Today's match-up with the Hoosiers has caused a lot of blogs, articles etc to be written about the AC game 30 years ago. I was lucky enough to be at the game.
Here are some of what I remember about the day:
We used to go to the Go Blue brunch before the homecoming game. Michigan "royalty would speak, Millie Schembechler; Wally Webber, Bob Ufer etc. Since this was the celebration of 100 years of M football - they invited all the living All-America players to attend and they sat on the stage. I got all their autographs - I have no idea where that is.
My dad always got tickets through the Pharmacy school and they were almost always in row A in the the end zone - somehow my sisters got "better" tickets for some of us for this game so only Mom & Dad were in row A of the south end zone behind the goal post. I was in the student section (If people weren't sleeping in my basement, I'd go look for the ticket stub) maybe near the 15-20 yard line row 60 or so.
As far as actual plays, I only remember a few and they all come from the last few minutes. With M up 21-14 and only a minute or so to go the M cheerleaders (the real ones, the guys in the maize sweaters) and maybe their fellow alums were doing a hand walk chain in the north end zone when IU's QB (Tim Clifford?) connects on a long TD pass forcing the cheerleaders to scramble out of the way. Corso elects to kick the PAT and settle for the tie.
I remember Michigan's final 3 snaps. Lawrence P Reid catches a short pass in the flat with ~8-10 seconds left has no chance to get out of bounds so he pitches it out-of-bounds underhand as he's being tackled. Coincidentally, it ends up right in the hands of Lee Corso. Corso is fuming - this should be a penalty or at worst the refs should wind the clock.
There's only 6 seconds left, IU is offside, no play move the ball to the 45 yard line.
Last play - Wangler - play action - hits AC at about the 20 - he splits the safeties and goes into the end zone. 95 teammates jump on him 5 feet in front of my parents. I guess they had the Better Seats!
I don't know how many last seconds TDs there have been in college football since, I have seen
several but I really compare this to the Stanford-Cal kick off return play in that it wasn't a heave to the end zone toss up a la Kordell Stewart; a player had to make a play to score here. I don't know if Bo was hoping to try and run a FG team on if he got tackled, or if AC was even the #1 option. I don't trust comments that make it sound like he obviously was because he was a freshman and he caught less than 20 passes all year, Ralph Clayton was the leading receiver.
I do know that M football was never the same after that.
