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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1987)
bports_ Orange Bowl wants Championship game By Mike Kluck Staff Reporter A Nov. 21 shoot-out between Nebraska and Oklahoma will deter mine who wins the 1987 Big Eight football championship and which team cams the No. 1 ranking at the conclusion of theregular college foot ball season. But it won’t determine this season’s national champion. Larry Adams, president of the Orange Bowl selection committee, said the national championship game will be Jan. 1, 1988, when the Big Eight champion faces one of foul teams believed to be in the front running to face cither Nebraska ot Oklahoma. He said those teams arc Notre Dame, Syracuse, Florida Stale and Miami. Adams said the Orange Bowl is looking for the best matchup it can get. “Our basic objective is to put to gether the most highly nationally ranked teams on pick-up day,” Adams said. “Pick-up day,” the first day bowls can extend bids to respective college coaches, begins Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. EST. Adams said the Miami Hurricanes have a good chance of facing the Big Eight champion because they arc 7-0 and ranked No. 3. Miami coach Jimmy Johnson re fused to comment on the Hurricanes’ chances of earning an Orange Bowl bid this season. He said everyone will “just have to wait and sec” until the bowl bids arc extended. But, Johnson said, the Hurricanes deserve an Orange Bowl bid because of the steady play they’ve delivered this season. He said Miami has worked hard to overcome the loss of players like quarterback Vinny Tes taverdc cn route to compiling its undefeated record. “When you consider we have lost six players into the top spot.'of the NFL draft, a team is losing a lot of players to graduation,” Johnson said. “We have one senior in the front seven on defense, and offensively we have had to replace four linemen, quarter back and Heisman Trophy winner Vinny Testaverde, and running back Alonzo Highsmilh.” Johnson said Miami will have to endure two big tests after the bowl bids are extended. The Hurricanes will face Notre Dame on Nov. 28 and South Carolina on Dec. 5. Adams said the Orange Bow l may wait to invite Miami. “There’s a possibility of making an invitation on the 21st or waiting until the 28th to make an offer,” Adams said. “That’s a bridge we will have to wait to cross.” Adams said No. 4-rankcd Florida Slate also has a good chance of ap pearing in the Orange Bowl because of its 8-1 record. He said the biggest test for the Seminoles, who dropped a 21-20 decision to Miami earlier this See BOWL on 9 --—, Ivy expects best year in last Husker season tsy ivyie xnurman Staff Reporter Maurtice Ivy’s coach doesn’t think Ivy can earn AU-America honors this year, but not because of a lack of talent. Nebraska women’s basketball coach Angela Beck said Ivy won’t earn All-America honors because Nebraska isn’t a national power house in women’s basketball yet. This means the senior from Omaha won ’ t get the recogn ition she needs to be an All-America, Beck said. “She’s a step away from being an All-America because our pro gram hasn’t gotten into the lime light yet,” Beck said. “But I think she can help take us there.” Beck said she depends on Ivy to be a team leader on and off the floor J .. this season.-Shesaid I vy’s personal / success will come if the team is I successful. i Know sne nas personal goals, but I want her to set her personal goals on the shelf,” Beck said. “She’s got a lot of ability, but she can only be as good as her team is.” Ivy said her goals are centered on the team because “great team success will lead to success for me.” She said her team goals in clude winning the Big Eight, being ranked in the top 20 and earning a trip to the 1988 Final Four. “We have the caliber of team that can do that,” Ivy said. “If we win the Big Eight it’ll make me look even better.” Ivy said she doesn’t feel any added pressure this season, even though she is closing in on three all time Nebraska records. Ivy, who plays both guard and forward, is third in all-time scoring with 1,578 points, 265 points be hind Debra Powell. Ivy is also third on the all-time charts in made field goals and tree throws, and seventh in rebounding. “I don ’ t feel any pressure at all,” Ivy said. “The coaches and my teammates have put no extra pres sure on me. I ’m more at ease this year than any other year I’ve been here.” Ivy led the Huskers in scoring and rebounding last year while averaging 23.6 points and 7.8 re bounds per game. She is averaging 19.2 points and 7.3 rebounds per game during her Nebraska career. Ivy said she is stronger this season because of an off-season conditioning class she and many of her teammates took during the summer. She said the class lifted weights and ran stairs to improve agility. aome memoers 01 me looioau learn also took the class, Ivy said. Ivy said she is more laid-back this year than last and just wants to “go with the flow” this season. She said her game has improved with age. “The older I’ve gotten, the bet ter I’ve gotten,” Ivy said. Beck said she isn’t expecting anything new from Ivy this season. “Everything I’ve ever expected from her. I’ve already seen,” Beck said. Ivy said her main goal is to gel her degree in December 1988. She said she might play basketball overseas after graduation, but if she gets a good job of fer, she ’ 11 take it. She said she hates for this sea son to be her last year of basketball because the Hunkers have so many good new pi oplc. “Mycareei went by so fast,” Ivy said. “I h?te >aving this be my last year when the team’s looking so good. I guess I saved the best year for last.” Nebraska’s Maurtice Ivy talks to a radio reporter during the Cornhuskers’ recent media day at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. NU writer fumbles carrying bland subjects By Charles Lieurance Senior Editor Bob Devaney — you might re member him as the coach who beat Oklahoma—pretty much epitomizes what’s wrong with James Sherwood’s “Nebraska Football” in his succinct review of it on the dust jacket: “A good history of Nebraska Football.” No matter how competent a histo rian and sports hound University of Nebraska-Lincoln visiting assistant Book Review history professor Sherwood is, he cannot make up for the overwhelming blandncss of the personalities in volved. Sure, these guys can go rushing onto the gridiron, pads slapping like brave gladiators and turn Winncba gos-full of common folk into blood • thirsty, obsessed hyenas, but it is obvious to anyone who has endured the excruciating “Tom Osborne Show” that after the clock runs out, the supermen turn into sub-Clark Kents. Sherwood attempts to breathe myth into what Sports Illustrated once called “the plowman’s philosophy of football,” describing Devaney as a man under intense strain, a “blocky” hero with a straight-ahead, no-apolo gies vision of his game. Osborne is shown as the quiet saint, the organ izer, a man whose vision of the game is an intensely personal matter be tween him and his God. Which makes one wonder why Dick Janda spent so much time trying to drag the Osborne secret out of him. In his own book, “More Than Winning”—quoted by Sherwood — Osborne manages this revelation: “My personal philosophy of coaching is this: to make an effort to win in a manner that reflects well on the uni versity, that promotes the personal development of the players, and that has a positive effect on young people.” Thankfully, Sherwood concen trates on the team aspects thoroughly, interviewing many of Comhusker football’s bit players — assistant coaches, secretaries, some folks in the administration. Most are fairly wor shipful, no surprise considering they still work under the mythical coaches concerned. One scene is particularly funny. Comhusker player Guy Ingles has a moment of religious revelation con cerning Devancy: “Guy Ingles still has a note of awe in his voice as he remembers the in sight that struck him during his junior season. He was walking across cam pus and thinking about the upcoming game when he realized that ‘we were simply belter coached than our oppo nents.’ He repeated this over and over again.” He then presumably took his phi losophy lest but flunked because he couldn’t wrestle this momentous thought from his conscious mind. The lone of Sherwood’s book is perhaps overly reverent, and a little more cynicism on his part might have helped this book transcend the literary pep-rally mentality that curses so many locally produced books about the Huskers. Sherwood more than once ad dresses “Big Red fans” as a kind of extension of the family, and if that is his intended audience, then all criti cism of this book is futile. The writer who inscribes a birthday card to his sister or brother is usually incapable of saying the wrong thing. To be fair, the history is wcll documcnlcd and researched and there’s plenty of material from before the glory days of the early 1970s that has not appeared so thoroughly in any other book on the Huskers. But sports fans, even Nebraska sports fans, can be fickle, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if most readers began this history lesson in Chapter 3, “The Bad Times” (concerning the years from 1941 through the mid-1960s) and went from there, savoring the slow buildup to Devaney’s reign of ass-kicking from 1969 to 1972. It’s a well-paced buildup culminating in Sherwood heaping accolades on Devaney, por traying him as a misunderstood gen ius, unfairly maligned in the national press but unconditionally worshipped on his home turf. Perhaps the most bothersome thing about this book to a layman is reliving the stompin^s other aspects of the stale and university took because of the attention paid to Devaney. Sher wood quotes an article by John Under wood in a 1972 Sports Illustrated: “Bigness, rather than beauty, is the mark of the University of Nebraska campus. It sprawls without rhyme through the avenues and side streets of See BOOK on page 10