College Football

When UNLV coach Jeff Horton was second-guessed recently by a couple of local newspaper columnists, he fell back on that tired defense of a cornered coach. He slammed the wags, saying they didn't understand because they had never played the game. It has since come to light that while Horton played football, he was not quite the gridiron stalwart that his bio in the UNLV media guide makes him out to be.

In the guide Horton is described as being a three-year letterman as a wide receiver at Arkansas. Hogwash, says the Arkansas sports information department, which maintains that Horton was merely a walk-on and never played a down.

Confronted with the evidence, Horton came clean: "I never lettered. I walked on and was on the jayvee most of the time. What little action I saw was very limited. I tore up my knee in practice. O.K., we'll take out the part in the media guide about being a letter winner."

Squibs

Michigan's decision to lift the interim status of coach Lloyd Carr defused a potentially sticky situation. "I wasn't coming back if Lloyd wasn't coming back," says Wolverine linebacker Jarrett Irons. "I didn't want to start over with a new coach, and five or six guys had made the same decision." Had Carr been let go, a potential list of replacements would have undoubtedly included Northwestern coach Gary Barnett. Although Barnett has pledged to stay in Evanston after this year, one source close to him told SI, "Gary loves Northwestern. But Michigan? That's the one job he would've thought long and hard about before saying no."...

Vince Dooley's long-expected sacking of Georgia coach Ray Goff last Friday made Goff a sympathetic figure to some Bulldog fans. Despite a 5-5 record this fall, Georgia, which has been hit hard by injuries and has had to use three quarterbacks and seven tailbacks, is significantly better than it was last year, when the Dawgs finished 6-4-1....

Kentucky's near upset of Tennessee should bolster the Wildcats' efforts to secure local wunderkind quarterback Tim Couch (SI, Nov. 20), who attended the game.