Wide Left

And then time suddenly started spinning backward.

"This game is not over," the stadium announcer yelled. Suddenly, the Seminoles' 18-16 win was not so definite. Destiny took a mulligan. The officials decided that on the last play, the ball carrier, Nebraska tight end Trumane Bell, had touched a knee down with one second left, so the refs returned that second to the clock. The victory soak was called back. The revelers were pushed to the sidelines. ESPN was hauled away. When all was cleared, the referees were standing at the Florida State 34. Way too far out for a Nebraska field goal, right?

"Thirty-four plus seven plus 10," Bowden said later. "That's 64 at Florida State. Least that's what my my boys told me."

It would be a 51-yard field goal try—but into the wind. Make it? Not on this planet. The title was safe again. But now the head referee was on the P.A. system saying, "Hello? Can I have a stat man up there? I need a stat man up there." And now they were checking the videotape to see where Bell had really put that knee down, and now they were taking the ball and marching it six yards closer to the goalposts. And now Nebraska's Byron Bennett ran onto the field to kick not a 51-yarder but a 45-yarder and end 21 years of close calls and near misses for his coach, Tom Osborne.

And now a fear colder than his soaked shirt gripped Bowden around the windpipe. "It seemed like some kind of cruel joke to me," Bowden said later. "Really, the crudest joke ever played on me." In the stands his wife, Ann, was nearly in tears. How could this be? she thought. And yet there stood Bennett and his right shoe, 45 yards from giving Bobby Bowden a very bad case of heartburn.

My lord, wasn't it enough, what the man had been through already? He had finished second in the polls twice in the last six years. If he came in second one more time, they would have to bury him in a silver coffin. He had gone undefeated in 11 straight bowl games, and yet this one meant more than all the others combined. All week in his Miami Airport Hilton suite, Bowden had surrounded himself with his six kids, all their spouses, his 15 grandchildren and two baby-sitters, as if to make a bunker of chaos that worry couldn't penetrate. But it did. He was not himself. "He kind of goes back in his private room and watches TV," Ann said.

The night before the game, Bowden had done another curious thing. He had shown his players a videotape of some of the great upsets in recent sports history, including Buster Douglas's knockout of Mike Tyson in 1990, Duke's win over UNLV in the 1991 NCAA college basketball tournament and Notre Dame's victory over the Seminoles this year. It was like getting a group of parachutists together the night before a huge jump and showing them great airline disasters.

But then New Year's Day broke lucky for Bowden. In Dallas the Irish barely beat the Aggies—and largely because of a goat who made good. Notre Dame's loss to Boston College six weeks before had somehow settled on the shoulder pads of linebacker Pete Bercich. His drop of an easy interception in the last minutes of the game allowed the Eagles to win that day. At the Cotton Bowl, though, Bercich held on to an interception. Later he watched gleefully as Notre Dame marched down and kicked the winning field goal with 2:17 left. "I can probably sleep at night now," the poor fellow said.

And when the game was over, Irish coach Lou Holtz got ready for the most important play of the season—the traditional Postgame Plea to the Voters. "Let's remember that the two teams who are competing for Number One have already played on the field, and it's been ascertained who won that game," Holtz said wryly. He also pointed out that in 1989, the cleat was on the other shoe. Notre Dame was 12-1 compared with Miami's 11-1, but the Hurricanes had beaten the Irish head-to-head, so the poll voters picked Miami. Holtz was hoping for a little karmic justice.

In New Orleans, Florida was about to play Deliverance with West Virginia, turning the Mountaineers' national-championship joyride into a nightmare of zigzagged Gator touchdowns and humiliating celebratory spikes. The undefeated Mountaineers were stomped 41-7. Florida tailback Errict Rhett was gone with the wind, running for 105 yards, three touchdowns and the game's MVP hardware. "They're on the Vanderbilt level," he said of West Virginia. "With all due respect to Vanderbilt. The SEC is just entirely too hard for them."