Ten Questions

Answers Begin to Arrive Sept. 1, but Here Are Our Best Guesses

By Eric Prisbell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page H8

What annual controversy will the Bowl Championship Series spark in 2005?
It is not a question of if, but when the mildly tweaked BCS system will cause havoc. In the past couple years, the specific circumstance has been unforeseen, but trouble inevitably emerged, be it with the voters, the computers or the supposed experts who devised the computer rankings.

Two years ago there was one controversy, but it was significant. The top-ranked team in both the Associated Press and USA Today-ESPN polls, Southern California, was not ranked in the top two of the BCS standings, meaning the Trojans did not play in the so-called national title game in New Orleans. USC staged its own coronation in the Rose Bowl that year, beating Michigan to earn half the national title it has yet to relinquish.

For fans of chaos, last season was better. For starters, five teams finished the regular season undefeated, and only two, USC and Oklahoma, could play for the national title game in the Orange Bowl, leaving Auburn, Utah and Boise State to fend for leftovers. Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville, fresh off a Sugar Bowl victory over Virginia Tech, openly campaigned for his team while the Trojans and Sooners played for the championship.

Speaking of lobbying, Texas Coach Mack Brown stumped for his Longhorns near the end of the regular season just to get into a BCS bowl. It worked: California, despite ending its season by beating Southern Mississippi while Texas was off, lost ground to the Longhorns in both human polls. Texas played in the Rose Bowl, Cal was relegated to the Holiday Bowl, and several voters received hundreds of e-mails that did not wish them a happy New Year.

In July, the BCS announced that the AP poll would be replaced by the Harris top 25, a poll of more than 100 voters, including media members and former players and coaches. Unlike the AP poll, the first Harris poll won't be released until Sept. 25. The formula to compute the BCS standings, two-thirds human polls and one-third computer rankings, remains the same, which should guarantee a headache come November.

Can Leinart hold off a teammate and a super sophomore for another Heisman?
If Matt Leinart finishes his college career with three national championships, two Heismans and a few more A-list Hollywood buddies, college was probably a worthy pursuit for the young man. He would be among the all-time greats, joining Ohio State's Archie Griffin as the only player to win two Heismans. And Leinart would have done it under different assistants. USC offensive guru Norm Chow headed to the Tennessee Titans after last season, leaving Leinart to pursue quarterback graduate work under Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin, two capable minds.

Leinart's toughest Heisman competition could come from the man who lines up behind him, Trojans running back Reggie Bush, as well as Oklahoma sophomore Adrian Peterson, who finished second last season, the best placement ever for a freshman.
Able challengers lurk around the country. Among quarterbacks, Texas's Vince Young, Texas A&M's Reggie McNeal and Florida's Chris Leak will be in the conversation. Others who will threaten include Ohio State wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., Michigan wideout Steve Breaston and Memphis running back DeAngelo Williams.

Which coach will first crack under pressure: Florida's Meyer or Notre Dame's Weis?
Odds are neither will because, for starters, neither has time to. There is much work to be done in both South Bend and Gainesville, but without question Weis drew the tougher assignment. The strongest evidence of that is the fact that Meyer, a former Irish assistant, passed on Notre Dame to take over the Gators from Ron Zook, who recruited well but neither won enough nor proved a strong disciplinarian.

Questions persist about how well athletic quarterback Chris Leak will fare in Meyer's system, which was so potent at Utah. Yet the Gators could land in the BCS, especially because they will host Tennessee. Meyer already has played the disciplinarian. He has created a "Champions Club," rewarding players for good behavior and has reportedly designated players to pop into local night spots on weekends to make sure teammates behave.

Meantime at Notre Dame, quarterback Brady Quinn took significant strides last season and should tap all of his potential under the guidance of Weis, whose last pupil, Tom Brady, hasn't done too poorly with the New England Patriots. The offense will be fine. Weis wants to game-scheme opponents into submission, and he'll likely have no choice because Notre Dame will be outmanned defensively. Four of its first six opponents are top 25-cailber schools. Notre Dame needs what it has not had: patience.

Will Texas beat Oklahoma this decade?
Study both rosters and you are tempted to say the streak of five straight Sooners victories ends Oct. 8 in Dallas. But think it over again and pause before answering. Imagine being Texas Coach Mack Brown, who has encountered his version of Groundhog Day one Saturday each October this decade.

In 2004, Brown after a 12-0 loss: "I'm really proud of the effort my guys gave. And they made some plays. They just didn't make enough inside the 30."

In 2003, Brown after a 65-13 loss: "When you get beat this badly, you as a coach have done something wrong. I have to go back and look at me."

In 2002, Brown after a 35-24 loss: "We can't sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. . . . We lost this game last year and had a chance to play for the national championship."

In 2001, Brown after a 14-3 loss: "There were two defenses that played great games out there. The only thing was they forced turnovers and we didn't."

In 2000, Brown after a 63-14 loss: "This is embarrassing to me. It's frustrating. I did a poor job. Nobody can screw it up as bad as I did today."

Which school will be this season's Utah?
Utah, out of the Mountain West, cracked through what had been an impenetrable boundary by making it to a BCS bowl game, but it needed a Heisman Trophy finalist, Alex Smith, and a hot-shot coach, Urban Meyer, to do it. The Utes trounced Pittsburgh, 35-7, in a Fiesta Bowl matchup that was every bit as anticlimactic and noncompetitive as it was expected to be.

There is no guarantee that a "mid-major" team can gain a berth again. The only scenario in which a team from one of the five non-BCS conferences is guaranteed a slot is if it finishes ranked in the top six of the BCS standings.

The team to watch is Boise State, whose only loss last season was to Louisville in the Liberty Bowl. Two games could trip up the Broncos: Sept. 3 at Georgia and Nov. 10 at Fresno State, their primary Western Athletic Conference rival. Boise players have already taken note that Fresno has gotten more preseason hype than they have.

Fresno State Coach Pat Hill acknowledges that if his team goes unbeaten, it won't be excluded like Boise was last season. Why? The Bulldogs play at Southern California on Nov. 19 in Fresno's Super Bowl.

Also watch Mid-American Conference favorite Bowling Green, featuring perhaps the best player not in a major conference in quarterback Omar Jacobs. Boise Coach Dan Hawkins said that when Bowling Green visits the Broncos on Sept. 21, the teams will combine for 150 points. The numbers that will matter most, however, are the BCS computations.

Can the Ol' Ball Coach be as successful as he is entertaining?
Steve Spurrier lacked his trademark swagger during last month's Southeastern Conference media day. This is a man who in his pre-NFL days called Florida State "Free Shoes University" after an NCAA scandal and said, "You can't spell Citrus without UT," poking fun at Tennessee's repeated appearances in the Florida Citrus Bowl. He pledged last month to cut down on the jokes, perhaps because his team could be the punch line this fall.

"We need to beat somebody first before those guys are going to worry about South Carolina," Spurrier said of the SEC's upper echelon. The Gamecocks don't figure to finish any higher than fourth in the SEC East, but that's not the only problem in Columbia. The university has proposed two years of probation and a reduction of four scholarships because of violations that occurred under the watch of former coach Lou Holtz; it awaits the NCAA's final verdict. And Spurrier already has upset state high school coaches after he revoked a few scholarships from players.

Even if two seasons with the Washington Redskins have wiped away his smirk, Spurrier promises to be entertaining for media and fans. When asked a seemingly innocuous question whether taking over at South Carolina was similar to when he arrived at Florida, Spurrier said: "Could be. Both schools were under investigation." He also is blunt about returning to the college ranks, saying, "It was a lot more fun hanging around the SEC than it was in the other league I was in a couple years ago."

Have happy days arrived again in Happy Valley?
Change is afoot at Penn State.

Believe it or not, Joe Paterno has publicly lauded two of his freshmen this summer, something he has preferred not to do during his previous 39 years coaching the Nittany Lions. He admits times have changed and kids are now more prepared for big-time college football after enduring high-profile recruitments that involve, among other pleasantries, their teenage lives being dissected by zany Internet message board loyalists. That certainly applies to freshmen Derrick Williams, the wide receiver-return man, and Justin King, a defensive back, two of the nation's finest recruits who could figure prominently into Penn State's resurgence this season.

Four losing seasons in the past five years have taken the luster off Paterno's final years at Penn State, if the career of the 78-year-old coach is in fact nearing a finale. He won't admit as much. If Paterno, who has 343 career victories, is to have another winning season, this could be his best opportunity. Nine starters return on a defense that did not allow more than 21 points in any game last season. The offense will be bolstered by the presence of the former Eleanor Roosevelt star Williams, and it can't be much worse -- remember the 6-4 loss to Iowa?

Paterno still loves to coach. He walks six miles some days. He still can function on five hours sleep. And he wakes up to pop in game tape of South Florida, Penn State's first opponent.

"If you said to me, take everything else out of my life," Paterno said at Big Ten media day. "All the problems, personal problems. . . . I'm a football coach. I could coach 10 more years."

Do the "hillbillies" strike back?
Granted, Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan called some Oklahoma fans "hillbillies," but for as welcome as he is likely feeling, he might as well have directed the comment to the entire Midwest. News bulletin: Cornhuskers fans aren't happy with their second-year coach, who is not a product of the once-dominant program and who overhauled the team's long-successful option attack in favor of the West Coast offense.

Oh, yeah, Nebraska also had played in the postseason every year from 1969 until last year, when Callahan directed the Cornhuskers to their first losing season since 1961. In the six previous seasons, former coach Frank Solich won 58 games, which wasn't enough to keep his job. The good news in Lincoln is that Callahan is only one of a few Big 12 North Division coaches on the hot seat, joining Colorado's Gary Barnett and Missouri's Gary Pinkel.

Callahan overwhelmed his players last season by implementing his entire offensive system. He acknowledged during last month's conference media gathering that coaches first need to establish credibility with their players before they can expect them to grasp schemes.

"Before you get into Xs and Os, you really have to develop a relationship with your players," Callahan said. "I have always contended that players really don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

How sweet. The relationship best improve because the playbook likely won't get less complex. Regarding the first year with the playbook terminology, lineman Seppo Evwaraye told the Houston Chronicle, "It looked like Hebrew to me and a bunch of other guys."

Does the Big East again turn into the Big Least?
It was almost laughable to some that Pittsburgh earned a BCS berth out of a middling Big East last season, while Utah managed to barely squeeze into the BCS picture and Boise State and Louisville were left on the outside. Pittsburgh, after all, lost to Syracuse, U-Conn. and Nebraska during the regular season. Worse yet, Louisville and Boise gathered in Memphis on New Year's Eve to grieve, calling the meeting the Liberty Bowl.

The conference was not anticipated to be much during a transition season after stalwarts Miami and Virginia Tech left for the ACC, and the diminished expectations were realized.

The Big East now gladly welcomes Louisville, which arrives with Cincinnati and South Florida, giving the league eight teams but only three that are truly bowl-worthy. The conference champion still will earn an automatic BCS berth, which this year should be warranted because Louisville has been ranked among the nation's top 10 teams in some publications.

The depth of the conference remains suspect at best. The league's four bottom teams -- U-Conn., South Florida, Rutgers and Cincinnati -- all were rated no better than 82nd nationally by one magazine.

"The future success of our league is not going to be dependent on one program," Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese said. "For us to really be successful, we have to have a number of programs be successful over a period of time."

That will not occur this season, with a school such as Rutgers still vying for its first bowl game since 1978.

Will instant replay matter?
Nine conferences will follow the lead of the Big Ten, which experimented with instant replay last year. The Sun Belt and Western Athletic conferences won't install a conference-wide system, which is a shame according to San Diego columnist Nick Canepa, who wrote, "Replay sure wouldn't hurt the WAC, a league whose officials couldn't see the Himalayas from Nepal."

The Mountain West is the only league that will allow coaches to challenge calls, NFL-style. But all 28 bowl games are expected use a system similar to the Big Ten after the NCAA grants permission. So, if Wyoming plays Southern California in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 4, the Cowboys would be at a distinct disadvantage because of their unfamiliarity with the nuances of the Big Ten-like system. Talk of a tainted national title would be rampant. Or not.

In Big Ten games last season, 21 plays were overturned out of 43 that were reviewed. A replay official, monitoring televisions in a secured booth, has the discretion to notify on-field officials about an incorrect call. Judgment calls such as holding or pass interference can't be reviewed.

The primary concern has been slowing down games already lagging because of television timeouts. The average review in the Big Ten took 2 minutes 39 seconds. The ACC wants reviews to be around 90 seconds. "What we all want is to get that crucial call right," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said. "I think it will enhance our abilities to do this."