Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today, ahead of one of Saturday's classic coaching showdown between Alabama's Nick Saban and Florida's Urban Meyer, we look back at Meyer's first career choice.

When you think of Florida coach Urban Meyer, failure is the last thing that comes to mind. This is the coach that resurrected Bowling Green from the dead, led Utah to the Fiesta Bowl and has won two national titles in his first five seasons at Florida.

But one of Meyer's early endeavors was anything but successful: His minor league baseball career. Long before he was coaching royalty in Gainesville, Meyer was a star high school shortstop in northeast Ohio with an eye on the big leagues.

As he

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he looks at the men who made the Heisman Trophy.

The Heisman Trophy has no rival as the most iconic prize in American sports. Imagine another award that could evoke the emotion and backlash that followed Reggie Bush's decision to become the first player to give his Heisman back last week. Or another pose that could move the president. Or turn a quick snap by a student photographer into a cause for celebration. No other award – not just the honor and pomp, but the actual hunk of metal itself – is such an integral part of the sporting landscape.

But there's something you probably never realized about the leather-helmeted runner with the stone-faced gaze and textbook stiffarm: It's not the fabled, journeyman coach who helped shape and spread the game at the turn of the 20th Century. In fact, Heisman was a lineman at Penn and Brown from 1887-91, not a running back. (Though he did

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today, he looks back on Peyton Manning’s career vs. SEC East rival Florida ahead of Saturday's Vol-Gator showdown in Knoxville.

No matter how high he climbs, there are few claims Eli Manning has staked or will ever stake in football that his brother didn't get to first. SEC Player of the Year? Been there. No. 1 pick in the draft? Done that. Super Bowl MVP? Yawn.

But there's one thing little brother did that Peyton Manning will never be able to accomplish: Beat the Florida Gators. Twice. Granted, Eli did it during the Ron Zook Era. But the elder Manning was 0-3 as a starter vs. UF, with the last two losses in particular submarining his Heisman campaigns and permanently tarnishing his otherwise illustrious college resumé at Tennessee:

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he catches up with former XFL star and Carolina Panther Rod Smart.

Rod Smart knows a thing or two about making a name for himself.

No, really.

He was the XFL player that became a cultural phenomenon in 2001 by having the words “He Hate Me” plastered on the back of his uniform to denounce haters everywhere, bringing him instant fame for his self-promotional genius. Brash personalities apparently run in the family; his cousin just so happens to be former Philadelphia Eagle Freddie Mitchell, the self-proclaimed “People’s Champ.”

Now, nearly a decade later, Smart is trying to get noticed in his first

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he catches up with former Alabama defensive lineman Barry Krauss ahead of Saturday's showdown between the Crimson Tide and Penn State.

Let's be clear up front: Barry Krauss was no slouch on the football field. He was a member of Alabama's All-Centennial Team, was picked sixth overall in the 1979 NFL Draft and had a 12-year NFL career with the Colts and Dolphins.

But you would be hard-pressed to find another football player better known for a single play – and still more successful at profiting from that play – than the man who is credited with Alabama's legendary goal-line stand against Penn State with the national championship on the line in the 1979 Sugar Bowl.

No. 2 Alabama led No. 1 Penn State, 14-7, with under seven minutes to go and the Nittany Lions facing fourth-and-goal from the one-foot line. Quarterback Chuck Fusina handed the ball to tailback Mike Guman, who

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he catches up with the decisive pass interference call in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, eight years later.

If you haven't seen the play countless times before, you will over the course of the next week leading into Miami's first visit to Ohio State in 33 years: The undefeated, top-ranked Hurricanes lead the undefeated, second-ranked Buckeyes, 24-17, in overtime of the 2003 Fiesta Bowl. The BCS championship is on the line. OSU is down to its final chance, on 4th-and-3 from the 'Cane five-yard line.

Quarterback Craig Krenzel fires a pass in the direction of Chris Gamble, who's tussling in the front corner of the end zone with Miami corner Glenn Sharpe. When the ball falls incomplete, Sharpe turns to line judge Derick Bowers just a few feet away to see if a penalty flag will be thrown. When the flag stays in Bowers' pocket, Sharpe and the rest of the Hurricanes immediately begin

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he catches up with former Nebraska great Eric Crouch.

If you remember the winding, 95-yard touchdown run at Missouri that highlighted Eric Crouch's 2001 Heisman campaign, you know it couldn't have been easy keeping up with the Nebraska legend on the playgrounds of Omaha. Nearly a decade later, it still isn't.

Crouch is now the owner of Crouch Recreation, a company that installs park and playground equipment ranging from water slides to scoreboards in Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa.

Crouch was the quintessential quarterback for the Huskers' vaunted triple option attack, rolling up a 33-5 record as a starter over three years with one Big 12 championship and a shot at the BCS title in the 2002 Rose Bowl. At just 6-feet, NFL scouts deemed Crouch too small to play under center on Sundays but were enticed by his quickness. Crouch was selected in the third round of the 2002 draft by

Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he reminisces on the simple, forbidden pleasures of the fumblerooski.

Even in the age of the spread, the Wildcat and Boise State's bottomless bag of big-game tricks, there's one gimmick we haven't seen in college football for almost two decades, and won't see anytime soon. In fact, the last time most people saw it was in the 1994 movie "Little Giants," where it was affectionately dubbed the "Annexation of Puerto Rico." (Technically, it was also in Adam Sandler's remake of "The Longest Yard," but really, who saw that?).

But by any other name, college football's long lost pinnacle of deception just isn’t as sweet. Of course, we're talking about the "fumblerooski."

Here's a quick nuts-and-bolts refresher: When the ball is snapped, the quarterback intentionally fumbles it forward, leaving it on the ground at the feet of one of his offensive linemen, completely unprotected while