COLLEGE FOOTBALL

SATURDAY'S HEROES...

They were quarterbacks all:

Navy's Alton Grizzard. Grizzard, a plebe, rushed 23 times from the wishbone for 225 yards and three touchdowns as the Middies beat Penn 38-28 to break a 12-game losing streak.

Michigan's Demetrius Brown. Brown, a junior, rebounded from his seven interceptions against Michigan State on Oct. 10 to complete 14 of 19 passes for three touchdowns. He ran for another score and had no interceptions as the Wolverines trounced Iowa 37-10.

Idaho's John Friesz. Friesz, a sophomore, had 35 completions in 51 attempts for 363 yards and five touchdowns in a 38-28 win over Nevada-Reno.

New Mexico Highlands' Brian Ainsworth. Ainsworth, a senior, threw for 492 yards in a 42-42 tie with Colorado Mines. That gave him 10,194 passing yards for his career, an NAIA record.

Georgia's Wayne Johnson. Johnson, a junior reserve, ran for three touchdowns in the second half to rally the Bulldogs against Vanderbilt. The Dawgs won, 52-24.

...AND SATURDAY'S GOATS

The Oregon offense. The Ducks relinquished the ball seven times—with three interceptions and four fumbles—in their 41-10 loss to UCLA. "I feel like I must be coaching the United Way fund drive," said Rich Brooks charitably.

The Tennessee offense. The Vols were nearly as generous as the Ducks, losing the ball on four interceptions and two fumbles in a 41-22 loss to Alabama.

LOW TECH

On Saturday, when visiting Auburn beat Georgia Tech 20-10, the second-longest rivalry in southern football came to a close. The teams first met in 1892 and have played annually since 1906, with the exception of one year during World War II. In 1992 the series will resume on a two-year-on, two-year-off basis.

Tech claims that a scheduling conflict necessitated the change. "We had to standardize our conference schedule and start playing Maryland in the middle of the season," says the Yellow Jackets' sports information director, Mike Finn. Auburn suspects that its superiority over the last decade—the Tigers hold a 47-39-4 series lead—is the reason that Georgia Tech decided to pack it in. "We didn't drop Tech when we got beat 13 times in a row from 1941 to '54," says David Housel, Finn's counterpart at Auburn. "We're very disappointed. The Georgia-Auburn rivalry is the only longer one in the South [their first meeting was nine months before the inaugural Tech-Tiger game]. It won't be the same when we start playing again. What if you had Christmas every four years?"

The competition between the two engineering schools has been intense. Before the game at Auburn in 1896, partisan fervor got out of hand when the first annual Wreck Tech Pajama Parade didn't end at the football field as planned. "The students went down to the railroad station and smeared pig grease all over the rails," says Housel. As a result the train carrying the Georgia Tech players slid right through Auburn, and they had to walk five miles back to town. It's believed that Auburn coach John Heisman, after whom the trophy is named, was behind the prank. Heisman was 3-0 against Tech when he coached the Tigers. Then, after a stint at Clemson, he became coach at Georgia Tech and went 5-10 against Auburn.

The Wreck Tech Pajama Parade remains a hallowed pregame tradition at Auburn. Each year students clad in pajamas march to Jordan-Hare Stadium chanting, "Wreck Tech, wreck Tech, wreck the hell out of Georgia Tech!" For a while in the 1920s the parade even had a road-game version. Tiger fans would lug a huge ball to Atlanta, and on the morning of the game they would roll it down Peachtree Street, yelling, "We're going to roll right over Georgia Tech!" Even as Auburn rolled on last week, a tradition came to a stop.

PRESIDENTIAL PRESSURES

Football has proved to be the undoing of more than one college president. In 1985 Clemson's Bill Atchley tried to restructure the athletic department and was pressured to resign. Fred Davison and L. Donald Shields, the presidents of Georgia and SMU, respectively, departed largely because of the pressures generated by football-related scandals.

Now Joab Thomas is feeling the heat at Alabama. Thomas handpicked first-year coach Bill Curry at least as much for Curry's emphasis on academics as for his record (31-43-4) at Georgia Tech. 'Bama is 5-2, but a lot of its fans are unimpressed, even after Saturday's 41-22 win over Tennessee. While one bad season won't get Thomas—or, one assumes, Curry—fired, his comments on the subject last week gave little cheer to those who put scholarship first and athletics second. "The board of trustees wouldn't consider the record of a football coach in evaluating me," said Thomas. "Of course, I might find so much unpleasantness in a situation that I might not want to put up with it."

KEEPING THE BEAT

Miami was idle on Saturday, which made other teams happy. The Hurricanes have ripped through four opponents by the combined score of 154-52, thereby posing the question: At what point does winning big constitute running it up? After the 'Canes beat Maryland 46-16 two weeks ago, Terp athletic director Lew Perkins said, "Talk about classless. We will never again play Miami as long as I am athletic director."

Perkins was fuming because, with 11 seconds left in the game, Miami freshman quarterback Craig Erickson threw a three-yard touchdown pass to second-string junior flanker Andre Brown. But Miami coach Jimmy Johnson pleads innocent to running it up: "It's interesting that on a week when Florida wins 65-0 and Florida State wins 61-10, with [star wide receiver] Herb Gainer scoring its 61st point on a pass with 15 seconds left, we would be accused of running it up."

The Hurricanes are playing an entirely different game than are the Terps. Miami plays 60 minutes a week for the national title. Its competition on any Saturday isn't just the other team on the field. It's also Oklahoma, Nebraska and even Florida State, whom the 'Canes have already beaten. Those teams score dozens of points every week—yes, they, too, run it up—and Miami looks less impressive if it doesn't keep pace.

Pity poor Cincinnati, which has to face the rested Hurricanes this weekend.

CHALK TALK

Before playing UCLA on Saturday, Oregon, then 4-1, debuted in several Top 20 polls, including SI's. Ducks linebacker Tom Talbot kept it all in perspective. "Ratings don't mean anything until you're the national champion," he said. "I heard the Miami and Oklahoma guys say that on TV." Healthy attitude, Tom. Oregon was crushed by the Bruins....

Baylor coach Grant Teaff issued a ban on table tennis before the Bears' game against Texas A & M on Saturday. On Oct. 9, Baylor quarterback Brad Goebel sprained his ankle while battling flanker Bobby Jack Goforth across the net. Goebel played against the Aggies, but the Bears were pinged 34-10....

North Carolina strong safety Norris Davis has four touchdowns this season, tops among the Tar Heels, and he has scored them in all sorts of ways. In Saturday's 17-14 win over N.C. State, he recovered an errant punt snap in the end zone for six points. Previously Davis had run in a blocked punt against Auburn, returned an interception for a TD against Illinois and grabbed a fumble in midair and rambled 27 yards to the end zone against Navy....

Bucknell coach George Landis thinks that unbeaten Holy Cross may be getting some help from above. On the morning of the Bison's 48-10 loss to the Cross, Landis wandered into Bucknell's near-empty Memorial Stadium and noticed a priest standing before the Crusaders' bench and talking into a headset. Landis glanced up at the press box to see who was on the other end of the line. The box was empty.

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ILLUSTRATION

KIMBLE MEAD

PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

OFFENSE: San Diego State's Todd Santos completed 40 of 60 passes for 536 yards and Jive touchdowns in a 44-40 loss to Stanford. Santos, a senior, now has 60 career TD passes, a school record, and is sixth on the alltime NCAA passing-yardage list.

DEFENSE: Idaho State linebacker Mike Calley, a senior, had a school-record 27 tackles in a 32-23 defeat at the hands of Northern Arizona. He also now has 116 tackles for the year and 365 for his career. Each total is a record for the Vandals.

SPECIAL TEAMS: UCLA tackle Randy Austin, a freshman, recovered two fumbles on Oregon punt returns and scored a TD on a fake punt in a 41-10 rout. While his teammates went right, Austin took a handoff from behind and rumbled left for 38 yards.