Florida Rolls Into Fiesta Bowl Wuerfful, Gators Whip Arkansas; Nebraska Awaits With Title At Stake

Ho hum, Florida won another Southeastern Conference championship Saturday night. Now comes the real test for the second-ranked Gators.

Danny Wuerffel, making one last bid for the Heisman, threw for 276 yards and two touchdowns and Ben Hanks gave the overlooked Florida defense a score of its own with a 95-yard fumble return as the Gators routed Arkansas 34-3 in the SEC title game.

Next up for Florida (12-0) is top-ranked and defending national champion Nebraska (11-0) in the Fiesta Bowl Jan. 2. After all the furor over the new bowl alliance, college football has a true title game between the only two unbeaten teams in the country.

Arkansas (8-4), a surprise winner of the SEC’s Western Division, will have to settle for a spot in the Carquest Bowl against North Carolina.

Florida continued its domination of the SEC, winning the championship game for the third year in a row. The Gators also won the title in 1991, giving them four crowns in the past five seasons.

But for the first time, coach Steve Spurrier’s “Fun-n-Gun” team can actually win something bigger than a conference title.

Wuerffel, who pushed his name back into contention for the Heisman with a 443-yard performance against Florida State the previous week, completed 20 of 28 passes, including touchdowns of 22 yards to Chris Doering and 29 to Ike Hilliard.

Wuerffel, the game’s MVP, extended his own SEC record to 35 touchdown passes this season. Only a junior, he also became the leading TD passer in conference history with 75, surpassing the mark of 74 set by former Florida quarterback Shane Matthews, and finished the regular season with a pass efficiency rating of 178.4 - the highest in NCAA history.

But his performance, in the face of almost constant blitzing by the Razorbacks, might not be enough to overcome Heisman favorites Tommie Frazier of Nebraska and Eddie George of Ohio State and the perception that Wuerffel’s numbers are aided by Spurrier’s passheavy system.

Arkansas scored on its first possession, driving 65 yards in 16 plays to set up Todd Latourette’s 36-yard field goal. But that was about the only highlight for the Razorbacks, who came in as a 24-1/2-point underdog.

Arkansas needed to play a perfect game and wound up committing four turnovers, a startling number for a team that came in leading the SEC in turnover ratio of plus-13.