#1: January 1, 1994 - Florida State 18, Nebraska 16
In spite of its pre-eminence in Nebraska, football was not the first sport I started watching. Blame Michael Jordan. That said, I was still only 9 when I became a fan, so its not exactly like I was dawdling. On the professional side, I caught a few upsets involving the Buccaneers, which started me down that interesting road. On the college side, my allegiance was much more pre-ordained due to geography. Luckily for me, Nebraska was about to enter a ridiculous five-year stretch where they would go 60-3 with three national titles.
I had caught at least parts of a few Nebraska games earlier in the season. I watched some of the Colorado game (which I believe to be my first college football watching experience), and got legitimately excited for the game against Oklahoma. However, as best as I can remember, this was the first game in which I was fully immersed in my Nebraska fanhood. My parents and I watched as the Blackshirt defense mostly shut down Heisman winner Charlie Ward. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough, as some (possibly) bad calls and some poor kicks would ultimately doom Tom Osborne's bid to win his first title. The game may not have ended the way I wanted it to, but a young Husker fan had been born. Over the next two years, Nebraska would take care of their "unfinished business" in the best way possible for me. In spite of the positive impact on me of this tight loss to FSU, nothing quite gets an impressionable kid to root for you more than winning every game.
Runner-up: I was really tempted to go with ND-FSU for the first game, but decided against it. Until recently, college football had tended to be more of a regional sport, so what better of a game to show how college football became what it is today than the first one to host College Gameday. Also, since this is a personal list, I must note that it was probably the second or third game I ever watched. That said, there's enough other ND games on this list, so I thought I'd go with Nebraska-FSU.
Fun note: Nebraska and Florida State played 8 times in 14 seasons, culminating in this game. They haven't played since.
#2: January 2, 1996 - Nebraska 62, Florida 24
I don't feel like I need to say much about this one. Nebraska dominated the much hyped Gators in every facet of the game en route to their second straight title (fourth overall). After the game, 72nd and Dodge was filled with people celebrating one of the best teams of all time, and certainly one of the top three I've ever seen. It was good to be a Cornhusker fan.
Oh, and this happened:
#3: August 24, 1996 - BYU 41, Texas A&M 37
If you've scanned the list of games, and are just coming back to read the capsules, you're probably confused as to why this game is on the list. As far as you know, I've never been a BYU fan, and there wasn't anything extraordinarily amazing about this game. Rather, what makes this game notable is how it represents my transition from a Nebraska-centric homer to a fan of the whole game of college football.
Of course, this wasn't the first non-Nebraska game I watched. In addition to the aforementioned ND-FSU "Game of the Century," I managed to catch a lot of other games those first few years. For example, I watched several games involving the amazing 1995 Northwestern team that made the Rose Bowl. Overall though, I would say that 1996 was the year when I became a full-fledged college football junkie, in large part because of just how great the first game of the season was.
Coming into the season, Texas A&M was ranked #13, which made BYU the underdog for this game. However, the Steve Sarkisian-led Cougars were more than ready for the task as they won a back and forth game with a 45-yard touchdown pass in the final minute. BYU would go on to win a super-sized WAC conference full of feisty teams with a 14-1 record*. The strength of BYU in this game would help propel me to pay attention to a lot of those feisty teams. I remember regularly staying up as late as I could to watch the end of some very random Thursday night games between teams like San Diego State and Wyoming. And thus the junkie was born.
*That record is still unique in FCS football to this day. BYU played their regular 11 games, plus the now-defunct Kickoff Classic, at Hawaii, the WAC title game, and a bowl in order to get to 15 games. This record will likely be matched yearly now that we have the playoff system in place.
#4: November 23, 2001 - Colorado 62, Nebraska 36
The three Nebraska games on this list combine to form quite the dramatic arc. With the FSU game, we saw the closest shot at a title in 20 years evade the Huskers at the last second, which set up the team to seek vengeance in the following years. With the Florida game, we saw a national power at the height of its peak turn in one of the greatest performances of all time. And with this game, we saw the unofficial end of Nebraska's run of dominance. The Huskers had seen a lot of success in Frank Solich's first four years (largely because Eric Crouch was awesome), but that fateful day in Boulder would mark the end of that. The Huskers would go just 16-10 for the rest of Solich's tenure, and then fade into relative obscurity under the terrible Bill Callahan.
About the game itself, it was notable mainly for how shocking it was to see Nebraska play this poorly. There weren't any major warnings for this performance: Nebraska entered the game #2 in the country, and had only given up more than 21 points once (to Mike Leach, of course). Colorado had a fantastic stable of running backs, but this was really the high point of the season for them. They would go on to avenge a previous 41-7 defeat by squeaking by Texas in the Big 12 title game, and followed that with a loss to Oregon by three scores in the Fiesta Bowl. Regardless of what came after, the win that may have been the Buffaloes' best ever made every Nebraska fan feel like this:
#5: September 6, 2003 - Notre Dame 29, Washington State 26 (OT)
The cratering out of Nebraska was most certainly disappointing, but on the positive side, it did clear out just enough room in my heart for me to start rooting for my new team. I began classes at Notre Dame in the fall of 2003, and the game against the Cougars would be my first in the student section. In fact, this was the first college game I had attended at all. Expectations were reasonable, but still high following Ty Willingham's miraculous debut season. While the season wouldn't go according to plan, the Irish would keep hope alive for one week at least with a fantastic comeback victory over a decent Washington State team. A combination of a thrilling game, learning all of the cheers associated with Notre Dame fandom, and teaching Rahul (the kid from India across the hall from me) about the sport* made this game a truly unique experience that started me down the bumpy road that is rooting for the Irish.
*He was skeptical at first, but then he really ended up enjoying it. In turn, he would try to teach us cricket later on. That didn't go as well.
#6: October 15, 2005 - USC 34, Notre Dame 31
Since I became a fan, Notre Dame hasn't had the same kind of triumphant wins that Nebraska had in the 90s and early aughts. Our victory over Oklahoma in Norman last year was a thing to behold, and numerous upsets of Michigan are always nice, but there's never been that moment where one can say that this team is the best there is. The closest we've come to such a win in the last decade (in my eyes, at least) was the culmination of the biggest spectacle I've ever witnessed firsthand.
The week leading up to the USC game my Junior year was nuts. Pretty much every celebrity was rumored to be attending, most notably Bon Jovi (because ND kids can't get enough Bon Jovi). The pep rally was a super-sized version held in the stadium, complete with multiple football alums and a Trojan horse. To top it all, Gameday was coming to campus for the first time in five years, so of course I had to go there. I left my dorm around 6 AM and was able to get a spot roughly in the middle of the crowd. The experience of Gameday live was OK. At the time, it was basically impossible to follow along with what was happening, so we mostly just cheered whenever the camera started moving*
*I hung around the fringes of the set for a bit at the Stanford game last year, and it is much, much better now.
And then came the game, which was even crazier than all of the buildup. In a testament to ridiculous gamesmanship, ND had let the grass grow extra long to slow USC's speed, while Pete Carroll chose not to use replay. Once the game started, Brady Quinn and Matt Leinart both played like the amazing future pros that they would become (whoops). Reggie Bush had one of his best games en route to winning
#7: January 4, 2006 - Texas 41, USC 38
I have two points to make about this game, so here they are:
Point 1:
I like watching sporting events at home because it's where I'm most comfortable, and there are usually minimal distractions. That said, games like this are best enjoyed in the company of others. As we would often do, my friends and I met up at Olson's house to watch this game in the comfort of his basement. Olson's family didn't have the fanciest basement, nor the most spacious one. However, it was by far the coziest place to meet up and spend the evening. As much as I remember the game for the contest itself, I also remember it as one of the many good times I had at 523 Crestridge.
Point 2:
Somewhere between the crazy OSU-Miami title game and this one, I turned into someone who roots for favorites a lot more than I first did. When I was younger, I mostly wanted as many ranked teams to lose as often as possible, just so I could do crazy things with my rankings. I still take up the underdog cause quite often to this day, but when it comes to playoffs and title games, I generally like to see the best teams succeed. This meant I was the only person in the room rooting for the Trojans to prevail. USC was a little annoying as ESPN had been lavishing praises upon them all season long, but I could still appreciate how historically good they had been over the past four seasons. Furthermore, they were riding a 34 game winning streak that had the chance of growing to 46 games (one shy of the record) by the time the next contest with the Irish rolled around. Notre Dame has already ended the longest ever winning streaks in both basketball and football, so that would have been another opportunity to add to our streak-busting reputation. In the end, I wasn't exactly disappointed when Texas prevailed (mostly because of how awesome Vince Young was that night), but for history's sake I still wish the Trojans would have won.
#8: December 1, 2007 - Pittsburgh 13, West Virginia 9
If 1996 was the year that I first exhibited signs of being a maniacal college football fan, then 2007 was the year that my diagnosis was confirmed. I had just graduated college, so instead of spending half of my Saturdays in Notre Dame Stadium, I could now spend them plopped in front of the TV taking everything in. As fate would have it, this just happened to be the best season of college football I've ever seen.
The season started out tame, with LSU steamrolling everyone and relatively few upsets dotting the landscape*. But once October rolled around, there was nothing but pure insanity for the next two months. Stanford beat USC despite being 41(!) point underdogs. Upstart programs like Cal and South Florida briefly resided in the seemingly cursed #2 spot before taking harsh tumbles. LSU played every game close as though it was contractually obligated to do so, barely beating Auburn and Florida, and losing to Arkansas and Kentucky in overtime. Illinois beat undefeated #1 Ohio State in Columbus largely because they only allowed the Buckeyes three offensive snaps in the fourth quarter. Hawaii managed to go 12-0 in spite of the fact that they weren't particularly good. Kansas and Missouri faced off as they always used to do; only this time, they were both ranked in the top three. In the nation. Yeah.
*There was this upset in the first week, so it wasn't all by the book.
After all of this, we arrived upon the final evening of the regular season. Two teams without national titles to their names sat in the top two spots in the BCS standings: Missouri and West Virginia. The Chase Daniel-led Tigers would lose to Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game that night, but this wasn't much of a shock as they weren't even favored. What was a shock - nay, one of the biggest shocks ever in the sport - was that a 4-7 Pitt team coached by a likely lame duck Dave Wannstedt would beat one of the best teams in the nation (with everything to play for, mind you) on the road as a four touchdown underdog. Pitt played the game smartly, stopping West Virginia at the 2 on their first drive, and then handing the ball to Lesean McCoy 38 times for 148 yards to control the clock. They controlled the game so well than West Virginia only ran four plays in the third quarter. They also got lucky in that Pat White missed part of the game and didn't play that well while he was healthy.
As a result of this game, power programs Ohio State and LSU faced off in the title game, with the Tigers demolishing the Buckeyes. Without the Mountaineers loss college football would probably look very different now. To wit:
- LSU wouldn't have played in the title game, and the SEC's "dynasty" is ended at one title.
- Rich Rodriguez would have been unlikely to leave for Michigan. Les Miles probably goes to Ann Arbor instead.
- The winningest program in college football without a title would have gotten a really good chance to win one, since Ohio State wasn't particularly great that year.
- With a potential recent title in hand, the Big East would have strengthened their standing in football and perhaps not fallen apart as it did.
In the end, this game ends up on the list not only because it was an awesome representative of the craziest college football season ever. It also makes it because of how much of a microcosm of the whole sport the game was. Every single game has massive importance, because each of them has the chance to make or break a season, career, or even a whole program. That, in a nutshell, is why it's still my favorite sport.
#9: September 3, 2011 - South Florida 23, Notre Dame 20
Like many of my compatriots probably feel, my history of Notre Dame fanhood is comprised of a great deal of pain. The past decade of Irish football has seem some great highs, but those moments have been equaled and, quite frankly, surpassed by all of the lows. The 3-9 2007 season was probably the lowest point, but no single game was quite as painful as this one. In spite of outgaining the Bulls by a 2 to 1 ratio, the Irish would be unable to climb out of a 16-0 halftime deficit, which was largely created by some bad turnover luck. To make matters worse, it took about 7 hours to complete this game because of two lengthy lightning/storm delays. As my first game back on campus as a grad student at the beginning of a season with raised expectations, it was quite the disappointing result.
However, there was a silver lining to this whole experience. As part of the recovery process from this loss I took to the internet, where many of the stathounds showed that ND lost this game largely because of bad turnover luck (this didn't provide a lot of comfort, but it kept my hopes up for the rest of the season). I was already well-versed in the Sabermetric movement in baseball, but had lagged behind in my knowledge of advanced football stats, in part because they're a lot further behind. Over the course of that season, I began to read Football Outsiders and Advanced NFL Stats a good deal more, and started to dig into an area that has really helped to increase my understanding of the game and what truly creates winning teams. As a result, I think I think I'm an even better fan of college football now.
#10: October 13, 2012 - Notre Dame 20, Stanford 13 (OT)
Of all the games on the list, I think that this one best represents the full experience of college football fandom. One, this was a tremendous game between two great teams that came down to the end. Two, College Gameday was there, which helped raise the excitement level for the game. Three, the ending was controversial, which led to weeks and weeks of debate (which all college football fans love implicitly). And finally, the game was a great excuse to have a weekend in my old college town spending time with a bunch of friends.
Despite the awesomeness of the game itself, college football at its core is about maintaining ones ties to the past. This manifests itself in the game's continuous callbacks to previous years (ie. I've seen the Flutie play about a thousand times by now), but also in the tradition of tailgating. It's nice to know that no matter what's happening with my life, and no matter how good ND actually is at football, there will always be a game or two every year that I can go back to and spend some time with my friends at the place where most of us met.
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