Michigan Wolverine Football: Indiana — The Play Before The Play
Posted at 12:00pm — 10/31/2014
Michigan Wolverine Football: Indiana — The Play Before The Play
The last half-century of Michigan football is a timeline dotted with shafts. Bad calls, no-calls, tough breaks and general catastrophic misfortune. Call it what you will, this trail of injustice has been a proverbial minefield for the fortunes of the maize and blue over the years.
The first and most notable shaft is The Snub of 1973, which left a 10-0-1 Michigan team fresh off a tie with #1 Ohio State home during bowl season, thanks to a vote of conference athletic directors. Then there’s the infamous “Phantom Touchdown”, where USC’s Charles White dove into the end zone for the winning points in the 1979 Rose Bowl despite fumbling the ball at the 3-yard line. Replays clearly confirmed the blown call, which very likely denied the Wolverines a share of the national championship (USC ended up splitting the title with Alabama).
And not to be outdone, “The Trip”, Michigan State’s blatant interference of Desmond Howard during a winning two-point conversion attempt for the then-#1 Wolverines in 1990. No penalty was called, and the Spartans walked away with a major upset.
Other shafts are just as noteworthy: “The Day The Wind Stopped” in South Bend, the “Phantom Clip” during a successful fake punt late in the 1990 Rose Bowl, the “Colorado Hail Mary”, the “Index Card” game of 1995, the “Spartan Bob Timeclock Incident” of 2001. These nicknames weave a historical tapestry of Wolverine fan agony.
It’s difficult to remember a moment where Michigan was actually the beneficiary of good fortune. Only one play comes to mind. A play largely forgotten by Wolverine loyalists and the rest of the college football-speaking world, mostly because the one that followed it became one of the greatest moments in Wolverine football history. Nonetheless it’s a play one particular sports broadcasting icon will never forget.
The year was 1979. The maize and blue were celebrating their football centennial. But, much like un-retiring Tom Harmon’s #98 jersey for Devin Gardner, the desired results hadn’t lived up to expectations. In week two, Notre Dame stole victory away from Michigan Stadium without scoring so much as a touchdown, securing a 12-10 victory only after linebacker Bob Crable blocked the Wolverines’ game-winning field goal attempt by standing on the back of a teammate. Another noted shaft in Michigan history, “The Block” resulted in a rule change forbidding players from standing on top of each other to block kicks.
The tenth-ranked Wolverines carried a fragile 6-1 record into their homecoming date with Indiana. For perspective, no Michigan team that decade had finished an entire regular season with more than one loss. Two losses, BEFORE the Ohio State game—well, a respectable Wolverine didn’t speak of such things back then.
By contrast, the 5-2 Hoosiers were soaring under seventh-year coach and future ESPN prognosticator Lee Corso. Their season would ultimately end with the first bowl berth in a dozen years (the Holiday Bowl), and first bowl victory in program history (over BYU, 38-37). For perspective, the last time Indiana had beaten Michigan was 1967, when John Pont’s Hoosiers shut down Dennis Brown and the Wolverines 27-20 on Homecoming in Ann Arbor. It was also the only time a Hoosier team reached Pasadena. But on this crisp and overcast October afternoon, they arrived in Ann Arbor with a legitimate belief that they would leave victorious.
Their play that afternoon reflected such expectations. Down 21-14 late in the fourth quarter, the Hoosiers stormed down the field and into the end zone with :55 remaining, to draw to within a point. Back in the pre-overtime days, the weight of a tie was much stronger for the underdog teams—especially when they could ruin a hated opponent’s season in the process. So Indiana opted for the PAT, and Michigan appeared headed to what to what most of the 104,832 in attendance felt was a 21-21 loss.
If you know Michigan football, you know how it ended: Anthony Carter scoring from 45 yards out as the clock hits zeroes, fans streaming onto the field, and Bo’s getting his first walk-off win at the old stadium. Every year during Indiana week we are reminded of this play. Few, however, recall the play that set it all up.
With a dozen seconds left and Michigan deep in their own territory, quarterback John Wangler found tailback Lawrence Reid in the center of the field. Reid realized he wasn’t going to make it to the sideline. On top of that, he didn’t realize the Wolverines had a timeout left. So he did what anyone in his frame of mind would do: he winged it. Literally.
Reid saw an approaching Indiana defender and pretended to fall to the ground, hurling the ball out of bounds as he went down. His “fumble” sailed directly into Corso’s arms. Having caught the line drive at midfield and not seeing a penalty flag, the red-jump suited coach exploded. The refs were too busy spotting the ball to pay attention to what had just happened. But they should have. The Wolverines should have been backed up 15 yards and forced to replay the down.
Instead, Michigan lined up with :06 left and, following a Hoosier offsides penalty, faced a first down and 5 situation at the Indiana 45. The rest, as legendary Wolverine play-by-play announcer Bob Ufer articulated in his dramatic radio call, “will be heard until another 100 years of Michigan football is played.”
The Hoosiers have beaten Michigan just once in the 35 years since that fateful day. And they have yet to win at Big House since Homecoming of 1967. Corso still fumes about the play. Not THE play, but the play before the play. In fact, I’ve got a crisp $20 in my pocket that says he’ll allude to it again at some point during Saturday’s Michigan-Indiana preview on ESPN College GameDay.
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Written by GBMWolverine Writer — Chris Hill
Go Blue — Wear Maize!