Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9409020060
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ABC has the Super Bowl XXIX telecast at the end of the NFL's 75th season, and will start the season Labor Day night with the Super matchup - San Francisco against the Los Angeles Raiders.
Those teams will win the NFC West and AFC West, respectively. The crystal football shows Buffalo and Pittsburgh as the other AFC division champs and Dallas and Minnesota as the other NFC winners. The AFC wild cards will be Kansas City, Denver and New England, with Green Bay, Arizona and Detroit in the NFC.
The 49ers will win the Super Bowl. You didn't expect an AFC pick, did you? The NFC Central will be the league's most competitive division. Philadelphia, despite the defensive losses to the new Buddy system in Arizona, is a playoff sleeper. Washington, even with one of the league's softest schedules, will finish no better than 5-11, no matter which quarterback Norv Turner starts.
STAGGERING: With the game three months away, Salem already has sold 1,450 tickets for its second Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. Maybe Rowan fans should stop by the civic center box office and buy their seats on the trip to Ferrum for Saturday's opener.
The Profs from New Jersey are again loaded with Division I transfers and in the Division III tournament regional rotation, will be at home for a semifinal game against the South champ (Washington & Jefferson?). The Stagg best-guess is Rowan against Wisconsin-LaCrosse.
HOW EASY? Besides talent and last season, a reason some football prognosticators are picking Virginia Tech 9-2 this season is the Hokies' schedule. The NCAA's preseason schedule-strength ranking puts Tech 79th among 107 Division I-A teams, using this year's opponents with last year's records. That's the lowest in the Big East by far, behind No. 44 Syracuse.
The Hokies' late addition of Arkansas State to the schedule lowered that ranking, but helped their bowl situation, because State is a I-A opponent and dropped James Madison is I-AA, which do not count in the computer poll. The NCAA figures North Carolina's schedule, at No. 84, is the ACC's softest. Virginia's schedule ranks 41st nationally and fifth in the ACC, but that does not count William and Mary, a I-AA opponent. All of these rankings will change weekly.
CRYSTAL BOWL: Virginia Tech will finish the season in the Carquest Bowl, Virginia in the Peach Bowl.
HEAD START: With Sunday's impressive Kickoff Classic start against West Virginia and network TV dates against Texas Tech and UCLA ahead by mid-September, Nebraska quarterback Tommie Frazier may have a grip on the Heisman Trophy before the Cornhuskers start rolling through the Big Eight Conference, where only Colorado may be good enough to stop them.
HUGE: The biggest college football game in the state this year won't be Virginia-Virginia Tech on Nov. 19 in Blacksburg. That's just a non-conference game now. What's huge is a week earlier: Randolph-Macon plays Hampden-Sydney - in their 100th meeting and a game that also should decide the ODAC title.
NO JOE: The NFL's 75th anniversary team was missing a quarterback. Where was Joe Namath? He not only saved one league and forged a merger with another, but he virtually created the phenomenon of Super Sunday. Isn't that enough?
FANFARE: The Salem Buccaneers finished their home season with a record attendance of 153,575. The Municipal Field-closing crowd Sunday was 5,467. Ten years from now, there will be 50,467 baseball fans saying they saw that game. It probably wasn't the last game at Municipal Field, however. Salem already has lost a cooler-than-usual August of grass-growing time at the site of the new ballpark.
GREAT NEWS? The good news is that a very deserving Bill Blair, the former VMI basketball coach, finally got an NBA head coaching job this week. The bad news is that he's coaching the Minnesota Timberwolves, so how many winters can he survive, even with two new Canadian clubs in the league?
Write to Jack Bogaczyk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010.
by CNB