January 1, 2020 • 44 mins
Is the current college football playoff perfect? Not remotely. But it’s a far cry from 1991, when not one, but two incredibly talented teams split the national championship due to the voting process that used to determine the national champion. Re-live the craziness, which featured a dominant year from the Miami Hurricanes - the bad boys of college football - and the Washington Huskies, who turned out to be the new bad boys for different and shocking reasons.
Chock full of future NFL stars, devastating injuries, a thrilling chapter in a famous rivalry, and a seismic change to college football AFTER the final votes were in. It’s the 1991 Miami Hurricanes and Washington Huskies: the first two-team Special Teams episode.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of I Heart Radio
Greetings and Welcome Inside Special Teams with Jason Smith and
(00:22):
Mike harmon our podcast. It takes a look back at
very big years and sports and very special teams that achieve.
Sometimes it's football, sometimes it's basketball, Sometimes it's baseball, Sometimes
it's soccer, sometimes it's hockey. Sometimes it's mumblety peg. Although,
like you know, sometimes the mumbley peg it's you get
get real blood and if you cut somebody's finger. But
(00:43):
we had to do that in two parts. It was
so big, yeah, mumbley Well, they have been some big
mumble peg years because there's big moments. Yes, there goes
a ring finger. I mean, the highlights are really next level.
Some of them. You've got to really spend a lot
of time editing to get the explains out. Today we
are looking back at the magical year of and not
(01:05):
one but two Special Teams. So a bit of a
wrinkle we have for you today because we're looking back
the college football season, which resulted in a co national
championship between the Washington Huskies and the Miami Hurricanes, a
championship that because of the way it ended with a
split national title helped foster what would eventually become the
(01:28):
BCS and what would eventually become the College Football Playoff.
Long road to get to the playoffs. But I shake
my my fist as many people do upon hearing the
term BCS. Dan, that's their faults, your fault, Miami, it's
your fault, Washington. And now what you have to remember,
and I'm sure everybody remembers this, but just in cases.
(01:50):
Back in the nineties, before we got to the BCS system,
the national championship was awarded by two properties, the Associated
Press and the Coaches Poll. And what happened is we
saw the bowl games played and whoever was the number
one team in the country. Usually they win their bowl game,
they're voted number one in the end. But this year
(02:10):
we had a split national title second year in a row,
because we're coming off the split national title the year before.
The Associated Press goes one way, the Coaches Pole goes
the other way. We got into this a little bit
in the split national title between Michigan and Nebraska in
one of our earlier podcasts. Well, we chuckle any time
you say coaches Paul, because it's like, all right, information director,
who for yeah, the the the guy whose son came
(02:34):
to visit the coach, and the coach said, hey, just
film out my bracket over here. Fill this out. See
why I got some game tape to watch. Leave me alone.
So the season begins for Washington and Miami teams. Who
do you want to do first? Washington? And how we
start with the Huskies? All right, Yeah, we've got some
personal connections to that team, so let's give them the others.
Who's our buddy, Lincoln Kennedy? Oh right, yes, long time, Yes,
(02:55):
I forgot about league and Fox Sports Radio Football Hall
of Fame. Yeah, all around? Good guy? Is he is? He? Is?
He really that? And he's walking in front of you.
I mean he blocks the sun. He does. He is
a very big dude and he played on this team.
(03:15):
Washington Huskies, coached by Don James, had high hopes coming
into the season, much like many teams we talked about
here on the podcast. They have high helps. Everybody's got
high hopes coming into the year. They were coming off
a really good and Mark Brunel was the starting quarterback
for Washington. He looked like he was going to become
one of the next star quarterbacks in college football. But
(03:39):
he rips up his knee in the spring, and he
has done for months, and the Washington Huskies have to
open up with their backup quarterback Billie Joe Hobert, who
was gonna start for Brunel while he rehabbed and tried
to race his way back into the lineup. Well, remember
how the year before, right, they get a big Rose
Bowl win, but a late season lost U c l
(04:00):
A kept them from having a steak at the national title.
So they're all salty, and now you have your quarterback
go down in in the spring, wondering how quickly you
can rehab and again knee injuries then a whole other volume.
I I got hurt back then, like things they wouldn't
clear me for trying to look at no. But in
(04:22):
all series of broken leg that I that I did
when I was in high school that I had, you know,
they wouldn't sign off on me when I was looking
to go to a military academy back then. If you're
a quarterback, a knee injury, we may see again, we
may not for Brunell. Unfortunately, long term it worked out
pretty well Jaguars, but in short term opened the door
(04:42):
for for a replacement. So the seventeenth year of Don
James's run at Washington. Who were the star players We
told you about Mark Brunell, who did come back into
action that year, Billy Joe Hobert, who oh, by the way,
goes from hey, this is a guy that won the
national championship to this guy brought down the Huskies Pro
Graham a year later. Something we'll get into later on
(05:02):
in the podcast. Napoleon Kaufman was there, big running back.
He was just a freshman. He was so fast. Obviously
he's known for the horrific knee injury he suffered in
the National Football League, but this is back when he
was a freshman and he was so fast. I mean,
you watch this guy in artificial turf, and there was
nobody who was better than he was on defense. Steve
Entman went very high in the draft to Marco Farr,
(05:24):
who I've done many shows with uh in the course
of my career doing sports talk radio Ram's coverage in
Los Angeles. After a nice career in the National Football League,
a guy have run into it several taco places through
the years here in l A very crazy so they
were the team to beat in the then Pack ten Conference, Meanwhile,
the Miami Hurricanes Dennis Rickson head coach ed Orgeron was
(05:48):
on the stand of young Eddio, who they probably couldn't
understand anything he was saying. No, he got a mumbled
like the dude from the Water Boy still does. But
it's been successful for him and his coaching career. Uh.
This is a team that wound up finishing twelve and
oh overall, they played a partial conference schedule in the
Big East. Things were really messy, and Miami was able
(06:11):
to get out of the gate fast and become the
rock stars of college football. I say this because way
do you see some of the star power they had
on this team, guys that went to the NFL that
you go, My goodness, these guys were great. You had
Leon Searcy, all right. You had Gino Torretta who went
on to win the Heisman Trophy. You had Michael Barrow,
Darryl Williams, Jesse Armstead. Dwayne Johnson was a freshman on
(06:36):
this team. Yes, that Dwayne Johnson, the Rock was on
this team. Horace Copeland played in the NFL for a
long time. It was top to bottom back when the
Miami Hurricanes were really the bad boys of college football
back in their midst to their rivalry with Notre Dame.
Jimmy Johnson had left to go to the Dallas Cowboys.
The program in great hands with Dennis Ericson. I do
(06:58):
want to point out before we get into the US
that the Big East football standings, of which Miami played
a partial schedule, they were not your Big East champions.
That was number eleven Syracuse, which finished five O and
o in the Big East back when you played like
five conference games. I don't even remember any of the
stars from that Syracuse team. Oh there were there were some.
(07:19):
That's PASCALONEI right, Oh, yeah, that that was him taking
over for Dick McPherson. Uh, that was I believe, Ernie Davis.
In the backfield, Floyd Little Brown, Jim Brown was just
doing it all. Marvin Harrison, uh, Marvin Graves, a lot
of guys named Marvin, you know. And yeah, I like that.
(07:40):
No it certainly Quentin spot Wood was catching some passes
on the outside. Quintin's fy like that showing you some
Syracuse knowledge. That pretty good. That is pretty good. So
these are your team's Miami highly rated coming into the season,
as was Washington three thousand miles away. What was everybody
else talking about besides college football? In let's take a
(08:00):
look back at that year in review. Debuting on television
in Home Improvement with Tim Allen Wilson, Wow, why what
are you just grunting? Like? Well, that's what he did.
I know, but run a lot, I know, but that
that sounded really weird that you just started grunting, Like
(08:21):
I said, Tim Allen's name was like a Pavlovian response
in you I'm gonna grunt. It was either that or
I was gonna start running lines from Galaxy quests, but
I thought those might be a bit obscure for people. No,
I was giving him though we're finished line. Oh I
didn't know that. Uh Ren and Stimpy debuted in eight,
as did the Jerry Springer Show. Nice, you know it
(08:46):
really it really gets me that. I guess I feel
like in this day and age, it shouldn't shock me,
but it's still At that time, this guy was the
mayor of Sinconna and now he's a guy saying you
are not the father. No, no, no, it's Mari. He
also debut that's doing that. Terry Springer was just how
can I get a bunch of craziness up on stage,
(09:08):
and then Steve, who was the security guy. He got
him show himself a show for a decade. Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve.
Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs was still years away.
The movies in theaters. Terminator to Judgment Day had everybody
running to the box office. I feel like Bob going,
you don't have the hair. But it also had a
(09:29):
guns and Roses song. Everyone was quiet watching the silence
of the lambs. Yeah, Oscar Winner for a few minutes
on screen, still terrifying. Beauty and the Beast was the
latest hit by Disney on the animation screen. Cell Cell Cell,
I remember going to that. You know, that was date
night with in high school and everyone wanted to have
(09:50):
sex on top of a fire truck because of backdraft.
Now I'm Russ Leatherman. If you would like to see
a sex scene with Billy Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Lee
one now and here I was gonna start quoting Bull
you go, I go. I mean, well, don't spoil it
for anybody. It's spen a minute, you know. Obviously ninety
(10:10):
one was a very heavy year as well. At the
beginning of Operation Desert storm, Mike Tyson was arrested. It
was a very heavy year in the news, and the
Gulf War really took on the majority of the news
cycle for a long time. Yeah, you had that. You
had a lot of world leaders change out. Michael Gorbachov resigned,
like Wealnza you had. You had a bunch of turmoil
(10:31):
and and just change over in world powers. When I
found out when the Gulf War was on, I was
in my history of the horror film class at Syracuse,
right I took. I took history though. It was a
great class. It was so awesome. And we were watching
a movie and the class was we'd watch a movie
one night and then talk about it the next night.
And that was that was a class. It was such
a great class. Tomatoes. We didn't watch that. We watched
(10:54):
good come on, we watch good stuff. And we were
watching a movie and the Gulf War was announced and
somebody opened up the bat like we're in a big auditorium.
Someone opened up the big doors and yelled, we just
bombed Iraq. The wars on and everybody's like muttering to
each other, going and half the people got up to leave,
and I'm like, okay, I get that and our professors
(11:17):
up and said, you are all responsible for this movie
for tomorrow. I still got to do your work must
go on. I think we're watching Suspiria. I mean not
the remake, but the old one. Yes, the Spiria. The
old movie was really good. I mean the original. It's
an Italian horror movie. Okay. There are a lot of
great horror movies came out of Italy in the eighties
(11:38):
and nineties. I have to go revisit trust. Maybe that'll
be an episode of a podcast. That was the precursor
of all the great European NBA players who came over
in the nineties. So fired by the horror films we
had the United States and then we had players like
Dirk come over in the nineties. That's what it was.
So that's where we are going into the college football
season of coming up next, we have traversy. We have
(12:01):
games interrupted on television on a Saturday because of hearings,
and the very first wide right as we celebrate Washington
and Miami, they're dual national championship. Here on Special Teams.
(12:30):
Continuing on with Special Teams, Jason Smith, Mike Harmon Our
show heard on Fox Sports Radio Monday through Friday, ten
pm to two am on the East Coast, seven to
eleven on the West Coast. We are your genial hosts
as we look back at big teams in big years
in sports history. Today, continuing on with the shared National Championship,
as we break down two teams for you, the Washington
(12:52):
Huskies and the Miami Hurricanes, both teams highly rated coming
into the season. For the Miami Hurricanes, it was no
problem early on. They blitched to a four and o record,
beating Oklahoma State four three in early October, setting up
their first big showdown of the year against number nine
Penn State in a game in which they would win
(13:14):
to twenty. But this game wasn't really known as much
for what Miami did is the fact that this game
was interrupted outside of South Florida because of the Clarence
Thomas hearings. He was nominated to the Supreme Court. He
was then accused of sexual misconduct by Anita Hill, and
the world was consumed with Clarence Thomas. Is he gonna
be okay as a Supreme Court justice? Is he gonna
(13:36):
wind up not getting it? This is a very big story,
And when the hearings resumed, ABC cut away from this
game to go show the Clarence Thomas hearings. So if
you're watching this game nationwide, it's wait a minute, I
still want to watch football. I don't want to watch this.
I want to watch football. It's before the current world
(13:56):
where you could go put it on any one of
your cable properties if you'd like to watch this Fox
Plasiness channel over here, right? How crazy that? Like Fox
Business Channel has? I remember watching Stanford and Cal on
Fox Business Channel because there was they had to put
the games someplace because other things happened and and games
ran overtime. Well, I've been at watering holes restaurants and
(14:17):
people like what am I watching here? Because you'll see
the commercial Hey on Monday's show come back to It's like, no, no,
it's really the football game. Just calm down. It'll get
back there in a second, just a different set of ads.
It'll be there. But yeah, it's it's just a different
world in terms of how news is disseminated, how people
get their reach through their phones or laptops or in
(14:39):
this case, multiple cable channels. I mean, it was it
was really shocking to think that there was no other
way to watch the game. There was we're not moving
into a sister station, We're not watching on PBS, You're
not going anywhere else because look, cable was still in
its infancy in early nineties, but everybody had fifty five
sixty channels. Yeah, you could have found a way to
do it in fear, Yes, but he's at that point.
(15:02):
Perhaps you know, there wasn't the need or desire. Maybe
we looked at politics and the world a little differently.
Some thirty years ago. It was a big day for
Gino Torrette at quarterback. You through an eight yr touchdown
past to Horace Copeland, a forty two yard touchdown pass
to Lamar Thomas, but Penn State fought back and had
(15:24):
a chance to potentially win this game. Tony Saka throws
a pick late in the fourth quarter on a play
that has been subject of a lot of controversy because
Darryl Williams, who was their best defensive back it was
a first round pick in the NFL, caught the ball
outside of the goal line, but his momentum kind of
(15:45):
carried him into the end zone and then he kind
of ran and he ran out of bounds, and the
clock stopped, and it probably should have been a safety
that Penn State cuts the score to two and then
gets the football back with at least a few seconds left.
Is this play happened in the final minute. It's a
play now that you would watch and go, well, he
caught it, okay, well man the end, he tried to run. Wait, wait,
(16:07):
you can't just wait a minute, that's a safety, but
not rule the safety on the field and Miami escapes
well and with no replay, although in nineteen would replay
have gotten it right even if they went back to
check the tape, there is that right has the old
rule of thumb is like if we only had the technology,
It's like sometimes it really doesn't clear things up either.
(16:29):
But you know, for for Joe Paterno and Mission and
and for Penn State, I got Michigan on the brain
because you're you're a Michigan game. The idea of Joe
Paterno and Penn State was only in year two in
the Big Ten, so it's a different world as opposed
to the past years as a juggernaut outside of that structure.
(16:51):
So this was a huge game to top ten teams.
And it ends just like that Miami came into the
year ranked number three. After this win against Penn State,
they stayed at number two, and then they would go
on to many big time victories. But we'll get to
their next close game coming up in a couple of minutes.
For the Washington Huskies, they started out they were ranked
number four out of the gate and again they didn't
(17:14):
have too much problem their first few weeks. They got
back to back shutouts of Arizona and Toledo fifty four nothing,
forty eight nothing. And after these couple of games, but
Washington defense started taking on a life of its own,
as it was widely viewed as the best defense in
college food. Well, what was interesting about it? All right?
As we mentioned the injury to Brunel and Hobart having
to take over. As you go into games at Stanford
(17:35):
at Nebraska, two places where you're like, all right, first
year quarterback, first year attempt to start a season. You
thought with Brunella it was gonna roll in Instead, n
and the the defense take on a whole other life.
They had beaten Nebraska early in the season thirty six
twenty one. That was their closest game. Nebraska was a
(17:55):
top ten team. They go into a game October nineteen
at Cal, who has ranked seventh in the country. And
I remember this game. I remember watching it. I remember
everything about it because I can say it because it's
years later. I illegally bet on this game is gone,
you know how. I remember this was kind of Pack
(18:17):
twelve after Dark before Pack twelve after Dark. I remember
this because I won a lot of money on this.
Now I'm I'm a college senior at this point, and
I knew a guy who knew a guy who did
right who I thought you were gonna say, who was
really close to a player on the team, And I
was gonna start sinking underneath my chair. I can't tell
(18:38):
you who it is, but his name rhymes with Schmive Schmittman. No, no, no, no.
I knew a guy do a guy that did parley sheets,
and I this was a five team parlay and I
bet ten dollars on it, right, And back then it
was like if you hit five games, you won like
sixty bucks. Right then you had to go five for five.
And this was my last game of the day, and
I bet Cal because they were getting fourteen points. And
(19:00):
I'm saying, Cow's at home. I know washing this good,
but they're getting fourteen points. Cow's pretty good. Mike Paulowski
is a pretty good quarterback. He was a quarterback at
Cal and I said, Okay, you know this is gonna
be this is gonna be a big day. I'm gonna win.
And I wound up winning because Washington wins this game
in dramatic fashion by a touchdown seventeen. But I don't
(19:21):
care because I was getting fourteen points and I was
sixty dollars Richard, which when I was twenty one sixty bucks.
The beer I bought, oh, the Peels bar bottles that
we were in a big Peels bar bottles thing back then.
The Peels bar bottles I bought like four cases. Then
they're like ten dollars. We were drinking those for like
a month and a half. I was a little nervous
that you're gonna start telling me about the list of
(19:43):
hobo wines or something that you're going there for cents.
I really loaded up. Hey, let's this is from Mike Velosky.
We're still enjoying this beer because he almost pulled off
the upset. A couple of great things out of this.
Bruce Sneider's your cow coach. Yeah, alright, and long career
for him and before he went on to start beating
up on cupcakes at Kansas State. There is that too,
(20:04):
uh and then you, um, you looked at having a
touchdown called back because of a holding puddally which helped
you finished the job. Now, this game ended very not controversially,
but very heart stopping. Lee. I remember the offensive coordinator
Cal was Steve Mariucci. Sure, this is Mooch who started
to really grow his legend where he would go on
(20:27):
to become the head coach of the forty Niners head
coach of the Lions because he was this great offensive
genius and he did great work at Cal. This was
a close game. Cal was driving down. They were on
the Washington twenty seven yard line. Final play of the
game incomplete, but Washington is off sides, so they get
one more play from the twenty two yard line. This
(20:48):
is the only time Washington was threatened in the fourth
quarter all season long, and Pulaski's pass was just over
the outstretched fingertips of one of his wide receivers. The
ball falls incomplete and why Shington wins. And many players
said after that game they knew that was gonna be
their big test it was survived, advance and exhale, and
they get out of this big showdown against Cal with
(21:09):
a seven point win. Escape on the road. Right, there's
always gotta be one of those. And all of these
special teams that we've examined, the ones that succeeded, Yes, man,
obviously we've got the abject failures mixed they're in. But
for those that finished the job, there's one or two
games where they've got to survive some crazy sequence, the
(21:30):
near miss, a bogus penalty. But this one at at
Cal seventeen, your final get you to six and oh,
you're halfway through. Your defense has played really well and
even here comes up with stops in big spots to
thwart Maryuchi's best efforts. But yeah, you have to exhale
and then get back on the grind for the rest
(21:51):
of your schedule. And that's exactly what they did. That
was the closest game they had played the rest of
the season. They had a low scoring game at USC
beat them fourteen to three. USC was unranked, but it
didn't really matter because they weren't really threatened in that game.
They get all the way through the rest of their
season undefeated. They win the Apple Cup over Washington State
fifty six to twenty one. At this point their ranked
(22:15):
number two in the country and they are going to
the Rose Ball. They score four hundred sixty one points
on the year, giving up a hundred one. About that.
The interesting part of this is as good as the defense.
Watch right, a hundred one points in eleven games. You're
talking about ten points a game. Mark Brunell at this
point had come back to the team and he came
(22:36):
back and I remember he rushed to come back and
he told Don James, listen, I don't want to cause
any controversy. I just want to contribute. So in the
beginning he came back and he was just holding on
extra points. He wanted to come back and get on
the field some way, some way, Ship because Billy Joe
Hobert's playing well, the team is scoring points that there's
no reason to make a move. And Brunell was like, listen,
(22:56):
I just want to contribute. And he came back and
he was holding you. You come back from a shredded
knee and you're actually playing a few months later. That's
a big time come back. Marc Bounell to go from
March until December and hey, you're back and actually on
the field. But this was Billy Joe Hobert's team, and
Brunelle was coming back, and eventually, you do, they were
gonna have an issue because you have two really good quarterbacks.
(23:17):
But for now, for Washington, everything is going okay. Well,
you had to have a guy that said, uh, I
have NFL wants and aspirations. I gotta get back out
the field and show people I could play. But you know,
in in terms of just their overall production from an
offensive side, we always talk about the eighty five Bears
and that defense and how brilliant they were. And look,
(23:37):
there's thousands of writers who've made careers off the next
book or next iteration of the Bears eight five story.
But what's often lost is that they were among the
highest scoring teams each and every year, just like this
Washington team. You might might be noted for the defensive
efforts and the brilliance that they showed and exhibited in
some of these big games, but also the fact that
(23:59):
they just roll dump teams time and again. A couple
of fifty burgers mixed there in. Yeah, they rolled it up.
So what about Miami ranked number two in the country.
They headed into a one versus to showdown on November
six at Florida State. This became the very first wide
right game. Now in parlance, it's wide right one, because
(24:21):
we've had a few more games like this the following
year they had. They had wide right to five games
in twelve years between Miami and Florida State, which really
was the football rivalry of the nineties. There was nothing
bigger than that. Notre Dame didn't have a bigger one. Michigan,
Ohio State wasn't as big because this always came down
to whoever won this game is gonna play for the
(24:42):
national championship, you know, not even Ohio State. Michigan was
like that. Ohio State was like we when we can
play for the title. Michigan it's like we when we
can play in the blue bonnetball and we're still gonna
beat you. But this five games and twelve years were
decided by a late field goal attempt, not always a
field goal, but a field goal attempt. This was wide
right one in which the Miami Hurricanes led this game
(25:04):
seventeen sixteen, but Florida drove to the doorstep in the
final seconds on third down with twenty nine seconds left,
Florida State decided, now we're gonna kick the final field goal,
which nowadays blows you away. First of all, why would
you kick with twenty nine seconds left and give Miami
(25:24):
any kind of time with the football when all they
need is a field goal? But Bobby Bowden decided, we're
gonna kick on third down, seconds left to go, from
thirty four yards away. This is as chip a shot
as you get in college football. Thirty four yards on
the seventeen yard line. This is gonna be it. But
what happens Jerry Thomas MSS wide right. This is Bobby
(25:45):
Bowden running on the field looking taking his helmet off going,
they're taking his hat off going. He missed, and Miami
wins and name move up to being number one in
the country. Here's the best part about this. Prior to
the uprights were narrowed by four ft. Think about that,
almost five full feet five full ft. This kick missed
(26:08):
by about the length of a football. So if this
were the old uprights, and you remember what it looks
like watching a college football game, how wide the uprights were.
They narrowed them by four ft. If they don't make
that change, this field goal goes in, Florida State may
go on to win a national championship in college football
history is rewritten. But instead we get wide right one.
(26:30):
Then you would have had Nick Saban, Chason, Bobby Bowden
and Bobby Bowden and Bobby Bowden and would have never
heard the end unquote an interception of bounce ball. You
lose the game, you'd kick yourself in the rear for
the rest of your life. So that was Bobby Bowden's
quote thereafter. And Keith Jackson was on the call, so
you get the pageantry of him, uh giving this punctuation
(26:53):
mark to a rivalry that all these years later, I mean,
you do so many documentaries on how these teams battle
for supremacy. So that was the win of the season
from aami. They moved to number one in the country.
They have a tough game the week after at Boston College,
talking about going off this big win. We beat Florida State.
We're on the road at Boston College and that's a
(27:14):
dog fight and they win this game nineteen fourteen. But
they get the benefit of the doubt from the Polsters. Okay,
it's a week after they play a big game. They
go and play San Diego State and their last regular
season game of the year, they win thirty twelve. So
they head into their bowl game in the Orange Bowl
the number one team in the country. And this is
a really weird schedule for Miami to play. As we mentioned,
(27:36):
they played a partial biggie schedule. I mean, look the
conferences back in the early nineties with the new ones
in the Big East, they were all insane. I mean,
who plays a schedule like this? Think about this. This
is Miami schedule, right. You think about the A c
C and the conferences they you know, and where they play,
and you're playing your conference games and then you're not
going very far. You're playing teams close to you. This
(27:58):
is their schedule, Okay, East Arkansas, Houston, Tulsa, Oklahoma State,
Like they're playing in the Big Twelve. Then it's Penn State,
Long Beach State, Arizona, Long Beach State, West Virginia, Florida State,
Boston College, San Diego State means, just like Notre Dame,
you're an independent. They're like they're like the traveling all
(28:19):
Stars across the country and play everyone are storming tour.
So they go onto the Rose Bowl. I'm sorry, they
go onto the Orange Bowl where they were going to
play number eleven Nebraska. Meanwhile, for Washington they would go
to the Rose Bowl facing number four Michigan. These were
the top two teams in the country and coming up
next even though we had two wins, didn't mean there
(28:41):
wasn't a ton of controversy. That's coming up next right
here special teams Jason Smith, Mike Harmon. So just how
(29:05):
did it shake out that Miami and Washington split the
national championship in and fostered a big change in college football? First,
let's talk about the Rose Bowl. It was the game
earlier in the day, the granddaddy of them all. The
middle of the afternoon, Washington crushes Michigan thirty four to fourteen.
This is when Michigan would routinely go to the Rose
(29:27):
Bowl and get killed by whoever was in the Pac ten.
This game wasn't close, and you talked about running up
the score at the end of the game to impress
the pollsters. Two things happened at the end of this game.
Michigan got an Oh by the way touchdown to turn
a thirty four seven game into a thirty four four
team game, and with Washington inside Michigan's ten yard line
(29:47):
in the final minute, with their third string quarterback in
the game, they decided to take a knee rather than
run up the score. So this final score is thirty
four teen, where had they played more for the jugular,
it could have been forty one seven. And maybe that
flips a few votes their way that go Miami's way.
Maybe a little bit of gamesmanship that should have been considered,
(30:08):
right you you go sportsmanship versus well, what are the
true rules of engagement here? And the coaches all recognize
what's at stake here that that's not something that you know,
Gary Mueller is gonna lose his mind over. He might
make a side eye comment about it after the game,
but he recognizes how this is played. You know, you
you're going for a national title and you've got another
(30:31):
team in Miami that that's right there with you. At
this point, Brunella is back and he's getting a couple
of series each half. He threw a touchdown pass in
this game. Also had a big day from Billy Joe Hobert.
But the touchdown I talked about. Tyrone Wheatley ran for
a fifty three yard touchdown with less than five minutes
to go in the game, and that's one of those
broken plays that listen, he'd stop Michigan all day and
(30:52):
Tyron Wheatley gets in the end zone. I'm telling you
seven looks a lot better than thirty four fourteen. We're
talking about impressing people who are make in that vote,
and that could have really tipped it because this was
close both ways. Well, especially when you don't have people
that necessarily see how the game flows, they just know
the final score. Don't let it go to the judges
is really when it all comes down to. Never let
(31:14):
it go to the judges. So after this entire day
of Bowl activity, back when everything was on January one
and we watched all the way through to the end,
the Orange Bowl was always the final Bowl game of
the night. So this is the last game Miami and Nebraska,
and Miami Nebraska played many classic games over the years.
This was not one of them. This was Miami absolutely
(31:36):
crushing the corn Huskers twenty two to nothing. It wasn't
a big outpouring of offense for Miami, but Nebraska had
nine first downs in this game and a hundred and
seventy one total yards. This is almost thirty years later,
they could still be playing that game and Nebraska wouldn't
have any points. First shutout in eighteen years. So when
(31:58):
you can put that in any press release and that's
one of the leads, then when you get to the
voting processes again, taking the AP and the coaches and
looking into that that it's going to add a little
bit of extra push. Obviously, Nebraska defensively did well. It
came down to a lot of Carlos Squerta kicks. Carlos
(32:20):
Squerta was there for about nine years. Yeah, so they
win this game, and now we have to wait for
the votes because this is the number one and number
two team in the country. The number one team played
the number eleven team. The number two team played the
number four team, and the votes were close in both polls.
Miami wins the Associated Press pole, Washington wins the coaches pole,
(32:43):
so they split the national championship. Many people were not
satisfied with this. Again, this is another split national title,
and this sparked the beginning of what was called the
Bowl Coalition, which was absolutely awful. This was a way
college football tried to figure out a way to get
the best teams playing against each other. In the bowl games, right,
kind of what the BCS did. We're trying to get
(33:04):
number one versus number two, and yeah, but this didn't work.
And this is why this is doomed to failure because
it all depended on teams who were contracted to different
bowls if they were able to play in one bowl
game or not. But this is back when the Orange
Bowl usually at least had part of the National Championship
involved in it because it was always Miami, Florida for
one of those teams Nebraska was contracted to play, or
(33:27):
the Big Twelve winner was contracted to play in the
Orange Bowl, so usually it turned out to be some
sort of form of Nebraska, Oklahoma Miami. But still this
is doomed to failure because the number one thing about
this was it didn't include the Pac Ten or the
Big Ten because they were still contracted to play in
the Rose Ball. So you're talking about these two teams
could win the title. No, no, we're not in the
(33:47):
bowl coalition. Wait really, why are we doing this? Then?
I don't know, it's better than what we have? Well,
anything was an improvement, right, This is how it always
came down to pass And even now when you you
look at where the playoff is. As you and I
sit and look back at this season, there's still a
ground swell to make changes to where we're at. And
(34:09):
you would argue, I think at least from where I sit,
it's light years ahead of where you were. You know,
people blindly throwing throwing their weight by yeah they won
by how many? All right? Vondam higher? And then the
as you said, the information director instead of the coach
or maybe just friend of the show, we'd be in
(34:29):
to fill things out, so you know, boosters and whatever else.
So bit by bit you have improvement. And we're talking
narrow margins here right, like four points in one poll,
nine points in the other. And here we have chaos,
controversy and a split national title. And when you refer
to Carlos S. Wuerta, he is first Team All American.
(34:49):
Carlos Wuerta. Oh, I thought you were gonna say, sir
or something like that. Miami had five First Team All Americans. Meanwhile,
Washington had eleven players taken in the NFL draft by
Steve Entman, who went number one over all of the
Indianapolis Colts. Mario o' bailey, star wide receiver on the
team he went later on in the draft as well.
Of course, this is when the draft was twelve rounds
to take a lot of players. That's all right, they
(35:11):
still got drafted. I'm not gonna take that away from him.
So Miami wins, Washington wins, We're sick of split national championships,
and we have the Bowl coalition. This was really ready
to rear its ugly head again the following year because
what happened. Washington started out the season eight no. They
were on a twenty two game win streak under Billy
(35:33):
Joe Hobert, who was still the starting quarterback. Mark Brunelle
again was back. Both of them had NFL futures. Brunel
was playing a little bit more, but it was still
Hobert's team and Washington was rolling. And then the story
breaks with Washington and eight No that Billy Joe Hobert
took fifty thou dollars from a family friend, which is
(35:55):
of course against n c a A rules. He has
ruled ineligible. Ark Brunel steps in, but it's not the same.
Washington wins one more game but finishes nine and three.
So what could have been back to back national championships
or at least in theory, depending what the Bowl coalition
would have figured out, turned into just an okay season.
(36:16):
This also marked the end of Don James because he
resigned over a two year bull band that Washington got
because of Billy Joe Hobert. He goes in one year
from being the guy who steps into the void the
biggest question Mark, Oh my god, No, Mark Brunel doesn't matter.
He's great, and then he's the guy that brings down
the Washington program that could have been back to back
national championship. Yeah. Kind of an interesting thing, right when
(36:39):
you look at what Don James was doing as well.
They they had had that run in the late eighties
where they weren't particularly good. Eight wins or fewer. He
didn't take a raise after a six and five season
and eighty eight all of these things. Now you're a
title you know, split title and with with Obert. And
you look at the fifty thou dollar loans and part
(37:00):
of the ruling was, well, he had no assets or
a payment schedule, Like how many loans have been put
out in America for many different things cars and and
for homes, I mean go back through the housing stuff.
People were getting loans with anything. There's nothing I mean
this is but the n C Double A being the
n C Double A. They came and cracked down and
(37:22):
it's the end of what could have been a huge
run here. A lot of these guys, as you said,
go on to the NFL, over being among them, but
never really has his career take off. Twenty three touchdowns,
twenty five i N T s for the career, and
a QB rating our favorite stat of just sixty. Uh.
Brunel of course had the big career with the Jaguars,
(37:45):
going to the a f C Championship game early on
in his career. He was fun, he was mobile, He
was a really good quarterback for a long time. And
you think, boy, if he didn't get hurt, I mean
they obviously they won. If he was still the quarterback
all next year, could they have one? Because he had
to step in and suddenly start playing full football games
when he hadn't done so south paw who could run,
(38:06):
so you had. That element was certainly pivotal to his
success with the Jaguars. But think about different element that
you add to an offense there where you were already
built for speed, something that they had shifted to in
terms of their analysis and recruitment of players in those
prior couple of years. Before we get to wear of
it now, just a little bit on Don James, head
coach at Washington, who was a head coach who was
(38:28):
always respected, but by and large he escaped the general
spotlight because of coaches like Jimmy Johnson, Bobby Bowden, Joe
Paterno back then. But he resigned in protest over what
he thought were the unfair sanctions against his team for
these infractions that it revolved around Billy Joe Hobert. He
(38:49):
wasn't named specifically as having broken any rules, but he
decided to resign in protest and that was it for him.
And later on he did an interview with the Seattle
Times at which he said resign ending probably saved his
life because of the coaching that told it was taking
on him. Everything going on was just so much. Uh.
He died in two thousand thirteen at the age of
(39:09):
eighty And uh, you know, he's someone that when you
hear them speak about his name now, it's of that
legendary status. Now maybe West Coast Boy Don James, Boy,
what a program he ran, What a horrible way it
had to end for him. There was resigning, but at
least he was able to look at his resignation and say,
you know what, he had a great quality of life
after that, and he stood up for something right. He
(39:31):
stood up and it's one of the long list of
players and coaches who have raised their hand at the
way the n C double A from where I sit
again arbitrarily decides how they're going to rule on different things.
Hundred seventy eight, seventy six and three three ties. That's
pretty impressive. Uh. Ten and five in Bowl games, three
(39:52):
time Pac Ten Coach of the Year, all sorts of
other coaching Coach of the Year honors, obviously the national
t Idol and then six pack eight pack ten championships overall.
I mean, that's that's a distinguished career. He was just
sixty years old when he stopped. He never entertained any
other offers. He said doctors told him if he kept coaching,
he probably would have died from stress. Uh five years
(40:14):
after that. So it was great for Don James to
be able to enjoy the rest of his life the
way he did. And look, the guy got a national championship.
He became a legend. What about some of those players
and other personalities from these two teams? Where are they now?
My car? Now? He got a couple of them. Obviously
we know Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Uh. He went on
to do something ju manji did he go on to
do anything? Became the greatest entertainer, most electrifying entertainer in
(40:39):
sports history. Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne Johnson never not ringing a bell.
Yeah it's pilot Steve. We've got the patch, all right?
How about Kip Vickers Guard Accounting? I t website design,
but I wish I could have figured out the right
website to run to make money? Yeah have I? I
just joined that for a little bit too late. Uh.
(41:01):
Darren Smith real estate investment development. Uh, and then also
does some religious Bible study work. He got Leon Searcy.
You mentioned him earlier. He's the CEO of Real Men Block.
And you'll like this for it's got a two pronged approach.
One it's we're gonna train lineman and we're gonna train
him up. The other it's apparel for big men. Oh.
(41:24):
I like that. Take care of that. Guys need the
guy's deep clothes. What about shorter guys. What about guys
who aren't linemen? But we're like five, will that work?
Short stocky build? You just look like the Hamburgler running
around here. I don't know. I live on the other side.
We got our buddy Lincoln Kennedy. You know, he's works
for the Raiders for years, played in the National Football League,
(41:44):
College Football Hall of Famer. Our team met at Fox
Sports Radio. He wanted to introduce me to a number
of people at a party where I was mocked openly
by a ray Lewis because my shoulders are wider than his. Wow, yeah,
you got that going. If I tell you, if you
ever get on Hinder, you make sure you write that. Yeah.
It was a pretty good, uh circle of people. So
you got Donovan McNab, Jerom Pettis, Linkoy Kennedy, Donovan McNabb,
(42:07):
and here's ray Lewis four times. That just for me.
He's a Chicago guy and he's for you. I'm sure,
uh and well, but he remembered that. So anytime I've
run into Donovan since or been on the radio with Donovan,
he's kind of mentioned that. And he kind of had
to laugh at because ray Lewis said that, well, God,
had shorted me. I'll keep it clean for the podcast.
(42:27):
Napoleon Goffman, Uh, football coach up in Oakland and an
ordained minister. Leif Johnson running back. Uh, he's doing mergers
and acquisitions. I think you said Leif Garrett there for
a second, you wanted it to be Leif Garretter You've
got ed. Cunningham was a broadcaster at ESPN a long
while the Center he walked away as the concussion issue
(42:50):
really took over the narrative in college and pro football.
But here's what I thought you might like, because I'm
sure you being a big movie buff like I am,
he helped produce a fist full of quarters the King
of Kong. Remember Billy Mitchell's battle for supremacy that it
was always wearing a shirt and tie while he was
(43:12):
playing video games. It was his battle. It's really an
amazing thing. If you haven't seen in folks, go to that.
In last one from Aunt Farm and from Saturday Night Live.
Finesse Mitchell part of the squad as well. Mike Finesse
Mitchell was on. That's what I forgot about the You know,
the Rock wasn't the only Hollywood star here. See when
I say rock stars. It's rock stars. People understand that
(43:35):
was the Miami hurricane. About that? So there it is
on look back split National championship between Washington and Miami.
Do you want to hit us up on Twitter at
how about a fresco? Mike is at Swollen Dome. Any
ideas for future Special Teams podcast? Hit us up. Mike
and Jason will talk to you next time. Before you go,
(44:04):
rate and review the show. Whether you're listening on I
heart radio, I heart radio apps, Apple, whatever it is,
give us a rate, tell us you like it. We
will love you forever and ever and ever. Special Teams
(44:28):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of I Heart Radio
Greetings and Welcome Inside Special Teams with Jason Smith and
(00:22):
Mike harmon our podcast. It takes a look back at
very big years and sports and very special teams that achieve.
Sometimes it's football, sometimes it's basketball, Sometimes it's baseball, Sometimes
it's soccer, sometimes it's hockey. Sometimes it's mumblety peg. Although,
like you know, sometimes the mumbley peg it's you get
get real blood and if you cut somebody's finger. But
(00:43):
we had to do that in two parts. It was
so big, yeah, mumbley Well, they have been some big
mumble peg years because there's big moments. Yes, there goes
a ring finger. I mean, the highlights are really next level.
Some of them. You've got to really spend a lot
of time editing to get the explains out. Today we
are looking back at the magical year of and not
(01:05):
one but two Special Teams. So a bit of a
wrinkle we have for you today because we're looking back
the college football season, which resulted in a co national
championship between the Washington Huskies and the Miami Hurricanes, a
championship that because of the way it ended with a
split national title helped foster what would eventually become the
(01:28):
BCS and what would eventually become the College Football Playoff.
Long road to get to the playoffs. But I shake
my my fist as many people do upon hearing the
term BCS. Dan, that's their faults, your fault, Miami, it's
your fault, Washington. And now what you have to remember,
and I'm sure everybody remembers this, but just in cases.
(01:50):
Back in the nineties, before we got to the BCS system,
the national championship was awarded by two properties, the Associated
Press and the Coaches Poll. And what happened is we
saw the bowl games played and whoever was the number
one team in the country. Usually they win their bowl game,
they're voted number one in the end. But this year
(02:10):
we had a split national title second year in a row,
because we're coming off the split national title the year before.
The Associated Press goes one way, the Coaches Pole goes
the other way. We got into this a little bit
in the split national title between Michigan and Nebraska in
one of our earlier podcasts. Well, we chuckle any time
you say coaches Paul, because it's like, all right, information director,
who for yeah, the the the guy whose son came
(02:34):
to visit the coach, and the coach said, hey, just
film out my bracket over here. Fill this out. See
why I got some game tape to watch. Leave me alone.
So the season begins for Washington and Miami teams. Who
do you want to do first? Washington? And how we
start with the Huskies? All right, Yeah, we've got some
personal connections to that team, so let's give them the others.
Who's our buddy, Lincoln Kennedy? Oh right, yes, long time, Yes,
(02:55):
I forgot about league and Fox Sports Radio Football Hall
of Fame. Yeah, all around? Good guy? Is he is? He? Is?
He really that? And he's walking in front of you.
I mean he blocks the sun. He does. He is
a very big dude and he played on this team.
(03:15):
Washington Huskies, coached by Don James, had high hopes coming
into the season, much like many teams we talked about
here on the podcast. They have high helps. Everybody's got
high hopes coming into the year. They were coming off
a really good and Mark Brunel was the starting quarterback
for Washington. He looked like he was going to become
one of the next star quarterbacks in college football. But
(03:39):
he rips up his knee in the spring, and he
has done for months, and the Washington Huskies have to
open up with their backup quarterback Billie Joe Hobert, who
was gonna start for Brunel while he rehabbed and tried
to race his way back into the lineup. Well, remember
how the year before, right, they get a big Rose
Bowl win, but a late season lost U c l
(04:00):
A kept them from having a steak at the national title.
So they're all salty, and now you have your quarterback
go down in in the spring, wondering how quickly you
can rehab and again knee injuries then a whole other volume.
I I got hurt back then, like things they wouldn't
clear me for trying to look at no. But in
(04:22):
all series of broken leg that I that I did
when I was in high school that I had, you know,
they wouldn't sign off on me when I was looking
to go to a military academy back then. If you're
a quarterback, a knee injury, we may see again, we
may not for Brunell. Unfortunately, long term it worked out
pretty well Jaguars, but in short term opened the door
(04:42):
for for a replacement. So the seventeenth year of Don
James's run at Washington. Who were the star players We
told you about Mark Brunell, who did come back into
action that year, Billy Joe Hobert, who oh, by the way,
goes from hey, this is a guy that won the
national championship to this guy brought down the Huskies Pro
Graham a year later. Something we'll get into later on
(05:02):
in the podcast. Napoleon Kaufman was there, big running back.
He was just a freshman. He was so fast. Obviously
he's known for the horrific knee injury he suffered in
the National Football League, but this is back when he
was a freshman and he was so fast. I mean,
you watch this guy in artificial turf, and there was
nobody who was better than he was on defense. Steve
Entman went very high in the draft to Marco Farr,
(05:24):
who I've done many shows with uh in the course
of my career doing sports talk radio Ram's coverage in
Los Angeles. After a nice career in the National Football League,
a guy have run into it several taco places through
the years here in l A very crazy so they
were the team to beat in the then Pack ten Conference, Meanwhile,
the Miami Hurricanes Dennis Rickson head coach ed Orgeron was
(05:48):
on the stand of young Eddio, who they probably couldn't
understand anything he was saying. No, he got a mumbled
like the dude from the Water Boy still does. But
it's been successful for him and his coaching career. Uh.
This is a team that wound up finishing twelve and
oh overall, they played a partial conference schedule in the
Big East. Things were really messy, and Miami was able
(06:11):
to get out of the gate fast and become the
rock stars of college football. I say this because way
do you see some of the star power they had
on this team, guys that went to the NFL that
you go, My goodness, these guys were great. You had
Leon Searcy, all right. You had Gino Torretta who went
on to win the Heisman Trophy. You had Michael Barrow,
Darryl Williams, Jesse Armstead. Dwayne Johnson was a freshman on
(06:36):
this team. Yes, that Dwayne Johnson, the Rock was on
this team. Horace Copeland played in the NFL for a
long time. It was top to bottom back when the
Miami Hurricanes were really the bad boys of college football
back in their midst to their rivalry with Notre Dame.
Jimmy Johnson had left to go to the Dallas Cowboys.
The program in great hands with Dennis Ericson. I do
(06:58):
want to point out before we get into the US
that the Big East football standings, of which Miami played
a partial schedule, they were not your Big East champions.
That was number eleven Syracuse, which finished five O and
o in the Big East back when you played like
five conference games. I don't even remember any of the
stars from that Syracuse team. Oh there were there were some.
(07:19):
That's PASCALONEI right, Oh, yeah, that that was him taking
over for Dick McPherson. Uh, that was I believe, Ernie Davis.
In the backfield, Floyd Little Brown, Jim Brown was just
doing it all. Marvin Harrison, uh, Marvin Graves, a lot
of guys named Marvin, you know. And yeah, I like that.
(07:40):
No it certainly Quentin spot Wood was catching some passes
on the outside. Quintin's fy like that showing you some
Syracuse knowledge. That pretty good. That is pretty good. So
these are your team's Miami highly rated coming into the season,
as was Washington three thousand miles away. What was everybody
else talking about besides college football? In let's take a
(08:00):
look back at that year in review. Debuting on television
in Home Improvement with Tim Allen Wilson, Wow, why what
are you just grunting? Like? Well, that's what he did.
I know, but run a lot, I know, but that
that sounded really weird that you just started grunting, Like
(08:21):
I said, Tim Allen's name was like a Pavlovian response
in you I'm gonna grunt. It was either that or
I was gonna start running lines from Galaxy quests, but
I thought those might be a bit obscure for people. No,
I was giving him though we're finished line. Oh I
didn't know that. Uh Ren and Stimpy debuted in eight,
as did the Jerry Springer Show. Nice, you know it
(08:46):
really it really gets me that. I guess I feel
like in this day and age, it shouldn't shock me,
but it's still At that time, this guy was the
mayor of Sinconna and now he's a guy saying you
are not the father. No, no, no, it's Mari. He
also debut that's doing that. Terry Springer was just how
can I get a bunch of craziness up on stage,
(09:08):
and then Steve, who was the security guy. He got
him show himself a show for a decade. Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve.
Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs was still years away.
The movies in theaters. Terminator to Judgment Day had everybody
running to the box office. I feel like Bob going,
you don't have the hair. But it also had a
(09:29):
guns and Roses song. Everyone was quiet watching the silence
of the lambs. Yeah, Oscar Winner for a few minutes
on screen, still terrifying. Beauty and the Beast was the
latest hit by Disney on the animation screen. Cell Cell Cell,
I remember going to that. You know, that was date
night with in high school and everyone wanted to have
(09:50):
sex on top of a fire truck because of backdraft.
Now I'm Russ Leatherman. If you would like to see
a sex scene with Billy Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Lee
one now and here I was gonna start quoting Bull
you go, I go. I mean, well, don't spoil it
for anybody. It's spen a minute, you know. Obviously ninety
(10:10):
one was a very heavy year as well. At the
beginning of Operation Desert storm, Mike Tyson was arrested. It
was a very heavy year in the news, and the
Gulf War really took on the majority of the news
cycle for a long time. Yeah, you had that. You
had a lot of world leaders change out. Michael Gorbachov resigned,
like Wealnza you had. You had a bunch of turmoil
(10:31):
and and just change over in world powers. When I
found out when the Gulf War was on, I was
in my history of the horror film class at Syracuse,
right I took. I took history though. It was a
great class. It was so awesome. And we were watching
a movie and the class was we'd watch a movie
one night and then talk about it the next night.
And that was that was a class. It was such
a great class. Tomatoes. We didn't watch that. We watched
(10:54):
good come on, we watch good stuff. And we were
watching a movie and the Gulf War was announced and
somebody opened up the bat like we're in a big auditorium.
Someone opened up the big doors and yelled, we just
bombed Iraq. The wars on and everybody's like muttering to
each other, going and half the people got up to leave,
and I'm like, okay, I get that and our professors
(11:17):
up and said, you are all responsible for this movie
for tomorrow. I still got to do your work must
go on. I think we're watching Suspiria. I mean not
the remake, but the old one. Yes, the Spiria. The
old movie was really good. I mean the original. It's
an Italian horror movie. Okay. There are a lot of
great horror movies came out of Italy in the eighties
(11:38):
and nineties. I have to go revisit trust. Maybe that'll
be an episode of a podcast. That was the precursor
of all the great European NBA players who came over
in the nineties. So fired by the horror films we
had the United States and then we had players like
Dirk come over in the nineties. That's what it was.
So that's where we are going into the college football
season of coming up next, we have traversy. We have
(12:01):
games interrupted on television on a Saturday because of hearings,
and the very first wide right as we celebrate Washington
and Miami, they're dual national championship. Here on Special Teams.
(12:30):
Continuing on with Special Teams, Jason Smith, Mike Harmon Our
show heard on Fox Sports Radio Monday through Friday, ten
pm to two am on the East Coast, seven to
eleven on the West Coast. We are your genial hosts
as we look back at big teams in big years
in sports history. Today, continuing on with the shared National Championship,
as we break down two teams for you, the Washington
(12:52):
Huskies and the Miami Hurricanes, both teams highly rated coming
into the season. For the Miami Hurricanes, it was no
problem early on. They blitched to a four and o record,
beating Oklahoma State four three in early October, setting up
their first big showdown of the year against number nine
Penn State in a game in which they would win
(13:14):
to twenty. But this game wasn't really known as much
for what Miami did is the fact that this game
was interrupted outside of South Florida because of the Clarence
Thomas hearings. He was nominated to the Supreme Court. He
was then accused of sexual misconduct by Anita Hill, and
the world was consumed with Clarence Thomas. Is he gonna
be okay as a Supreme Court justice? Is he gonna
(13:36):
wind up not getting it? This is a very big story,
And when the hearings resumed, ABC cut away from this
game to go show the Clarence Thomas hearings. So if
you're watching this game nationwide, it's wait a minute, I
still want to watch football. I don't want to watch this.
I want to watch football. It's before the current world
(13:56):
where you could go put it on any one of
your cable properties if you'd like to watch this Fox
Plasiness channel over here, right? How crazy that? Like Fox
Business Channel has? I remember watching Stanford and Cal on
Fox Business Channel because there was they had to put
the games someplace because other things happened and and games
ran overtime. Well, I've been at watering holes restaurants and
(14:17):
people like what am I watching here? Because you'll see
the commercial Hey on Monday's show come back to It's like, no, no,
it's really the football game. Just calm down. It'll get
back there in a second, just a different set of ads.
It'll be there. But yeah, it's it's just a different
world in terms of how news is disseminated, how people
get their reach through their phones or laptops or in
(14:39):
this case, multiple cable channels. I mean, it was it
was really shocking to think that there was no other
way to watch the game. There was we're not moving
into a sister station, We're not watching on PBS, You're
not going anywhere else because look, cable was still in
its infancy in early nineties, but everybody had fifty five
sixty channels. Yeah, you could have found a way to
do it in fear, Yes, but he's at that point.
(15:02):
Perhaps you know, there wasn't the need or desire. Maybe
we looked at politics and the world a little differently.
Some thirty years ago. It was a big day for
Gino Torrette at quarterback. You through an eight yr touchdown
past to Horace Copeland, a forty two yard touchdown pass
to Lamar Thomas, but Penn State fought back and had
(15:24):
a chance to potentially win this game. Tony Saka throws
a pick late in the fourth quarter on a play
that has been subject of a lot of controversy because
Darryl Williams, who was their best defensive back it was
a first round pick in the NFL, caught the ball
outside of the goal line, but his momentum kind of
(15:45):
carried him into the end zone and then he kind
of ran and he ran out of bounds, and the
clock stopped, and it probably should have been a safety
that Penn State cuts the score to two and then
gets the football back with at least a few seconds left.
Is this play happened in the final minute. It's a
play now that you would watch and go, well, he
caught it, okay, well man the end, he tried to run. Wait, wait,
(16:07):
you can't just wait a minute, that's a safety, but
not rule the safety on the field and Miami escapes
well and with no replay, although in nineteen would replay
have gotten it right even if they went back to
check the tape, there is that right has the old
rule of thumb is like if we only had the technology,
It's like sometimes it really doesn't clear things up either.
(16:29):
But you know, for for Joe Paterno and Mission and
and for Penn State, I got Michigan on the brain
because you're you're a Michigan game. The idea of Joe
Paterno and Penn State was only in year two in
the Big Ten, so it's a different world as opposed
to the past years as a juggernaut outside of that structure.
(16:51):
So this was a huge game to top ten teams.
And it ends just like that Miami came into the
year ranked number three. After this win against Penn State,
they stayed at number two, and then they would go
on to many big time victories. But we'll get to
their next close game coming up in a couple of minutes.
For the Washington Huskies, they started out they were ranked
number four out of the gate and again they didn't
(17:14):
have too much problem their first few weeks. They got
back to back shutouts of Arizona and Toledo fifty four nothing,
forty eight nothing. And after these couple of games, but
Washington defense started taking on a life of its own,
as it was widely viewed as the best defense in
college food. Well, what was interesting about it? All right?
As we mentioned the injury to Brunel and Hobart having
to take over. As you go into games at Stanford
(17:35):
at Nebraska, two places where you're like, all right, first
year quarterback, first year attempt to start a season. You
thought with Brunella it was gonna roll in Instead, n
and the the defense take on a whole other life.
They had beaten Nebraska early in the season thirty six
twenty one. That was their closest game. Nebraska was a
(17:55):
top ten team. They go into a game October nineteen
at Cal, who has ranked seventh in the country. And
I remember this game. I remember watching it. I remember
everything about it because I can say it because it's
years later. I illegally bet on this game is gone,
you know how. I remember this was kind of Pack
(18:17):
twelve after Dark before Pack twelve after Dark. I remember
this because I won a lot of money on this.
Now I'm I'm a college senior at this point, and
I knew a guy who knew a guy who did
right who I thought you were gonna say, who was
really close to a player on the team, And I
was gonna start sinking underneath my chair. I can't tell
(18:38):
you who it is, but his name rhymes with Schmive Schmittman. No, no, no, no.
I knew a guy do a guy that did parley sheets,
and I this was a five team parlay and I
bet ten dollars on it, right, And back then it
was like if you hit five games, you won like
sixty bucks. Right then you had to go five for five.
And this was my last game of the day, and
I bet Cal because they were getting fourteen points. And
(19:00):
I'm saying, Cow's at home. I know washing this good,
but they're getting fourteen points. Cow's pretty good. Mike Paulowski
is a pretty good quarterback. He was a quarterback at
Cal and I said, Okay, you know this is gonna
be this is gonna be a big day. I'm gonna win.
And I wound up winning because Washington wins this game
in dramatic fashion by a touchdown seventeen. But I don't
(19:21):
care because I was getting fourteen points and I was
sixty dollars Richard, which when I was twenty one sixty bucks.
The beer I bought, oh, the Peels bar bottles that
we were in a big Peels bar bottles thing back then.
The Peels bar bottles I bought like four cases. Then
they're like ten dollars. We were drinking those for like
a month and a half. I was a little nervous
that you're gonna start telling me about the list of
(19:43):
hobo wines or something that you're going there for cents.
I really loaded up. Hey, let's this is from Mike Velosky.
We're still enjoying this beer because he almost pulled off
the upset. A couple of great things out of this.
Bruce Sneider's your cow coach. Yeah, alright, and long career
for him and before he went on to start beating
up on cupcakes at Kansas State. There is that too,
(20:04):
uh and then you, um, you looked at having a
touchdown called back because of a holding puddally which helped
you finished the job. Now, this game ended very not controversially,
but very heart stopping. Lee. I remember the offensive coordinator
Cal was Steve Mariucci. Sure, this is Mooch who started
to really grow his legend where he would go on
(20:27):
to become the head coach of the forty Niners head
coach of the Lions because he was this great offensive
genius and he did great work at Cal. This was
a close game. Cal was driving down. They were on
the Washington twenty seven yard line. Final play of the
game incomplete, but Washington is off sides, so they get
one more play from the twenty two yard line. This
(20:48):
is the only time Washington was threatened in the fourth
quarter all season long, and Pulaski's pass was just over
the outstretched fingertips of one of his wide receivers. The
ball falls incomplete and why Shington wins. And many players
said after that game they knew that was gonna be
their big test it was survived, advance and exhale, and
they get out of this big showdown against Cal with
(21:09):
a seven point win. Escape on the road. Right, there's
always gotta be one of those. And all of these
special teams that we've examined, the ones that succeeded, Yes, man,
obviously we've got the abject failures mixed they're in. But
for those that finished the job, there's one or two
games where they've got to survive some crazy sequence, the
(21:30):
near miss, a bogus penalty. But this one at at
Cal seventeen, your final get you to six and oh,
you're halfway through. Your defense has played really well and
even here comes up with stops in big spots to
thwart Maryuchi's best efforts. But yeah, you have to exhale
and then get back on the grind for the rest
(21:51):
of your schedule. And that's exactly what they did. That
was the closest game they had played the rest of
the season. They had a low scoring game at USC
beat them fourteen to three. USC was unranked, but it
didn't really matter because they weren't really threatened in that game.
They get all the way through the rest of their
season undefeated. They win the Apple Cup over Washington State
fifty six to twenty one. At this point their ranked
(22:15):
number two in the country and they are going to
the Rose Ball. They score four hundred sixty one points
on the year, giving up a hundred one. About that.
The interesting part of this is as good as the defense.
Watch right, a hundred one points in eleven games. You're
talking about ten points a game. Mark Brunell at this
point had come back to the team and he came
(22:36):
back and I remember he rushed to come back and
he told Don James, listen, I don't want to cause
any controversy. I just want to contribute. So in the
beginning he came back and he was just holding on
extra points. He wanted to come back and get on
the field some way, some way, Ship because Billy Joe
Hobert's playing well, the team is scoring points that there's
no reason to make a move. And Brunell was like, listen,
(22:56):
I just want to contribute. And he came back and
he was holding you. You come back from a shredded
knee and you're actually playing a few months later. That's
a big time come back. Marc Bounell to go from
March until December and hey, you're back and actually on
the field. But this was Billy Joe Hobert's team, and
Brunelle was coming back, and eventually, you do, they were
gonna have an issue because you have two really good quarterbacks.
(23:17):
But for now, for Washington, everything is going okay. Well,
you had to have a guy that said, uh, I
have NFL wants and aspirations. I gotta get back out
the field and show people I could play. But you know,
in in terms of just their overall production from an
offensive side, we always talk about the eighty five Bears
and that defense and how brilliant they were. And look,
(23:37):
there's thousands of writers who've made careers off the next
book or next iteration of the Bears eight five story.
But what's often lost is that they were among the
highest scoring teams each and every year, just like this
Washington team. You might might be noted for the defensive
efforts and the brilliance that they showed and exhibited in
some of these big games, but also the fact that
(23:59):
they just roll dump teams time and again. A couple
of fifty burgers mixed there in. Yeah, they rolled it up.
So what about Miami ranked number two in the country.
They headed into a one versus to showdown on November
six at Florida State. This became the very first wide
right game. Now in parlance, it's wide right one, because
(24:21):
we've had a few more games like this the following
year they had. They had wide right to five games
in twelve years between Miami and Florida State, which really
was the football rivalry of the nineties. There was nothing
bigger than that. Notre Dame didn't have a bigger one. Michigan,
Ohio State wasn't as big because this always came down
to whoever won this game is gonna play for the
(24:42):
national championship, you know, not even Ohio State. Michigan was
like that. Ohio State was like we when we can
play for the title. Michigan it's like we when we
can play in the blue bonnetball and we're still gonna
beat you. But this five games and twelve years were
decided by a late field goal attempt, not always a
field goal, but a field goal attempt. This was wide
right one in which the Miami Hurricanes led this game
(25:04):
seventeen sixteen, but Florida drove to the doorstep in the
final seconds on third down with twenty nine seconds left,
Florida State decided, now we're gonna kick the final field goal,
which nowadays blows you away. First of all, why would
you kick with twenty nine seconds left and give Miami
(25:24):
any kind of time with the football when all they
need is a field goal? But Bobby Bowden decided, we're
gonna kick on third down, seconds left to go, from
thirty four yards away. This is as chip a shot
as you get in college football. Thirty four yards on
the seventeen yard line. This is gonna be it. But
what happens Jerry Thomas MSS wide right. This is Bobby
(25:45):
Bowden running on the field looking taking his helmet off going,
they're taking his hat off going. He missed, and Miami
wins and name move up to being number one in
the country. Here's the best part about this. Prior to
the uprights were narrowed by four ft. Think about that,
almost five full feet five full ft. This kick missed
(26:08):
by about the length of a football. So if this
were the old uprights, and you remember what it looks
like watching a college football game, how wide the uprights were.
They narrowed them by four ft. If they don't make
that change, this field goal goes in, Florida State may
go on to win a national championship in college football
history is rewritten. But instead we get wide right one.
(26:30):
Then you would have had Nick Saban, Chason, Bobby Bowden
and Bobby Bowden and Bobby Bowden and would have never
heard the end unquote an interception of bounce ball. You
lose the game, you'd kick yourself in the rear for
the rest of your life. So that was Bobby Bowden's
quote thereafter. And Keith Jackson was on the call, so
you get the pageantry of him, uh giving this punctuation
(26:53):
mark to a rivalry that all these years later, I mean,
you do so many documentaries on how these teams battle
for supremacy. So that was the win of the season
from aami. They moved to number one in the country.
They have a tough game the week after at Boston College,
talking about going off this big win. We beat Florida State.
We're on the road at Boston College and that's a
(27:14):
dog fight and they win this game nineteen fourteen. But
they get the benefit of the doubt from the Polsters. Okay,
it's a week after they play a big game. They
go and play San Diego State and their last regular
season game of the year, they win thirty twelve. So
they head into their bowl game in the Orange Bowl
the number one team in the country. And this is
a really weird schedule for Miami to play. As we mentioned,
(27:36):
they played a partial biggie schedule. I mean, look the
conferences back in the early nineties with the new ones
in the Big East, they were all insane. I mean,
who plays a schedule like this? Think about this. This
is Miami schedule, right. You think about the A c
C and the conferences they you know, and where they play,
and you're playing your conference games and then you're not
going very far. You're playing teams close to you. This
(27:58):
is their schedule, Okay, East Arkansas, Houston, Tulsa, Oklahoma State,
Like they're playing in the Big Twelve. Then it's Penn State,
Long Beach State, Arizona, Long Beach State, West Virginia, Florida State,
Boston College, San Diego State means, just like Notre Dame,
you're an independent. They're like they're like the traveling all
(28:19):
Stars across the country and play everyone are storming tour.
So they go onto the Rose Bowl. I'm sorry, they
go onto the Orange Bowl where they were going to
play number eleven Nebraska. Meanwhile, for Washington they would go
to the Rose Bowl facing number four Michigan. These were
the top two teams in the country and coming up
next even though we had two wins, didn't mean there
(28:41):
wasn't a ton of controversy. That's coming up next right
here special teams Jason Smith, Mike Harmon. So just how
(29:05):
did it shake out that Miami and Washington split the
national championship in and fostered a big change in college football? First,
let's talk about the Rose Bowl. It was the game
earlier in the day, the granddaddy of them all. The
middle of the afternoon, Washington crushes Michigan thirty four to fourteen.
This is when Michigan would routinely go to the Rose
(29:27):
Bowl and get killed by whoever was in the Pac ten.
This game wasn't close, and you talked about running up
the score at the end of the game to impress
the pollsters. Two things happened at the end of this game.
Michigan got an Oh by the way touchdown to turn
a thirty four seven game into a thirty four four
team game, and with Washington inside Michigan's ten yard line
(29:47):
in the final minute, with their third string quarterback in
the game, they decided to take a knee rather than
run up the score. So this final score is thirty
four teen, where had they played more for the jugular,
it could have been forty one seven. And maybe that
flips a few votes their way that go Miami's way.
Maybe a little bit of gamesmanship that should have been considered,
(30:08):
right you you go sportsmanship versus well, what are the
true rules of engagement here? And the coaches all recognize
what's at stake here that that's not something that you know,
Gary Mueller is gonna lose his mind over. He might
make a side eye comment about it after the game,
but he recognizes how this is played. You know, you
you're going for a national title and you've got another
(30:31):
team in Miami that that's right there with you. At
this point, Brunella is back and he's getting a couple
of series each half. He threw a touchdown pass in
this game. Also had a big day from Billy Joe Hobert.
But the touchdown I talked about. Tyrone Wheatley ran for
a fifty three yard touchdown with less than five minutes
to go in the game, and that's one of those
broken plays that listen, he'd stop Michigan all day and
(30:52):
Tyron Wheatley gets in the end zone. I'm telling you
seven looks a lot better than thirty four fourteen. We're
talking about impressing people who are make in that vote,
and that could have really tipped it because this was
close both ways. Well, especially when you don't have people
that necessarily see how the game flows, they just know
the final score. Don't let it go to the judges
is really when it all comes down to. Never let
(31:14):
it go to the judges. So after this entire day
of Bowl activity, back when everything was on January one
and we watched all the way through to the end,
the Orange Bowl was always the final Bowl game of
the night. So this is the last game Miami and Nebraska,
and Miami Nebraska played many classic games over the years.
This was not one of them. This was Miami absolutely
(31:36):
crushing the corn Huskers twenty two to nothing. It wasn't
a big outpouring of offense for Miami, but Nebraska had
nine first downs in this game and a hundred and
seventy one total yards. This is almost thirty years later,
they could still be playing that game and Nebraska wouldn't
have any points. First shutout in eighteen years. So when
(31:58):
you can put that in any press release and that's
one of the leads, then when you get to the
voting processes again, taking the AP and the coaches and
looking into that that it's going to add a little
bit of extra push. Obviously, Nebraska defensively did well. It
came down to a lot of Carlos Squerta kicks. Carlos
(32:20):
Squerta was there for about nine years. Yeah, so they
win this game, and now we have to wait for
the votes because this is the number one and number
two team in the country. The number one team played
the number eleven team. The number two team played the
number four team, and the votes were close in both polls.
Miami wins the Associated Press pole, Washington wins the coaches pole,
(32:43):
so they split the national championship. Many people were not
satisfied with this. Again, this is another split national title,
and this sparked the beginning of what was called the
Bowl Coalition, which was absolutely awful. This was a way
college football tried to figure out a way to get
the best teams playing against each other. In the bowl games, right,
kind of what the BCS did. We're trying to get
(33:04):
number one versus number two, and yeah, but this didn't work.
And this is why this is doomed to failure because
it all depended on teams who were contracted to different
bowls if they were able to play in one bowl
game or not. But this is back when the Orange
Bowl usually at least had part of the National Championship
involved in it because it was always Miami, Florida for
one of those teams Nebraska was contracted to play, or
(33:27):
the Big Twelve winner was contracted to play in the
Orange Bowl, so usually it turned out to be some
sort of form of Nebraska, Oklahoma Miami. But still this
is doomed to failure because the number one thing about
this was it didn't include the Pac Ten or the
Big Ten because they were still contracted to play in
the Rose Ball. So you're talking about these two teams
could win the title. No, no, we're not in the
(33:47):
bowl coalition. Wait really, why are we doing this? Then?
I don't know, it's better than what we have? Well,
anything was an improvement, right, This is how it always
came down to pass And even now when you you
look at where the playoff is. As you and I
sit and look back at this season, there's still a
ground swell to make changes to where we're at. And
(34:09):
you would argue, I think at least from where I sit,
it's light years ahead of where you were. You know,
people blindly throwing throwing their weight by yeah they won
by how many? All right? Vondam higher? And then the
as you said, the information director instead of the coach
or maybe just friend of the show, we'd be in
(34:29):
to fill things out, so you know, boosters and whatever else.
So bit by bit you have improvement. And we're talking
narrow margins here right, like four points in one poll,
nine points in the other. And here we have chaos,
controversy and a split national title. And when you refer
to Carlos S. Wuerta, he is first Team All American.
(34:49):
Carlos Wuerta. Oh, I thought you were gonna say, sir
or something like that. Miami had five First Team All Americans. Meanwhile,
Washington had eleven players taken in the NFL draft by
Steve Entman, who went number one over all of the
Indianapolis Colts. Mario o' bailey, star wide receiver on the
team he went later on in the draft as well.
Of course, this is when the draft was twelve rounds
to take a lot of players. That's all right, they
(35:11):
still got drafted. I'm not gonna take that away from him.
So Miami wins, Washington wins, We're sick of split national championships,
and we have the Bowl coalition. This was really ready
to rear its ugly head again the following year because
what happened. Washington started out the season eight no. They
were on a twenty two game win streak under Billy
(35:33):
Joe Hobert, who was still the starting quarterback. Mark Brunelle
again was back. Both of them had NFL futures. Brunel
was playing a little bit more, but it was still
Hobert's team and Washington was rolling. And then the story
breaks with Washington and eight No that Billy Joe Hobert
took fifty thou dollars from a family friend, which is
(35:55):
of course against n c a A rules. He has
ruled ineligible. Ark Brunel steps in, but it's not the same.
Washington wins one more game but finishes nine and three.
So what could have been back to back national championships
or at least in theory, depending what the Bowl coalition
would have figured out, turned into just an okay season.
(36:16):
This also marked the end of Don James because he
resigned over a two year bull band that Washington got
because of Billy Joe Hobert. He goes in one year
from being the guy who steps into the void the
biggest question Mark, Oh my god, No, Mark Brunel doesn't matter.
He's great, and then he's the guy that brings down
the Washington program that could have been back to back
national championship. Yeah. Kind of an interesting thing, right when
(36:39):
you look at what Don James was doing as well.
They they had had that run in the late eighties
where they weren't particularly good. Eight wins or fewer. He
didn't take a raise after a six and five season
and eighty eight all of these things. Now you're a
title you know, split title and with with Obert. And
you look at the fifty thou dollar loans and part
(37:00):
of the ruling was, well, he had no assets or
a payment schedule, Like how many loans have been put
out in America for many different things cars and and
for homes, I mean go back through the housing stuff.
People were getting loans with anything. There's nothing I mean
this is but the n C Double A being the
n C Double A. They came and cracked down and
(37:22):
it's the end of what could have been a huge
run here. A lot of these guys, as you said,
go on to the NFL, over being among them, but
never really has his career take off. Twenty three touchdowns,
twenty five i N T s for the career, and
a QB rating our favorite stat of just sixty. Uh.
Brunel of course had the big career with the Jaguars,
(37:45):
going to the a f C Championship game early on
in his career. He was fun, he was mobile, He
was a really good quarterback for a long time. And
you think, boy, if he didn't get hurt, I mean
they obviously they won. If he was still the quarterback
all next year, could they have one? Because he had
to step in and suddenly start playing full football games
when he hadn't done so south paw who could run,
(38:06):
so you had. That element was certainly pivotal to his
success with the Jaguars. But think about different element that
you add to an offense there where you were already
built for speed, something that they had shifted to in
terms of their analysis and recruitment of players in those
prior couple of years. Before we get to wear of
it now, just a little bit on Don James, head
coach at Washington, who was a head coach who was
(38:28):
always respected, but by and large he escaped the general
spotlight because of coaches like Jimmy Johnson, Bobby Bowden, Joe
Paterno back then. But he resigned in protest over what
he thought were the unfair sanctions against his team for
these infractions that it revolved around Billy Joe Hobert. He
(38:49):
wasn't named specifically as having broken any rules, but he
decided to resign in protest and that was it for him.
And later on he did an interview with the Seattle
Times at which he said resign ending probably saved his
life because of the coaching that told it was taking
on him. Everything going on was just so much. Uh.
He died in two thousand thirteen at the age of
(39:09):
eighty And uh, you know, he's someone that when you
hear them speak about his name now, it's of that
legendary status. Now maybe West Coast Boy Don James, Boy,
what a program he ran, What a horrible way it
had to end for him. There was resigning, but at
least he was able to look at his resignation and say,
you know what, he had a great quality of life
after that, and he stood up for something right. He
(39:31):
stood up and it's one of the long list of
players and coaches who have raised their hand at the
way the n C double A from where I sit
again arbitrarily decides how they're going to rule on different things.
Hundred seventy eight, seventy six and three three ties. That's
pretty impressive. Uh. Ten and five in Bowl games, three
(39:52):
time Pac Ten Coach of the Year, all sorts of
other coaching Coach of the Year honors, obviously the national
t Idol and then six pack eight pack ten championships overall.
I mean, that's that's a distinguished career. He was just
sixty years old when he stopped. He never entertained any
other offers. He said doctors told him if he kept coaching,
he probably would have died from stress. Uh five years
(40:14):
after that. So it was great for Don James to
be able to enjoy the rest of his life the
way he did. And look, the guy got a national championship.
He became a legend. What about some of those players
and other personalities from these two teams? Where are they now?
My car? Now? He got a couple of them. Obviously
we know Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Uh. He went on
to do something ju manji did he go on to
do anything? Became the greatest entertainer, most electrifying entertainer in
(40:39):
sports history. Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne Johnson never not ringing a bell.
Yeah it's pilot Steve. We've got the patch, all right?
How about Kip Vickers Guard Accounting? I t website design,
but I wish I could have figured out the right
website to run to make money? Yeah have I? I
just joined that for a little bit too late. Uh.
(41:01):
Darren Smith real estate investment development. Uh, and then also
does some religious Bible study work. He got Leon Searcy.
You mentioned him earlier. He's the CEO of Real Men Block.
And you'll like this for it's got a two pronged approach.
One it's we're gonna train lineman and we're gonna train
him up. The other it's apparel for big men. Oh.
(41:24):
I like that. Take care of that. Guys need the
guy's deep clothes. What about shorter guys. What about guys
who aren't linemen? But we're like five, will that work?
Short stocky build? You just look like the Hamburgler running
around here. I don't know. I live on the other side.
We got our buddy Lincoln Kennedy. You know, he's works
for the Raiders for years, played in the National Football League,
(41:44):
College Football Hall of Famer. Our team met at Fox
Sports Radio. He wanted to introduce me to a number
of people at a party where I was mocked openly
by a ray Lewis because my shoulders are wider than his. Wow, yeah,
you got that going. If I tell you, if you
ever get on Hinder, you make sure you write that. Yeah.
It was a pretty good, uh circle of people. So
you got Donovan McNab, Jerom Pettis, Linkoy Kennedy, Donovan McNabb,
(42:07):
and here's ray Lewis four times. That just for me.
He's a Chicago guy and he's for you. I'm sure,
uh and well, but he remembered that. So anytime I've
run into Donovan since or been on the radio with Donovan,
he's kind of mentioned that. And he kind of had
to laugh at because ray Lewis said that, well, God,
had shorted me. I'll keep it clean for the podcast.
(42:27):
Napoleon Goffman, Uh, football coach up in Oakland and an
ordained minister. Leif Johnson running back. Uh, he's doing mergers
and acquisitions. I think you said Leif Garrett there for
a second, you wanted it to be Leif Garretter You've
got ed. Cunningham was a broadcaster at ESPN a long
while the Center he walked away as the concussion issue
(42:50):
really took over the narrative in college and pro football.
But here's what I thought you might like, because I'm
sure you being a big movie buff like I am,
he helped produce a fist full of quarters the King
of Kong. Remember Billy Mitchell's battle for supremacy that it
was always wearing a shirt and tie while he was
(43:12):
playing video games. It was his battle. It's really an
amazing thing. If you haven't seen in folks, go to that.
In last one from Aunt Farm and from Saturday Night Live.
Finesse Mitchell part of the squad as well. Mike Finesse
Mitchell was on. That's what I forgot about the You know,
the Rock wasn't the only Hollywood star here. See when
I say rock stars. It's rock stars. People understand that
(43:35):
was the Miami hurricane. About that? So there it is
on look back split National championship between Washington and Miami.
Do you want to hit us up on Twitter at
how about a fresco? Mike is at Swollen Dome. Any
ideas for future Special Teams podcast? Hit us up. Mike
and Jason will talk to you next time. Before you go,
(44:04):
rate and review the show. Whether you're listening on I
heart radio, I heart radio apps, Apple, whatever it is,
give us a rate, tell us you like it. We
will love you forever and ever and ever. Special Teams
(44:28):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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