Army went for a two-point conversion to try to make the lead 14-7. Quarterback Trent Steelman took it himself-and drove right into the end zone. The band played the fight song again. The place was jumping.
But Georgia Tech hadn’t run up a 9-1 record without having dealt with some tough situations. The Yellow Jackets calmly pieced together a drive that took another seven minutes off the clock and tied the score at 14 with just under four minutes left in the game. Each team got the ball once more; neither came close to scoring.
So the game went to overtime.
In the NFL, overtime was played like a real game: there was a coin toss, followed by a kickoff, and the first team to score won the game.
But in college football, it was completely different. A coin toss decided who got possession first. Then the ball was placed on the 25-yard line and the team tried to score from there. Regardless of whether they scored or not, the other team also got the ball at the 25. So if the first team to have the ball scored a touchdown, the other team had to match that or the game was over. If the first team kicked a field goal, then the other team could tie with a field goal or win the game with a touchdown. If the score was still tied after each team had the ball, the game continued with another pair of possessions.
Georgia Tech won the toss and elected to defend first.
“You always want to let the other team have the ball first so you know exactly what you need to do when you get the ball,” Kelleher said.
“But if they go to a second overtime, Georgia Tech gets the ball first, right?” Stevie said.
Kelleher nodded. “Yeah, they alternate,” he said. “Plus, Army gets to decide which end of the field they’re going to play on, and they’re going to make Tech play right in front of the corps.”
It was clear to Stevie, from Army’s play-calling, that Coach Ellerson still believed in his defense: a fullback dive got two yards, a quarterback sprint gained two more, and another fullback dive was good for three. So it was fourth down, with the ball on the 18-yard line, and Jay Parker and the field goal team trotted on.
“Ellerson’s taking no chances,” Kelleher said. “I’m not sure that’s a good play.”
“I don’t like it at all,” Taylor said. “They’ve already driven the length of the field on us twice in this half. Now they only have to go twenty-five yards to win the game.”
Parker nailed the field goal from thirty-five yards and Army led 17-14.
There was no break with change of possession; Georgia Tech’s offense trotted out, as did the Army defense.
Johnson had a reputation as a bit of a riverboat gambler in his play-calling. And even though a bold call had resulted in an interception earlier in the game, he was still thinking big. On first down, he called for a play-action fake to the fullback, and then Tech quarterback Lamar Goodes rolled out right and connected with a receiver streaking toward the sideline. He caught the ball in full stride at the 10 and looked like he might score, until one of Army’s safeties, Derek Klein, fought off a block and pushed him out of bounds on the 7-yard line.
“I just knew it.” Taylor shook his head.
“They haven’t scored yet, Doc,” Dicky Hall said.
“First and goal on the seven…,” Taylor said.
Johnson went for the quick kill on the next play, calling another play-action pass, but this time Army had everyone covered and Goodes threw the ball away. Second and goal. On second down, Tech went with a run up the middle and plowed to the 4-yard line. Instinctively, Stevie looked up at the clock and then realized it was at 0:00. There was no clock in overtime.
“What’s he do here?” Tim Kelly asked.
“He might call the same play, try to fool us,” Hall said.
“Roll out,” Taylor said. “Let the quarterback make a play with his feet or his arm depending on what he sees.”
Taylor had it right. Goodes rolled out, his arm cocked as if to pass. At the last possible moment, he pulled the ball down and charged toward the corner of the end zone. Two Army defenders came up to stop him, and they wrestled him down very close to the goal line.
For a split second, it looked as if Goodes might have scored. There was no signal from the officials. Finally the referee stood up with his right arm raised above his head in a clenched fist-the signal for fourth down. Nearly everyone in the stadium breathed a sigh of relief.
Stevie could see Paul Johnson at least five yards out onto the field pointing in the direction of the press box.
“He wants them to review it,” Kelleher said. “He thinks they scored.”
“You can’t blame him for asking, right?” Stevie said. From where he was standing, it was impossible to know if Goodes had gotten over the goal line or not.
“Yes, they really should review in this situation,” Kelleher said. “This is one time where you want to be a hundred percent sure.”
“The play is under review,” the referee said, turning on his microphone. “The ruling on the field is fourth down.”
And so they waited. Two minutes went by, then three. The crowd grew restless.
“The rule should really be that if they can’t be sure after two minutes of review, then the call on the field stands,” Kelleher said. “This is ridiculous.”
Another minute passed. Finally, the referee took off the headset that connected him to the press box and trotted back onto the field.
“After further review, the ruling on the field stands…”
He continued to talk, but Stevie couldn’t hear him over the wild cheering coming from the corps, which was directly behind where they were standing.
“Now what does Johnson do?” Stevie asked.
“Any other coach, I’d say he kicks the field goal and plays on in a second overtime,” Kelleher said. “But that’s not usually Paul’s way. He always thinks he can come up with a play to get what he needs, and it looks like he only needs about a foot.”
Johnson had called time out to think about it, and both teams were huddling around their coaches. The Army players were so close to Stevie, he could hear Rich Ellerson’s voice even over the din coming from the corps.
“He’s going to go for it,” Ellerson said. “He thinks they can make a play and win the game. So this is where we make a play and win the game. They will not run up the middle-that’s not what he does in these situations. We’re going to sell out on the quarterback sprint, okay? If he goes the other way, then I lost the game, so don’t even worry about it. Ignore the middle-we want maximum coverage on the sides.”
The teams trotted back out. Tech huddled up, even though the play had clearly been called on the sideline. Goodes brought his team to the line, barked signals, and took the snap. At first, Stevie thought Ellerson had blown it, because Goodes appeared to put the ball into his fullback’s stomach and the fullback flew through the air into the end zone.
But the fullback didn’t have the ball. Goodes had pulled it away at the last minute and was sprinting to his left, to the near corner, only a few yards from where Stevie, Kelleher, Hall, Kelly, and Taylor were standing. As Goodes tried to turn his shoulder toward the goal line, Stevie realized that at least a half dozen black-shirted defenders were pursuing him.
He held his breath as Goodes got to about the 3-yard line and tried to dive at the corner of the end zone. But at least three Army defenders were right in front of him. He struggled forward for an instant and then collapsed under a pile of black shirts, still a yard from the goal line.
Stevie heard a cannon go off somewhere and saw Kelly, Taylor, and Hall jump into a three-man hug. The entire Army team left the bench to celebrate. Stevie noticed something else: the Army defenders who had tackled Goodes had not gone into celebration mode right away. Instead, they reached down and helped him to his feet. Handshakes and hugs were exchanged.
Kelleher had a huge smile on his face. “You understand,” he yelled over the screams and shouts cascading down on them, “that there is NO way this team should beat a team with Georgia Tech’s talent
. These kids do this stuff on guts and heart.”
As Kelleher talked, Stevie saw the Army players, having celebrated and then shaken the hands of the Georgia Tech players, walking back in their direction. The Tech players, he noticed, were right behind them.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just watch,” Kelleher said.
The Army players lined up in neat rows, facing the corps of cadets. The Tech players stood directly behind them.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the playing of the Army alma mater,” the public address announcer said.
Stevie noticed the Army players come to attention, as did the entire corps. After the song everyone yelled, “Beat Navy!”
Kelleher explained. “Army, Navy, and Air Force all play their alma maters after each game. When they play each other, the losing team goes first, then they cross the field and do it for the winning team. You see guys who have been trying to kill one another for three hours crying on each other’s shoulders.
“Paul Johnson was at Navy, so he understands the tradition. That’s why his guys stayed. It doesn’t always happen that way.”
“Cool,” Stevie said.
Hall was right behind them. “Come on, hustle up,” he said. “You don’t want to miss the song.”
“The song?” Stevie said. “They just played the song.”
Hall shook his head. “That was the alma mater. After we win, the players sing the song. You really need to hear it.”
Hall wasn’t kidding. As soon as the players had piled into the locker room, still hugging one another joyously, Ellerson jumped on a chair and called for silence, which he got very quickly.
“I don’t need to tell you what a great win that was,” he said. “I’m not sure there’s a game in which you earned the right to sing the song more than this one. So, let’s do it!”
With that, the entire team began singing the Army fight song, belting it out in a way that even Stevie recognized was way off-key, but it didn’t matter. Stevie had been in winning locker rooms after the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Final Four. And he’d never seen a group of athletes happier than the Army players.
He and Kelleher lingered for a while. Hall introduced them to Ellerson just before the coach left for his postgame press conference.
“That was a great call on the last play,” Stevie said as they shook hands.
Ellerson waved him off. “Against that offense they can tell you what they’re going to do and it’s still hard to stop,” he said. “The kids just made a great play.”
Stevie liked him right away. So many coaches loved taking bows after wins. Clearly, Ellerson wasn’t like that.
Hall also took Stevie around the room so he could meet some of the players, explaining to them that Stevie was going to be around a fair bit in the next couple of weeks prior to the Navy game.
“I know who you are,” Mario Hill said. “I read all about you and your partner, Susan Carol, right? In my newspaper back home.”
“Where are you from?” Stevie asked, then felt embarrassed because he could easily have checked it in the media guide.
“Goldsboro, North Carolina,” Hill said.
Stevie nodded. Susan Carol’s hometown.
“I hope I get to meet Susan Carol too,” Hill said. “You two are quite a team.”
* * *
They were on their way back up to the press box so Kelleher could write his column for the Sunday paper when Stevie heard from the other half of the team.
He checked his phone and discovered a text from Susan Carol: Halftime. Great game. FREEZING to death. Miss you.
When they reached the press box, Stevie found a TV that was showing the end of the Navy-Notre Dame game. Just looking at the snow and the bundled-up fans in the stands made him feel cold.
Watching your game now, he texted Susan Carol back. Army’s win amazing. He paused for a second and then added: Miss you too. Not the same. They really were a good team.
Stevie heard a roar from the TV after Navy intercepted a pass only to have the officials give the ball back to Notre Dame because of a holding call.
“I don’t see it,” NBC analyst Pat Haden said. “If there was a hold, the official must have had an angle we don’t have.”
“It’s that kind of call along with the hold that denied Navy a touchdown earlier that makes people occasionally wonder if the Irish don’t get the benefit of the doubt from the officials in this stadium,” Tom Hammond added.
Stevie was surprised to hear Haden and Hammond say that. He had watched enough Notre Dame games to know that Hammond and Haden almost always sang the praises of the Irish. It had to have been a truly awful call if they were criticizing the officials, even mildly.
Kelleher walked up behind him, computer slung over his shoulder, as the game was winding down.
“Irish are going to pull it out here, huh?” he said as Notre Dame was lining up for a field goal to win the game.
When Stevie told him about the holding call, Kelleher shook his head. “I wish I was surprised.”
The field goal split the uprights and the Notre Dame players celebrated. Stevie looked for Susan Carol on the sidelines but didn’t see her.
He heard her loud and clear, though, when she called later to tell him about the game. Once she’d had a chance to review parts of the game on TV and see it from all angles, she’d only gotten madder than she’d been on the field.
“Let ’em have it,” Stevie told her.
And in her story for Monday’s Post labeled “News Analysis,” she did.
There are some who say the luck of the Irish has very little to do with luck, especially in Notre Dame Stadium. That was never more evident than Saturday, when two controversial holding calls from the officials were the difference between a Notre Dame win and a Navy win.
In the fourth quarter, with the game tied at 14 all, quarterback Ricky Dobbs lofted a perfect touchdown pass to G. G. Greene. But the play was called back on an offensive holding call. Navy’s coach, Ken Niumatalolo, was enraged by the call. But holding is not a reviewable play, so he was left to vent his frustration at referee Mike Daniels, saying, “You’re stealing the game from my players!” Daniels tacked on a charge of unsportsmanlike conduct for the Navy bench.
On the very next play, Notre Dame was able to capitalize on this second chance-picking up a fumbled pitch and running it back for a touchdown to put them ahead.
Navy battled back against a tired Notre Dame defense and put together a fifteen-play drive to tie the game again with just under six minutes left.
Notre Dame seemed poised to answer back when Navy cornerback Kevin Edwards jumped the route and intercepted a Roger Valdiserri pass, returning it to the Notre Dame 21. But again, a holding call reversed a Navy big play and gave the ball back to Notre Dame, along with a first down.
With only three seconds on the clock, Notre Dame was able to kick a field goal and win the game 24-21.
NBA Hall of Famer and Navy grad David Robinson was on the sidelines making his opinions known, wondering aloud if it was in the officiating contract that Notre Dame had to win at home.
NBC analysts with multiple replay angles could find no evidence of holding in either instance, prompting Tom Hammond to comment, “It’s that kind of call… that makes people occasionally wonder if the Irish don’t get the benefit of the doubt from the officials in this stadium.”
When a reporter visited the officials’ locker room after the game, referee Mike Daniels was belligerent. “We have no obligation to talk to the media,” Daniels said. “We all get pretty sick and tired of people blaming us for everything that goes wrong. Go find another scapegoat.”
While it’s true that officials are often cast as the villains and rarely the heroes of a game, the pattern of controversial calls in Notre Dame Stadium has many asking for further inquiry. Bad calls will always be a part of the game-officials are only human. But when a game is decided by the officials and not the players, the coaches and playe
rs deserve a thorough review and a thoughtful response. There have been longstanding questions about how officiating is run in college football, and games like this only add fuel to the fire of suspicion that referees have an incentive to slant calls in favor of the conference that pays their salaries-or, in this case, the team with its own TV network.
Honest mistakes can be forgiven if they are followed by honest apologies. But since the officials in this case were so clearly unwilling to review their own performance, they will have to live with the accusations of those who have reviewed it-and found it not only wanting, but suspect.
10. GAME DAY: 1 HOUR, 36 MINUTES TO KICKOFF
With the march-ons complete and the cadets now in their seats engaging in good-natured razzing with the midshipmen, the teams began coming onto the field to warm up.
Stevie noticed they didn’t come out all at once. The kickers came out first, apparently so they could boom kicks all over the field without getting in anybody’s way. Then the rest of the players came out by position: linebackers, defensive backs, linemen. The so-called skill position players-quarterbacks, running backs, and receivers-came last.
Stevie and Susan Carol both saw players they’d gotten to know well, but there was no time for chat-the players were all focused on getting warmed up for their biggest game of the year.
By eleven o’clock, the field was filled with players and the stands also appeared full. Stevie had no doubt there were still some people trying to get through security, but it looked to him as if most people had heeded all the warnings about arriving early.
Susan Carol saw that the officials were also on the field, warming up. She hadn’t realized when she wrote her story about the officials at Notre Dame that some of them would be working this game as well. She tried to unobtrusively keep Stevie between her and Mike Daniels, and for the first time she found herself wishing that Stevie was taller.
She was glad when Kelleher, Pete Dowling, and Bob Campbell returned after another pregame check-they offered more cover.
“Another hour and we’ll have the president in his seat and be seventy-five percent of the way home,” Dowling said.
The Rivalry: Mystery at the Army-Navy Game Page 7