Tennessee Still Has Something to Prove Tonight

With three weeks remaining in the Southeastern Conference football season, Tennessee’s football players controlled their own destiny. If they won the rest of their games, they could go to the Sugar Bowl. And since they already had beaten Alabama, 16-14, the bowl situation was looking pretty sweet.

That’s when they heard some news about Alabama. The coach of the Crimson Tide, Ray Perkins, had had his team kick an extra point against Louisiana State with 1 minute 23 seconds to play, preserving a 14-14 tie and a shot at the Sugar Bowl, rather than gambling for two points and a victory. In other words, he was daring Tennessee to earn the SEC championship.

“I kind of took it as: ‘Those guys don’t believe we can win our last three games,’ ” Tennessee quarterback Daryl Dickey said. “Coach Perkins’ attitude was like a lot of other people’s. They don’t believe in us, even now. They don’t believe we can handle Miami.

“So, it’s up to us to prove we can handle the big people. It’s up to us to prove we are the big people.”

That chance will arrive tonight, at 5:10 p.m., Pacific Coast time, when Tennessee (8-1-2) takes on Miami (10-1) in the 52nd Sugar Bowl game. Although it is Miami that has a chance to move to the top of college football’s polls, it is Tennessee that is talking about national recognition as it makes its first New Year’s Day bowl appearance since its Sugar Bowl victory over Air Force in 1971.

“We really didn’t get the respect we deserved until late in the season,” Tennessee linebacker Kelly Ziegler said. “In fact, I’m still not sure we’ve gotten any respect. All we keep hearing down here is Miami this, Miami that. I guess we still have a point to make.”

Tennessee’s loss, like Miami’s, was to Florida. The Volunteers also tied UCLA, 26-26, in their season opener, edged Wake Forest and Alabama by two points apiece, and were tied by Georgia Tech, 6-6, so in their first six games of the 1985 season they did not exactly resemble a steamroller.

There were extenuating circumstances, though. In the last quarter of the Alabama game, Tony Robinson, one of the country’s top quarterbacks, was knocked out of the game with a knee injury, never to return. His job went to Dickey, the long-frustrated senior whose father, Doug Dickey, had just been appointed Tennessee’s athletic director in August.

Like Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde, who spent a large part of his college eligibility waiting for a chance to play, Dickey had considered transferring to another school.

“I heard Vinny say it took him a long time to get there, and I can relate to that,” Dickey said. “Unfortunately, my chance happened a different way.”

No one enjoyed seeing Robinson get hurt. Tennessee’s All-American wide receiver, senior Tim McGee, said he was worried at first for himself and for the team.

“Me and the other receivers had worked with Tony for four years, and the offense kind of stuttered after he left,” McGee said. “But then we got together and said: ‘Let’s not worry about what Tony was. Let’s see what Daryl can do. ‘ Pretty soon, everybody found out that Daryl Dickey is a heck of a quarterback, too.”

Even so, McGee, added: “I think it’s important for everybody to remember that we do have Tony Robinson to thank for being here. We would never have made it to any Sugar Bowl without him. Even if he did miss the last few weeks.”

Tonight’s game, perhaps unfairly, is being billed as a skirmish between Tennessee’s defense and Miami’s offense. Opponents of the Volunteers averaged only 12 points in 11 games. Testaverde, All-American tight end Willie Smith and the Hurricanes averaged 461 yards of total offense and 36 points a game.

“Looking at Vinny Testaverde, you’re looking at a guy who if he isn’t the best quarterback in the country, he’s at least in the top two,” Tennessee defensive back Charles Davis said. “When a quarterback gets that much attention, a lot of people are going to be focusing on the other team’s defensive backs. So, if you think we want to let that guy do a number on us, you must be crazy.”

In that same vein, the Volunteers believe they can do a number on the Miami secondary, which includes two freshmen and a sophomore. “They have so much inexperience in their backfield, I’m pretty sure they’ll blow some coverages,” Tennessee’s McGee said.

Miami’s tight end, Smith, is a 6-2, 230-pound junior who has caught a school-record 114 passes in only two seasons.

He also has seen nothing but double and triple coverage, and is sick of it. “I understand it, but I’m getting tired of fighting three guys all the time to get open,” he said. “No pro team’s gonna put three guys on a tight end.”

Miami’s purpose in the Sugar Bowl is twofold--to win it, of course, and to win it so impressively that the Orange Bowl opponents, Penn State and Oklahoma, do not top the Hurricanes in the final national polls.

“We’d just better worry about winning the game and not about how much we’re going to win it by,” Miami fullback Alonzo Highsmith said.

Miami’s players believe they should be No. 1 if they win, no matter how the Orange Bowl turns out, but many of them seem to accept the fact that since Penn State is on top, it will stay there if it beats Oklahoma. What galls the Hurricanes is the thought of Oklahoma winning big and taking the national title. Miami defeated Oklahoma Oct. 19 on the Sooners’ home field, 27-14.

Someone asked Testaverde if he thought it mattered that Oklahoma had lost its starting quarterback, Troy Aikman, with an injury in the first half of that game, and had played all day without nose guard Tony Casillas, the eventual Lombardi Trophy winner.

“Hey, that’s not our fault,” Testaverde replied.

He could have responded by mentioning that Miami’s best lineman, fifth-year defensive end Kevin Fagan, suffered from hip and lower back problems and missed that game himself.

The hardest thing for Miami at the Sugar Bowl seems to be convincing the masses that it is up against a worthy opponent.

Highsmith said: “It’s strange, but two years ago nobody gave us a chance in the world to beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, which we did. And now it’s like nobody gives Tennessee a chance to beat us. Well, they’ve got a chance to beat us. A good chance.

“We’re not playing some junior college here, you know.”