Manning Wins Unitas

Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning was selected Wednesday as winner of the 1997 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award as the nation’s top senior quarterback.

The award is presented by the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation Inc. and the Kentucky Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. Manning will receive the award during a ceremony in Louisville on Dec. 12.

Manning, the son of former New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning, has thrown for 3,287 yards and 31 touchdowns with one regular-season game remaining. In his four years at Tennessee, Manning has thrown for 10,669 yards and 84 touchdowns.

Manning was selected from a list of finalists that also included Florida State’s Thad Busby, Auburn’s Dameyune Craig, Nebraska’s Scott Frost and Penn State’s Mike McQueary.

Past winners include Danny Wuerffel, Rodney Peete, Craig Erickson, Charlie Ward and Tommie Frazier.

Falcons accept bid

No. 24 Air Force, coming off its best season in six years, has accepted an invitation to play in the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 20.

“All of our fans in Colorado are excited about this opportunity, and I am sure we will have our traditional great following to this game,” athletic director Col. Randy Spetman said Wednesday.

The Falcons (10-2) won their first seven games, but finished second in the Western Athletic Conference Pacific Division after losing to Fresno State and San Jose State.

For the first time in 36 years, New Mexico is headed to a bowl game, even if it comes up a loser next month in Las Vegas.

The Insight.com Bowl said Wednesday it will take the runner-up team from the Western Athletic Conference championship game Dec. 6 in Las Vegas between New Mexico (9-2) and No. 20 Colorado State (9-2).

The winner of the WAC title game gets a bid to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on Dec. 29 and the loser will head to Tucson for the Insight.com Bowl (formerly the Copper Bowl) on Dec. 27.

The Motor City Bowl rescinded its offer to Michigan State and will begin formally negotiating with other schools for its at-large bid.

The bowl, to be played Dec. 26 at the Pontiac Silverdome, extended its bid to Michigan State last Thursday. The school neither accepted or declined, deciding to investigate other options.

The Spartans were permitted a final opportunity to accept the Motor City Bowl bid by Wednesday’s 5 p.m. local time deadline before bowl officials began formal negotiations with other schools.

The bowl game matches an at-large school against the Mid-American Conference champion. Marshall and Toledo will meet for the MAC title at Huntington, W.Va., Dec. 5 to determine the conference’s representative.

Bulldog aims for Triple Crown

Hines Ward started out as a running back. Then he became a quarterback. Finally, he wound up at receiver.

Saturday against Georgia Tech, all that moving around could make Ward a part of history. The Georgia senior has a chance to become the first NCAA Division I-A player to accumulate 1,000 yards in three categories: rushing, passing and receiving.

Ward already has surpassed 1,000 yards in rushing (1,044) and receiving (1,863). He needs 82 yards passing against the Yellow Jackets to finish off his trifecta.

Actually, Ward has passed for more than 1,000 yards, but the NCAA doesn’t recognize bowl statistics. So his 413-yard effort against Virginia in the 1995 Peach Bowl isn’t in his official file.

Shock waves

Spectators said the Swamp shook at the end of Florida’s upset of Florida State on Saturday. But the Gators’ victory also reverberated through the elite ranks of major-college football.

It cost the Bowl Alliance a game between undefeated teams in the Orange Bowl.

It cost the Sugar Bowl a shot at staging Peyton Manning’s final college game in his hometown. If Tennessee beats Vanderbilt and wins the Southeastern Conference title game, it will meet Nebraska in South Florida.

It raised the stakes on the SEC title game in Atlanta. If Auburn beats Tennessee, the Tigers will take the SEC’s Bowl Alliance bid to the Sugar Bowl, where they would probably face Florida State. They’d have to rename it the Bowden Bowl after Auburn’s Terry and his father, FSU’s Bobby.

Former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler had a predictable reaction to the Bowl Alliance. Like many traditionalists, Schembechler dislikes the idea that a Big Ten champion may play somewhere other than the Rose Bowl. But he said he rejects the Alliance for another reason.

“I’m not an Alliance guy,” he said. “I can’t believe that you can just pick two teams and say they are the best. That’s a joke.”