Orange Bowl : The Miami-Oklahoma Winner Deserves Title

MIAMI — In other games, these two teams would have been hailed as heavies. But matched against one another in tonight’s Orange Bowl, Miami and Oklahoma make a hard choice for those determined to find a morality play--or big-time wrestling--in postseason college football.

“Who is the bad guy in this game,” wondered Dante Jones, one of several self-styled rogues from Oklahoma. Tough-talking Oklahoma, so laden down with gold jewelry that the players seem to walk in a constant stoop? Or Miami, which except for a dress code might well be wearing the jungle fatigues they sported a year ago?

In truth, neither team is very bad, images aside.

The tribulations and, of course, trials that dogged several Miami players last season have been missing. The players still talk--woofing is the name of their game--but can’t manage the outrageousness of departed Jerome (Pearl Harbor) Brown.

As for the Sooners, not even Dante (Raw Dog) Jones can replace the bark of graduated Brian Bosworth.

But if there has been confusion in assigning roles in this game, there has also been a problem handicapping it. These teams, the winningest in college football the last two seasons, never win this game, although this game is not quite the same for each team.

In five seasons at Miami, Jimmy Johnson has coached the Hurricanes to a 50-6 record, best in college football over that span. The team, second-ranked to the Sooners, has a 32-game regular-season winning streak.

Yet Miami can’t win a bowl game. It’s 0-4 under Johnson, including last year’s loss to underdog Penn State for the national championship in the Fiesta Bowl.

Then there’s Oklahoma. The Sooners, 11-0 this season, have the third-best winning percentage over the last five years (Nebraska is second) and they have won the Orange Bowl twice and the national championship once.

But Oklahoma can’t seem to beat Miami. Twice in the last two years, Oklahoma was ranked No. 1 going into games against Miami, and twice was beaten.

Whoever wins this game, finally, deserves the national championship that is at stake.

The Sooners, who are locked into a Big Eight schedule that doesn’t often allow them to show what they’re made of, had just one challenge all season. And in that game, using a backup quarterback in his first start, Oklahoma beat Nebraska, 17-7.

Miami’s hold on No. 2 has been more tenuous throughout the season. It was probably not the better team but nevertheless beat Florida State early in the season. Still, just as doubters began to gather, Miami regrouped to blow highly ranked Notre Dame out of the water.

It is hard to say whether Miami is better than Oklahoma, easier to say it is not as good as last year’s Miami team. Sophomore Steve Walsh throws a nice pass but Miami’s pro-type attack is certainly not the threat of the last two Oklahoma-killer years, when Vinny Testaverde took snaps.

Miami has lost other players more recently. Just this week, two offensive linemen and the team’s leading tackler departed the game. Two, offensive tackle John O’Neill and linebacker George Mira Jr., failed drug tests. Tackle Matt Patchan sprained a knee in practice.

Miami, therefore, is suddenly thin on offense, with just seven healthy specimens along the line. But unless Oklahoma defenders find that line particularly porous--and Walsh very available--it is not likely to matter. As usual, Miami flourishes with big-play people, wide receivers such as Michael Irvin and Brian Blades.

Discounting the loss of Testaverde, Oklahoma defensive back David Vickers said, “They get a lot of yardage after catching the ball.”

Most other Oklahoma players find a lot of comfort in the fact that Testaverde is safely retired to the National Football League. Nobody, they say, could scramble like he, or throw as far.

Miami’s Michael Irvin, who has caught nearly as many of Walsh’s passes this season as he did Testaverde’s last, mocks that suggestion. “It’s basically Testaverde,” he said, sarcastically. Maybe, he added, Miami can just do those little things, “like running, catching.”

Oklahoma should know that people can be replaced, however. The Sooners lost quarterback Jamelle Holieway and then threw in a kid named Charles Thompson for the biggest game of their regular season. No drop-off was detected.

It never is. Last year, Dante Jones went in for the banned Bosworth.

These two teams are alike in that they tend to reload, not rebuild.

The Sooners, though awesome with their wishbone offense and a line Coach Barry Switzer calls his best ever, are actually as dangerous on defense. Their defensive backfield has been together three years, during which time it has led the country in pass defense. Only Testaverde has ever pierced it. The Sooners doubt he could again, even if he had remained.

Miami seems to sense more urgency in this game. No player on this otherwise fabulous team has ever finished on a winning note. Bowl defeats have dogged them and have turned even Johnson petulant.

“Maybe we shouldn’t win so many games during the regular season and we wouldn’t have to play national championship games,” he sniffed the other day.

Oklahoma seems more comfortable, having now been here four years in a row. The pub across from the Sooners’ Fountainbleau Hotel is even crammed with Oklahoma memorabilia, the team having finally been adopted after all these visits. The players feel at home here and by now know which discos to frequent, which not. They officially have the home-field advantage. Unofficially as well, it seems.

But both teams are equally used to playing this game. Just not to winning it.