushed to Dec. 8.

Commissioners of the bowl championship series conferences will convene next week to discuss what impact last weekend’s postponements and/or cancellations will have on the BCS rankings. Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen thinks 5-5 schools that had games canceled should be bowl eligible, as should schools with eight victories be eligible for a BCS bowl. Ordinarily, six wins are required for bowls and nine victories for BCS eligibility.

“I would favor doing both,” Hansen said. “I wouldn’t want to predict that, but I can only tell you where my support will lie.”

Washington State, which had to cancel its game against Colorado because of scheduling conflicts, has filled the void by agreeing to play Montana State on Thursday, Oct. 18. Montana State, a Division I-AA school, was supposed to play at Oregon State last Saturday.

The apparent robbery-attempt shooting of Florida State defensive end Eric Powell has dealt another blow to the Seminoles, inundated with injuries and off-the-field tragedies. Bowden said Powell’s condition was improving, adding, “I’m sure he’s out for the year.” Bowden has already lost linebacker Devaughn Darling, who died during a conditioning workout in February, and three receivers to injuries. Bowden said his team’s depth has not been this thin since a rash of injuries swept the 1993 team. That team, coincidentally, won the national title. “Course,” Bowden said, “I had Charlie Ward at quarterback.”