This Sport’s Power Base Has Gone South

Time was, in this country, when football meant Yale-Harvard. Or Princeton-Penn.

Then, the big game of the year was Notre Dame-Army. But Army couldn’t recruit the semi-sociopaths you need to win on the field today. They drifted out of the big time.

Sometime in the ‘30s, the country began hearing of a new cult of football players called “the Trojans.” From a part of the country known only for its movie stars, they were famous for suiting up this batch of big, blond track-and-field specialists who manned not only their school’s football fortunes, but, often, the U.S. Olympic team as well.

Notre Dame put them on the schedule and on the map. Also on coast-to-coast radio. They used to monopolize the nation’s first bowl game--the Rose--and they won those bowl games by 47-14 and 35-0 scores against the flower of the East and South. Some of their players became top Hollywood players--John Wayne, for example.

Sometime in the post-war ‘40s, another part of the country began to be heard from--the South. Teams from Alabama to Texas began to make their presence felt. College football became a semi-religion there. Coaches became demigods.

But Florida in those days was just some place New Yorkers went for the winter, and it was the doormat of those Dixie conferences until, subtly, the state began to fill up as the rest of the United States left the Rust Belt for the Sun Belt.

Florida became a football powerhouse. For one thing, the descendants of a long line of cotton choppers and cane cutters proved as hard and skilled as the sons of the coal miners and wheat farmers of the Big Ten.

All of a sudden, the No. 1 teams in the nation weren’t from Ohio State or Southern California anymore, they were from Miami, Tallahassee and Gainesville. All of a sudden they had practice fields full of young men who could all run the 40 in 4.3, bench-press a Cadillac or heave a spiral through three counties. Football became a giant bowl of orange juice.

So now, on this Saturday in September, in the Coliseum, here were these upstarts from Florida State, these Johnny-come-latelies teeing it up against the guys who really started it all, the Southern California Trojans.

As if this weren’t gall enough, they were coming here ranked No. 5 vs. the once lordly Trojans rated, oh, say, 20th.

How dare they? Who does their coach, Bobby Bowden, think he is? Rockne? Howard Jones? Pop Warner?

It was up to SC Saturday to restore order, to strike a blow for tradition, put these cheeky upstarts in their place.

As this is written, tradition’s nose is bleeding. Its ear is torn.

The scepter is passing. The dreaded ‘Noles (short for Seminoles, if you can believe it) of Florida State struck a blow for the land of Gators and ‘Canes (for Hurricanes) Saturday. The capital of all football is south of the Swanee and East of the Gulf of Mexico.

They came in and pasted the team of John Wayne, 14-7. I mean, where was the spirit of John Wayne, Cotton Warburton, the McKeever twins, Jon Arnett, Mike Garrett, Johnny Baker, Sam Cunningham and all those guys who used to make SC the scourge of college football?

I mean, Gifford played here. Marcus Allen. SC used to make a specialty of knocking that chip off the shoulder of these pretenders. SC used to like it when these la-di-da teams would come in here flaunting their AP polls, waving their press clippings, poking their index fingers in the air.

Notre Dame came in here like that once. Riding a 21-game winning streak, boasting a backfield of All-Everythings, a line full of nose-breakers. SC ruined their season, 14-14.

But it was not to be this time. These Floridians, Lord knows, tried to help the Californians. They went around bumping into each other. They kicked a field goal with 24 seconds to play in the half--but proved to have 12 men on the field at the time. I guess math is not their strong suit.

They once had the ball on the Trojan 34, fourth down and short yardage. And they punted in the end zone. For a net gain of 14 yards and loss of ball. Another time, a Florida player caught a Trojan punt and razzled and dazzled his way 70 yards for a touchdown. But a teammate clipped on the play.

They didn’t beat themselves. But they tried. Once, they had a fourth down and about two feet to go on the Trojan goal line--and they divined a brilliant play where they threw the ball backward. Naturally, it didn’t work.

Their coach’s bulletin-board pep talk as they took the field was hardly out of Rockne. “Bloody their noses!” exhorted Bobby Bowden. Actually, most of the game they just reddened their own faces.

Still, they emerge as the class of college football. Howard Jones might be unimpressed. Rockne would call them girls. Lombardi would threaten to cut their scholarships.

But, winning ugly is still winning. The mother lode of college football is not South Bend anymore. Or Columbus. Ann Arbor. It’s a Bermuda Triangle beginning in Tallahassee and swinging down to Gainesville and Miami.

It was a great game only if you’re crazy about punts. Eighteen of them in all.

But, if you’re a pro scout, or just an advance man for the All-American and the Heisman Trophy, try the Atlantic seaboard. They’ve got the key players--and the police blotters to prove it (nine players are on suspension at Florida State for various crimes).

But the football capital has moved with the rest of the country to Ponce de Leon country. Maybe we have to let them host the Rose Bowl.