Matchup of Two Top States Leaves Much to Be Desired

The starting quarterback for the California team, Chris Rix from Santa Margarita High, is going to Florida State. California’s best linebacker, D.J. Williams from Concord De La Salle, is going to Miami.

There were 9,200 people sprinkled around the Rose Bowl Saturday night for the CaliFlorida Bowl, an all-star football game between graduated high school seniors from, you guessed it, California and Florida.

If this game had been played in Gainesville or Tallahassee, there would have been 40,000 people. Which explains why Rix and Williams would turn down all their Pacific 10 Conference suitors and move to places where the humidity makes alligators cranky and where you can take a sauna in November while you’re watching a football game in either place. You can take that sauna outside, in your seat, but you can also feel football frenzy 12 months a year.

There were no players on the Florida roster set to attend California colleges. There were no players on the Florida roster set to attend Florida either. Gator Coach Steve Spurrier was adamant about not having his recruits fly across the country a month before practice starts.

The Florida coach for Saturday’s game, David Wilson, whose Lincoln High team won the Florida 6A state title last season, checked left, checked right, didn’t see anyone looking, then bent down and grabbed a clump of Rose Bowl grass. Wilson stuck the souvenir into his pocket. That’s why Wilson came to Pasadena. To take home history.

The idea of this game, which benefited the Los Angeles Ronald McDonald House, is nice. Players from two of the states which produce great college football players meeting in the Rose Bowl for fun and for bragging rights before they head off for college and two-a-days.

Of course bragging rights might be diluted because none of Florida’s recruits came along. Maybe they had the right idea.

There was so little noise at the Rose Bowl you could hear the coaches yelling at the players. “Go Billie Bob,” one coach yelled.

This had to be coming from the Florida side because it is not possible for a California player (or play) to be called Billie Bob.

It would have been nice if the organizers had not chosen to make the numbers on the Florida jerseys white and the jersey a light gold, which meant from more than 10 feet away you couldn’t read the numbers. But with a set of binoculars and a roster it was easy to see that Johnny Jones, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound quarterback from Lakeland, Fla., will be closely watched while he plays junior college football at Hutchinson, Kan.

Nebraska seems to have claimed a good one from Los Angeles Locke High. Alvin Marshall, 5-11, 185 pounds, made the first big play of the game. His 80-yard kickoff return set up California’s first touchdown. OK, Marshall stepped on the sideline twice, once with each foot, and the Florida coaches pointed to the spots where Marshall should have been called out of bounds for the next five minutes.

Up in the press box a friend of Marshall’s screamed, “Go Alvin, go Alvin,” every time Marshall touched the ball. “Alvin won’t play running back at Nebraska,” the Alvin cheerleader said. “He’ll play defense. And run back kickoffs. They’re gonna love him at Nebraska. I don’t know if he’ll love it at Nebraska.”

Marshall knocked away some tacklers, fooled others with nifty moves and showed that it was no accident he was named first-team All-City Section and was recently the MVP of the Gridiron Game, another all-star contest. In the Gridiron Game, Marshall played quarterback.

Another Nebraska recruit, Bernard Thomas from Mountain View St. Francis, made the first big defensive play for California, stripping a Florida runner and causing a turnover early in the second quarter. So this game could also be considered the last chance to see California players headed not only to Florida, but also Nebraska.

And Wisconsin. The most ferocious and eager tackler of the evening seemed to be 6-3, 300-pound defensive lineman Kalvin Barrett, a Cupertino Monte Vista High graduate who is headed for Wisconsin. Barrett even got a personal foul call for a late hit, something you don’t see much of in all-star games.

Barrett has grown to like Wisconsin as he’s seen the Badgers come to the Rose Bowl and manhandle Pac-10 teams.

At halftime two Rose Bowl employees sat sweating and complaining.

“Who knew high school football games could last this long. This is worse than soccer. A minute can last a half hour,” one said. His friend answered, “No, the halftime is going to last a half hour.”

And sure enough, halftime was interminable too. There was some sort of quarterback challenge with seniors-to-be throwing at moving golf carts which had targets on them. Mater Dei’s Matt Leinart patiently spelled the name of his school for a photographer. The drivers of the carts would occasionally get hit in the head and stop the cart. “Don’t stop on the field,” security would yell.

In the second half Rix hooked up with Hueneme’s Keary Colbert on a 34-yard touchdown. Colbert is headed to USC.

But Los Alamitos kicker Chris Kluwe, a prize recruit for UCLA, missed two extra points and that was more how the football was played. It was sloppy, ending in a 21-11 California victory.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected].