Blooming BCS

If you were pitching tonight’s Rose Bowl game between Miami and Nebraska in Hollywood, you’d cut straight to the movie-trailer hook: Slick versus Hick, Fast Planes versus Flat Plains, Back Talk versus Back Hoe, Urban versus Cowboy.

Truth is, these schools are different: culturally, offensively, geographically and philosophically.

You know how, in time, some people start looking like their dogs?

Well, the same might be said about Nebraska and Miami.

Nebraska is conservative, corn-fed, religious and rural--and so is its football.

Miami is diverse, spicy, sun-soaked and cosmopolitan--and so is its football.

Nebraska’s style reflects a pioneer people who settled the territory yards at a time; Miami’s attack looks more like Saturday night in South Beach.

Joe Price, professor of theology at Whittier College and author of the book “From Season to Season: Sports as American Religion,” has long been fascinated by the cultural dynamic of the Miami-Nebraska series.

“There is something about football itself that appeals to the frontier myth, especially in a landscape like Nebraska, in ways not as significant as, say, Miami,” Price said. “In Nebraska, the game takes on more mythic significance.”

Nebraska (11-1) and Miami (11-0), which will play for first place in the bowl championship series, have won or shared seven national titles since 1983.

This pairing has been college football’s longest running morality play--White Hat versus Black, or so they made us think in serials narrated by Keith Jackson.

Tonight’s game, of course, has a completely modern and independent relevance and will be contested by players conceived at roughly the time this rivalry was born.

Miami, led by first-year Coach Larry Coker, is out to stamp out the raging BCS controversy with victory and claim an undisputed national title.

It would cap a remarkable rookie season for the 53-year-old Coker, a lifetime assistant who inherited the Hurricanes this season when Butch Davis left to coach the Cleveland Browns.

For Coker, who grew up in Oklahoma, “literally at the end of a dirt road,” victory becomes validation for perseverance.

“I still remember watching the Rose Bowl growing up,” Coker said this week. “At halftime, I would go out. My mother actually planted rose bushes, not quite as attractive as some of the roses you have around Pasadena this week, but I had my football and would go out and play. Then I’d come back in and watch the Rose Bowl. To dream I would ever be here in any capacity was out of the question.”

Nebraska is out to prove it even belongs in the game, a less convincing argument since Oregon’s 38-16 thrashing of Colorado in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl.

“People will look at that as a measuring stick, and they should,” Nebraska Coach Frank Solich said. “But it’s not the only measuring stick.”

Nebraska, although ranking only fourth in both the writers’ and coaches’ polls, finished second behind Miami in the BCS standings, a system devised in 1998 ostensibly to resolve poll disputes.

At the final finding, however, Nebraska nipped Colorado and Oregon in the BCS to win a golden ticket to Pasadena.

This continues to be interesting, given that Colorado defeated Nebraska, 62-36, and more so now that Oregon has put the wallop on Colorado.

A Nebraska victory over Miami all but assures that Oregon, No. 2 in both subjective polls, will earn a split of the national title by winning the Associated Press crown.

It would seem to most a just result, given that Oregon beat by 22 points the team, Colorado, that defeated Nebraska by 26.

By contract and by contrast, however, the voting coaches must award the Sears Trophy to the Miami-Nebraska winner. If that is Nebraska, it will mean the coaches must jump their No. 4 team over their No. 2, Oregon.

Nebraska, understandably, is tired of being the punching bag in this debate.

“As far as I know, the BCS was designed to have one national champion,” Nebraska safety Dion Booker argued. “If we win, we deserve to be the champion. There should be no split, it should be Miami or Nebraska as the all-out champion.”

It is thoroughly fitting that Miami and Nebraska should be hammering out a season’s final details on center stage.

You cannot speak of tonight’s game without paying homage to its historical context, blithely ignoring the diversely different roads each school took to national prominence, or how each used the other to reach its political objectives.

Miami and Nebraska met three times between 1984 and 1992, all at the Orange Bowl.

Black Bart (Miami) got the girl each time.

The business of myth-making, however, is never, in reality, as cut and dried as good versus evil. Miami was not as Snidely Whiplash-diabolical as its image portrayed, and Nebraska has known its share of bail bondsmen.

Yet, delineating the differences for the purposes of art made masterpiece football theater.

The legends of both modern-day dynasties were forged after the 1983 season--in that majestic 1984 Orange Bowl.

It remains in a time capsule, one of the most engaging contests the college game has yet to offer, a South Florida thriller in which Miami claimed its first national title and Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne became, in defeat, a laconic icon.

Remember? Nebraska scored with less than a minute remaining to cut Miami’s lead to 31-30.

There was no overtime then, so Osborne had a choice to make, with America watching.

He could elect to tie the score with an extra point and all but assure a national title for Nebraska, or try to win the game outright with a two-point conversion.

Osborne did not hesitate in going for the win and valiantly accepted defeat when the two-point attempt failed.

A judgment call had cost Nebraska the title and handed it to Miami.

“It was a game that almost looked like it was preordained by a higher authority,” former Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger, said.

To this day, Schnellenberger hails Osborne’s decision.

“He made the right decision for himself and for his team, even though it didn’t work out,” Schnellenberger said. “I think everyone respects him and his team very much for having the courage to do it.”

Nebraska’s Solich, then a young assistant under Osborne, said the decision to go for two was made long before the call had to be made.

“We looked at a lot of things, and one of them was the personality of our football team,” Solich said. “Would they want us to line up and tie a football game? Or would they want us to line up and attempt to win a football game? It was not as tough a decision as maybe a lot of people thought at the moment because we knew what we were wanting to do.”

The moment defined Osborne as a football hero, probably hastened Schnellenberger’s win-and-out departure to head the Miami franchise of the United States Football League, and crystallized a rivalry.

The problem for Osborne was, the 1984 game unleashed Miami as a national power, pretty much at Nebraska’s expense.

Osborne trudged through the 1980s and early 1990s, still seeking his first championship, watching the gap between his program and Miami’s widen.

In the Orange Bowl after the 1988 season, Miami defeated Nebraska, 23-3. At the end of the 1991 season, Miami claimed its fourth national title with a 22-0 victory over the Cornhuskers.

Significantly, it was the magnitude of those losses that brought Osborne to an understanding. Despite fundamental differences of philosophy and approach, Nebraska had to become more like Miami, not less.

“We learned a great deal,” Solich said of the defeats against Miami. “We learned you’d better have speed on your football team if you wanted to win big games. We certainly tried to learn from our losses to Miami, and I think we did.”

Nebraska changed the way it recruited, took more chances on players, even altered its defense to slow down Miami’s passing attack.

In the Orange Bowl after the 1994 season, the lessons paid off as Nebraska finally vanquished Miami, 24-17, with Osborne winning the first of his three national titles.

That Nebraska and Miami should battle again tonight is no surprise. The surprise is how the schools have evolved since 1983. Differences remain, but Miami and Nebraska seem to share a more common ground.

In stark contrast to decades past, Miami’s image as a renegade program has largely waned. Gone are the Army fatigues, trash talk and stereotypes.

Miami offensive tackle Joaquin Gonzalez chose Miami over Harvard.

“We’ve taken this program from the dumps to the pinnacle of college football, and we’ve done it the right way--with character,” Gonzalez said. “I mean, when in the past year have you heard anything absurd happen with Miami football?”

It was Nebraska that made news last spring and summer with a series of player arrests.

In the 18 years since Miami and Nebraska started this ongoing saga at the Orange Bowl, both schools have evolved, become more representative of America’s melting pot.

“American Gothic” versus “Scarface” is a tougher sell these days.

Nebraska boasts starting players from Canada, California and Hawaii. Miami has a strong safety from Piscataway, N.J., a right guard from Mountaintop, Pa., a tight end from Oklahoma.

Some things, though, don’t change. On the field, Miami will think pass first, Nebraska will run. Nebraska is about option, Miami about options.

In the end, with Miami and Nebraska, it’s OK to have it both ways.

So, welcome the changes and savor the differences.