An Unpopular Vote

By RICHARD CORLISS

Southern Mississippi University was today declared the 1989 college football champion by a poll of writers for the Dissociated Press. The Golden Eagles, who compiled a poor 5-6 record, earned the title by defeating Florida State in their first game of the season. Florida State later beat Miami, which later beat Notre Dame, which on New Year's Day beat Colorado, the top-rated college team. "If the polls say we're No. 1," exulted a Southern Miss fan, "who's to complain?"

Well, Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz, for one. Even if, this year, the wire services actually named Miami, not Southern Mississippi, as the best team in college football. Holtz's "Fighting Irish," who were ranked first until a November loss to Miami, had just flogged the new champ, Colorado, in the Orange Bowl. Yet four polls gave top ranking to Miami, which had also lost one game. "You can justify why Miami won it," Holtz said. "What you can't justify is why we didn't." He pointed to the unique toughness of his school's schedule: Notre Dame played eight of the Associated Press's Top 25 teams. Moreover, if Miami took the top slot by beating Notre Dame, surely the Irish should have become the champs when they defeated Colorado.

In a sport where 106 Division 1-A colleges play a dozen or fewer games each season -- and in a system without an organized play-off structure -- controversy is bound to boil. If the national champ were determined by popular vote, Notre Dame would have won this year. Twice as many viewers tuned in to the Orange Bowl as to the Sugar Bowl, in which Miami defeated Alabama. An ABC phone-in vote for the top team, taken during the Sugar Bowl, rang up a 52% Notre Dame landslide.

But fans need not apply here. The college football title, like Miss America or the Oscars, is chosen by "experts." The 60 A.P. voters represent such influential journals as Pennsylvania's Tarentum Valley News Dispatch, Oklahoma's Enid News & Eagle and the Moscow Idahonian-Daily News, but no papers based in New York City or Los Angeles. The U.P.I. board comprises 50 college coaches, but its membership also borders on the capricious. Tim Rose of minor Miami (Ohio) is a voter; Dennis Erickson of major Miami (Fla.) is not.

When one team goes undefeated, as Colorado would have if it had beaten Notre Dame, the polls stoke little debate. But when several schools can claim the top spot, the murmur begins for a national play-off of the four or eight best teams. "The championship should be decided on the field," says Mike Francesa, sports swami for CBS and WFAN radio, who favors a play-off. "But we'll never do away with the bowls. They produce a phenomenal amount of money for the teams."

Bowling for dollars is indeed big business. Notre Dame and Colorado each picked up $4.1 million at the Orange Bowl. The Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences earned $5.5 each at the Rose Bowl. A play-off would mean even more money, but for only a few teams. Two years ago, Division I schools voted 98-13 against the idea.

For now, Holtz can take solace in the notion that the college football season is enriched, not impoverished, by ending with an imaginary championship played in the mind of every partisan fan. Or he can follow the Southern Miss theory to its happy conclusion. Let's see: Southern Miss was beaten by Southwest Louisiana, which was defeated by Tulane, which was defeated by Virginia Tech, which was beaten by Virginia, which, in its first game of the season, was defeated by . . . Notre Dame.

With reporting by David Thigpen/New York