On the morning before he sent his sacrificial lambs out to slaughter the butcher, University of Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger gazed out a picture window in his hotel suite high above downtown Miami and wondered aloud if the Nebraska Cornhuskers realized "what a bunch of alley cats they're about to run into." He said he doubted it. He said he doubted a number of things about No. 1-ranked, 12-0 Nebraska, including whether it was as unbeatable as everybody thought. The bookies, for example, had made the Huskers an 11-point favorite. Looking lordly in his Oriental smoking jacket and red felt slippers, Schnellenberger bit down on a bagel and wondered, too, if the Huskers realized they were about to get hit from the heavens by a round-eyed, curly-haired freshman quarterback who talks as if he's 30, thinks as if he's 40 and may not be spacy but is definitely from another world. "I doubt it," said Schnellenberger.
What he didn't doubt was his Hurricanes. "The only thing that worries me," he said, "is that they're so high I have to walk among them like a zombie so they won't get any higher. I mean they are high." He pointed out that the Hurricanes were "about to face the Russian Army, and they don't care. They think they're going to win. And I'm the silly bastard who has everybody around here thinking they will." Schnellenberger smiled. "That's O.K. I think so, too."
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