LOS ANGELES, California. USC head football coach Pete Carroll today demanded a recount of the Trojans' 41-38 loss to Texas in the Rose Bowl following the disclosure that Longhorns' quarterback Vince Young answered just six of 50 questions correctly on the Wonderlic test, the intelligence exam used by NFL teams to rate college players.
"That was a high scoring game, and Young had 467 total yards. You're telling me he did all that in his head, without a calculator?" Carroll said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Facing a fourth-and-five with 19 seconds left on the clock, Young scored the game-winning touchdown on an eight-yard scramble. Southern California, whose double-Heisman duo of Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush produced 939 total yards, failed to advance into field goal range as time expired. Had the two teams' offenses continued in opposite directions averaging 4.2 yards per play, how long would it have taken for them to meet in NFL Europe? Show your calculations.
Carroll said he and his assistants would spend some time over the next few days proofreading the Texas roster to bolster their case. "We already found a kid--Ramonce Taylor--who apparently doesn't know how to spell 'Romance'. My guess is their score will go way down by the time we're through."
Young, who lost out to USC's Reggie Bush in this year's Heisman Trophy voting, defended his mental credentials in the face of Carroll's sore-loser crusade. "Tell him to close his eyes, say the words 'bonehead lateral' and see who comes to mind."
Thanks. Dudski, if the allusion is to the ubiquitous Foxwoods Casino theme--"The Wonder of It All"--when my kids were toddlers they had heard it so much on commercial breaks during baseball games they knew the words. Kind of embarassing when they started singing "Take a chance--make it happen . . ." in front of the grandparents one day.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
