DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050485

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ALAN SCHMADTKE, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL 

DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE                       LENGTH:   66 lines

INTERNET IS A 2-HEADED BEAST FOR FLORIDA STATE

Certain weeks, caution creeps in.

Even at Florida State, which has won at least 10 football games for a decade, coach Bobby Bowden tightens security around his practice field during big-game weeks.

As the information superhighway makes its inroads, you never can be too sure.

The Seminoles should know because as the biggest game in Atlantic Coast Conference history approaches this week, they're watching as closely as anybody.

Third-ranked FSU faces No. 5 North Carolina on Saturday in a game of the two highest-rated ACC teams ever to meet. In addition to spending time on the practice field preparing for the Tar Heels, some Seminoles will spend some in front of their computers.

``There's just a lot of information on the Internet on a lot of teams, including ours,'' said Joe Hornstein, a graduate assistant in FSU's sports information office who is charged with maintaining the official Web site for the athletic department (www.seminoles.com). ``Why not see what's out there?''

Coaches are willing - and wary. A few weeks before his team's season opener against FSU, Southern California coach John Robinson closed his practices because he heard about a Web site posting information about the Trojans. The information was gleaned from watching practices open to the public.

Like most schools, FSU subscribes to newspapers that carry ACC news. Most papers also have Web sites. Internet sites and school home pages generally are more detailed about rumors, trends and gossip.

``Most of the stuff out there is the same stuff - what guys said, who gained how many yards against that team, what the quarterback did,'' FSU graduate assistant coach John Lilly said.

``Where I've gotten good information is from some of the chat rooms.''

One time earlier this year - he declines to reveal the opponent - Lilly oversaw a chat-room conversation in which he learned of a significant and previously unpublicized injury to an opposing player.

``The guy said he had watched practice, and this guy was hurt,'' Lilly said.

``That's pretty good stuff.''

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who turns 68 on Saturday, learned a long time ago how nefarious teams can be. When he was quarterback at Howard College - now Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. - in 1949, a spy infiltrated the team and lined up at defensive tackle during practice. The player turned out to be an assistant coach at Tennessee Tech, which beat Howard that year.

Bowden has yet to be victimized by the Internet.

``I don't even know what that is,'' said Bowden, although he did participate by proxy in a question-and-answer session on FSU's home page. Bowden does not own a computer.

Like Hornstein, FSU cinematographer Dave Campanozzi, who grew up in Winter Park, is one of the Seminoles' Internet users. Campanozzi started as an administrative assistant with the Atlanta Falcons. Most of the time, he tracked weather reports.

That's what he started doing for himself before practice - having to stand up in a tower filming practice, he wants to know about nearby lightning - and for FSU offensive coordinator Mark Richt as Richt finalized his game plans late in the week.

Gradually, other assistant coaches began asking Campanozzi and Hornstein whether they'd seen anything about opposing teams' personnel.

``Nine out of 10 times it's not worth going to Coach Bowden about,'' Campanozzi said. ``But I do like to check on bigger games. Some games are bigger than others, and every little bit helps.''

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