Columnist Ron Kantowski: JT simply overrated by Sega

Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2001 | 9:11 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088. Regular columnist Dean Juipe is on vacation.

The people who created "NCAA College Football 2K2" had better start a recall. The college football game for the Sega Dreamcast console has a major flaw.

While still coming to grips with the terrorist bombings the Saturday before last and with college football dark, both literally and figuratively, I went out and bought the game and fired up the Dreamcast, which had been collecting dust (again, both literally and figuratively) in our linen closet.

I lined up UNLV against Arizona. In that the last video game I was any good at was Pong, I played in "Coach" mode. That meant I only had to call plays and let the game processor do the rest, rather than twirl joysticks and press flippers, or whatever it is that makes the digital players do what you want them to do.

(It's amazing what they can do with computer graphics these days. However, the electric football game I played as a kid didn't require the hand-eye coordination of Hawkeye Pierce.)

Utilizing a conservative game plan that John Robinson would have been proud to call his own, I held the Wildcats without a touchdown. The only trouble is that No. 86 -- Rebels fans know him better as Troy Mason -- drops passes in the computer game, too, and "my" Rebels came up short 12-7.

The reason my Rebels were able to stay close was the passing and running -- mostly the running -- of Jason Thomas. In the second half, I discovered a bread-and-butter play that went for eight yards virtually every time I called it -- a quarterback draw.

Paraphrasing the announcers in the game: "Usually, a coach hates to let his quarterback take unnecessary punishment. But when you have a guy who can run like No. 2, you've got to take advantage of it."

Obviously, the game creators read the same scouting report by Mel Kiper Jr. that all of us here did, the one trumpeting Thomas as the best quarterback in college football before the start of the season.

To make the players perform like their real-life counterparts, the game assigns each a 1-100 value. UNLV's No. 2 (Thomas) is rated 92. Conversely, Fresno State's No. 8 (prolific David Carr) is rated only 91.

Well, my little sister's Easy Bake Oven didn't always cook those miniature brownies all the way through, either.

The problem with computer football is that there's no accounting for a player's mental frame of mind, and at the moment, Thomas' is out of whack. His mechanics aren't any better (or worse) than last year, but at least last year when he threw into a crowd (or beyond it), he did so knowing that Nate Turner would somehow come down with the ball.

Now that Turner has latched on with the San Diego Chargers, his replacements are having trouble latching on to much of anything, even when Thomas puts the ball right in their hands or between their numbers. Which isn't that often.

With no breakaway threat in the backfield to turn to -- how long before Dominique Dorsey gets his shot? -- it's not a good situation for an 0-3 team to be in.

Too bad real-life football isn't more like the computer kind. Then Robinson could just choose to play BYU as Miami or Oklahoma on Saturday night.

Or pull the plug upon falling behind.