Only Seat in the House
SPORTS by Christopher Dean Heine

NEW YORK -- Watching Heisman Trophy candidate Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch break away for a long touchdown run is thrilling and confusing.
      He looks like a bank robber chasing his horse. Or a runt winding past rival bullies. He looks perfectly desperate. Who knows what drives such speed?
      What I know is that what lies before him now is a big season, which is like declaring icebergs have tips. Obvious drama is deep right here.
      It's clear that the sprinting option quarterback from Omaha isn't just competing with several other hopefuls for the Heisman Trophy this year. Nope.
      Truth be told, the Nebraska Cornhuskers aren't so much a team to its farmland surroundings, but the state's loudest voice -- its "Hi, over hear America! Yes, it's me, Nebraska. I am playing in a football game today! Please watch me!?!"
      And as corporate farms swallow marketshare down to every backyard garden, the state's farmer-and-the-dell identity has been belittled down to an outdoors factory culture. Couple this with these high-media times and this "Hey look at me" urge grows as fruitfully as berries on crick trees.

PARANOIA WILL DESTROY YA!
Nebraska is like most states outside of New York and California in that it doesn't trust the national media in the handling of its own stories. The state has seen what has happened to its heroes in their tough times, namely one Tom Osborne.
      The coaching legend six years ago found himself at a moral crossroad when his star running back Lawrence Phillips beat up his girlfriend. The details in the crime are surprisingly complicated for such a seemingly plain act of violence. A lot of we-said, they-said pieces of information concerning the actual tort damage committed. Those on record seemed to disagree on the difference between shades of black and blue.
      All of that -- surrounded by the underlying question of whether a once-orphaned minority man with considerable athleticism deserved forgiveness although he scarred the life of a white woman -- made the subject ripe for loud, itchy opinion. Although there is little doubt that Phillips hurt her significantly, Osborne, who had a history of hard rules with his players, eventually said yes, he will play for my team again. Osborne brought Phillips back to afford him the opportunity to impress pro scouts and get the running back the hell out of Dodge. To give him a second chance far away from the scene of the crime.
      It was a common sense decision and Nebraskans clearly understood but cringed because they knew the media onslaught would be brutal. Yeah, get him out of town, we thought, but what about the shrapnel? What about us? We love this team. Heck, we love you, Tom. Protect yourself.
      Of course, Phillips went on to become a national pariah and an embarrassment to the entire state. Osborne quickly became depicted in national forums as Phillips' corrupt uncle. The press jumped all over the author of the philosophical 1980s memoir "More than Winning," accusing him of selling out for the sake of winning. Like Gandhi getting accused of throwing constant temper tantrums.
      Even celebrated Nebraska natives such as nationally syndicated political columnist Marianne Means hit the coach hard with criticism. The hometown boy. The supposedly simple, moral perfection that was Dr. Tom Osborne. Tom Who Went For Two!
      But Osborne has never deserved the entire credit or blame bestowed upon him for his actions as a dynamic player on this big-time entertainment stage.
      Further, like all entertainment culture and life in general, college football is dense with good and bad egos. To be involved in anything near the aggressiveness of high-profile football, you almost have to associate with some sketchy folk. Even if by accident.
      So stud athletes -- many who have played for Nebraska no doubt -- feel powerful and either get into plenty of trouble because of it or do really nice things such as visit children's hospitals. Or they do neither. Sometimes both. The Cornhuskers have certainly not been an exception to any of these circumstances.
      Meanwhile, Nebraska fans have reacted to every bit of criticism about its football team since the Philips debacle with the idea that the rest of the world was building on his one isolated incident. Nebraskans have constructed a skyscraper of delusional guilt about it all. No negative issue concerning the 'Skers was separate from the horror of Phillips, suddenly.
      But the paranoia is understandable in these talk-radio, Internet soap box times. Media has become some sort of Civil War. It brings out the classist, regionalist tendencies our culture has always had, and has been nurtured in the TV and radio wavelengths since Elvis helped rock'n'roll us into this era of attitude and abrasion.
      Yet, the Nebraska catalog of insecurities is neither restricted by the Phillips incident nor state identity. Every college football state -- from Florida and Mississippi to Pennsylvania -- has seen its beloved football teams shot down in tragic grandeur by the imperfections of its players and coaches. All the while the coastal press -- who preside in markets where professional sports rule the roost -- waits like a gothic monster to cobble up negative stories about college sports. Sometimes the corps is fair, sometimes it is not.
       And here comes that Superman-fast Eric Crouch to, perhaps, to save Nebraska from its past and the press. A good guy who sings in musicals to please his mother. Someone who seems to say and do the right thing because he would even without the football adulation.
       Most of Nebraska loves him because they believe he will not let them down. I don't know for sure, I admit, but ... (the whole Crouch-Bobby Newcombe conflict was spun into No Man's Land long ago by the athletic department's PR wing and it remains a swamp best left for a blood war between its native crocodiles) ... here goes, a faith in believing in the beauty of speed over confusion.
        Here is Crouch, who helped his mother through divorce as an adolescent. Here is a football player who will not hurt women. He will not steal from a gas station the way that Nebraska Heisman winner Johnny Rodgers did thirty years ago.
        Crouch winning the Heismann, as a Nebraska mom would say, would be "neat." Especially after the way another neat guy, Cornhusker cum laude Tommy Frazier, got gypped six years ago.
        Yet, really, it is not so simple. How do we properly involve Crouch in a debate involving star-crossed heroes like Phillips and Rodgers? After all, during these times, it is not uncommon to hear flippant talk about the downfall of the Roman Empire in correlation to modern America in some small town coffee shop. Old men with hairy ears spouting such nonsense. Silent old women nodding to one another as one of their husbands uses the R and E words.
         It seems that people are looking for answers for nearly everything. Singular answers for angular problems. Our people, in essence, speak of our so-called demise in abstract, moral phrases. And they draw upon their heroes to provide some sort of analogy.
         Phillps and Rodgers -- The Jet to a far, far, far lesser extent -- have, at their more negative peaks, represented the ship sinking to some folks. On a larger scale, so have Bill Clinton, Robert Downy Jr. and OJ Simpson. Lovable, faulty people that have collided with great institutions.
         That's why Eric Crouch represents a penance that his fans need.

FOOTBALL FEVER
What does this season mean to him in pure football terms? He is in position -- not ignoring the sensitive implications of competition such as team chemistry, offensive line development, tackling and special teams play -- to become the fourth quarterback to help lead the Cornhuskers to the national championship.
       Chief to this possibility is the fact that Nebraska has almost all of its key games on home field turf this season. The team could conceivably run the table for the seventh time in its history. If Crouch, arguably the most recognizable name in the Heismann Trophy race, leads his team to the championship game in Pasadena, he will win the award. I'm willing to bet my next paycheck on it.
       And by the way, no Cornhusker has ever won a national championship and Heismann in the same season. There's real gold in them historical hills.
       Physically, Crouch is sandy-haired and of less-than-imposing stature. He stands 6-foot-one-inches and holds 195 pounds. He's no Greek god, no Herschel Walker. Not even close to Heismann runner-ups such as John Elway or Hugh Green.
       But Crouch is fas-s----------------------------t-t.
       Crouch's signature moment so far has been when he took coach Frank Solich's call to sprint wide left during last year's Notre Dame game in the face of a big NBC crowd. He outran everyone for the pylon and an overtime touchdown. That run evened the 9-decade-old Nebraska-Notre Dame series at 7-7.
       After the touchdown, in the back of the end zone, he spun the ball like a top on a slab of concrete as Notre Dame fans worldwide felt sheer frustration and pain. It was a cocky explanation point. It was theater. Knute Rockne moaned in his grave.
       Crouch will have ample opportunities this season to create more drama, month by month. College football awaits somebody big enough for the star role, perhaps it is him.
       Notre Dame comes calling again in early September. Crouch, in October, can atone for the embarrassing loss he had a major hand in last fall against Oklahoma. In November, he can even his record with the growing rival Kansas State. Come December, if everything goes according to his plan, the Huskers can win the Big 12 Championship. And in January, there's the national championship in Pasadena.
       That's a helluva lot to expect.
       But Crouch knows better than anybody that speed kills. Perhaps, it kills everything.
       Tommy Frazier dissipated so many old nightmares for the team a decade ago by running his way to two national championships. Can the squeaky-clean Crouch make Lawrence Phillips go away for good with the feels-nice publicity that would come with his Heisman victory? Or at least help put the whole spiel behind us all for awhile?
        Please don't tell me this is not very, very real. Every time I come home from New York, multiple people ask me if they are still ripping us for LP out there on the East Coast. I haven't heard such a reference in my two years here, and I discuss college football at every possible turn in this pro sports market.
        Can Crouch can heal this wound? It's probably a combination of a new hero like him emerging and LP and the current Nebraska team keeping their proverbial noses clean. With some of the things that happened during the summer with the current team, this seems unlikely.
        But, if Crouch can win the Heisman, it is assured, Nebraskans will run with him. Stride for stride. Inch by inch. A farmer and his wife seeing their first game in Memorial Stadium. First-generation immigrants in Lincoln's south Russian Bottoms watching the game on TV, becoming a new family of fans. The strange brew down in the Old Market also catching the action on the tube. Some long-gone alumni flown in for his luxury box.
         If Crouch wins the award, it might be as dramatic as birth and death. Does he falter, he becomes the new Steve Taylor, a statistical great better fit for the record books than at the converstational top of great Nebraska quarterbacks. This gamble has big play for Crouchie.
        And let's face it, some Nebraska fans take their passion to a bookie. Winning these games is of extreme importance for those few. And if Vegas doesn't play with your checkbook, it doesn't mean gambling never enters your mind in some other fashion.
        Did you ever lay in bed in 1999 and mentally pitch the ball to Dan Alexander? What were the odds there? Might as well been a cockfight in the Arizona desert.
        Ah, let college football seaon begin.

next: Brad Sonder