Gators Are No. 1 Product of System

You know a system is flawed when the coach of the consensus national championship team stares at his title trophies the morning after his greatest triumph and asks with all his heart:

“It’s official?”

Steve Spurrier, whose Florida Gators dismantled Florida State, 52-20, in Thursday night’s Sugar Bowl, proved there is no football obstacle he cannot conquer.

Yet, this master of offense and psychological warfare and opponent baiting spent a restless night wondering whether the handful of writers and coaches he has offended with his plain-talk, son-of-a-preacher frankness might cost him his precious first national title.

Last year, after his second-ranked team was routed by Nebraska, two Division I coaches disrespectfully dropped Florida to 11th and 13th in the polls.

Well, Friday morning, as Spurrier rubbed the party out of his eyes, it indeed became official.

Florida swept both pillars of the national title, winning the Associated Press and USA Today/CNN coaches’ polls in landslides.

Florida received 65 1/2 first-place votes in the AP poll; runner-up Ohio State received 1 1/2 votes.

Marc Katz, who works for the Dayton (Ohio) News, assured himself good restaurant seating in Columbus when he cast a lone first-place vote for Ohio State. Rich Kozlowski, a writer for the Journal of Martinsburg, W.Va., split his No. 1 vote.

The Gators garnered 58 first-place votes in the coaches’ poll, with Ohio State getting four. The coaches vote anonymously.

The landslide muted Ohio State Coach John Cooper’s claims that his 11-1 team deserved a piece of the national championship, although not the cries for reform in the current system.

In no other sport does the winning coach have to ask the next morning if he won the championship.

In no other sport--OK, it’s like this in boxing--do back-room politics and old-boys’ networks play such a large role in determining champions.

Ridiculous?

Of course.

Even though fate and the polls were kind to the Gators this year, it did not affect Spurrier’s position on the subject.

“A playoff would be better for all concerned,” he said Friday.

Spurrier joked that he should send Texas Coach John Mackovic and Cooper a couple of national championship rings.

“That’s why we’re here,” Spurrier said. “I think we get plenty of money [from the Sugar Bowl]. Send them something.”

Florida was able to get another shot at No. 1 Florida State and a chance for the title only because Texas upset No. 3 Nebraska in the Big 12 Conference title game and Ohio State beat No. 2 Arizona State in the Rose Bowl.

“God smiled on us, he gave us another chance, gave us a mulligan, as we call it on the golf course,” Spurrier said.

The reality is that there is no playoff in Division I-A college football and will not be one in the near future.

“Right now, that’s not the consensus with the NCAA,” Tom Mickle, Atlantic Coast Conference associate commissioner, said.

The reality is the alliance is the best bad answer to a bad situation.

The problem is existing bowls are mules when it comes to change, with ritual passed down through generations like family heirlooms.

“To break those traditions is one of the most difficult things around,” Southeastern Conference Commissioner Roy Kramer said.

Short of a playoff, and a perfect world, the alliance was formed two years ago to try to match the highest-ranked teams in a national championship game.

And, for all the fuss, isn’t that what happened this year?

“We got here,” said Kramer, the alliance coordinator. “It took the last 13 seconds of the Rose Bowl for it to happen.”

Short of a playoff, in a perfect world, Florida and Ohio State would not even be in this title discussion. Short of a playoff, Florida State and Arizona State, the only undefeated teams before the bowls, should have played for the national title in the Sugar Bowl.

That couldn’t happen because the Rose Bowl is not yet in the alliance.

“No concept is perfect,” Kramer said. “We’re in the evolutionary stage of the process.”

In one major leap forward, beginning after the 1998 season, the champion of the Pacific 10 and/or Big Ten conferences will be allowed out of its Rose Bowl obligation if either team is ranked first or second nationally.

“I don’t think you realize,” Kramer said, “the stride we made with the Rose Bowl was an enormous stride.”

Mickle said a playoff may be feasible “down the road,” but added that the alliance should work to improve the system until then.

“We should be comparing the alliance to what was before,” he said.

Mickle was referring to the antiquated bowl days when deals were cut in smoke-filled back rooms with little regard for title implications.

Kramer agreed.

“We used to cut deals in late October,” he said, “sometimes August. If nothing else, we’ve slowed down the selection process.”

Kramer said you will never be able to satisfy everyone.

“Certainly, we’ll have controversy after it’s over,” he said the morning of the Sugar Bowl. “We might get a headline in Columbus after it’s over. That’s not all bad.”

The more pressing issue is the alliance’s relationship with the four Division I-A conferences that were not invited to be members.

Cooper, one of five coaches of teams with one loss, claims his team should share No. 1? But what about No. 5 Brigham Young, which went 14-1 but did not qualify for a major bowl because the Western Athletic Conference was not allowed to join the alliance?

The Cougars were ranked higher than three teams that went to $8-million alliance bowls--Penn State, Virginia Tech and Texas.

BYU settled for the $2-million Cotton Bowl, and answered the doubters with a win over alliance member Kansas State.

Kramer comes off as disingenuous when he says BYU had a fair shot at one of two at-large picks.

“The WAC is in the equation,” Kramer insisted. “They have a 100% shot.”

Kramer claims the alliance was only formed to help pair the top two teams in a title game.

“It was never intended to work toward a playoff, never intended for No. 3 and No. 4 to play in another bowl,” he said.

To further move toward equity, the alliance should adopt the WAC’s proposal to guarantee a non-alliance conference team an automatic at-large bid if that school ranks in the top 10. In the end, the alliance looked like Jake “the Snake” Plummer as it wiggled itself out of another fix.

Sometimes, being lucky is just as important as being good.

“We have been a team of destiny,” Spurrier conceded. “That’s all you can say. It was meant to be.”

COOPER’S CRY

John Cooper’s plea for a share of the national title would have had more weight had Florida pulled out a squeaker against Florida State. But the Gators’ dominance in the win should end the discussion, at least outside Columbus.

Yes, five teams finished with one loss. The bottom line is Florida’s lone defeat was a three-point loss to Florida State on the road. Ohio State’s defeat was a four-point loss to Michigan at home. That great Michigan team Cooper keeps mentioning? It finished 8-4.

The Gators beat the Seminoles by 32 points in the rematch. Cooper is still 1-7-1 against Michigan.

HURRY-UP OFFENSE

Spurrier already is fending off rumors he will use his latest success to jump to the NFL. He already has turned down an offer from the Atlanta Falcons. “There will always be a 1% door open no matter what job you have in life,” Spurrier said. “But it will be very difficult to leave my roots, the University of Florida, the beach, golf courses. I’ve got it good down in the state of Florida.”

Turns out Florida did get to catch the end of the Rose Bowl after all. Spurrier said the team checked into its hotel in Gonzales, La., just outside Baton Rouge, with five minutes left in the game between Ohio State and Arizona State. “It was very, very quiet when Arizona State scored,” Spurrier said. “We watched the last two drives. Of course, when Ohio State scored, and the final gun went off, all the guys sort of walked out of the Holiday Inn there yelling and screaming. It was an extra boost, just like when Texas beat Nebraska.”

Spurrier all but extended his quarterback, Danny Wuerffel, an offer to join him on his coaching staff someday. The mild-mannered Wuerffel, though, said he would consider coaching only junior high or high school because of the pressures of being a major college coach. How would Wuerffel compare to Spurrier?

“I don’t know if I’d throw my hat,” Wuerffel said. The senior quarterback admitted the strain of the last month has worn on him. “I just want to go somewhere where no one knows you and relax,” he said.