Battle of Michigan Stays One-Sided

Before Michigan restored order Saturday with a 34-31 overtime victory over 11th-ranked Michigan State, the intrastate rivalry had been turned upside down.

For the first time since 1968, the year before Bo Schembechler began coaching at Michigan, the Wolverines were underdogs against Michigan State. Michigan State, a 5 1/2 -point pick, was inching toward the top 10, while Michigan was unranked. The Spartans were unbeaten, the Wolverines in danger of falling below .500.

“When Michigan State is ranked ahead of you and you’re Michigan, that’s not good,” running back Mike Hart told reporters after rushing for 218 yards at East Lansing and helping the Wolverines improve to 3-2, avoiding their worst start since 1967. “That’s pressure in itself. We were 2-2. That’s pressure within itself.

“We don’t ever lose three games a year. If we lost three, what would that make us look like? We knew it was a must win.”

Michigan State, though, was favored after losses to Notre Dame and Wisconsin had dropped Michigan out of the top 25 for the first time since 1998, ending a string of 114 poll appearances, the nation’s longest.

Not that Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr was ready to acknowledge it.

“I don’t ever in my life remember going into any game feeling like I was an underdog,” he said last week. “I certainly have never experienced that at Michigan.”

After its fourth consecutive victory over the Spartans and its eighth in the last 11 meetings, Michigan leads the series, 65-28-5, and threatens to take permanent possession of the Paul Bunyan Trophy, which goes to the winner.

Last week, a photo of the trophy leaned against a wall in Michigan State Coach John L. Smith’s office.

“That’s the closest we’ve been to that thing,” said Smith, 0-3 against Michigan after consecutive overtime losses, including last year’s triple-overtime heartbreaker. “This is not a real rivalry yet because we haven’t held up our end of the bargain.”

Maybe next year.

Talk About Going

the Distance

If you thought Arizona State put forth a stellar effort Saturday, how about this: In 1933, the last time before Saturday that USC took a 25-game winning streak into a game, Oregon State ended it with a 0-0 tie in which its 11 starters never left the field.

“Eleven mighty men of Oregon State College, with murder in their orbs, fought the powerful Trojan football team to a scoreless tie here this afternoon as 15,000 wild-eyed natives roared themselves into a state of complete collapse,” wrote Braven Dyer of The Times after the game at Portland, Ore.

“Playing the game without a single substitution, the battling Beavers won as sweet a moral victory as was ever achieved on any gridiron. As I write this the field is swarming with Oregon State fans and the goalposts at the south end of the stadium are being jerked from their moorings by loving hands. Delirious with joy, the citizens of this thriving metropolis jammed the gridiron as the game ended and literally mobbed the 11 iron men.”

USC extended its unbeaten streak to 27 games the next week with a 6-3 victory over California before losing to Stanford, 13-7, before 95,000 at the Coliseum.

These Masters Survey

Lay of the Rankings

Is there anything less needed in college football than another group of voters weighing in on who’s No. 1?

That didn’t stop Andy Curtin, an Atlanta lawyer and former sports agent, from creating the Master Coaches Survey, an advisory poll made up of 16 former coaches, including John Robinson and Schembechler.

The poll, which is not part of the bowl championship series formula to determine the participants in the national-title game but will crown its own champion, debuted last week with the top three of USC, Texas and Virginia Tech mirroring the AP poll.

Five of the pollsters -- Robinson at USC in 1978, Vince Dooley at Georgia in 1980, LaVell Edwards at Brigham Young in 1984, Don James at Washington in 1991 and Gene Stallings at Alabama in 1992 -- won national championships. But some admitted that while still active as coaches they left a lot to be desired as voters.

“Some coaches had their [publicists] doing it,” former Indiana coach Bill Mallory told the Indianapolis Star. “You’re so focused on the game at hand, let’s not kid ourselves. I tried to do a respectable job, but did I put a lot of time into it? No. Not even a half-hour.”

One of the pollsters, former Arizona State coach Frank Kush, made no secret who he thought was No. 1. USC, he said, might be the greatest college team ever.

“Let me put it this way,” Kush told the East Valley Tribune. “In all the years I’ve been involved as a player and a coach, I have not seen a team with as much talent as USC. This is an unbelievable football team. They’re as good as I’ve ever seen.”

They Were Burning

for a Victory

West Virginia fell short in its upset bid Saturday, losing to third-ranked Virginia Tech, 34-17, but firefighters in Morgantown, W.Va., were ready just in case.

Two years ago, more than 140 street fires were set by fans after the Mountaineers upset Virginia Tech, so this time special orders were issued in an effort to thwart arsonists.

Residents in the Sunnyside section of the city, where most of the trouble occurred in 2003, were told to remove any indoor furniture that had been placed outside, the Morgantown Post-Gazette reported.

Why Does Pink Stink?

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post was tickled pink by the furor over the pink decor in the visitors’ locker room at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, where the Hawkeyes have won 21 in a row after Saturday’s 35-7 victory over Illinois.

“That pink has such grim cultural connotations is going to come as a heck of a surprise to the makers of Pepto-Bismol,” she wrote. “Also, to several million women who, unbeknownst to them, are walking around with hate speech painted on their toenails. The consequences of the discovery are potentially far-reaching. Death to polo shirts....

“Now, I’d hate to think we have to start painting over or dyeing anything pink. What would happen to carnations? Or Cadillacs, or cardigan sweaters? Or Barbie Band-Aids? Bubblegum? Birthday cake? The effects of a proposed ban on pink are especially depressing to contemplate when it comes to alcohol. No pink champagne? No cosmopolitans?”

Erin Buzuvis, an Iowa law professor, called the decor misogynistic and homophobic. “The pink locker room,” she said, “is a subtle way of painting the words ‘sissy,’ ‘girlie man’ ... on the walls.”

Stellar Efforts

Bruce Eugene passed for 618 yards and seven touchdowns to lead Grambling State to a 56-7 victory over Prairie View in a Division I-AA game. Eugene broke the school record for career touchdown passes with 96, eclipsing the mark of 94 by Doug Williams .... Lehigh’s 49-24 victory over Harvard ended the nation’s longest Division I-AA winning streak at 13 games.... P.J. Williams set an NCAA Division III record with 278 yards on punt returns in Mary Hardin-Baylor’s 61-0 victory over Mississippi College.