Thirty Years Later, Punting On This Rivalry Is A Fake Move
November 17, 2022 | Football, #ForBoston Files
BC returns to where it all started in 1992.
A weird tension hung over the Boston College trip home from Notre Dame on November 7, 1992. Eight years after Doug Flutie brought the Eagles to national prominence, the No. 9 team in the nation traveled to South Bend to play its first game against the Fighting Irish as part of a new scheduling arrangement between the only two Division I-A football programs representing Catholic universities, but any thought of an upset of a national championship contender or the establishment of a friendly matchup between sibling schools went out the window as the Eagles boarded their flight home.
Notre Dame was still a national championship contender despite a tie against Michigan and an earlier loss to Stanford, but the Irish needed a statement and help from undefeated Washington, Miami and Alabama. Their best hope was a split title if enough teams lost over the last three weeks of the season, but they separately needed to move themselves into a position to compete against Florida State, Nebraska and Texas A&M for even the most remote possibility of winning the title for the first time since 1988.
Boston College was the perfect stepping stone. Head coach Tom Coughlin had rebuilt the program into a top-10 team, but the Eagles were still relatively unknown to the national audience despite an undefeated record. The win over Penn State in mid-October was increasingly diminishing in its relevance after the Nittany Lions lost to unranked BYU, and BC entered South Bend needing a win to jump into the most elite tier after a tie against West Virginia offset the three consecutive shutouts.
Both teams were angling for that level below the three undefeated teams battling for the national championship, which is why the feeling on the flight home wasn't so much sad as much as it was angry after Notre Dame stomped BC with a 54-7 loss that unraveled much of the good feelings built by the team's 7-0-1 start.
"We felt coming in here we would have to have a special effort and have to have many, many people do something of a special nature, but it didn't happen for us today," Coughlin was quoted in The Boston Globe the next day. "No one could make a play to get us going, whether it was on the defensive side of the ball or the offensive side of the ball."
Literally everything about the day felt like a bad dream in reality. Notre Dame scored on two of its first five possessions, and the BC offense gained 11 yards in the first half after entering the game rated sixth in the nation. Glenn Foley was ineffective in a day that went 11-for-28 for 121 yards and a touchdown, and an offense that averaged over 460 yards per game was relegated to less than 200 yards by a Notre Dame defense that kept BC off the scoreboard until Pete Mitchell caught a four-yard touchdown pass with less than a minute remaining in the game.
The Irish, meanwhile, were practically perfect and gained nearly 600 yards of offense behind a blistering running game. Reggie Brooks had two touchdowns and averaged almost 10 yards per carry en route to 174 yards on 18 carries, and his 73-yard touchdown run in the second quarter staked Notre Dame to a 34-0 lead before the quarter dipped under the 10-minute mark. Quarterback Rick Mirer threw three touchdowns while going 13-for-18 for 180 yards. He was eventually replaced by Kevin McDougal in mop-up time, and his successor threw for 56 yards on two completions. Four Irish receivers had multiple receptions, but running back Jerome Bettis made the most of his one catch on a 37-yard touchdown.
BC finished with exactly 400 less yards than Notre Dame and went 1-for-13 on third down conversions while holding the ball for 23 minutes. The Irish finished with as many passing first downs as the Eagles had total for the entire game, and Notre Dame only had to punt twice while receiving one kickoff return for 23 yards.
"I wasn't shocked because I thought we could play this well," Mirer was quoted after the game. "It was a total team effort. Everyone did their job."
It was that last point - the number of punts - that became the legacy of a game in which halftime featured filming of the final game scene for the movie Rudy. In the third quarter, just after the crowd stopped chanting for Sean Astin's version of the diminutive former walk-on, BC held Notre Dame to a fourth down near midfield. The Irish already led, 34-0, so nobody really expected much when punter Craig Hentrich, a future Super Bowl champion with the Green Bay Packers, trotted out onto the field.
Holtz had decided to run a fake punt, and after Hentrich ran 16 yards off the right side of the formation, Mirer completed a 67-yard drive by throwing a touchdown pass to Jeff Burris to give Notre Dame a 44-0 lead. After the game, the unapologetic Holtz offered an explanation that was flimsy at best.
"We came into the game knowing that we were going to run the fake punt," he said. "If the situation is right, we'll call it. There's nothing illegal about it. It was just a matter of running the play and letting people know we have it."
To a degree, he was right. If BC didn't want Notre Dame to convert the fake punt, the Eagles should have stopped it, and there's no penalty for running a play or running up a score. Everyone does it, and even last year, the New England Patriots beat the New York Jets, 54-13, by scoring two completely meaningless touchdowns in the fourth quarter. There's no penalty for doing what he did, and showing off that particular play was a muscle flex to the next year's opponents as much as it offered strategic film to Penn State and Southern California for the last two games in 1992.
It just felt unnecessary, and it didn't matter that Coughlin deflected it in the postgame aftermath. He specifically said, without "rancor," as Boston Globe columnist Michael Vega noted, that Holtz didn't run the score up, but that didn't stop the train from leaving the station for the next year's rematch when the Irish were in position to win the national championship after beating Florida State in the "Game of the Century" one week prior to the BC matchup.
"The fact of the matter is there isn't one pleasant memory of that whole ordeal," said Coughlin one year later. "We have a tendency, psychologically, to try and eliminate the things that are most distasteful to you, but I certainly haven't forgot the things that deal with the game itself and some of the problems that I thought existed."
That game in 1993 became one of the greatest moments in BC program history after the Eagles marched back into Notre Dame Stadium and robbed the Fighting Irish of their national championship dreams, but it was made all the more sweeter for the fans - and for BC - that it avenged the beatdown in 1992. Foley certainly couldn't help himself from mentioning how Notre Dame rubbed it into the Eagles' wounds.
From those moments, a true rivalry, a bitter battle between hated opponents, was born. The Holy War was forged, built by the filming of Rudy at halftime (which, by the way, there's a very obvious Boston College banner in the crowd of that movie scene), built by the 34-0 lead, and certainly built by the fake punt. Thirty years later, it still resonates, and on Saturday, the latest chapter between the Eagles and Irish are back where it all began, underneath the watchful eyes of Touchdown Jesus.
Boston College and No. 18 Notre Dame kick off on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. from Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. The game can be seen on national television via NBC with streaming options available through the Peacock app.
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Notre Dame was still a national championship contender despite a tie against Michigan and an earlier loss to Stanford, but the Irish needed a statement and help from undefeated Washington, Miami and Alabama. Their best hope was a split title if enough teams lost over the last three weeks of the season, but they separately needed to move themselves into a position to compete against Florida State, Nebraska and Texas A&M for even the most remote possibility of winning the title for the first time since 1988.
Boston College was the perfect stepping stone. Head coach Tom Coughlin had rebuilt the program into a top-10 team, but the Eagles were still relatively unknown to the national audience despite an undefeated record. The win over Penn State in mid-October was increasingly diminishing in its relevance after the Nittany Lions lost to unranked BYU, and BC entered South Bend needing a win to jump into the most elite tier after a tie against West Virginia offset the three consecutive shutouts.
Both teams were angling for that level below the three undefeated teams battling for the national championship, which is why the feeling on the flight home wasn't so much sad as much as it was angry after Notre Dame stomped BC with a 54-7 loss that unraveled much of the good feelings built by the team's 7-0-1 start.
"We felt coming in here we would have to have a special effort and have to have many, many people do something of a special nature, but it didn't happen for us today," Coughlin was quoted in The Boston Globe the next day. "No one could make a play to get us going, whether it was on the defensive side of the ball or the offensive side of the ball."
Literally everything about the day felt like a bad dream in reality. Notre Dame scored on two of its first five possessions, and the BC offense gained 11 yards in the first half after entering the game rated sixth in the nation. Glenn Foley was ineffective in a day that went 11-for-28 for 121 yards and a touchdown, and an offense that averaged over 460 yards per game was relegated to less than 200 yards by a Notre Dame defense that kept BC off the scoreboard until Pete Mitchell caught a four-yard touchdown pass with less than a minute remaining in the game.
The Irish, meanwhile, were practically perfect and gained nearly 600 yards of offense behind a blistering running game. Reggie Brooks had two touchdowns and averaged almost 10 yards per carry en route to 174 yards on 18 carries, and his 73-yard touchdown run in the second quarter staked Notre Dame to a 34-0 lead before the quarter dipped under the 10-minute mark. Quarterback Rick Mirer threw three touchdowns while going 13-for-18 for 180 yards. He was eventually replaced by Kevin McDougal in mop-up time, and his successor threw for 56 yards on two completions. Four Irish receivers had multiple receptions, but running back Jerome Bettis made the most of his one catch on a 37-yard touchdown.
BC finished with exactly 400 less yards than Notre Dame and went 1-for-13 on third down conversions while holding the ball for 23 minutes. The Irish finished with as many passing first downs as the Eagles had total for the entire game, and Notre Dame only had to punt twice while receiving one kickoff return for 23 yards.
"I wasn't shocked because I thought we could play this well," Mirer was quoted after the game. "It was a total team effort. Everyone did their job."
It was that last point - the number of punts - that became the legacy of a game in which halftime featured filming of the final game scene for the movie Rudy. In the third quarter, just after the crowd stopped chanting for Sean Astin's version of the diminutive former walk-on, BC held Notre Dame to a fourth down near midfield. The Irish already led, 34-0, so nobody really expected much when punter Craig Hentrich, a future Super Bowl champion with the Green Bay Packers, trotted out onto the field.
Holtz had decided to run a fake punt, and after Hentrich ran 16 yards off the right side of the formation, Mirer completed a 67-yard drive by throwing a touchdown pass to Jeff Burris to give Notre Dame a 44-0 lead. After the game, the unapologetic Holtz offered an explanation that was flimsy at best.
"We came into the game knowing that we were going to run the fake punt," he said. "If the situation is right, we'll call it. There's nothing illegal about it. It was just a matter of running the play and letting people know we have it."
To a degree, he was right. If BC didn't want Notre Dame to convert the fake punt, the Eagles should have stopped it, and there's no penalty for running a play or running up a score. Everyone does it, and even last year, the New England Patriots beat the New York Jets, 54-13, by scoring two completely meaningless touchdowns in the fourth quarter. There's no penalty for doing what he did, and showing off that particular play was a muscle flex to the next year's opponents as much as it offered strategic film to Penn State and Southern California for the last two games in 1992.
It just felt unnecessary, and it didn't matter that Coughlin deflected it in the postgame aftermath. He specifically said, without "rancor," as Boston Globe columnist Michael Vega noted, that Holtz didn't run the score up, but that didn't stop the train from leaving the station for the next year's rematch when the Irish were in position to win the national championship after beating Florida State in the "Game of the Century" one week prior to the BC matchup.
"The fact of the matter is there isn't one pleasant memory of that whole ordeal," said Coughlin one year later. "We have a tendency, psychologically, to try and eliminate the things that are most distasteful to you, but I certainly haven't forgot the things that deal with the game itself and some of the problems that I thought existed."
That game in 1993 became one of the greatest moments in BC program history after the Eagles marched back into Notre Dame Stadium and robbed the Fighting Irish of their national championship dreams, but it was made all the more sweeter for the fans - and for BC - that it avenged the beatdown in 1992. Foley certainly couldn't help himself from mentioning how Notre Dame rubbed it into the Eagles' wounds.
From those moments, a true rivalry, a bitter battle between hated opponents, was born. The Holy War was forged, built by the filming of Rudy at halftime (which, by the way, there's a very obvious Boston College banner in the crowd of that movie scene), built by the 34-0 lead, and certainly built by the fake punt. Thirty years later, it still resonates, and on Saturday, the latest chapter between the Eagles and Irish are back where it all began, underneath the watchful eyes of Touchdown Jesus.
Boston College and No. 18 Notre Dame kick off on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. from Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. The game can be seen on national television via NBC with streaming options available through the Peacock app.
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