Look Who's Perfect

With Auburn, it pays to read the fine print. Comb the Tigers' box scores, because the team, on NCAA probation, is banned from the tube this season. Note the asterisk next to Auburn in the Southeastern Conference standings, which indicates that the Tigers are "not eligible for title." And by all means train an eye on the left biceps of tailback James Bostic, which was on display last Saturday evening after the Tigers' 38-35 come-from-behind triumph over No. 4 Florida. Hobbling around misty Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, wearing a T-shirt and paying tribute to the hometown fans, Bostic flashed a tattoo of a panther surrounded by these faint words: NEVER ENOUGH RESPECT.

How can there be enough respect for a team that has a Nielsen rating of zero and no bowl to play for, yet has gone 7-0 and earned a No. 10 national ranking? How can there be enough respect for the five Tigers from Dillard High in Fort Lauderdale who had endured ceaseless jawing back home after losing to the Gators the last two years, but who chipped in on Saturday when it meant the most? How can there be enough for Ace Atkins, a senior defensive end who entered the game with three career tackles and left with two king-sized sacks? And for placekicker Scott Etheridge, whose decisive 41-yard field goal with 1:21 to play redeemed an earlier miss from 35 yards out?

How can there be enough respect, finally, for first-year Auburn coach Terry Bowden, who watched his team nearly disappear into a 17-zip black hole, scrapped one game plan for another and remained upbeat throughout? Bowden is a law-school grad who knows a little about fine print but spoke more about the big picture. "I wanted so much for these players lo feel the good part in college football," he said after the game. "They haven't felt that in a while."

On a shelf in Bowden's office are a pair of white-and-orange sneakers, size 20. They were sent to him by a fan with a note that reminded Bowden of the magnitude of the shoes he had to fill. Before Pat Dye resigned as Auburn coach last November under a cloud of NCAA rules violations, he had brought the Tigers to national prominence and received the state's unofficial equivalent of canonization: favorable comparison to Bear Bryant. But the 37-year-old Bowden eagerly put his size-8 in Dye's footprints. After successful coaching stints at Salem (W.Va.) College and Division I-AA Samford (Ala.) University, he had been steeling himself for just such a Division I opportunity. "Besides," he says, "I'd had some experience filling big shoes before."

Indeed, as the third son of Bobby Bow-den, coach of top-ranked Florida State, Terry has faced daunting comparisons time and again. For the record Terry is better educated (magna cum laude at West Virginia, postgrad studies at Oxford, J.D. from Florida State), slightly plumper and far less folksy than Bobby. Though Terry has a keen feel for play-calling, he has not swamped his game plans with reverses and rooskies like his dad; the kind of player he has at Auburn thrives on a blue-collar, power-I team. And Terry sees being Bobby's boy for the advantage it is. "Every time Florida State's on national TV, it's talked about, how both the Bowdens are unbeaten," Terry says. "So we've gotten a lot of exposure out of the relationship."

A more likely heir to Bowden père—at least in terms of offensive inventiveness—is the Gators' fourth-year coach, Steve Spurrier. Against Auburn, Spurrier's Fun 'N' Gun attack put up its usual gaudy numbers: 560 yards in total offense, 196 coming on 22 carries by Errict Rhett. The defense, prone to surrendering large strikes, yielded no gain of more than 23 yards, while limiting Auburn's reliable running game to 116 yards. But in the end the Gators were undone by a handful of costly mistakes and by an opponent that didn't lose its composure or its faith—or the ball. Under Spurrier the Gators have now faced a ranked team on the road seven times, and seven times they have lost. Said Rhett after the game Saturday, "I'm still trying to figure out what happened."

It all began according to form. Thanks to the soft passing touch and prescient reads of freshman quarterback Danny Wuerffel, the Gators were appropriately lively 'n' lethal, taking a quick 10-0 lead and driving again with a minute left in the first quarter. Wuerffel's cause had been abetted by the Dillard High Five, three of whom start in the Tiger secondary. They were out of position on a few plays.

"We were too eager," said strong safety Otis Mounds. A redshirt junior, Mounds was the first of the Fort Lauderdale bunch to sign on with Auburn; Dye had continued to recruit him even after Mounds served 10 months in a Florida correctional institution for dealing crack. Dye's loyalty impressed four of Mounds's schoolmates—Bostic, cornerback Calvin Jackson, free safety Brian Robinson and wideout Frank Sanders—who followed Mounds's lead the next year. "Most schools wouldn't look at Otis because of his past," says Jackson. "It really gave me the feeling that Auburn cared."

On Saturday the Dillard gang began to assert itself on a second-down play for Florida at the Auburn 10. Wuerffel's pass to wide receiver Willie Jackson in the end zone found Calvin Jackson instead at the four, and the Tiger cornerback had a clear stretch of green in front of him. Touchdown. That made it 10-7, Florida, instead of 17-0. The game suddenly seemed on.

Bowden's battle plan at the outset had called for long drives full of running plays to keep the ball out of the Gators' hands. "But if they get up two touchdowns," Bowden had said, "I'm not sure we have the sort of team that can come back." Bowden was entitled to his doubt: The combined record of Auburn's first six opponents was 13-19. By halftime Saturday the Tigers had had five possessions, rushed 13 times and gained just 12 yards. Florida had owned the ball seven times and scored five times—and led 27-14.