Wake 27, Ole Miss 3

Poor Leigh Tiffin. He kicks - by the time I post this, I might need to say kicked - field goals and PAT's for the Alabama Crimson Tide. But Saturday, he didn't. Sure, he lined up for the attempts and put his foot on the ball, but 3 of his field goal attempts and his last extra point attempt flew, straight as an arrow, to the outside of the goalposts. Alabama lost 24-23 in double overtime to SEC foe Arkansas.*

Alabama football matters in Alabama. Matters a lot, probably more than it should.* Tiffin's dad kicked for Alabama, too, so poor young Tiffin knows better than most how much Alabama football matters. Tide fans are already suffering through the agonies of the damned this year, watching rival Auburn run out to a 4-0 record and the #2 ranking in the AP poll. Now this Tiffin kid took what should have been a big conference win and pushed it wide right.*

Bama is one of college football's elite programs, even during seasons when they struggle just to be bowl-eligible. They've won enough titles in the past, under both Bear Bryant and Gene Stallings, and they continue to win enough in the present to keep them in a sort of mental upper echelon even if their actual record doesn't get them in the Top 10. A few other programs are like that - Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Florida. Their names earn respect even in those years when their records don't. Casual fans know about those teams. They usually don't rebuild, they just reload.

Other programs have some tradition, but most of their high-profile success has come in the last ten years or so: Oregon, Virginia Tech, Louisville. Florida State fit this category in the late '80s and early '90s.

Then there are the programs who have a terrific tradition, a large and loyal fan base, but no or very few titles and no record as a serious, year-in and year-out contender. They've had a few flashes of greatness, some outstanding players and teams, but not the sustained excellence of a Bama or a Notre Dame. Ole Miss falls into this category. Their fans still wear jerseys with Archie Manning's number, 36 years after Ole Miss retired it. The youngest of Archie's litter of QBs, Eli, led the Rebels to some great season just a few short years ago, but they never seriously threatened to take the BCS title. This year they started a miserable 1-2.

Still, they are an SEC team with a long and storied tradition. In fact, they are the only football team I know of that has been memorialized by a Nobel Prize winner for literature:

"And they gave him a uniform and on that afternoon . . . one of the other players failed to rise at once and they explained that to him - how there were rules for violence, he trying patiently to make this distinction, understand it: 'But how can I carry the ball to that line if I let them catch me and pull me down?'
. . . He did this for five days, up to Saturday's climax when he carried a trivial contemptible obloid across fleeing and meaningless white lines. Yet during these seconds, despite his contempt, his ingrained conviction, his hard and spartan heritage, he lived, fiercely free - the spurning earth, the shocks, the hard breathing and the grasping hands, the speed, the rocking roar of massed stands . . ."*

So listening to the Deacons thump the Rebels was awfully, awfully nice.

The Deacs went into the game a 2½-point underdog. I really should have laid $100 on that. That line was built on SEC bias (understandable) and the Deacons' loss of star tailback Micah Andrews to a torn ACL (also understandable). But the Deacon defense dominated; only a couple of dumb 1st quarter penalties - roughing the passer and 12 men on the field - kept the Deacs from pitching a shutout.

On offense, DeAngelo Bryant got the start in place of Andrews. Bryant racked up 105 yards on 22 carries. Riley Skinner only had to pass the ball 5 times, completing 4 for 43 yards. 34 of those yards came on a beaut of a pass to fullback Rich Belton that took the Deacons to the Rebels' 4-yard-line.

So Wake has started the season 4-0 for only the fourth time in school history (two of those times came in the 1940s). They take that shiny 4-0 into next Saturday's game against Liberty.

I said Liberty. Liberty. Yes, Jerry Falwell's Liberty. Yes, apparently they do have a football team.

Wake cannot overlook Liberty. Number one, 4-0 record or not, we're still Wake Forest. Number two, Falwell's boys might go all jihad on us, since we heretic Demon Deacons broke from the Southern Baptist Convention back in the 1980s, so we could let the campus collapse into a den of such iniquities as dancing and co-ed dorms.

Then, the Saturday after Liberty, the Deacons welcome the Clemson Tigers back to Groves Stadium.

I'm about to get a lot of ugly e-mails from my Clemson-fan friends and readers, but I'd put the Clemson program, historically, in the same category as Ole Miss. They've got fans as devoted as any in the country. Game days in Clemson are like medieval holy-day carnivals, except with RVs, gas grills, and lots and lots of orange. I defy any serious college football fan - South Carolina fans excepted - to sit in the sea of orange inside Death Valley, watch the Tigers touch Howard's Rock and run down the hill, hear the Tiger Band play the Tiger Rag (Hold That Tiger), and not get chills. But Clemson only has one national championship (in 1981), and they haven't won an ACC title in more than a decade.

That could change this year. Two weeks ago I mentioned their gut-wrenching double-OT loss to Boston College; if the ball had bounced their way one more time, the game would have, too. Last week they beat Florida State in the annual Bowden Bowl, pitting the Seminoles' Bobby (that huckster SOB) against his son Tommy, the Tigers' 8th-year head coach.

Yesterday I watched them crush - I mean crush - UNC. The final was 52-7, but it wasn't really that close. Clemson was up 21-0 by the end of the first . . . quarter. They were up 35-0 at the half. They scored on 5 of their first 6 possessions. It was a rout. It was a joke. It was a great Saturday for ABCers* everywhere.

As good as the Deacons have looked so far this year, we can't really know what they're made of until they face the Tigers on October 7th. And just to make it more interesting, all Deacon fans (and Clemson fans, too) have this thought running through their heads: the Deacons have absolutely owned the Tigers the last 3 years. Wake doesn't have Clemson's tradition, they don't have Clemson's rabid fan base, they usually don't have Clemson's talent on both side of the ball. What they have had is Clemson's number in 2 of the last 3 games.

Blame the higher academic standards.


* Don't believe me? Read Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer like I told you to.

* Give the Alabama coaching staff and team tremendous credit for class: the camera, of course, followed Tiffin to the sideline after every missed kick, and every shot included at least two players and at least two coaches coming over to comfort, console, and cheer up the poor kicker. Nobody got in his face; instead, they patted his shoulder or his helmet, hugged him, put their arm around him. They may have given him the Full Metal Jacket/Private Pyle treatment once they got into the locker room, but in public they showed nothing but support for their teammate. Says a lot about their character, and I suspect it says a lot about Tiffin's character, too.

* In fairness, Tiffin had made a 46-yard-attempt just before the half, and he kicked the game winner against Vanderbilt two weeks ago.

* from The Hamlet by William Faulkner. The passage describes the reaction of a poor Mississippi farm boy who takes a summer job grading the University (of Mississippi)'s new practice football field, and ends up being offered a football scholarship. Even after graduation, he can't believe they gave him an education in exchange for merely carrying that "trivial contemptible obloid."

* The ABC - Anybody But Carolina - Club is normally a basketball season organization, and the membership has declined recently in direct proportion to the growth of the ABD - Anybody But Duke - Club.