Rose Bowl Notebook: Oregon’s Bellotti comes to watch ‘Canes, leaves impressed

Steve Guiremand

Friday, Jan. 4, 2002 | 11:25 a.m.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti stopped by the Rose Bowl on Thursday night hoping to leave with a Cornhusker victory and a share of the national championship.

Instead, he left with one big question: What if?

What if the Pac-10 champion Ducks (11-1), who finished No. 2 in both polls and just fractions of a point behind Nebraska in the now-infamous Bowl Championship Series computer rankings, had gotten a chance to play Miami in the Rose Bowl instead of the Cornuskers, a team that had lost by 36 points (62-36) to a Colorado squad that the Ducks trounced, 38-16, in Tuesday's Fiesta Bowl?

"I've had better days," Bellotti said with a smile. "I think Miami's a very, very talented football team and obviously a great football program. But, yeah, certainly we would have liked a shot to play them."

Bellotti felt that the Ducks, who run a similar passing attack to the Hurricanes, might have matched up better with Miami.

"College football is all matchups," Bellotti said. "(Nebraska) was not a good matchup. Could we have matched up with (Miami?). Possibly, yes. Miami's extremely talented. Nebraska is a great football program, but obviously the polls had us No. 2 for a reason."

Miami head coach Larry Coker was asked what he would say if Bellotti called him and asked him to settle the issue.

"Why?" Coker responded. "We're the national champions. It's already settled."

Hurricanes free safety Edward Reed seemed intrigued by the idea, however.

"Oregon? Give us a week off. We could do it next Saturday," Reed said.

"I think Miami is a great football team," Bellotti said. "The bottom line is that we would have loved to have a chance to play them. ... Knowing how close we came to playing them is the heartbreaking part of it."

* RED WAVE: If they awarded national championships on the basis of fan support, there's little doubt Nebraska would have been a unanimous choice.

About 80 percent of the crowd of 93,781 was decked in Cornhusker red, transforming the Rose Bowl into a western version of Lincoln, Neb. In fact, just about the entire west side of Arroyo Boulevard was taken over by RVs with red Nebraska flags.

Nebraska got zero sacks on Thursday night. For the season, Miami quarterbacks attempted 375 passes and were sacked just four times.

On Thursday night, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior running back realized his dream of playing in a Rose Bowl, but it was as a member of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

"It's kind of funny how things worked out," Collins said.

Collins, who used to sneak into USC's Howard Jones Field to play pickup games with his friends, prepped at nearby Manual Arts High School and originally signed with Washington State. He fell short of a qualifying score on the SAT and enrolled at East Los Angeles Junior College, where in 1998 he was named a J.C. All-American.

Collins redshirted his sophomore season while earning his associate of arts degree at West L.A. JC, then transferred to Nebraska in 2000 where he played in just three games and gained 77 yards.

However, he became a key backup to starting I-back Dahrran Diedrick this season and rushed for 647 yards. He carried six times for 10 yards on Thursday night.

However, tickets were plentiful right up until game time when many were going below the $150 face value.

The fact a West Coast team was not involved in the contest was blamed for the low demand.