COLLEGE FOOTBALL
SATURDAYS HEROES...
Auburn quarterback Jeff Burger. Burger, who had a difficult week off the field (page 13), completed 18 of 29 passes for 220 yards and a touchdown as the Tigers beat Florida 29-6.
The Auburn defense. Led by linebacker Aundray Bruce and defensive tackle Tracy Rocker, the Tigers held freshman Emmitt Smith to 72 yards rushing on 21 carries—and the rest of the Gators to minus 19. It was the first time in 34 games—dating back to high school—that Smith failed to gain 100 yards in a game in which he started.
Wyoming halfback Gerald Abraham. Abraham rushed for 143 yards and caught five passes for 94 as the Cowboys beat Colorado State 20-15. In the first quarter Abraham, a senior, scored a touchdown on a 69-yard pass play, and in the fourth he ran 58 yards for the winning score.
Brigham Young free safety Scott Peterson. Peterson, a junior, had a game-high 13 tackles, intercepted two passes and recovered a fumble in a 24-13 upset of Air Force.
Duke quarterback Steve Slayden. Slayden, a senior, set an ACC record with six touchdown passes in a 48-14 rout of Georgia Tech. Two weeks after being benched for poor play, he completed 31 of 50 passes for 396 yards.
The Michigan State defense. The Spartans held Ohio State to a net of two yards rushing in a 13-7 victory. After Buckeye quarterback Tom Tupa connected with Everett Ross on a 79-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the game, Michigan State allowed only 68 additional yards on 48 Ohio State plays.
Texas A&I tailback Johnny Bailey. Bailey, a sophomore, carried 29 times for 254 yards and five TDs in a 44-20 victory over West Texas State.
...AND SATURDAYS GOATS
The Tennessee kickoff-return unit. The Vols were unable to field a squib kick by Boston College's Brian Lowe after a third-quarter touchdown. The ball bounced off one Vol's face mask and the Eagles' Jun Anderson fell on it at the Tennessee 49-yard line. BC then drove for what proved to be the deciding touchdown in a 20-18 upset.
Air Force quarterback Dee Dowis. Dowis, a sophomore who is the nation's top rushing quarterback, ran for 78 yards against Brigham Young, but his passing doomed the Falcons. In seven attempts he completed two to teammates and three to defenders as the Cougars won 24-13.
Colorado State halfback Tony Carr. Carr, a freshman, fumbled twice inside the Wyoming 10-yard line during that loss to the Cowboys. Late in the game Carr burst through the middle from the 15 but fumbled at the 5. "If I'd held on to the ball, we would have won the game," he said. "Their defender didn't even hit the ball that hard. I wasn't concentrating on covering it up."
SATURDAY'S MILESTONES
Penn State trailed West Virginia 21-10 in the final period but rallied to win 25-21. Thus, no matter what happens over the next three Saturdays, the 6-2 Nittany Lions are assured of their 49th consecutive nonlosing season, the longest current streak of .500 or better in Division I-A.
The behemoths of the Big Eight, Oklahoma and Nebraska, rolled on. The Sooners trounced Kansas 71-10, and the Huskers beat Missouri 42-7. The victories were the 145th for both Oklahoma's Barry Switzer and Nebraska's Tom Osborne. The two, neither of whom had held a head coaching job before assuming his present post—both in 1973—are tied with former Sooner coach Bud Wilkinson for most career victories in the conference.
LONG ROAD TO HOPE
Hope College's freshman placekicker, Duy Dang, knows all about pressure—of a sort that has nothing to do with booting a football over a crossbar.
With his parents' encouragement, Dang spent much of his youth trying to flee Vietnam. When he was 12, he was arrested twice for attempting to escape from so-called re-education camps just outside Ho Chi Minh City (once Saigon). "I'll never forget working my way through the barbed wire at night, all the time worrying that I was making too much noise," says Dang, who finally did flee. In 1980 he bought passage on a clandestine refugee boat and left the country. After six hours the engine died on the dangerously overloaded boat. For seven days, the craft drifted in the South China Sea before washing ashore in the Philippines. Dang was, at last, free.
After nine months in a Philippine refugee camp, 13-year-old Dang was placed with an American foster family in Ann Arbor, Mich., then with a Vietnamese family in Tecumseh, Mich., and finally with another American family, the Nixes, also in Tecumseh. Wayne Nix is a teacher and football coach at Tecumseh High. Dang told Nix that he'd played a little soccer in Vietnam, and Nix invited him to practice. "My dad said if I liked it, he'd buy me a pair of football shoes and let me on the team," says Dang. "I didn't understand the game at all, but I did like to kick."
By his senior year Dang, 5'9" and 125 pounds, was the team's star field-goal kicker. In September Dang enrolled at Hope College, a Division III school in nearby Holland to study business. He also won a spot on the football team, which last year won the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship and this season has gone 5-3 (4-0 in its conference).
Dang has attempted 10 field goals and has made good on 8 for the Flying Dutchmen. His longest so far is 33 yards against Alma. He is also 23 for 25 on point-after attempts. "Kicking's important to me, so I put pressure on myself to do well," says Dang. Pressure, of course, is relative.
HOLD THAT WAISTLINE
Two teams last week employed variations of the Golden Arches Defense. Before Syracuse played Pitt, Orangemen coach Dick MacPherson revealed his plan for stopping 260-pound Panther tailback Craig Heyward. "We're going to bring in some McDonald's hamburgers, french fries and Cokes to see if we can interest [i.e., distract] him," said MacPherson. Heyward didn't bite; he gained 141 yards on 24 carries and scored a TD on a seven-yard pass reception. Syracuse stayed undefeated anyway, by beating Pitt 24-10.
Meanwhile, the front three in Dartmouth's defense—Derek McDowell, Ish McLaughlin and Brent Frei—are known around campus as the Two Big Macs and a large Frei. Around the Ivy League they're better known as Swiss Cheese. In four conference games, the Big Green has yielded 114 points. On Saturday Yale ate up Dartmouth 17-7.
CHALK TALK
On Saturday morning, Georgia Southern players were seeing red. Beautiful Eagle Creek, which runs right next to the Eagles' practice field, had been dyed with red—Western Kentucky red—paint. Word got around that a bus from Western had stopped near the creek the night before, and three students did the deed as a Halloween prank. "You mess with our creek, you're messing with us," said Georgia Southern cornerback Terry Young. Then he backed up his tough words with two interceptions as the Eagles beat the Hill-toppers 23-20....
The NCAA canceled SMU's football season, but it couldn't ban its band. For much of the autumn the Mustang musicians have been all dressed up with no place to play. But Saturday they were guests of Texas A&M: The Aggies invited the Mustang Band to perform during halftime of their game against Louisiana Tech, which had not planned on bringing its own marching musicians. With so many Texans ganging up on them, the Bulldogs fell to A&M 32-3....
Two weeks ago in this space we reported that North Carolina strong safety Norris Davis had scored four touchdowns this season in four different ways. Now make it five. In Saturday's 27-14 win over ACC-rival Maryland, Davis blocked a punt and then picked up the ball and ran 26 yards for a TD.
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PHOTO
RICHARD MACKSON
ILLUSTRATION
KIMBLE MEAD
PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
OFFENSE:
Quarterback Troy Aikman of UCLA (above), the top passer in Division I-A, completed 22 of 31 attempts for 328 yards and two third-quarter TDs as the Bruins rallied to defeat Arizona State 31-23.
DEFENSE:
Arizona safety Chuck Cecil, a senior, tied a Pac-10 single-game record by intercepting four passes in the Wildcats' 23-13 win over Stanford. He also tied the league career record of 20 interceptions.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
Iowa's Marv Cook, a tight end-turned-punter, averaged 43.3 yards kicking in the rain against Indiana. Cook's longest went 64 yards, and he also made two solo tackles on kickoffs as Iowa won 29-21.