The Assassination of Bobby Bowden by the Coward Florida State

If you are fortunate enough to live long enough and be really good at something, you may have to deal with forced retirement, just because you are perceived to be too old. I’ve never liked Florida State, or the state of Florida. I don’t like Bobby Bowden, but it is with a mix of sadness and satisfaction and historical relief that I mark his forced retirement from being the head coach of Florida State for 34 years.
It’s tough to see a living legend be forced out by the university before he felt it was his time to go. That he had bowed to the pressure of naming a head-coach-in-waiting and set off the ticking clock did him no favors.

Florida State’s “tradition” of dominance had fallen in recent years, but not nearly to the depths that his contemporary, Joe Paterno, had dealt with from 2000-2004. Over that span, Penn State was 26-33 with only one winning season and one bowl appearance.

The years 2000-2004 were tough for Paterno (who is five years older than Bobby), when had to deal with incessant retirement questions. There was talk of him being forced out. I never thought it would come to that, but that’s not to say I wasn’t worried. There was a lot of pressure on Joe, and the media and rabid, stupid fans can drive you (i.e., me) insane. I’m thankful that Penn State University had enough courage and loyalty to its legendary coach to stick with him in the fallow years. Their reward has been a 50-13 mark from 2005-2009, and yet another recruiting class (for 2010) that is rumored to be second best in the nation.

Compare Bowden’s 2005-Present, where he is 37-27, with zero losing seasons and four – soon to be five – bowl appearances, having split the previous four 2-2. How embarrassing. Let’s take him out back and beat the shit out of him.. The contrast to Florida State’s handling of Bowden’s exit is so jarringly different that it is difficult to watch, much less comprehend. Here’s a man who (hey, let’s not quibble about records – Joe will now not have to look over his shoulder at Bowden for most wins ever) is a fantastic coach who built Florida State football up from nothing. NOTHING. And his reward would have been the university allowing him to keep coaching in a limited capacity in his final year. Like a pet figurehead. Bobby said thanks, but no thanks. Who can blame him?

It’s a sad way to treat your living legend. I hope for a little more from Florida State. A little. On the other hand, this could also be exactly what I expected: stay classy FSU.

The Night College Football Went to Hell

To this day the most satisfying Penn State victory ever is the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, a game where the underdog of all underdogs fought and won an impossible victory against a swaggering juggernaut. The most satisfying article on the subject is the following piece by Michael Weinreb written for ESPN the magazine. The link is here, but as links tend to break, here’s the article in its entirety. Enjoy.
…
The Night College Football Went to Hell
Two decades later, and the real world has been kind to the quarterback, even if no one can remember his name. He lives in what can only be described as a sprawling manifestation of the American dream, an enormous stucco house on a tree-lined cul-de-sac in a tony New Jersey suburb. He has a wife, and he has four children, and he has a den with a wet bar and a pool table, and until recently, when corporate restructuring rendered him a temporary stay-at-home father, he had spent 18 years as a star at Merrill Lynch.

Hardly a household name, John Shaffer won a national title and lost only one game as the starting QB at Penn State.

John Shaffer. The name, like the way he played quarterback, is bland and forgettable, which is why few people outside of the state of Pennsylvania even recall it anymore. When he graduated from Penn State as an academic All-American in the spring of 1987, he had a national championship ring and a reputation as a solid citizen who had no legitimate shot of making it in the National Football League. He went to training camp with the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent. By the end of August, he did something that many football players could never muster the courage to do: He asked to be cut. He had a degree in finance, with an internship waiting on Wall Street. He had another life to start. Maybe, he says now, he could have hung around for a couple of years, could have made a roster as someone's second or third option, could have spent that time aspiring to be something he'd probably never be. Maybe, if he had lost that one game, on a January evening in the Arizona desert, he would have felt he had to aspire to something more. Maybe, if he had lost that game, his entire life might have unfolded differently. But that was the thing about John Shaffer: He was one of those quarterbacks who specialized in not losing, one of those quarterbacks you hardly see anymore in major college football, one of those quarterbacks who not only shows up for class but actually cares about his classes, one of those quarterbacks whose job is not to alter the course of the game but simply not to screw the damn thing up. Shaffer was not fleet of foot, and he did not have a prodigious arm, and while he was broad-shouldered and generically handsome, he was not an imposing physical presence. Yet, in all of his games as a starter dating back to the seventh grade, Shaffer won 66 times and lost only once, on New Year's Day 1986, to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. This is not the story of that game. This is the story of a game that took place exactly one year and one day later, the last game, the best game, and the most important game Shaffer ever played. And it's a funny thing. Because if you go by the statistics of that night, if you measure a performance purely by the numbers, John Shaffer could not have been worse.

WINSTON MOSS, LINEBACKER, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: "Their quarterback? I don't remember their quarterback."

DON MEYERS, FIESTA BOWL SELECTION COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: "Joe (Paterno) had this quarterback -- I think his name was Shaffer. Joe told me, 'He'll never get a call from an NFL team.' I do think Shaffer would have a hard time playing big-time college football today."

BEANO COOK, COLLEGE FOOTBALL HISTORIAN: "Penn State had less firepower than Sweden did in World War II."

DANIEL STUBBS, DEFENSIVE END, MIAMI: "They couldn't throw the ball! All night, we're screaming at them, saying, 'Throw the ball!' They couldn't do it!"

But this was not the type of game you could judge by numbers. This was a game that turned every number and every statistical notion and every prediction upside down. This was a game shaped by its own hype and pregame story lines, by its own bloated sense of self-importance, by the fact that it served as a thumb in the eye of the bowl system and its antiquated sense of propriety.

This was Jan. 2, 1987, and for the first time, the college football season had been extended beyond New Year's Day. Because of a quirk in the system, because Miami was ranked No. 1 and Penn State was ranked No. 2, and both schools were independents at the time, with no ties to any conferences, meaning no affiliations with any specific bowls, the Fiesta Bowl landed the dream matchup. Before this, the Fiesta had been second-tier, unable to stand up to the cabal of Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange, but now the Fiesta Bowl was in the right place at the right time, and so was NBC, which took the radical step of shifting the game to a Friday night and preempting its most popular television show to make room for, of all things, a college football game.
Two decades later, the men who played that game have become stock traders and broadcasters and salesmen and coaches and ministers. Some have fallen ill, and some have died, and some have spent time in police custody and some have spent time in the Canadian Football League and two of them, a punter and a quarterback from Miami, have defied the laws of genetics and are still playing in the NFL. But wherever they may be, wherever they may end up, they will remain united by this moment, a game between two teams with such contrasting styles that it felt like maybe something much larger was at stake, that maybe this was a referendum on where American sports were headed, for better or for worse.

BRUCE SKINNER, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE FIESTA BOWL: "We had just signed a contract with Sunkist. It was the first title sponsorship of a bowl game. So, yes, I'll take the blame for that. There was a certain feeling that a title sponsorship should not be involved in a college football bowl game. But the Sunkist sponsorship allowed us to be competitive. Those other four bowls, they wanted to keep it as the big four, and I don't blame them for that."

MEYERS: "I started going down to Miami and talking to Sam Jankovich, their athletic director, and the coach, Jimmy Johnson. They said there was no way they were not going to the Orange Bowl, it was right in their backyard. But I kept going down there. We had to come up with a way to match the Orange Bowl's payoff, so we went to NBC and said if we could move this game off New Year's Day and move it into prime time, we could sell ads for a lot more money. They said, 'You're not moving it into prime time, because you're talking about preempting the most popular prime-time show on television. You're talking about "Miami Vice." ' But we sensed that this could change the entire bowl picture in college football. It was a true No. 1 versus a true No. 2, both undefeated, playing on a neutral field. And from NBC's perspective, it could change college football, too."

This was his vision, grandiose and bold, and Meyers was unwilling to compromise on the scope of it. He exploited every angle. He stroked every ego. He played off the media. He worked his way up the ladder at NBC, and eventually he twisted enough arms in the entertainment division that they agreed to accommodate him, if he could actually secure the matchup. Getting Penn State wasn't much of a problem. Joe Paterno was 3-0 in the Fiesta Bowl; why wouldn't he want to play there? His team had more than a dozen fifth-year seniors who wanted nothing more than another chance at a national championship after the loss to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl the previous season. "If we have to play this game in a parking lot in Brooklyn," Paterno told Meyers, "we'll do it." But Penn State was never the No. 1 team that season, and in the end, the decision would not be Penn State's. There was never a question that Jimmy Johnson possessed the best team in the nation that year. The only question, in fact, was whether this was the most talented team college football had ever seen. It had a Heisman-winning quarterback in Vinny Testaverde, a top-flight backfield anchored by fullback Alonzo Highsmith, an unbearably cocky wide receiver, Michael Irvin, and a defense rife with size and speed and bubbling over with attitude. (Even the punter, Jeff Feagles, was one of the best at his position.) This was a new breed of college football team, an NFL developmental squad disguised as amateurs.Johnson was new to the politics of the bowl picture, having come to Miami from Oklahoma State as a no-name coach in 1984. He saw no real reason for his team to leave Florida, home of the Orange Bowl, the Citrus Bowl and the Gator Bowl. His team had outscored its opponents 420-136, had already beaten Oklahoma, the defending national champion, and had been No. 1 ever since. Whoever they played, wherever they played, it would be a formality, a culmination of a season guided by destiny. What was the point in hauling across the country to play a team that might have been undefeated, yes, but had nearly lost to Cincinnati and barely beaten Maryland? So even after Meyers had secured more money from the sponsors, even after he'd coaxed more money out of NBC, even after he'd set up a fundraising banquet with Bob Hope, even after he'd delivered black satin sweat suits to the entire Miami team, and even after he'd arranged for the wives of the Miami coaches to get free treatments at a highbrow desert spa, he realized he needed one more flourish, one last appeal to the ego of a coach whose immaculate coiffure had already assumed a mythical significance. As an insurance policy, Meyers said he began calling reporters. Jimmy Johnson doesn't want to play Joe Paterno on a neutral field, he told them. Jimmy's afraid. When anyone at Miami asked him whether he might be the anonymous source making such statements, he denied it. Immediately after Miami's last victory over East Carolina, Johnson stood in front of a room full of reporters and confirmed that his team would be playing in the Fiesta Bowl, in prime time, against Penn State. With this team, why should he be afraid of anyone?

TREY BAUER, LINEBACKER, PENN STATE: "As a group, they didn't seem very smart to me. No way that (expletive) would have happened at Penn State. But they were clearly at the front end of all that (expletive) you see now."

STUBBS: "They were just ... bland. And we were doing things that teams are still doing today. You know how everybody puts up four fingers when the fourth quarter comes around? That was us. We were the first ones to cut our jerseys, and the NCAA made sure that isn't around no more. When we played Oklahoma, we didn't shake their hands, and now there's a rule you have to do it. People didn't respect us? We didn't care."

ALONZO HIGHSMITH, RUNNING BACK, MIAMI: "Yeah, Jerome Brown had a gun on campus, and that put the program in a bad light. But they didn't mention how many of us graduated, how we weren't allowed to take those easy courses like other programs get away with. We were brash, and we did a lot of talking on the field, but if you asked the majority of college players, they wished their coaches would let them play like us."

BAUER: "They made us out to be a bunch of choirboys, but that wasn't the case, either. It wasn't like we were locked in the library 24/7."

COOK: "The general feeling was that Miami was just a bunch of rogues. They made Penn State good because everyone wanted to say Miami is evil, and so it became good versus evil."

The idea? Two decades later, who can remember how the idea came about? According to Highsmith, it started with a few of the seniors, like him and like Brown, the incorrigible All-America defensive tackle. And then it spread, and it became the latest outlandish brainstorm of a team that felt like it could do absolutely no wrong, even as the improprieties and transgressions mounted and the self-righteous criticism came hard and fast. They were thugs. They were outlaws. They were the Oakland Raiders of college football. So when somebody came up with this new idea, the notion of wearing combat fatigues all week long, to show the world that they meant business, that they were there to do a job, they all seemed to think it made perfect sense. Johnson and Jankovich were already out in Arizona, so the players were flying out on their own, and there was no one to tell them otherwise. It wasn't until they stepped off the plane in their fatigues and saw the Penn State players walking around in suits and ties that they realized what their outfits had wrought. This had already become the most hyped game in the history of college football, and now here was an organic story line: The bad guys had dressed the part.

JANKOVICH: "I was decimated. We didn't know anything about it, and if we were on the plane, they probably wouldn't have done it. From that point on, it was really downhill."

STUBBS: "People need to understand, we didn't have a dress code. It's different now, with all the teams wearing shirts and ties. While we were out there, we visited some Army base in the mountains and we bought me some medals. I was a 17-star general, because I had 17 sacks that season. That was something we did. It ain't gonna be repeated again."

HIGHSMITH: "If we win the game, no one cares about it. It might be a fashion statement or something."

BAUER: " We thought it was absurd. Like, what are these guys doing?"

At a news conference in which he referred to Paterno -- anointed that week as Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year -- as "St. Joe," Johnson affirmed that he didn't care much how his players dressed, or how they went about motivating themselves. He told the assembled horde -- and in the end, about 1,500 media members flocked to Phoenix to cover a game that was beginning to feel like a Super Bowl -- that he couldn't wait to see what they came up with next.

He had other things on his mind. Meyers had never seen a coach so ... uptight. Johnson complained about the carpeting in the locker room, so at the last minute Meyers had carpenters flown in from Los Angeles to replace it with something in Miami's green. The day before the game, each team was scheduled to do a walk-through on the field at Sun Devil Stadium. Meyers called Paterno and asked him what time he wanted. "Four o'clock," Paterno told him. He called Johnson. "What time does Joe want to go?" Johnson asked. Meyers told him 4 o'clock. "Then we want to go at 4," Johnson said. Meyers called Paterno back. "We're going out at 4," Paterno said. Jankovich called Meyers sometime around midnight that night. He was upset, claiming favoritism toward Penn State. According to Meyers, Jankovich might even have cried, though Jankovich says he can't recall any of this. All he knows is that the Hurricanes were promised certain things. They wanted the bigger locker room; they got the smaller one. They wanted to be the home team, but Penn State wore its home blue jerseys. When 4 p.m. came, Miami showed up for the walk-through. Penn State never did. By then, the Hurricanes were primed to implode in a bizarre display of rebelliousness that still lingers, two decades later. Both teams attended a steak fry, where they were supposed to deliver a brief skit. Penn State's players wore suits and ties. Miami's players wore their black sweat suits, only because, Highsmith insists, the Fiesta Bowl officials told them to. The Penn State punter, John Bruno, made a couple of jokes, dragged out a garbage can labeled with masking tape as Jimmy Johnson's Hair Spray, and made a crack about how much racial harmony there was at Penn State: "We're one big family," he said. "We even let the black guys eat with us at the training table once a week." So now it was Miami's turn. Jerome Brown stood up and unzipped his sweat suit to reveal his fatigues. "Did the Japanese sit down and eat with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them?" he said. "No. We're outta here."

Out toward their buses went the men in the fatigues, cementing a reputation that Miami still cannot shake, 14 years after Brown's death in a car accident. Bauer started to laugh. Bruno stood up, made some crack about Miami having to leave so the players could begin filming "Rambo III," and then delivered a quote that Penn State football fans still evoke, 14 years after Bruno's death from melanoma: Miami/Collegiate ImagesAlonzo Highsmith carried Miami's vaunted ground game.

"Excuse me," he said. "But didn't the Japanese lose the war?"

TIM JOHNSON, DEFENSIVE LINEMAN, PENN STATE: "When they walked out, that was the moment where the heat turned up 100 percent. I was ready to go find our locker room, suit up, and play right now. It's on. It is on."

STUBBS: "We weren't there to have fun. We had some mariachi band come on our bus, and they were passing out oranges, and we were like, 'We're here to win a game.' Then we went to this steak fry and they made us put on a show, and we said we're not here to do a show. But then the Penn State players get up there and they're ripping us, and they're ripping Coach Johnson. So when it's our turn, we just said, 'Dude, we're out of here.'"

BOB WHITE, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, PENN STATE: "If you're told a lie for long enough, you start to believe it. They were talented, but they bullied people by running their mouths." JEROME BROWN (from a pregame news conference): "I think they're nothing. Shaffer thought he had a bad bowl game last year. That was nothing. After this game, he'll wish he'd graduated. The dude's about to star in a nightmare."

JERRY SANDUSKY, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR, PENN STATE: "That game took on everything that went on around it until it became more than a game."

PATERNO (From "Paterno: By the Book," by Joe Paterno with Bernard Asbell): "I don't know whether Jimmy helped his kids plan their disgraceful walkout. ... But I know he was there. Nor did he raise a finger of caution when we were climbing out of our bus for the locker room as his team ... just about blocked our path, waving and taunting and yelling, 'We'll get you, you mothers.' (I'm only using half their word)."

MEYERS: "By game time, it felt like the place was going to explode."

A year and a day removed from the only loss of his football career, a year and a day removed from the moment when he insisted on accepting the blame for his team's 25-10 defeat to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, John Shaffer walked onto a field in Tempe and tried not to think of anything except the first play of the game. It was going to be a pass. They were going to throw on first down, to try to catch Miami off guard, and then Shaffer found himself distracted by the presence on the sideline of David Hartman, one of the anchors of "Good Morning America," who had been hanging around all week. And he saw all these famous alums from both teams -- Kenny Jackson, Curt Warner, Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly -- and the whole thing began to sink in: This was bigger than last season. This was bigger than any college football game he had played in. This was bigger than any college football game anyone had ever played. For a few more moments, they had to muzzle themselves. Miami's Irvin walked over to Penn State's undersized safety, Ray Isom. "You're Isom?" he said. He was laughing; all week, Miami had been ridiculing Penn State's defensive backs, likening them to Smurfs -- they were too small and too slow to cover Irvin and Brett Perriman and Brian Blades. Penn State got the ball first. Shaffer called that pass play. Then he looked in the eyes of his offensive linemen, and they were glassy and unfocused. They're not here yet, he thought. He took the snap, faked a handoff to his All-America tailback, D.J. Dozier, and dropped back four or five steps. One Miami lineman, Winston Moss, came charging in from the outside, unblocked. Shaffer ducked, Moss overran him, but here came two more linemen, charging straight into him. Shaffer wound up twisted in the grass, 14 yards behind the line of scrimmage. He never had a chance. It would go like this all night for Penn State's offense. They could not throw the ball, and even behind Dozier, they could not run the ball either. At the end of the first quarter, they had seven total yards. Shaffer finished 5-for-16 for 53 yards. They managed only one sustained drive, of 74 yards, which ended in an ugly dive by Shaffer to tie the game at 7-7 in the second quarter, and negated Shaffer's only crucial mistake of the game, a fumble deep in Penn State's territory that led to Miami's first and only touchdown. That Nittany Lions drive accounted for nearly half of their 162 yards of total offense; Miami would finish with 445.

And all of this was fine with Paterno, and it was fine with Sandusky, because they had built this team on a philosophy that, two decades later, has begun to seem more and more quaint: You win with defense first, and you win with special teams second. And all your offense has to do -- and all your quarterback has to do -- is avoid screwing the whole thing up.

SHAFFER: "We really trusted authority. We felt like if we listened to the coaches, we'd be successful. And our offense was very comfortable taking a secondary role. I think for a young head coach today, with all these wide-open offenses, it would be very hard to win that way."

BAUER: "When I watched the film, I remember thinking, 'Are these guys that good or are the teams they're playing that bad?' It looked like a flag football game. But we had a veteran defense, and we had six weeks to prepare. We had 150 different looks on defense just for that game."

SANDUSKY: "They weren't very concerned in warm-ups. I remember Vinny and Jimmy coming over to check out our defensive backs and I'm thinking, 'Man, I wish we looked more impressive.'"

STUBBS: "I'm a Jersey guy, and the one thing I knew about Penn State was that their defensive backs could hit. They crushed Michael on one play, and he came to the sidelines and I said, 'I told you so.' "

BAUER: "Irvin got totally jacked up early in the game by one of our guys. I mean, he got hit. And I don't think he did much of anything the rest of the game. I think in the press conference afterward, he said the ball was slippery or something."

Sometime around the start of the second quarter, the talking subsided and this game settled into a rhythm: Penn State stalls, Bruno punts the ball deep into Miami territory, and Miami turns the ball over. At halftime, Bob Costas conducted a rambling interview with President Reagan. Meyers' vision had come to fruition. The ratings were enormous, larger than even the network could have expected: 25.1 percent of households with televisions (more than 70 million viewers) were tuned to NBC that night; no college football game has gotten that kind of ratings share, before or since. In the third quarter, All-America linebacker Shane Conlan made an interception for Penn State, then stumbled and fell on a bad knee that had been bothering him all night long. After Penn State gave the ball back, Miami missed a field goal.

On the first play of the fourth quarter, linebacker Pete Giftopoulos made an interception. Then the Lions missed a field goal. Penn State was rushing three men and dropping eight, and instead of running the ball with Highsmith, Testaverde kept throwing. He threw into coverage. He threw to the wrong man. His receivers dropped passes. Even so, Miami went up 10-7 on a field goal with 11:49 remaining because Penn State simply could not move the ball either. On Penn State's next possession, Jerome Brown sacked Shaffer, leapt up, and saluted the crowd. The swagger had returned. But after another Bruno punt, Testaverde, looking as perplexed by Penn State's shifting schemes and coverages as he had all night long, threw another pass directly into the arms of Conlan, who returned it to the Miami 5-yard line. Dozier scored, dropped to a knee and said a prayer. Penn State led, 14-10. Rob Tringali for ESPN.com. Shaffer left Tempe with memories and mementos that no one will ever take away from him.

Both defenses stood up once more. Miami tight end Alfredo Roberts fumbled the ball away, but Penn State could not manage a single first down and Bruno punted the ball back with 3:18 left. A minute later, after Bauer dropped a potential interception, Miami was facing fourth-and-6 on its own 26-yard line.And then, as if perhaps they had both finally awakened from an evening's slumber, Testaverde found Brian Blades for a 32-yard gain. Soon the Canes had moved to the Penn State 26, and then Testaverde hit Irvin at the Penn State 10 with a minute left. Conlan went down on his bad knee, stopping the clock. Testaverde hit Irvin again, and it was second-and-goal at the Penn State 5 with 45 seconds left.

SANDUSKY: "After Conlan got hurt, Bauer came over to the sideline. He looked at me and I said, 'I can't help you. Good luck.' Then I asked Trey if he knew what to call if they went without a huddle and he said he did. And then he got lockjaw."
BAUER: "That's (expletive)! The coaches were confused! They never sent in the play!"

STUBBS: "On the sidelines, we're all saying we should run the ball. Run a delayed draw to Alonzo, and he'll carry somebody in to the end zone. But Vinny wanted to throw."

HIGHSMITH: "To this day, I have no clue what happened. All I know was they weren't gonna stop me that day. I always figured I'd get one or two carries on the goal line."

On second-and-goal, Testaverde dropped back, and Tim Johnson burst through the line, wrapped an arm around Testaverde's neck and sacked him. On third down, Testaverde dropped back again, and threw incomplete in the flat. And on fourth down, with 18 seconds left, Testaverde dropped back once more, looking for ... well, who knows? In one last burst of confusion, he threw left, toward the end zone, toward several Penn State players, and Giftopoulos, the soft-spoken linebacker from Ontario, Canada, intercepted his pass -- Testaverde's fifth interception of the game, and Miami's seventh turnover -- and then, not knowing what else to do, started to run aimlessly, like a foal lost in the woods.

SANDUSKY: "I've always prided myself on being able to handle pressure, but on that fourth down, I couldn't even speak to make the defensive call. When it was over, I just walked over to the bench and sat down by myself and started to cry."

SHAFFER: "Joe was going crazy to get people off the field, because there was still time on the clock. We had to snap the ball once more, and I told our center, Keith Radecic, just hold the ball up and don't move your hand."

BAUER: "I lost 12 pounds that night. Afterward I couldn't go out, I couldn't celebrate, I couldn't do anything."

COOK: "I had picked Penn State to win. But I was one of the only ones. A few years ago, I saw Joe at a dinner and he told me, 'To this day, I still don't know how we beat Miami.' There's always a game that every Hall of Fame coach loses and wakes up years later at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat thinking about it. For Jimmy Johnson, this was that game."

MOSS: "We thought we were the superior team. And I still feel that way. But we've won, what, four titles since then? And we won the next year, in '87."

STUBBS: "The next year they made us sign some paper, saying we'd be good. I don't even know what it said. I just signed the (expletive)."

COOK: "That game did cement Miami's reputation, though. And they still pay for it. A lot of it is unjustified, but it's true -- that was the college football equivalent of the scarlet A."

SKINNER: "Not only did it mean a lot for both programs, but I think it really implemented the idea that we need to have a national championship game. It was a big domino, at least for the BCS."

Of course, even today's BCS system is deeply flawed. Games like this do not take place every year, and even when they do, the hype is often manufactured and artificially inflated. Rarely is the contrast so stark, so obvious, and rarely is the game so competitive, and rarely is the emotion so palpable. To play with a swagger, to high-five and taunt like those Hurricanes once did -- this is, for better or for worse, the rule, not the exception. So much so that even Penn State, long an oasis of high-mindedness, is no longer immune from harboring such an attitude.

Two decades later, the game has changed, both because of and despite what happened that night. But one thing has not changed: The anonymous quarterback, one of the last of a breed nearing extinction, still has trouble proving his worth. Not long ago, Shaffer watched the most important football game of his life with his son, and while they were watching, his son turned to him and said, "Did you actually talk to Joe Paterno?

Iowa 24, Penn State 23

It's hard to even think about writing about Penn State's heartbreaking loss on Saturday to Iowa. I am physically exhausted and my stomach has that permanent pit. I watched the entire game, and it's hard to get my head around how we managed to lose that game after dominating the first half and being up 9 going into the 4th quarter. I think it's best encapsulated by Joe Paterno's son, Jay:

"There were 25 plays in the game that, if we make one of them, we win the game," quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno said.

The most talked about play was the late interception:

As the ball fluttered out of his hand, Daryll Clark tried in vain to snatch it back, then prayed -- "Please, please, please!" -- that Derrick Williams somehow would get a hand on it.

Afterward, the quarterback blamed that fourth-quarter interception, and himself, for the loss that essentially ended Penn State's chance at a national championship.

"First of all, I want to apologize to the whole Penn State nation for my play today," Clark said. "And I take full responsibility for that loss. I apologize to our seniors, and our captains. I just keep having that turnover recurring in my head over and over again.

"I just can't get it out of my mind."

I feel bad for Clark, who has been so good all year, but now will have to replay that one play -- a errant pass in a game where it was freezing and there were 25-mph gusts -- for the rest of his life. I really hope this team can rally and win their last two games, and not let this shocking loss ruin the rest of the season. The pass is a 'game-changing performance':

The excellent recap ticks off just some of the others. Read it and it will make you crazy:

There was the blown protection on Penn State's third play of the game, resulting in a fumble which Clark was lucky to recover at his own 1-yard line. Iowa needed just two offensive plays to respond, with Shonn Greene (the nation's only back with 10 100-yard rushing games) scoring on a 14-yard run.

There was the busted coverage on Derrell Johnson-Koulianos' stutter-and-go route on third-and-13 in the third quarter that turned into a 27-yard touchdown. Cornerback A.J. Wallace expected help from a deep safety, which never arrived.

There was the debilitating holding call on Penn State guard Rich Ohrnberger on the play prior to Clark's interception. The penalty, on third-and-14, negated a potential first-down completion to Butler. "I hope they're right on that one," Jay Paterno said. "I hope it's an obvious one there."

And there was the crushing pass interference call on safety Anthony Scirrotto on Iowa's next series, which produced the game-winning field goal. Scirrotto ran into Iowa receiver Trey Stross from behind on third-and-15, giving the Hawkeyes a first down at the 39-yard line.

"He went after the ball," defensive coordinator Tom Bradley said. "He made a play on the ball. I'm not going to fault the guy for making a play on the ball."

I'm not going to even mention that the referees gave some seriously suspect 1st down spots to Iowa in that drive. Oh wait, there I go. SUSPECT.

Watch the recap from ESPN, if you like. Favorite quote, "Don't underestimate the impact of the wind." This game happens on a sunny day, this doesn't happen. Wouldn't coulda shoulda. Arrgh.

Did I mention that I'm sad?

BCS Blustering

Speaking of that upset victory, a funny thing happened on the way to the BCS rankings this week. A previously unbeaten Texas team gets beat ON THE ROAD on the NEXT-TO-LAST PLAY by last week's number 7 ranked (BCS, the only one that matters) team, and the BCS vaults the victor to number 2, over an also unbeaten Penn State team who was idle at #3. And I won't lie to you I was fuming over that leap. But then I calmed down and got to thinking about a few things.First, here's the voting differential in the top 4 (AP):

1.Alabama 1600
2.Texas Tech 1528
3.Penn State 1525
4.Florida 1398

That's such a slim margin between the top 3. Hardly anything to get steamed about in early November with 3 games left.

Second is the remaining schedule for Texas Tech. In their next two weeks they are hosting Oklahoma State (current #8, nearly beat Texas themselves) and then AT Oklahoma (current #6, been scraping opponents remains off their cleats recently) the following week. If they survive those two scraps, I would have no problem with them being considered #2, or even #1 for that matter. So, let them play the games and we'll see.

Third, is at Penn State, we need to either forget things we can't control and focus on what we can. We need to take care of business, finish undefeated, period, and then let the BCS implode should they not put us in the championship game. Screw impressions, which is all the rankings are. I'm sure that's what Joe Pa is telling them right now. And that's why I shrug my shoulders and say we've got to finish the season out strong and screw what all the experts think.

Also: I can't wait until this week's press conference with Paterno to get his reaction when a reporter asks him about it. Can't. Wait.

Rushing the field

This previous weekend saw an incredibly exciting game where number 1 (BCS rankings) Texas Longhorns were upset on the road by number 7 Texas Tech, 39-33, winning on the next-to-last play of the game.

It also saw Texas Tech fans at their embarrassing and predictable worst. The Associated Press not only got the event wrong (shocking!) but severely downplayed the possibility of a different outcome:

Thousands of Texas Tech fans poured onto the field and had to be sent off while the play was under review to make sure Crabtree didn't step out of bounds. Once the fans were chased off the field and Tech kicked the extra point, the Red Raiders were penalized and forced to kick off from their own 7.

When Texas couldn't pull of a miracle kickoff return, the fans ran back on the field to celebrate the biggest win in Texas Tech history.

First, they got one fifteen yard penalty for rushing the field when Texas Tech scored the touchdown. Second, not being aware enough to realize that NO TIME ELAPSES during an extra-point attempt, they rushed the field again (I predicted this) getting another fifteen-yard penalty. This forced Texas Tech to kickoff from their own 7.5 yard-line. Texas head coach tried to arrange for an automatic fair catch, but unfortunately that isn't allowed. Either way, a squib kick that starts at your own 40 is a lot more dangerous than one that starts at the opponent's 40. Despite wanting for a Texas upset I think I would have been even more satisfied if the Longhorns had somehow scored because of this.

Well, I'm sure that the Red Raiders fans will learn from this incident and not do it again. Oh, wait, this has happened before, even after the university put in a really effective "zero tolerance" policy in 2002:

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Texas Tech students celebrated a 42-38 victory over Texas on Saturday by storming the field, ignoring a two-day-old "zero tolerance" policy prohibiting fans from going onto the stadium turf. In announcing the new policy Thursday, university officials said anyone going onto the field before, after or during games would be subject to arrest.

But moments after Texas Tech beat fourth-ranked Texas behind Kliff Kingsbury's six touchdown passes, thousands of students poured onto the turf of Jones SBC Stadium, where Texas Tech players were still gathered.

As soon as the game ended, in a pre-emptive [it's "preemptive" -- stupid AP reporters] move, university officials dismantled the goal posts before students had a chance to tear them down. Capt. Gordon Hoffman of the Texas Tech campus police said no arrests were made.

"Practically speaking, I don't see how we could have made any arrests. When you have those kind of numbers, it's not possible. I don't see how they could have been arrested and contained," Hoffman said.

Texas Tech officials said the policy came about because they didn't want to see a repeat of what happened after Texas Tech upset Texas A&M 12-0 a year ago in Lubbock. Tech students tore down the south goal post and took it into an area in the east stands where Texas A&M fans were located. Fighting broke out.

"This is a pre-emptive deal and probably a policy that needed to be in place before," Texas Tech sports information director Chris Cook said Thursday. "As our program continues to get better, the more enthusiasm is generated, and we have a good opportunity now to put this policy into effect."

VERY effective. The students demonstrated the wiles of any two-year old by calling the bluff of a weak-willed parent. Six years later and now the Tech fans have graduated from rushing the field after the game to before it is over. Twice. And costing your team penalties that could have had effected the outcome. Congratulations, Texas Tech, your fans are officially the dumbest.

Bonus: It's not hard to find evidence of Texas Tech fans repeated stupidity on the web. Here's a satisfying video from last year's Oklahoma-Tech game showing some Tech idiots getting arrested rushing the field.

Team Allegiances: A Reference Guide

Brace yourself, because this is one long and blustery blog about my allegiances to sports teams. (It started out small, but I found that I had a helluva-lot to rant about when it comes to this.) If there's anything that I tend to take flack from "true" fans of sports teams is that I root for more than one team from just about every sport I follow. For people that have only followed one team in a particular sport, the idea that you can pull for more than one professional sports team feels, well, wrong.

College Sports
And the way that I can tell you that I can testify what these fans feel is that I agree with that sensation for college sports. When it comes to college, I am a die-hard Penn State fan. There is something about attending a school that really gives you a sense of ownership and pride, and a lovely bloodlust for crushing certain teams and screaming "fucking kill him!!!" and meaning it, at least for the four seconds their quarterback is scrambling around. I'm looking at you, Nebraska and Ohio State. And any team from Florida but I digress; that's just general displeasure with teams from that state. So, college football is the one sport where I really have only one team.

In college basketball, to the annual chagrin of local ACC fans, I also root for, wait for it, Duke. OH MY GOD, NOOOOOOOO!!! But, yes.If your head has not exploded in righteous indignation, allow me to explain why. Before I ever went to Penn State, I was a fan of college basketball. In the days way before on-demand sports and ESPN8: The Ocho, you didn't have a lot of options as to who you wanted to watch. As it happens, Duke was starting to become a perennial powerhouse in the early-to-mid 80's, so they were getting a lot of exposure on TV. Plus, right around the time I was a junior in high school, they recruited a kid named Bobby Hurley to run the point. At the time, I was a short, white point/shooting guard, so there was instant emulation. Anyway, that's when I started watching Duke games as a fan.

Does the fact that I have been a Duke basketball fan for over 20 years get me any street cred down here? Of course not. Granted, I am in Maryland Terp country, and they love to hate Duke, so what do I expect. It makes for more fun watching, frankly. Now, that all said, if Duke and Penn State played, I like Duke, but I bleed PSU. No contest. I watched just about every PSU game they played this season that was televised (don't get me started about the Big Ten Network) and though we finished 15-16, was satisfied with a season where we lost our best two players to injury. PSU basketball has a long tradition of 'suck', but I love my team. Hey if you only have one tournament highlight in the last ten years (2001), that says something. But we beat Carolina and that is worth arms-raised-in-victory cred for years. In looking up the results for that tourney, I forgot that Duke was the eventual champion. Puts my priorities in clear relief, but man, that was a good tourney.

Now before we get into the rest of the discussion, here are the general guidelines for figuring out allegiances:

1. I grew up south of BUFFALO, and my mother's side of the family is mostly up there.
   
2. I migrated to PHILADELPHIA to finish high school, and my father's side of the family is mostly up there. My best friend lives up there.
   
3. I lived with many PITTSBURGH natives in college (PSU is 40% Pittsburgh, 30% Philly, 30% miscellaneous), so I grew to appreciate their teams.
   
4. I have lived in the WASHINGTON, DC area for the last 10 years (has it really been that long?).

These four notes will help you to understand most of my choices. But there are quirks in every system, most of these driven by sweet, sweet bitterness.

NHL
Now, moving on to professional sports (and I am only talking about the big four), that's when we get a little murky. Let's start with the murkiest and the one currently on the brain as we are hip-deep intro round one of their playoffs: the National Hockey League.I fully admit, I'm a playoff hockey fan only. I have a hard time finding interest in any sport where the regular season is more than 30 games; for me it has to do with the import of each game. (I cannot understand how baseball fans can bother to care about each game, especially in April. I have seen fans get so upset over something that matters 1/162 of their season. NOOOOOOO!!!) That all said, my favorite team is the Flyers, (Reference Guideline #2 above) followed closely behind by the Sabres (Reference Guideline #1). This is as close to a wash as I get in sports; it seems that just about every year they play each other in the playoffs, and I just kind of shrug and wait for the outcome.At least that's what I tell my family. I figured out that Philly trumps Buffalo because Philly fans are mean. I like that. So put that as unofficial guideline #5: when in doubt, go with the mean fans.

Now, because of Reference Guidelines #3 and #4, I root for the Penguins and the Caps when neither the Flyers nor the Sabres are involved, but it's not even close to as strong a feeling. So they get no logo post. It just doesn't feel right. Honorable mention: Detroit Red Wings. This is my girlfriend's team. She loves to watch playoff hockey, too (she actually smiles when she sees blood on a player's face -- I'm not joking). I don't root against them, but I like to see her happy. But am I going to root for them if they come up against any of the above four teams? Not really.

MLB
Moving on to the longest season ever and one that certainly doesn't start for me (although I always check scores) until August, baseball. Another very tight race for me, but ultimately, I take the Phillies over the Cubs.Using the Reference Guidelines, the first choice should be easy to figure out, but the Cubs? Well, western New York obviously has no baseball team, so how do you get the Cubs? Cable TV, that's how. In the early 80's you had two choices (other than the friggin' Yankees: blech) for daily baseball coverage: TBS and WGN. Braves and Cubs. My brother is a Cubs fan, and they always (used to) play their home games in the daytime, which means I came home from school early enough to catch the fourth inning on and Harry Caray.However, in terms of allegiances, although I have to admit I'd love to see the Cubs win the WS for the first time in 100 years, I think I'd be pulling against them if the Phillies played them in the playoffs. Because neither team has won in at least 25 years, I don't think I'd be too upset either way. Still, slight edge to the Phillies.

As for my current "home town" Washington Nationals... well what can you say about a team that's been around for three years? Not much, is my conclusion, and no logo for you.

NBA
Continuing our tour of the major sports, we hit professional basketball and arrive with a more solid thwacking. Again, without a major team in the Buffalo (or Pittsburgh (discounting the Fish That Saved...), for that matter), the choice is easy: the 76ers. Watching the early 80's Sixers with Dr. J, Bobby Jones, Mo Cheeks, Andrew Toney, and Moses Malone (effortlessly recalling the starting lineup of the 1983 Championship team for your approval) was indeed the golden age of this team. Since then, I've watched many an Alan Iverson game in my time, and even though he's kind of a thug, I'm sad to have seen him go. Probably the highlight of his era was lighting up the Lakers for 48 to steal Game 1 of the 2002 Championship series. Certainly the Sportscenter highlight was his infamous "We talking about practice" press conference, which still gets a lot of airtime.
Iverson's point of view was comically made by his repeated (and by repeated, I mean like 25 times) mention of "practice" versus "the game". It's too bad that he ended the rant with the question, "How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?" Up until that point I was laughing with him. Anyway.

I certainly have watched my share of Washington Wizards games around here, but are they logo-worthy? I think you know the answer. The team really took a down-turn once they changed their name from "Bullets" to "Wizards", which is about as limp a change as I can imagine. I guess it's not as bad as a nickname like "Heat" or "Magic", but it certainly sucks. And sucky nicknames. But I will put a Boston Celtics logo on here as a distant second team, surprising even the most prophetic prophesiser! This is the negative-postive inversion support (or NPIS) case, where I pretty much can't stand any other team (excluding the Sixers) in the East, and I also grew up watching the Lakers-Celtics battles of the 80's. Guess which Western Conference team I hate?

NFL
Finally on to the main course, pro football. This one is tough because you again have two football teams that I have followed for a long time: Buffalo and Philly.Again, Philly gets the nod by the slimmest of margins, but only in recent years. I grew up a Bills fan and slowly evolved my preferences to the Eagles by being immersed in the NFC East environment that is Washington, DC. Obviously, there are plenty of Redskins fans around here, but you'd be surprised there are a great many Dallas, Eagles, and Giants fans around, too. It makes for great rivalrys, and great games. But it's the fans that bring it out in me, specifically the Redskins fans. You'd think that being down here this long would have swayed me towards their camp, but in fact where I used to support them (for my friends who liked them as long as we weren't playing each other), their incredibly delusional fans have driven me to embrace fully my hatred of the Redskins fans. Over the last couple years, this classic video of the fantasy football guy continually butchering "T.J. Houshmandezadah" and, finally getting it correct, intones "Championship" had come amongst my friends to represent your typical Redskins fan: cluelessly confident.

So, you see that it is a combination of Reference #2 and pure irritation that puts Philly over the top in my heart. It's like milk chocolate and caramel coming together, and it is oh, so sweet.
Worth mentioning: I put the logo of Green Bay up there because I once made the mistake of not supporting Danielle's team in the fullest amount. All my guidelines and irritations cannot stand up to an intense frowning and/or withholding of affections.

The Greatest College Game Ever Played

There's been a lot of talking by some sports fans about last night's amazing Fiesta Bowl win for Boise State. An electrifying game, for sure, but does it deserve to be talked about as the best bowl game ever?

Nay, my friends, Michael Weintrab disagrees. Not only is it not the best bowl game ever, it's not even close to the best Fiesta Bowl ever.

This was Jan. 2, 1987, and for the first time, the college football season had been extended beyond New Year's Day. Because of a quirk in the system, because Miami was ranked No. 1 and Penn State was ranked No. 2, and both schools were independents at the time, with no ties to any conferences, meaning no affiliations with any specific bowls, the Fiesta Bowl landed the dream matchup. Before this, the Fiesta had been second-tier, unable to stand up to the cabal of Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange, but now the Fiesta Bowl was in the right place at the right time, and so was NBC, which took the radical step of shifting the game to a Friday night and preempting its most popular television show to make room for, of all things, a college football game.

The article is fantastic, and obviously I couldn't agree more. Here's a few more snippets...

That Nittany Lions drive accounted for nearly half of their 162 yards of total offense; Miami would finish with 445. And all of this was fine with Paterno, and it was fine with Sandusky, because they had built this team on a philosophy that, two decades later, has begun to seem more and more quaint: You win with defense first, and you win with special teams second.

Ever wonder who the first person in prime time to get 'jacked up' was? Why none other than Michael Irvin:

DANIEL STUBBS, DEFENSIVE END, MIAMI: "I'm a Jersey guy, and the one thing I knew about Penn State was that their defensive backs could hit. They crushed Michael on one play, and he came to the sidelines and I said, 'I told you so.' "

TREY BAUER, LINEBACKER, PENN STATE: "Irvin got totally jacked up early in the game by one of our guys. I mean, he got hit. And I don't think he did much of anything the rest of the game. I think in the press conference afterward, he said the ball was slippery or something.

Read the entire article if you have a chance, on this the 20th anniversary of the greatest college football game ever played.

18-10

Well, the outcome wasn't what I wanted, but we played a lot stronger than I thought we would. Our defense held up pretty impressively when I thought they'd break, and our offense, while not incredibly proficient, still managed to play better than the last two games. We're a work in progress, to be expected when you lose 6 players from the offense and 8 from the defense to the NFL. In the end, though we surprised a lot of people by sustaining a halftime lead, Nebraska's running game wore Penn State down.

We are...

I'm not looking forward to this weekend. Of course, last year we were in the same situation, in that no one expected us to win the game, much less keep it close. The difference is we have lost 8 starting defensive players and Larry Johnson from a strong team last year. BC jumped all over us and we never recovered. I'm not imagining Nebraska to be as kind.

College Football is at hand
The NCAA Division I college football preseason ESPN top 25 coaches' poll has been released, thus marking the beginning of the trash talking. My Nittany Lions have squeaked in at No. 25, despite losing Larry Johnson and most of the defense in our best showing ever in the NFL draft. Still we've got a solid offense and Zack Mills, and I hope that will be enough against this dreaded team when we show up in Memorial Stadium on September 13th, 8pm on ABC. Be assured after last year's game, which I was gleefully present at ("the greatest game EVER"), that our opponents will be out for blood. And then likely cheer us off the field. Really.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy
One of my fondest memories of Penn State football was the rivalries we enjoyed with Notre Dame and Miami. Those games went away for the most part thanks to our induction into the Big Ten in 1993. However, it was announced today that in 2006, we'll get to crack heads with the Irish again.

In 3 years.