Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by Bacon, John U.

  The Wolverines got the ball back on their own 38-yard line with just 18 seconds left, and no time-outs. If you were a betting man, you’d still take the Wildcats—and you’d have a hard time finding anyone to take the Wolverines.

  Gardner dropped back and launched a high-arcing, wobbly duck, which looked more punt than pass. It was ripe to be intercepted, and that’s just what Nick VanHoose planned to do—although just knocking the ball down would have left Michigan at its own 38-yard line with six seconds left, and would probably have done the job.

  VanHoose went for the pick—but he jumped too soon, giving the more patient Roy Roundtree a path to the ball. Roundtree could not catch it cleanly, but he managed to tip it back up into the air like a volleyball player, as he fell to the turf at the 9-yard line. The ball, amazingly, fell right back down to him, and he secured it against his helmet. But it was a catch, fair and square, and didn’t even require a review—rare, in this era.

  “I remember the pass like it was yesterday,” Quentin Williams said two months later. “I saw the ball go up—and I’m like, ‘Awesome, we got ’em.’ Then I saw him catch it, and I’m like, ‘Wow, we’re really screwed here.’ ”

  Roundtree bounced back to his feet, displaying his boyish enthusiasm, and pointed the ball at the fans, looking as happy as a frat boy in mud. Just seconds earlier, those same fans had feared a demoralizing fallback to another 6-4 record, and another trip to the TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl, but now they responded as if Roundree was their leader, unleashing all the noise 112,510 people can make.

  “They were going crazy then!” Colter said. “Kind of hard to believe, but just a few seconds before, we had the game won.”

  Roundtree’s teammates, standing on the sidelines and on top of the benches, started jumping and hugging each other, as you’d expect. But it was a little more surprising to see the middle-aged men in the garish sport coats from the Rose Bowl and the Capital One Bowl start hugging each other, too. Although they were paid six figures to “scout” potential invitees to their bowls and perform an objective analysis, they weren’t even bothering to fake it. They didn’t want Northwestern, its relatively paltry two hundred thousand alums, and weak TV ratings. They wanted the Wolverines—and the money they would bring.

  Gardner had no time for celebrations. He ran up to the line of scrimmage, took the snap, and spiked the ball to stop the clock. Brandon Gibbons trotted out to attempt a game-tying, 26-yard field goal.

  One fan, hanging over the rail, holding her head, let out an involuntary, “Oh my God!”

  Two years earlier, Michigan’s kickers could convert only 4 of 14 attempts. But last year, the same kickers made 15 of 19. This year, to that point, Gibbons had made 13 of 15.

  So, what would it be—the 2010 Gibbons, or the 2011–2012 versions?

  Gibbons stepped toward the ball and blasted a perfect strike: 31–31. Everyone but the Wildcats hugged again: the fans, the players, even the bowl reps.

  The crowd knew all momentum had suddenly shifted Michigan’s way—and some important Northwestern backers did, too. “To be honest,” President Schapiro told me, “after watching Michigan pull off a minor miracle to tie the game, I wasn’t that optimistic in overtime.”

  On Michigan’s overtime possession, Gardner rolled out to the right and ran straight through the right corner of the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.

  On Northwestern’s turn, facing third and one on the 16, Colter’s draw play got stuffed by Kenny Demens, inspiring the band to break into “Temptation” and the fans to yell, in unison, “You suck!”

  On fourth and two, Pat Fitzgerald sent Tyris Jones up the middle. But once again, Demens read the play perfectly, eluded his man, and sent Jones hard to the turf.

  The Wolverines had held up, won the game, and kept their dream of a Big Ten title alive. Vincent Smith and Denard Robinson hugged, then found Roundtree to hug some more.

  The crowd got the moment they had waited for, while the Wildcats got a swift kick in the gut.

  “That was probably the worst loss I ever had in my football career,” Colter told me. “It was a really hard-fought game, but it was a game we feel like we should have won. Once you lose that kind of momentum, it’s really hard to get it back.”

  • • •

  When you walk up the famed Big House tunnel, you can keep going straight out to the parking lot and join the tailgaters, or you can turn to your right and join the raucous celebration in the Michigan locker room, or you can turn to the left for the postgame press conferences. Take that left-hand turn and the first stop on your right is Michigan’s pressroom, which is usually crammed with four or five dozen reporters and cameramen, and half as many photographers working behind them.

  But if you keep going through the catacombs of the old stadium and hit the far wall and turn right, and right again, you’ll reach the infinitely smaller—and usually far unhappier—visitors’ postgame pressroom.

  Here the Northwestern beat writers—most of them working for the Daily Northwestern, plus a couple from Chicago—waited for head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

  While killing time, one student reporter asked another, “Is this the worst ever?”

  The second one thought about it, then said, “No, the Outback Bowl,” where the Wildcats had their chance, on January 1, 2010, to taste their first bowl victory since January 1, 1949. They twice spotted Auburn, which would win the national title the next year, a 14-point lead, but came back both times, tying the game with 1:15 left.

  In overtime, they held Auburn to a field goal, then attempted a 37-yarder themselves. The ball hit the upright—and bounced back. No good. But the officials called Auburn for roughing the kicker—who had actually been injured on the play—giving Northwestern a first down and the ball on the 9-yard line.

  On fourth and goal from the five, Fitzgerald sent in his backup kicker, a freshman. With the Auburn players still not set, Northwestern ran a version of the fumblerooski—but got knocked out of bounds at the two. Auburn had the victory, in what had to be one of the hardest losses any Wildcat had ever suffered.

  “No,” a third student said, “this was worse. They had it!”

  “Yeah, but the stakes in the Outback were so much higher,” the second one said. “The bowl streak!”

  They ended their debate of despair when Fitzgerald walked in. After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in arguably the most painful manner possible, Fitzgerald was not gruff, short, or snarky. Although hardly happy—the man is as competitive as anyone else in the league, which his hoarse voice revealed—he opened by saying, “First, thanks to everyone for being here, especially those of you who came all the way from Chicago.”

  There are good reasons why Pat Fitzgerald is among the most respected coaches in the Big Ten.

  Down the hall, I stopped in to catch the end of Michigan’s press conference. Brady Hoke had already been through, getting a good laugh with his opening line, “Who started writing the article before the game was over?”

  But the highlight was Devin Gardner and Roy Roundtree, both intelligent, engaging, funny young men. They wore Adidas sweats and glasses. Not sunglasses, but glasses. The dozens of reporters gathered there were asking about The Catch. Why did it work?

  “I think it’s ’cause we practice that very play,” Gardner said with a grin, “just like that! Obviously, he doesn’t usually tip it to himself.”

  “Basically,” Roundtree said, “I saw Devin roll out and he chucked it. It hit my helmet, I held it—and then I pulled it in. [Then] I just jumped up. There was no review, so I’m good!” More laughter.

  When someone asked Devin, who had just won his first two starts, about his new role, he cut that idea off quickly. “This is Denard’s team,” he said of his roommate and mentor. “And it will always be Denard’s team until he leaves. He’s done way too much.”

  Nonetheless, Gardner’s growing confidence was evident when another reporter asked him, “What made you think, with eighteen seconds left, you
were going to win?”

  He grinned and said, “We had the ball.”

  • • •

  Around the league, the other games unfolded as expected.

  While both Michigan State and Ohio State had bye weeks, Wisconsin crushed Indiana, 62–14, Minnesota beat Illinois, 17–3, and Purdue beat a struggling Iowa team, 27–24.

  Only one of those teams, Wisconsin, had been ranked at any point that season, yet only Indiana did not fill its stadium, while still attracting a respectable 85 percent of capacity.

  That left the Penn State–Nebraska game, played in Nebraska’s 81,091-seat Memorial Stadium. The game drew 85,527—including one Warren Buffett, a loyal alum and fan, who sits with the regular folks—marking Lincoln’s 324th consecutive sellout, an NCAA record that stretched back to 1962.

  For the Penn State coaches and players, the Ohio State game two weeks earlier had been painful, but no one claimed they had outplayed the Buckeyes or lost for any reason other than Ohio State was the better team that day.

  They salved their wounds by mopping up on a Purdue team that had started the season 3-1, then lost its first four Big Ten games. Penn State made it five, with a 34–9 shellacking, all but sealing the coffin of Purdue’s fourth-year head coach Danny Hope.

  That gave the Nittany Lions a 6-3 record overall, and a 4-1 mark in the Big Ten, where they still had a chance for at least a share of the divisional title if Ohio State stumbled against Wisconsin or Michigan, which was a real possibility.

  But the Lions would have to go through Nebraska, the only Big Ten team ranked in the Associated Press’s Top 25 that week, at No. 18. The Cornhuskers had suffered their only losses on the road at UCLA and Ohio State, while surviving close calls against Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Michigan State. They had not lost in over a year at their cherished eighty-nine-year-old Memorial Stadium.

  Of all the teams in the Big Ten, Penn State players respected their counterparts at Nebraska the most. At least a half dozen told me how similar Penn State was to Nebraska: hardworking, nothing fancy—right down to the uniforms—no trash talk, just good, solid football.

  That’s why the Penn players wanted to beat Nebraska so badly. “We were going to show the Big Ten that we’re better than their Rose Bowl team,” Mauti said. “We were gonna knock ’em off.”

  The clash of inspired amateurs produced predictably unpredictable results, with the lead jumping back and forth, as often due to a great play as a rookie mistake.

  After Nebraska finished another long drive to take a 27–23 lead, Penn State marched right back down the field all the way to Nebraska’s 3-yard line. Facing second and goal, with at least two chances to punch it in, McGloin rolled out to his right and made a quick toss to tight end Matt Lehman, the walk-on from Newport, Pennslyvania.

  The play was designed for Lehman to follow his blockers to the outside, and it seemed set up perfectly for Lehman to rumble home. But Lehman saw a gap and, being a rookie, he could not resist. He made a hard left cut, dipping his left shoulder toward the end zone. The Huskers crashed into him at the goal line.

  And this is where Lehman made another rookie mistake: He took the ball in both hands and extended it toward the goal line, trying to break the plane for the touchdown. On fourth down, this would make sense—you’d have nothing to lose—but not on second down. The Huskers’ David Santos slapped the ball out of Lehman’s hands, and after a scramble, Nebraska recovered the ball in the end zone.

  Kirk Diehl missed the play because he was busy escorting James Terry to the locker room to have Dr. Sebastianelli look at his high ankle sprain. On their way, they passed the referees’ small locker room, where a credentialed Nebraska stadium official in a red jacket had his feet up on a folding chair, watching the game on a portable TV. Diehl had heard the cheers and asked the man what had happened.

  “There was a fumble at the goal line,” he said, “but it’ll be overturned because the ball crossed the plane. You guys just scored.”

  The replay showed Lehman had, in fact, extended the tip of the ball well past the front edge of the goal line, good for a touchdown. But after several minutes, the replay official confirmed the call on the field.

  “It went on forever,” Mauti recalled, “and the longer it goes, the more likely they are to screw it up.”

  When Diehl felt the second cheer reverberate through the stadium, he knew what had happened.

  And that was it. The Cornhuskers sent the Lions home with a 32–23 defeat.

  “That game hurt the most,” Mauti said. “We had ’em. We emptied the tank out there, and that one just hurt.”

  The plane ride home was the worst of the season—worse even than after the Virginia game.

  “Nebraska took something away,” Spider said. “It hurt a lot more than Ohio State. We really felt we should’ve won that game. We wanted to have that storybook ending—and we thought Nebraska was it.”

  After they returned to State College at 4:00 a.m.—thank you, night game—the Omaha paper and a Nebraska website posted graphically enhanced photos of Lehman’s reach for the end zone, showing three-quarters of the ball clearly crossed the goal line. (Give the Nebraskans credit for such honesty.)

  It was small consolation, but the Penn State players followed the same protocol they had after every setback over the past year.

  “Parents were sending photos of Lehman’s touchdown,” Craig Fitzgerald said. “ ‘Was he in or was he out?’ O-B said, ‘Who cares? Let’s move on!’ No bitching allowed.”

  That left the Lions with a ho-hum mark of 6-4, and 4-2 in the Big Ten.

  They still had to play Indiana, which was 4-6 but had lost to Oregon State, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Navy by a total of 10 points and put up 49 on the Buckeyes. After that, the Lions had Wisconsin, which had lost three games, each by 3 points, but had already clinched a berth in the Big Ten title game.

  Nonetheless, Penn State’s seniors determined, on the flight home from Nebraska, they would not lose another game that season.

  This declaration was not based on their opponents’ records or Penn State’s, but on nothing more than their force of will.

  CHAPTER 20

  “YOU CAN’T MANUFACTURE TRADITION”

  November 17, 2012: In the Spartan Stadium press box, Northwestern PR man Paul Kennedy still had the Wildcats’ previous week’s game against Michigan on his mind. “You know, Nebraska beat us at the end of the game, and Penn State beat us at the end of the game, but we couldn’t say we outplayed them. But Michigan! We outplayed them—and still lost. That one hurt.”

  It also raised the stakes for that day’s game.

  “I’m in the locker room after every game,” President Schapiro told me. “And after that Michigan game, it was just stunned silence—something you don’t see very often. Pure shock. We felt we were out of there with a ‘W’—but an amazing turn of events took the game away.

  “Fitz got up there and said, ‘We’re done with this. We’re going up to East Lansing in a week, and we’ve gotta win that one.’

  “I have to tell ya, that was a tough plane ride back.”

  Northwestern entered the Michigan State game at 7-3, and 3-3 in the league, having lost three of their last five games. They were all but eliminated from the division race—it was Nebraska’s to lose, and Michigan’s to pick up if the Cornhuskers dropped it—but they were still playing for their own records, and an improved bowl bid. If they beat the Spartans, they would be heavily favored to defeat struggling Illinois the next week and secure nine wins for only the sixth time in their 131 seasons. Win the bowl game, and the 2012 Wildcats’ ten wins would tie them for the school’s best record, sharing the podium with their 1995 and 1903 squads.

  Since all three of their losses were close calls, they obviously could have won more, but if they fell apart now, they would reduce a season that had started with such promise to something that would soon be forgotten.

  Across the field, the 5-5 Spartans were fighting to salvage their sea
son. If they lost to Northwestern, they would have to win up at Minnesota’s new stadium, against the reviving Gophers, to qualify for a bowl—or stay home for the first time since 2006, the year before head coach Mark Dantonio’s reign began.

  This was another appeal of college football: on almost any given Saturday, even late in the season, both teams were still fighting for something. By the next-to-last regular-season game in the NFL, most teams are either out of it or are resting their starters for the playoffs. Most teams end their season not with a bang against an archrival, but a whimper against another team that doesn’t care, either.

  The Wildcats would get no sympathy from the Spartans for their three close losses. The Spartans lost by one point to Ohio State, three to Iowa (in overtime), two to Michigan, and four to Nebraska—a total of ten points keeping them from a 9-1 record and a Top 5 ranking. Instead, they were far off the national radar, and 2-4 in the league.

  The Spartans, however, were still interesting—certainly to their loyal students, alums, and fans. The Spartans’ faithful sold out four of their seven home games and averaged more than their 75,005 capacity for the season—something the stumbling Detroit Lions, playing in the smaller 65,000-seat Ford Field, have never come close to accomplishing.

  This gets to another difference: College football fans don’t stop caring about their teams when they’re losing. The bond is too strong. They may rip into the athletic director, the coach, and all the assistants they know, and go online to bomb every strategic decision made by anyone attached to the program, but they do not stop caring. If you want the acid test, it’s Michigan’s 2008 season, whose 3-9 record broke a 33-year string of bowl games, a 41-year streak of winning regular seasons, and the school record for most losses in the program’s then-129-year history. Yet every one of their seven home games exceeded the stadium’s 106,201 capacity.

  Records be damned; the Northwestern–Michigan State game still mattered. And 75,101 fans showed up to prove it.