Column: This BCS game needs a body slam

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor


JIM LITKE

AP Sports Columnist

GLENDALE, Ariz. - What college football needs at the moment, even more than a playoff, is a good body slam.
And we know just the guy to do it.
His name is James Laurinaitis, and if it sounds vaguely familiar, well, it should. More on that in a moment.
First, try to remember the last time a national championship was so badly in need of some buzz. Bowl fatigue and the start of the NFL playoffs have made it easy to forget college football's biggest game isn't until Monday night, and nobody wearing the colors of Ohio State or Florida has said or done anything memorable enough to change that.
If this Bowl Championship Series title was being contested in New Orleans, chances are good we'd have at least one arrest or a barroom brawl by now. But here in the sedate Valley of the Sun, most players have said so few interesting things they might as well have shown up for news conferences still wearing their mouthpieces.
And if there was any doubt where they got their cues, Gators coach Urban Meyer and counterpart Jim Tressel said even less, leaving the impression they'd rather swallow a dry eraser than utter anything that might turn up on the blackboard in the opposing locker room.
On top of that, there's a nagging sense the best games have already been played - and in the same locale, no less.
On Dec. 29, Texas Tech pulled off the biggest comeback in bowl history, rallying from 31 points down against Minnesota in the Insight on Dec. 29. Just three days later came Boise State's wild 43-42 overtime win over Oklahoma on New Year's Day, topped off by three zany, sandlot-styled plays and a marriage proposal at the finish.
All of which brings us back to Laurinaitis.
Ohio State's All-America linebacker is the first true sophomore to win the Nagurski Award, but even those achievements don't completely explain the echo. For that we have to bring in his father, Joe Laurinaitis, better known as "The Animal" of pro wrestling fame, the surviving half of his sport's most fabled tag team, the Road Warriors/Legion of Doom.
If this game has a backstory worth telling, it's how a father who would have given up anything to become a great football player wound up with a son who did. It begins the day Joe Laurinaitis met his wife, Julie, in a weight room.
"She was some sort of power lifter, she asked my dad for a spot, and that's how they met. Of course, my teammates loved hearing that story, they think it's hilarious," Laurinaitis said. "Even now, whenever they see me I'm in the weight room, they say, 'You need a spot,' and I'm like, 'No, I'm fine.' Then they say, 'Can I marry you?' and I say, 'No, that's not how it went.'"
By then, Joe had already given up on football and started making his mark in the wrestling racket. When James was born, though, he channeled those desires into coaching his son's peewee teams.
"He used his wrestling voice a lot on the field. Imagine as fifth- and sixth-graders hearing that," James recalled. "Parents, too."
Joe's private persona, though, was very different from the public figure who made his living parading around in tights, a mohawk, a painted face and spiked shoulder pads. At the height of his reign in the wrestling world, Joe flew back to Minnesota every Saturday morning to coach his son's games, then back to wherever that evening's rasslin' extravaganza was being staged. By the time James reached high school, Dad knew enough to defer to coaches whose expertise exceeded his own and quietly stepped aside. Soon after, Julie Laurinaitis assumed the cheerleading duties.
That explains why, when someone asked Tressel whether Joe Laurinaitis ever threatened to "body slam you" if James didn't get enough playing time, the coach replied with a straight face, "He didn't mention that, no. But I would listen more to his mom, anyway."
And Tressel is not the only one.
James has spent a good part of his 20 years hanging around rings and play-wrestling with luminaries like Stone Cold Steve Austin. He grew up big and skilled enough in the process to earn an invitation to join the circuit if either football or his business degree don't provide a comfortable living. James calls that "not too bad of a fallback job." But his father, who retired last year and limits his involvement in wrestling to motivational speaking, says there's very little chance of that happening.
"His mother," Joe Laurinaitis confirmed, "would kill him."
But that didn't stop James and a cadre of teammates from hanging out backstage every time the pro wrestling tour touched down in Ohio.
"Those guys are tough, unbelievable athletes," Buckeyes linebacker Austin Spitler, one of James' best friends on the squad, marveled, "and you could see where a lot of the stuff they know would come in handy on the football field. But it's not like we're going to be throwing guys around like that."
Some of Florida's Gators are counting on that very thing. More than a few were wrestling fans growing up and several had no problem connecting the Laurinaitis name.
"We don't live in a box or anything," said Florida wideout Dallas Baker, who figures to cross Laurinaitis' path when the teams meet. "So yeah, I know who his dad is. But I can't think somebody is going to put a finishing move on, or body slam me in the middle of the national championship game just because of that."
He better hope not.
 
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