Stardom is a thrill ­ in space or in football

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

A beam of light travels 186,000 miles in one second. A "light-year" is the distance that beam of light will travel in one year.

Throughout the universe, massive clouds of dust and gas - incubators for young suns - are thousands of light years thick. Breathtaking photos from the Hubble Space Telescope show dozens of them forming in the embrace of one cloud, winking through the debris. New stars add to the billions already sparkling in the deep void.

The Hubble also shows us stark pictures of old stars, glory faded, collapsing onto their own burned-out central cores.

College football burns brightly in our sunshine state. Some stars, like the Seminoles, Hurricanes and Gators, have only recently achieved their prime. As there is still plenty of fuel, these vigorous, bright giants should be in their glory for a long time.

New stars are forming, young and eager. Our state is a particularly fertile incubator. The University of South Florida began play just this fall. The University of Central Florida is enduring the painful passage into full maturity from its small-college origins.

Jacksonville University will begin play in September 1998. Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton expects to have a football team as early as 2000. And the Florida Board of Regents has given Florida International University in Miami permission to raise fees now to save for a football program. The Golden Panthers want to begin play within three years.

As any good thing struggles into being, the bellyachers are inevitable. One leader among the anti-football crowd at USF groused his 'why bother?' theme to the St. Pete Times: "We are never going to establish a football team like FSU or the Gators. That takes decades."

Yes, it does take decades. It took Miami six decades to find greatness. Our Seminoles took nearly five decades to achieve it. It took the Gators nine decades, but to be fair, we all three finally arrived about the same time. And what's a few decades among friends?

The three largest stars paid their dues, but frankly, the dues are lower these days, and the younger stars may progress faster than we did. Florida's exploding population has recently made us the fourth largest state. Our 14 million citizens can play outdoors year-round, and many are very fast and very talented.

Yes, it does take decades, but the truth is they fly by. When you and I sat in Doak Campbell on that late November Saturday in 1973, with only 18,000 fellow 'Noles to comfort us as we watched our 0-10 Tribe get hammered 52-12 by South Carolina, did we think ­ did we dream ­ that just two decades later we'd be celebrating the National Championship?

We all struggled. As late as 1979, Miami lost to Florida A&M, and until the 1990s, Florida had to endure the humiliation of being the only SEC team besides Vanderbilt never to have won the Conference title.

But no one remembers all that today. In the 1990s, we've had three Heisman Trophy winners, all quarterbacks, one from each school. Three national championships have been brought home to our state in the '90s, one for each of us. Something like 11 of the last 13 national championship games have included a team from Florida.

I thought it was a big deal when all three of us won our Conference championships the same season. Now, I've lost track of how often it's happened. Miami's won the Big East every year but one since it joined in 1991. They've never held an SEC Championship game without the Gators, and Florida's won five of six.

As for the Seminoles and the ACC, I'd bet that if you quizzed 100 Seminole fans at random, at least 90 of them would not know which bowl the second place ACC team has to go to. Our folks remember the 1995 loss at Virginia, but the 39 wins all run together. Time flies, as they say, when you've never failed to win the title.

The Florida State vs. Florida game (the first one, the good one) was the most watched regular-season college game last year.

How things do change. How many light years away are we from where we once were? Last October, Ohio State's John Cooper sounded defensive. "You don't have to be from Florida to be No. 1," he fumed to reporters. "We just automatically assume Florida State or Florida or Miami out to be No. 1 in the pre-season."

Back when Ohio State ruled the earth, there were other bright giants too. Representatives of one of them visited us this summer. On the way back to the airport, I asked if they'd seen everything they wanted. "Yes," they said. "It's depressing...You guys have everything in place: fan base, university support, fund raising, and a top-ranked winning football program."

I told them that I was part of a group that visited their campus just a couple of decades ago, and when we left, we were depressed because at that time they had everything and we had so far to go.

Even the brightest stars grow cold eventually. They're trying to reignite the fire, and I wish them every good fortune.

The University of Central Florida has decided to make a suicidal frontal assault on Division I football. UCF's first five opponents this fall are: Ole Miss, South Carolina, Nebraska, Idaho and Auburn. They might consider taking one of the guarantee checks and buying another ambulance. But, if the Golden Knights of UCF upset one or more of those, the impact will catapult them onto the national stage.

The University of South Florida is luxuriating in its first football season. President Betty Castor said, "We are blessed with many generous friends and alumni, and now we've got football. Is this heaven, or what?"

Ah, yes, heaven it is. All the clouds, all those stars, all the bright burning glory.

Heaven it is. Let us enjoy it to the fullest while the fires roar.