Sugar Bowl Football Game

Into each thick skull, a coach attempts to knock some sense. He teaches. He preaches. He advocates sportsmanship. And above all else, there are two goals he, or she, recommends emphatically to every athlete who walks into practice: Winning and trying.

In a year when the Sugar Bowl had to temporarily relocate from New Orleans, the Big East was supposed to be the Big Easy. West Virginia, champion of the maligned Big East Conference, looked to be modest competition for a No. 8-ranked Georgia team playing in a sold-out Georgia Dome packed with red-clad fans, only 70 miles from the Georgia campus. Then No.

It is just as well that No. 1-ranked Miami and No. 2-rated Alabama at last meet for the national championship in tonight's Sugar Bowl game at the Superdome. After all, the human ear can listen to only so much pregame posturing. In no specific order: --Miami linebacker Rohan Marley, who doesn't even start, said, "We're going to kick (butt)." --Alabama running back Derrick Lassic chided Marley for his lack of manners and said, "I got something for him."

There are a lot of things that seem as if they don't quite belong at this Sugar Bowl, displaced from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. There was the Mardi Gras-style parade down Peachtree Street on New Year's Eve, a small but earnest attempt to bring a little bit of the Big Easy to Atlanta. There is the game itself, tonight in the Georgia Dome instead of the damaged Louisiana Superdome.

His career at West Virginia will be remembered for one drop and one catch, each with millions of dollars at stake. Ed Hill, a senior receiver, an amateur, had the whole world in his hands. Twice. Had he accepted a T-shirt or under-the-table money from a booster to fly home for Christmas, NCAA investigators might have swarmed his dormitory.

An athlete who says he's the best there is in college football should have to back it up in a bowl game. And Monday night, Deion Sanders, who calls himself Prime Time, finally did. In the last 5 seconds of the 55th Sugar Bowl, the Auburn Tigers were on the move to what would have been the winning touchdown when they were interrupted in the end zone by Sanders, Florida State's All-American cornerback.

Richard Schultz, executive director of the NCAA, predicted early this year that college football will soon have a playoff system that determines a true national champion. "It's coming before you know it," he said. In the meantime, officials of four bowls, five conferences and Notre Dame announced Wednesday that they have agreed to form an alliance to make a national championship game more likely each year, starting with the 1992 season.

Cornerback Deion Sanders, the uninhibited orator of Florida State, is often identified as the best athlete in college sports. And he couldn't agree more. He is as good as he is flamboyant, his teammates and adversaries all say, and Sanders' opinion makes it unanimous. Deion, as in neon, is generally called by his first name, although at Clemson this season he was called some other things as well.

The controversy that never dies in college football reduces to this question: In a close, tough game, if there's a chance to tie it in the final minutes, do you take the tie, or do you play to win? --In a famous game from long ago, Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian settled for a tie and has never lived it down. --At USC, by contrast, John McKay always played to win, and so in the big games of that era, the Trojans won some and lost some.

We heard all week about the lack of respect accorded No. 2 Virginia Tech in its quest to upend No. 1 Florida State for the national title in tonight's Sugar Bowl at the Superdome. It prompted a flashback: Call it deja voodoo. On Jan. 1, 1994, a Big East team from the "Virginias" marched into the Big Easy to take on a floor wiper from the "Floridas."

In the terrible days after Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Superdome, home of the Sugar Bowl game since 1975, became a putrid symbol of national disgrace. When a few Sugar Bowl staffers were allowed inside after the evacuation of the cavernous building that was meant to be a refuge for storm victims, they found their offices looted and a stadium that could not possibly be fit for a game in January.

A decision on where to play the Sugar Bowl game Jan. 2 will be made in early October, as college football officials pursue parallel plans that include an option to move the game to Atlanta. Sugar Bowl Executive Director Paul Hoolahan, after a meeting with bowl championships series commissioners Tuesday in Chicago, said, "We want in every way possible to conduct our event in the state of Louisiana," but acknowledged it was difficult to move forward when "you're ejected from your home venue."

Thank you, Auburn. You did your part. Sorry that you won't have anything but a homemade banner to honor your accomplishment, but your sacrifice will be remembered one day when this BCS system comes toppling down like Sauron's tower at the end of "The Lord of the Rings."

The Auburn Tigers are undefeated and unsatisfied. The "We're No. 1" chant from fans rang a bit hollow when it started almost perfunctorily in the minutes after the Tigers' somewhat muted celebration of a 13-0 season. Their 16-13 Sugar Bowl defeat of No.

Louisiana State claimed it staked a claim to history, not controversy, after scoring a hard-fought 21-14 win over Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl on Sunday night. The victory, in front of a record crowd of 79,342 at the Superdome, earned the Tigers a controversial share of their first national title since 1958 and finally put an end to the most controversial college football season in recent memory. The games have ended, but the debate will not.

Bringing an end to the college football season but not to the controversy that engulfed it, Louisiana State defeated Oklahoma, 21-14, on Sunday night to win the Sugar Bowl and the Bowl Championship Series national title. LSU will share title honors with Rose Bowl winner USC, which was named Associated Press national champion later Sunday night. The BCS was created in 1998 specifically to head off a shared championship, and had done so each season until this one.

Thank you, Auburn. You did your part. Sorry that you won't have anything but a homemade banner to honor your accomplishment, but your sacrifice will be remembered one day when this BCS system comes toppling down like Sauron's tower at the end of "The Lord of the Rings."

There are a lot of things that seem as if they don't quite belong at this Sugar Bowl, displaced from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. There was the Mardi Gras-style parade down Peachtree Street on New Year's Eve, a small but earnest attempt to bring a little bit of the Big Easy to Atlanta. There is the game itself, tonight in the Georgia Dome instead of the damaged Louisiana Superdome.

Oklahoma quarterback Jason White may not have known what was about to hit him Sunday night, but Louisiana State defensive end Marquise Hill gave him a pretty good idea early on in the Sugar Bowl. "He's Mr. Heisman and we wanted to go at him all night," said Hill, who had one of the Tigers' five sacks and helped harass White into a miserable 13-for-37 passing performance for 102 yards and two interceptions. "That's a big award if you win it, and you're going to pay for it.

It has been almost a month since Oklahoma lost its only game of the season, a 35-7 thrashing at the hands of Kansas State in the Big 12 Conference championship game on Dec. 6, but the defeat remains fresh in the minds of the Sooners and continues to motivate them going into tonight's Sugar Bowl game against Louisiana State. "That was a real eye opener," defensive end Dan Cody said. "The problem was we got on a cloud three-quarters of the way through the season.