Section B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, August 27, 1996
Gators to take field as SEC favorites again
Florida remains team to beat in conference
The Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala — Wrestling the title away from Florida was one thing. Eliminating the swagger could prove more difficult.
A season after failing to win the Southeastern Conference for the first time since 1992, the Gators hardly seem like a team on a downside. Rather, they're confident — what's new? — and excited about entering the season with a strong defense in a league full of unproven quarterbacks.
They relish their role as favorites. They were ranked third in The Associated Press preseason poll and are the clear choice to climb back to the top of what is considered by many to be the country's toughest conference.
"I like that," said Florida coach Steve Spurrier, who was seemingly unfazed by Florida's failure to defend the 1996 national and conference titles last year. "We want our players to know we're supposed to win it. We don't want them to feel
like it's a fluke if we do win it."
Florida finished 9-2 and continued its mastery against Tennessee last season by beating the Volunteers for the fifth straight time. But the Gators slipped against LSU and Georgia, which cost them the SEC East and a chance to match Alabama's record of five consecutive league championships.
Georgia, Tennessee and LSU should again be Florida's main threats, but all have noticeable weaknesses; Tennessee comes in without Peyton Manning, Georgia went into camp mired in a five-man battle of inexperienced quarterbacks and LSU has a strong nucleus but no recent history of stringing together important wins.
Still, the preseason hype has surrounded the defense.
Defensive lineman Ed Chester is a strong All-American candidate, and are linebackers Johnny Rutledge and Jevon Kearse. Kearse, known as "The Freak" by his teammates, is 6-foot-5, 255 pounds and runs the
"It's still Florida, Florida, Florida wherever you go," said defensive lineman Charles Dorsey of Auburn, which won the SEC West last season. "Spurrier brings his reputation wherever he goes. Even when the offense isn't great, you have to believe they can put up 60 points at any time."
"It's still Florida, Florida, Florida wherever you go. Spurrier brings his reputation wherever he goes. Even when the offense isn't great, you have to believe they can put up 60 points at any time."
Charles Dorsey
Auburn defensive lineman
40 in 4.5 seconds.
On offence, Spurrier eventually will decide between sophomore Jesse Palmer and junior Doug Johnson at quarterback. Johnson is coming off shoulder surgery after overthrowing in football and his second career, minor league baseball, and won't be available for Florida's Sept. 5 opener against The Citadel.
He threw for 2,023 yards and 21 touchdowns last year before finding his way into Spurrier's doghouse. Many people predict the unsettled quarterback situation is a sign that Spurrier will have to water down the offense, but the coach hasn't committed to that yet.
"I don't know what we'll do," he said. "If you hit a whole bunch of passes early, you keep pitching. If you can't hit anything, then you slow down and try something different. It's really not that complicated."
Georgia's Jim Donnan may not enjoy that flexibility. Heading into camp, he was trying to decide between junior Jon England (five career passes), sophomore Mike Usry (seven) and freshmen Nate Hybl and Quincy Carter to replace Mike Bobo.
Otherwise, Donnan's got a solid core — including receiver-defensive back Champ Bailey — returning from a team that won 10 games last season and snapped a seven-year losing streak against the Gators.
"We do have a good defense, we have a good offensive line," said Donnan, who enters his third year at Georgia. "For the first time since I've been there, we're going to line up against a lot of teams and say, 'Hey, we're going to run the ball, you've got to stop us.'"
Tennessee figures to do the same, basing more of its offense around 1,364-yard rusher Jamal Lewis than
quarterback Tee Martin, who spent the last two years watching Manning play.
This could be the farewell for quarterback Tim Couch at Kentucky if the junior picks up from where he left off last season. He looked like a sure bet for the NFL under coach Hal Mumme's new offense last season, throwing for 3,884 yards and 37 touchdowns.
South Carolina coach Brad Scott will fight for his job this year after going 22-22-1 in his first four seasons. Vanderbilt led the conference in defense last season but failed to win an SEC game.
In the West, LSU appears to be the favorite. Senior quarterback Herb Tyler will run a ground-based offense centered on tailbacks Kevin Faulk (1,144 yards in 1997) and Rondell Mealey (664 vards).
The Tigers finished 9-3 last year. They lost to Auburn and Mississippi and finished second for the second straight season. This looks like LSU's turn to break through, but coach Gerry DiNardo refuses to put that pressure on his team.
"I don't ever want to think we're so fragile that one thing is going to make that big a statement about our program," DINardo said.
Auburn won 10 last year and came within a point of taking the SEC title but lost quarterback
Dameyune Craig to graduation, linebacker Takeo Spikes to the NFL, receiver Robert Baker to a drug conviction and — most recently — two starting offensive linemen who left for personal reasons.
Mississippi State's Jackie Sherrill has built his usual assortment of stout linenen and put the defense in the hands of innovative coordinator Joe Lee Dunn. As always, the Bulldogs could be a threat but must remain healthy because the team lacks depth.
Mississippi made its first bowl game since 1992 last year in what coach Tommy Tuberville called a "miracle season." Sophomore quarterback Romaro Miller will be asked to replace the offensive explosiveness that departed tailback John Avery provided last year.
Alabama coach Mike DuBose apparently feels untested senior quarterback John David Phillips will give the Crimson Tide a better chance to win this season than top recruit Tyler Watts.
Arkansas is the only SEC team with a new coach. Houston Nutt takes over for Danny Ford after the Razorbacks followed their 1995 SEC West title with consecutive 2-6 conference records.
Notre Dame begins to recover from troubled season
The Associated Press
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — If the absence of aggravation marks a good day, second-year Notre Dame coach Bob Davie is finally on a roll.
He's back to coaching instead of cringing, teaching instead of testifying, confident that he and his team are about to put a tumultuous couple of months behind them. Davie would have found filling Lou Holtz's shoes tough enough. But to put it kindly, he found himself embroiled in the kind of off-season you'd expect Barry Switzer to have if he somehow wound up in charge of the Fighting Irish.
Coming off a 7-6 rookie season, Davie landed squarely in the middle of an age-discrimination law.
suit filed by an assistant whose firing had been one of his first coaching moves. That came only a few months after the university learned that a secretary for a local company who had a child by one former player was using some of the $1 million she embezzled from her employer to lavish gifts on a handful of players. Throw in reports of peeping-Tom players and screaming coaches, and it's not hard to understand why one emboldened headline writer renamed the school "Notre Shame."
"I had the opportunity to be here for three years as an assistant, so I had a taste of the kind of pressure this place can generate," Davie said Tuesday by phone. "Then again, I don't know that anything could have prepared anyone for
what hapened here the last few months." Th e scandal touched off by secretary Kim Dunbar's gifts of jewelry, sports tickets and trips for some current and former players is still open on three fronts. There is the criminal case being brought by the St. Joseph County prosecutor, a civil case brought by Dunbar's former employer and an ongoing NCAA investigation that could bring more grief than the first two combined.
But Davie did receive good news Monday when the NCAA cleared five players who had gone to a
Chicago Bulls game with Dunbar of any wrongdoing and declared them eligible for the upcoming season. With defending national champion Michigan first up on Notre Dame's schedule, the announcement had plenty of practical value. But it might have been even more important as a contribution to Davie's sense of momentum.
Two weeks ago, his first recruiting class arrived on campus.
"After all the agravation, it reminded me what I liked most about coaching," Davie said. "All these freshmen showing up on campus with their parents for the first time, discovering the things that make this place special — that made it easy to see how bright the future will be at Notre Dame."
Two days after that, the varsity
followed, reminding him that the past hadn't been all aggravation, either. Included among the returning players was senior captain Mike Rosenthal, who turned up in court as a witness against Davie and the school in a lawsuit brought by former line coach Joe Moore.
Rosenthal's deposition wasn't the only shock the trial offered. Among other things, testimony revealed dissension among the staff during Holtz's reign and several incidents of coaches roughing up players. There was even one instance of Moore making some players do calisthenics in a parking lot at 1 a.m. after catching them peering into the window of a hotel during a road trip to Dublin, Ireland.
was 64 at the time of his firing,
$86,000 in back pay and damages. It
took Davie considerably less time to
realize it wasn't going to cost
him his team. Because for all the
ways that Notre Dame was special,
it reacted to trouble the same ways
all teams do — by pulling together.
A federal court jury needed less than a week to award Moore, who
"This place prides itself on being unique. But the one thing all of us had to realize," Davie said, "is that what happened was not unique to Notre Dame."
Asked what he planned to say to his team before the Michigan game, Davie paused.
"I don't think I'll have to spend much time motivating them. I'll tell them that beginning now, we control what's going to happen," he said. "After what we went through, that should be all the motivation they'll need."
Wrestlers
INFO MEETING:
Thursday, August 27, at
9:30 p.m. in room
207 Robinson
We provide the opportunity to learn folk-style wrestling and bring competitive wrestling to the students of KU.
Join the KU Wrestling Club For more info call Tom at 838-3408
KU Roller Hockey Club
Attention
"NO COUPON SPECIALS" EVERYDAY
will have an informational meeting on Thursday, August 27, at 6:00p.m., on the main floor of the Kansas Union (4th floor).
Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
Questions? Call Sean at 864-8243
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