As another college football season is about to be unleashed upon us we find Notre Dame not in the Big Ten after all, but just exactly where we left it, rich, isolated and defending scandal. A Ricky Williams is being considered for the Heisman Trophy, Steve Spurrier is roundly resented and Ron Dayne is unable to hold his stomach in.
The BCS, still one letter of the alphabet too many, will determine which two of 114 college football teams will meet for the national championship and Northwestern figures to be 12th in an 11-team league.
The more things stay the same, the more necessary the examination, but happily and coincidentally, there are exactly as many answers as there are questions.
Q–It is still only August, yet three of the top four college teams are playing each other this weekend and two of them, Penn State and Arizona, are in a Rose Bowl preview against each other. Whatever happened to opening in September against Arkansas State?
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A–Illinois got there first.
Q–Did Illinois’ Ron Turner really predict that the Illini would win six games this year, or twice as many as Turner has won in his first two years as head coach?
A–No math problems, please.
Q–Is it true the Heisman Trophy’s newest commercial sponsor, a Japanese car maker, wants to have its customers select the winner of American college football’s greatest individual prize?
A–The one-test-drive, one-vote rule.
Q–Who is the consensus No. 1, Florida State or Penn State?
A–Gwyneth Paltrow.
Q–Since Tennessee won the national title, Vols coach Phillip Fulmer has griped about having only one championship instead of three and predicted, “It ain’t our last and it won’t take 47 more years.” Hasn’t he gotten a little full of himself?
A–I believe he always has had that gut.
Q–When SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer is called the Godfather of the Bowl Championship Series, is that an insult or a compliment?
A–It is a smirk.
Q–What’s this about Gary Barnett letting a homecoming queen try out to be the placekicker on the Colorado football team?
A–But she has to provide her own corsage.
Q–Because the Southeastern Conference has played in the last four national championship games, doesn’t that mean the SEC is the better than the Big Ten?
A–Oh, yeah? Our Northwestern can beat your South Carolina any day.
Q–Speaking of that, what in the name of Knute Rockne is Lou Holtz doing down in South Carolina anyhow?
A–To use Lou’s own words, “I ask myself that every morning.”
Q–Besides Heisman front-runners Peter Warrick of FSU, Ron Dayne of Wisconsin and LaVar Arrington of Penn State, are their any other candidates we should keep an eye on?
A–Arizona running back Trung Canidate.
Q–It took Ricky Williams of Texas 21 years to break Tony Dorsett’s all-time rushing record, but with Dayne only 1,716 yards behind Williams, doesn’t it seem inevitable Dayne will catch Williams one season later?
A–Roger Maris’ family plans to be there.
Q–Which Michigan team will Ohio State lose to this year?
A–The worst one.
Q–Does Penn State have the toughest schedule with five bowl game winners or does Notre Dame have the easiest schedule with eight teams with losing records?
A–Both.
Q–Is it true Indiana’s electrifying quarterback, Antwaan Randle El, also played basketball for Bob Knight?
A–Not according to Knight.
Q–If one Miami is the Cradle of Coaches and the other Miami is the Cradle of Quarterbacks, where is the Cradle of Cradles?
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A–Hickory, North Carolina.
Q–With Y2K and the millennium ending or beginning, whichever it is, and all the stuff going on with that, isn’t having the national championship game around New Year’s and Bourbon Street a really insane idea?
A–Not as nutty as playing it on a Tuesday, on Jan. 4, a full 30 days after the end of the regular-season schedule.
Q–Who is the best quarterback in college football, Drew Brees of Purdue, Chris Redman of Louisville or Tee Martin of Tennessee?
A–Chad Pennington of Marshall.
Q–Will Iowa miss coach Hayden Fry more than Miami of Ohio misses coach Randy Walker?
A–Fry doesn’t dodge things as well as he used to.
Q–Bowl games are confusing. For instance, what’s the difference between the Mobile Alabama Bowl and the Mobil Cotton Bowl?
A–The Cotton Bowl is now the Southwestern Bell Bowl, the Peach Bowl is the Chick-Fil-A Bowl and the Jeep Aloha Classics are back-to-back bowls, the Aloha and Oahu–not to be confused with the Outback Bowl, the Humanitarian Bowl or the defunct Weedeater Bowl. Seems perfectly clear to me.