Vanderbilt tutoring on success

We begin this week's diatribe with a quiz: Where has ESPN's "College GameDay" decided to set up camp this week?

North Carolina, where Butch Davis has put a spring in the Tar Heels' step? Alabama, author of the first month's biggest rise in the polls? Oklahoma State, 4-0 and averaging 52 points a game?

If you answered Vanderbilt, take off early from microbiology lab and meet me at the corner tavern.

Yes, it's Vandy, and if that's weird, it's also fitting. Seemingly by coincidence, the early part of the season has been partly given over to the nation's nerds, getting it done in tutorial as well as in the Sagarin ratings.

Vanderbilt, at 4-0, hosts 13th-ranked Auburn. Meanwhile, Stanford, 3-2 in Jim Harbaugh's second year, is at Notre Dame. Northwestern, 5-0 with a bye, is a mere victory from bowl eligibility. Duke is 3-1, its most wins since 2003, and going to Georgia Tech.

This no doubt busts the buttons of the administration at the NCAA, particularly president Myles Brand. He has for years extolled the virtues of Academic Progress Rate reform, and contended — over the racket of late-night bar fights, drug busts and stolen stereos — that the scholar-Sam linebacker model is not dead.

A look at what's up with this quantum-gridiron equation:

Vanderbilt: Vandy has played in exactly three bowl games, the last in 1982. The Sporting News' preseason magazine might want to take back what it burped up last summer:

"This, ladies and gentleman, is a bad team," it wrote. "Vandy will be lucky to win more than two games."

Well, Vandy has doubled that, including two wins in the SEC, led by quarterback Chris Nickson, who passes a little (52 times) and runs a lot (for 326 yards). The Commodores have been outgained by more than 300 yards, but have intercepted 10 passes and not been picked yet.

Bobby Johnson, in his seventh season (he was appointed by ex-Vandy and former Washington athletic director Todd Turner), sometimes has to accommodate players who have study sessions conflicting with practice, or tailor workouts for an engineering student's needs.

"Once we demonstrated we can compete in the SEC and win some games, the message got better: You can have it all," says Johnson. "We get sharp young men who usually stay in school and become fifth-year seniors."

Stanford: Of these four, Stanford has the richest football history, but much of that is buried in archives seven and eight decades ago. Now Harbaugh has introduced a rugged persona to his team that has rarely been there.

He estimates the annual high-school talent pool of athletes good enough for Stanford at both football and academics to be only "100 to 150."

"It's a small pool," he says, "smaller than anybody else's."

Northwestern: Pat Fitzgerald, the coach, is a little defensive about any portrayal that the Wildcats are an out-of-the-blue phenomenon.

"Since 1995, we've had a pretty successful football program," he said. "This isn't an overnight thing for us."

True. Fitzgerald was an All-American linebacker on the 1995 team that rocked the Big Ten by marching to the Rose Bowl. Since then, the Wildcats have been to four more bowls.

But all of those, they lost. The school's sole bowl win was in the 1949 Rose Bowl, against California.

Under the leadership of quarterback C.J. Bachér, a grad student from Sacramento, the Wildcats are 5-0 for the first time since 1962.

Duke: Duke? This would be the unlikeliest of the eggheads to keep it going, but when the Blue Devils throttled Virginia 31-3 last week, it marked their biggest margin of victory in an ACC game since 1994.

One day, David Cutcliffe, the first-year coach, was trying to make a point on the practice field, recalling a slice of physics he learned long ago.

"How many of you have had physics?" Cutcliffe recalled asking. "Just about everybody on the team raised their hand."

Cutcliffe has been an assistant at Tennessee and a head coach at Mississippi, and he notices the difference among his new charges.

"Absolutely," he says. "Just in communication skills, accountability skills, reliability. I'm just amazed at the amount of work they do. The challenges and demands of the faculty are just far beyond what I'm used to. These guys don't complain, they just do their work."

Clockwork

Through the first month, the game's rules changes are having TV's desired effect of shortening games. In the Big 12, plays are down from an average of 147 a game to 135, and TV games have been trimmed by 20 minutes to 3:15.

Other conferences report similar, if less pronounced, trends. This year, the NCAA has gone to a 40-second clock that starts just after a play finishes, rather than the 25-second clock that began at the "ready-for-play" signal. And the game clock starts after plays end out of bounds rather than on the next snap.

One of those most displeased with the new rules is Florida coach Urban Meyer, who points out the shorter game limits playing time for reserves.

"I love the game of college football," he said. "I don't just love it, I live it.

"There's a reason why the NFL does it [shorten games]; they can't afford the rosters. We have 85 scholarship players and they all deserve to play. I'm very concerned about the direction of college football, and the timing rules."

Follow that kid!

Here's how Mat Williams found his way to the Texas Tech roster: He was participating in one of those halftime kicking contests at the Red Raiders' game against Massachusetts and showed flawless technique on a successful boot.

Coach Mike Leach caught the end of it, had a staffer follow Williams out a stadium ramp, and Leach convinced him — during the second half — to walk on to the roster. Williams might be kicking soon if Donnie Carona (1 for 5 on field goals) doesn't pick it up.

And what's more ...

• Colorado (3-1) hosts Texas (4-0) in their first meeting since 2005, when the Longhorns rocked the Buffs in an incredible Big 12 title game, 70-3, which ushered out coach Gary Barnett.

• Penn State (5-0) likely will find out if it's national-title timber this month. It visits Purdue and Wisconsin, hosts Michigan and plays at Ohio State.

• Fourth-ranked Missouri (4-0) has removed a lot of old skeletons under Gary Pinkel, but has another in front of it at Nebraska (3-1), where it hasn't won since 1978.

• Likewise, the record book would suggest Baylor's (2-2) signs of life will grow fainter in Waco against Oklahoma. The top-ranked Sooners are 17-0 in the series.

• Florida State (3-1) plays Miami (2-2) in a shadow of a series that was, but at least the Seminoles are back to one old habit, committing penalties. They've been flagged 24 times for 249 yards in their past two games.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com