Finding 48 seconds seemed to take an eternity

But the search never turned into a waste of time.

I checked one Web site after another. I e-mailed. I scoured You Tube. For almost a week, it was no good. It was relatively hard to discover how the 1984 Orange Bowl actually ended.

Every college football fan knows what happened through the first 59 minutes and 12 seconds. Miami raced to a pair of big leads over unbeaten and top-ranked Nebraska. The Cornhuskers rallied. Finally, it came down to a failed two-point conversion try. Miami won the game, 31-30, and the national championship.

As the game's 25th anniversary passed, the ripples of that Orange Bowl still wash over college football.

We remember the fumblerooski. We know the players - Bernie Kosar of the Hurricanes and Turner Gill of the Cornhuskers, to name two. That game announced the arrival of Miami as a power in the sport.

Finally, Nebraska coach Tom Osborne seemed to be the ultimate victor, even though his team failed to win the game and the top spot in the polls. By taking a shot at the win rather than the tie and a likely national crown, Osborne captured the nation's enduring respect.

And that's where the discussion ends - with a Miami defensive back named Ken Calhoun deflecting a Gill pass intended for Jeff Smith in the end zone. One item is largely forgotten. Exactly 48 seconds remained in the game when the Hurricanes stopped the Huskers.

Oh, there are Nebraska fans who can probably tell you exactly what happened next. And one Web site offered a simple, dull description of the game's end. It said, "On the ensuing onsides kick, Miami recovered and won the national title." Period. Game over.

Any other details proved very hard to find, until Friday. Then I finally saw an ESPN Classic re-run that included those missing 48 seconds. Well, some of them. On NBC's original broadcast, the cameras failed to catch the actual onside kick. All that could be seen was a football bouncing right into the eager arms of a Hurricane. Then, Miami ran out the clock.

Still, nobody seems to care much about the real end to the '84 Orange Bowl, and that's fine. At first look, those closing moments carried little drama. It's like comparing Vince Lombardi's tenure at Green Bay with the Phil Bengston Era. One football coach achieved immortality. Bengston, Lombardi's replacement, did nothing special.

Still, those 48 seconds nagged at me. It seemed like the tale was incomplete, not because of what happened. No, what didn't happen makes that time intriguing.

It boils down to this. What if Nebraska had recovered the onside kick?

The failed two-point pass was critical enough. But let your imagination run an option play. Let's say that kick takes a funny bounce, right into the hands of a Cornhusker. He falls on it.

Now what?

No one knows, of course, but we can guess a little.

Remember, teams kicked off from the 40-yard-line 25 years ago. Nebraska would have started its final series near midfield, with roughly 40 to 45 seconds to go.

Does Miami's defense make the stop? Does Gill, who hit 16 of 30 passes on the night, connect on a big throw for a touchdown, to Irving Fryar perhaps?

Or maybe the hero is a kicker named Scott Livingston.

A quarter-century later, I wonder if he thinks about how close he came to being a hero. If the Huskers pounce on his onside kick and move the ball 25 to 30 yards into Miami territory, Livingston may have been asked to try a game-winning field goal. Would he have become a predecessor to Adam Vinatieri? Or his generation's Scott Norwood?

Livingston didn't get his chance. He's not a prime-time player in what may have been the greatest college football game of all time.

But maybe, just maybe, the 1984 Orange Bowl could have been even better. Give Nebraska one more shot at scoring, and we might still be talking about 48 seconds of magic.

Contact Jim Sullivan at (319) 291-1434 or jim.sullivan@wcfcourier.com