First-time Jitters

Pick a team with a first-year starter at quarterback to win the national championship? You might as well suggest that a 21-year-old is the best golfer in the world.

Yes, what appears outlandish at first glance sometimes isn't. There is precedent for Penn State to fulfill the prophecy put forth in this issue. First-year starter Craig Erickson led Miami to the national title in 1989. Not coincidentally, Erickson was a junior. The real rarity is not a first-year quarterback leading his team to the national championship, but a young quarterback doing so. Only two teams in 20 years have won the national championship with a freshman at the helm, Miami with Bernie Kosar in 1983 and Oklahoma, behind Jamelle Holieway in 1985.

That should be reassuring news for the Nittany Lions, for their new starter is Mike McQueary, a fifth-year senior. Not that Penn State coach Joe Paterno has been terribly worried about having a rookie at the helm. He says McQueary merely "needs to get into a game and have success."

Washington State coach Mike Price contends that the importance of quarterbacks in the national title hunt is overstated. "I never thought you had to have an experienced or great quarterback to win a national championship," says Price. Of course, Price has yet to win one, and he has coached such prolific passers as Jack (the Throwin' Samoan) Thompson, Drew Bledsoe and current starter Ryan Leaf, who threw for 2,811 yards last season as a sophomore. Says Price, "What you've got to have is a great defense."

THE FALL CAMPAIGN

By the traditional measures of success—attendance and revenue—college football would seem to be very healthy. More than 26 million people attended Division I-A games last season, and ABC just agreed to throw $190 million at the ACC for television and Internet rights. Yet in the midst of all this radiant good health, those who rule the sport are worried. The prevailing feeling among conference officials from the Ivy League to the Big 12 to the SEC is that student attendance is falling, and that future students, i.e. younger teenagers, not only aren't going to games but also aren't watching them.

At Nebraska, according to athletic director Bill Byrne, the average age of the season-ticket holder on the more desirable west side of Memorial Stadium is 73, and the size of the student section has gone from 19,000 seats in 1972 to 8,500 as demand for tickets has shrunk. At Alabama, students celebrated a 10-3 season in 1996 by passing up some 4,000 student tickets per game. Big 12 commissioner Steve Hatchell blanched when he saw one of his son's pals wearing a T-shirt that read FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS PLAY FOOTBALL.

"As much as we love college football and as much as it is a religion to so many, we're seeing the effects of so many more opportunities for young people," says Auburn athletic director David Housel. "Football may not be as important as it was to those of us in school 20 and 30 years ago. Back then, the only thing to do was go to the game, and you wouldn't be caught dead not going."

So is college football in danger of becoming, like baseball, a sport with a dwindling following? Administrators don't plan on waiting to find out. Beginning Aug. 23, college football is implementing a marketing and advertising plan aimed at grabbing the attention of 16-to 24-year-olds. The last line of the TV commercials, which debut during telecasts of the Pigskin and Kickoff classics, is "NCAA Football: Pile on." A TV show called The Slant is in the works and will chase the same young viewers who now watch the NBA's Inside Stuff.

Host Communications handles marketing for the NCAA, and it has committed $3 million to begin the Pile On campaign, which was developed by DDB Needham in Dallas. Creative director Jim Ferguson has a history of success—he headed the Michael Jordan-Larry Bird campaign for McDonald's in 1993—and a love for college football. A native of Hico, Texas, the 42-year-old Ferguson can recall "working in the field with my dad listening to Kern Tips do the SWC game on the radio. You'd hear him talk about downtown College Station and think, God, that must be gorgeous!"