‘All We Have Now Is Football’

Handed a raw deal and a bad game plan, Tulane has decided to play the 2005 football season -- whether you like it or not.

Junior quarterback Lester Ricard said he broke down and cried when he heard the thought of canceling the season had been broached.

“It shocked me,” Ricard said. “I was bawling.”

There apparently was some backlash last weekend after school President Scott Cowen, following Hurricane Katrina, announced that the games would go on even though the New Orleans-based campus is closed, parts of the city are submerged and players are living out of suitcases in Dallas.

Tulane Coach Chris Scelfo said he received hate mail to the effect that he was “an inhumane person for even talking about football or playing football.”

Well, here is an alternative view: Players and coaches orphaned by Katrina are playing this year because they need to.

“It’s not about football with these kids, it’s about mental health,” Scelfo said.

Coaches and their families too have been uprooted, not knowing whether they have homes to return to.

“That’s all we have right now, is football,” Scelfo said. “We lost everything else.”

So Tulane will open Sept. 17 at Mississippi State -- and see where it goes from there.

The Tulane football family has been taken in by Southern Methodist University and has been practicing at Jesuit College Prep School. It was announced this week that the football team would soon relocate from Dallas to Louisiana Tech.

The Green Wave will play road games this year, but their hearts will be at home.

Forty players on the Tulane roster hail from Louisiana. Fortunately, all of the players’ immediate family members are safe and have been accounted for -- although there were some tense moments.

Quarterback Ricard said two of his uncles were missing after the hurricane hit. Three days later, he received an anonymous text message on his cellphone saying both men were safe and in Baton Rouge.

Christopher Spincer, brother of Tulane senior linebacker Brandon, elected to ride out Katrina at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans. It was two days before Brandon learned his brother had been evacuated to Houston and then reunited with their mother in Greenwood, Miss.

Tulane is going to play -- and it’s going to be rough.

“Obviously, I see those images, what’s going on, I feel helpless,” said Spincer, who attended New Orleans’ St. Augustine High. “That’s where I live, the streets I walk on every day. Some of the people in those images, I know.”

The team beat Katrina out of town and stayed in Jackson, Miss., before the hurricane chased coaches and players to Dallas. They are now being chased to Ruston, La., where players will continue their educations at Louisiana Tech.

And they are ... the lucky ones?

“If anybody has a complaint about that, shame on them,” Spincer said. “We’ve got people who don’t know where their next drink of water is coming from. I’m living in a hotel. I feel blessed.”

No one from Tulane knows when they’re going home, or what they’re going home to. “Quite frankly,” Scelfo said, “we still don’t know how bad it is.”

Last Friday, Tulane returned to the practice for the first time since Katrina, and the coach said it was the best practice he’d been a part of in 20 years.

“What matters is we’re playing,” Scelfo said. “We’ll play in the parking lot at Popeye’s. I guarantee you I’ll play in the parking lot at Wal-Mart if that’s where they tell us to play. That’s all we have is football. We’ve lost everything else.”

The Green Wave probably will become America’s team, sentimental favorites everywhere they play.

They ask that people appreciate their commitment but forward their charity to the Red Cross.

“I don’t want people feeling sorry so they have to cheer for me,” Ricard said.

What’s Next

The future of the Sugar Bowl will be a hot topic when bowl championship series commissioners meet in Chicago on Sept. 19 and 20.

The news could be dire if it is determined that the game’s home site, the Louisiana Superdome, must be rebuilt.

“There could be tremendous long-term impact,” BCS spokesman Bob Burda said Wednesday.

Burda said commissioners might not have all the answers soon, but they hope to come out of the Chicago meetings with a “Plan B.”

Pacific 10 Conference Commissioner Tom Hansen said Wednesday that a Sugar Bowl representative will attend the Chicago meetings.

More bad Sugar news: The bowl’s offices are in the Superdome, and it is feared that Sugar Bowl records and archives may have been lost.

Site Adjustment

Moving Saturday’s Louisiana State-Arizona State game from Baton Rouge to Tempe was the logical thing to do, but it could mark the third time in eight years a hurricane has had a major effect on the BCS.

In 1998, a hurricane postponed UCLA’s game at Miami from September to December and may have cost the Bruins a chance to play Tennessee for the national title. That is, if you believe UCLA would have won the Miami game if it had been played as scheduled.

Last year, a hurricane pushed California’s game against Southern Mississippi to the end of the season and may have cost the Golden Bears a trip to the Rose Bowl. That is, if you believe Cal, in a formula race with Texas, was unjustly docked by suddenly interested BCS voters for not beating Southern Miss by enough points.

What could be at stake Saturday?

No. 15 Arizona State is two wins -- against No. 5 LSU on Saturday and No. 1 USC on Oct. 1 -- from being a prime national-title contender. And now, Arizona State’s two most important games are at home.

“It’s about time the Pac-10 was impacted positively by a hurricane,” Hansen said.

Hurry-Up Offense

Of all the years No. 2 Texas didn’t want to play at No. 4 Ohio State ...

It’s not that Texas is afraid, or not up to the challenge, or can’t win the game, but why play a game like this if you don’t need to?

If this is the year Texas can beat Oklahoma, which lost its opener to Texas Christian, Mack Brown’s Longhorns might have had a straighter track to the national title without risking a loss against Ohio State on Saturday.

Brown is not complaining publicly but did say, “It’s unusual anymore to have matchups like this out of conference.”

The game was scheduled years ago, with Ohio State playing at Texas next year.

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BCS matters: It wouldn’t be college football if there wasn’t some confusion over the standings formula. Technically, LSU’s game at Arizona State on Saturday night will remain a home game for LSU. The problem is that, in some BCS computers, a team gets more credit for a road win. So, in a game with possible national-title implications, Arizona State will get credit for a “road” win at Sun Devil Stadium?

No.

“The computer operators are going to treat it as an Arizona State home game,” BCS spokesman Burda said. “They said the site where the game is played determines the home team, not the distinction of who the home team is.”

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What goes around: South Carolina travels to No. 9 Georgia on Saturday in a game the people in Athens have eagerly awaited for months.

This has nothing to do with South Carolina -- but everything to do with Steve Spurrier.

On Oct. 28, 1995, Spurrier’s Florida team became the first to score 50 points on Georgia at Sanford Stadium.

The story around Athens goes that Spurrier knew the historical relevance when his Gators tacked on a late touchdown in a 52-17 rout.

This time, Spurrier returns with an inexperienced South Carolina squad that struggled last week to defeat Central Florida.

“Hopefully, we can go over and give the ‘Dawgs a game,” Spurrier said.

For what it’s worth, Lou Holtz, the Gamecocks’ former coach, has picked South Carolina to win.

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Hey, didn’t we see this scene in the movie “Diner”? Saturday, before the team’s road opener, first-year Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis gathered his players at the team hotel and gave a pop quiz ... on the University of Pittsburgh football team.

Notre Dame passed by the score of 42-21.

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Welcome back, we think: First-year Washington Coach Tyrone Willingham returns to Pac-10 play this week when Washington plays host to California. Willingham was 7-0 against Cal when he coached at Stanford. He’s not at Stanford anymore, though, and none of those seven wins came against Jeff Tedford.