Bowl Chaos Season

THE GAMBLE in Ohio was inspired by a Gamble from Ohio. The 2007 college football season turned on a piece of advice given by Brian Gamble, a freshman wideout from Massillon who altered the course of gridiron history when he made so bold as to nudge an Illinois teammate on the sideline at the Horseshoe last Saturday. Gamble spoke up during a timeout that the Ohio State Buckeyes will regret having taken for the rest of their lives.

Illini quarterback Juice Williams was pacing the sideline like Hamlet with 6:53 left against the top-ranked Buckeyes. Having staked his team to a 28--21 lead with four touchdown passes and zero picks, the sophomore was pitching the football equivalent of a perfect game. But he could see how things might slip away. On fourth-and-one from his 33, Illinois coach Ron Zook sento ut the punt team.

It was the proper call. No matter how slender the distance'"I'm telling you, it was one inch," Williams insisted the next day'you punt the ball. You don't chance handing the Buckeyes a short field, in their own house, when you're clinging to a one-touchdown lead. The problem was, pacing that sideline, his guts in a knot, Williams knew he could pick up the first down. When Ohio State called a timeout it only prolonged his torture. Should he say something to Zook?

Rebellion brewed among the Illini. Williams could hear defensive players questioning the decision to punt. As linebacker J Leman later put it, "We didn't go through all those 6 a.m. winter workouts, didn't suffer in summer conditioning, didn't come all the way to Ohio to give the ball back to them."

Halfway through the timeout, Gamble approached his quarterback. Feeling his oats, perhaps, after having caught the touchdown pass that put his team up 21--14 just before the half, the 18-year-old told Williams, "If you think you can get it, you've got to tell him."

Williams walked over to Zook and tapped him on the shoulder. It was the tap heard round the college football cosmos, the tap that set in motion the events that soon laid waste to whatever order and sanity the BCS rankings had promised to provide. With closing wins over Illinois and Michigan, the Buckeyes were guaranteed a return to the BCS title game. Yes, there would be an unseemly brawl for the other spot: The airwaves would fill with recriminations and gripes about strength of schedule, the what-ifs and why-nots of one-loss teams. But one half of the equation, mercifully, would be filled in. The rancor would be halved.

Welcome, instead, to chaos. Or as Antony says in Julius Caesar, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."

And Tigers (on two campuses) and Ducks and Jayhawks and Sooners and Mountaineers, and yes, even the undefeated Rainbow Warriors of Hawaii, who won't allow the fact that they have no shot at playing for the national title prevent them from expounding on the unfairness of it all.

This cacophony is brought to you by Zook, who changed his mind, of course. "You better get it, or I'll hurt you," Williams recalls him saying. ("I don't think he really meant it," the quarterback allowed the next day.) Torpedoing over the left buttock of center Ryan McDonald, Williams moved the chains with a two-yard gain, then got on with the job he did better than anyone else this season: exposing the soft underbelly of a unit that had begun the day ranked No. 1 in total defense and scoring defense. That fourth-down conversion was followed by a trio of third-down conversions'Williams calling his own number on each'that allowed the Illini to devour the final 8:09 of the clock.

Thus did the Buckeyes' loftiest ambitions die under the bright lights of the Horseshoe. With running back Rashard Mendenhall gashing the defense on early downs and Juice moving the chains, Ohio State couldn't get the unranked visitors off the field. (In the fourth quarter the Illini ran 26 plays to OSU's three.) In the end the Buckeyes were proved unworthy of a BCS title-game berth. The burning question: Who the hell is?