Sports Then and Now

Many college football experts and fans have been asking for years: What’s wrong with the Notre Dame football program?

It may be a lack of continuity in head coaches or the inability to recruit the best high school players or the fact that the talent is now spread all over the country that has led to the downfall of Notre Dame.

But for those who are superstitious or believe in luck, they will point to the Irish’s last-second loss to Boston College in the final game of the 1993 regular season that not only shattered the dreams of the Irish’ s chances of a national title that season, but has brought several years of mediocrity for the Irish.

Notre Dame entered the game with Boston College as the #1 team in the country following their 31-24 victory over Florida State in a game billed as the “Game of the Century” and had won their previous 17 games.

With one more victory, the Irish would finish the regular season with an 11-0 record and probably would go on to play in the Fiesta Bowl in a rematch against Florida State with a chance for a second national title under head coach Lou Holtz.

The one remaining obstacle between the Irish and a trip to Tempe was the #17 ranked Boston College Eagles, who were coached by future head coach Tom Coughlin in his third season as the BC head coach.

The Eagles had rebounded from a 0-2 start which included a 22-21 loss to lowly Northwestern when kicker David Gordon missed a potential game-winning 40-yard field goal with over a minute left, to win their next seven games, thanks to a high-powered offense led by quarterback Glenn Foley and running back Darnell Campbell, who was the nation’s leading scorer with 20 touchdowns.

Despite their offensive firepower and hot winning streak, the Eagles were not given much of a chance against the Irish as they were 18-point underdogs as they traveled to South Bend. Read the rest of this entry →

Which quarterback would you rather have?

Of the two left-handed, running quarterbacks in the NFL, which would you rather have: Michael Vick or Tim Tebow?

At first that question probably seems a bit silly. After all, Vick has a decade of NFL experience while Tebow has started just seven games as a pro and the number of NFL “experts” who believe he will never be a quality pro quarterback could fill a stadium.

However, given that Tebow suddenly has the Denver Broncos in contention in the AFC West while Vick and the Eagles are the biggest disappointment in the NFC the question has at least some validity.

What is ironic about Vick is that for most of his career he had the reputation as the unconventional quarterback who didn’t put up great numbers, but did what was needed to win games.

During his six seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, Vick was 38-28-1 as a starting quarterback while leading the team to a pair of trips to the playoff and one appearance in the NFC Championship Game. He did that while never posting a season quarterback rating higher than 81.6 (75.7 for the six seasons) and completing only 53.8% of his passes.

Since becoming the starter for the Philadelphia Eagles, Vick’s numbers have suddenly become comparable to the elite quarterbacks in the league. He has completed 62% of his passes over the last two years with a quarterback rating of 94. However, after winning eight of 11 starts in 2010, Vick is now just 3-6 as a starter so far in 2011 despite having a team that everyone thought had the talent capable of contending for a Super Bowl berth. Read the rest of this entry →

Jim Plunkett

It was 40 years ago that the November Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month earned NFL Rookie of the Year honors and began a 16-year career that would include twice leading his team to the Super Bowl Championship.

After leading Stanford to the Rose Bowl Championship and winning the Heisman Trophy in 1970, Jim Plunkett was tapped by the New England Patriots with the first pick in the 1971 NFL Draft. Read the rest of this entry →

In 1978, the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints were unlikely contenders for a playoff spot in the NFC as both teams had never made the playoffs in their collective 23 seasons between the two teams.

The two divisional rivals meet twice over a span of 14 days in November 1978 in a pair of last-second finishes that determined both teams’ fates for the 1978 season.

The Falcons entered the first game with the Saints on a four-game winning streak to up their record to 6-4 to put themselves in the hunt for their first playoff berth in franchise history.

Atlanta was led by head coach Leeman Bennett, who was in his second season as the Falcons head coach, and featured a defense that called “The Grits Blitz” which had allowed a NFL-record 129 points in 14 games in Bennett’s first season, only to have the team finish 7-7 because of an offense that only scored 179 points.

While their stats were not that much better in the 1978 season, the Falcons offense with quarterback Steve Bartkowski at the helm was doing enough for the Falcons to win games. Read the rest of this entry →

Joe Paterno's tenure as head football coach at Penn State is over after 46 years.

The firing of Joe Paterno as head football coach at Penn State is a sad and in some ways shocking twist to a story that has rocked the college football world over the last week and that will perhaps serve as the tipping point for regaining perspective on where college athletics fit within the overall landscape.

Ironically, Paterno is the one coach that many thought already understood the role of college athletics.

Paterno became a legendary figure at Penn State and across college football not just because he was a successful coach on the field, but because it was generally perceived that he and his program “did things the right way.”

From the beginning of his tenure in 1966, Paterno emphasized having his players integrated as part of the educational institution. His players had to not only perform on the field, but also in the classroom. The result is a graduation rate of 78% of football players that ranks well above the national average.

For much of his tenure, it was generally felt that Paterno wasn’t coaching to create a legacy, but instead to provide young men with the tools to be successful well after their football careers were over.

He clearly recognized that a successful college had much more than just a good football team. Paterno and his wife donated millions of dollars to programs around the campus and were instrumental in raising the money for a library extension, which was named in their honor.

However, at some point things started to turn. Maybe it was around the time when Paterno and then-Florida State coach Bobby Bowden started to compete for the honor of having the most wins in Division I-A college football. Maybe it was when Penn State suffered back-to-back losing seasons for the first time ever during his tenure during the 2000 and 2001 campaigns and whispers started as to whether the game had passed him by.

Though the graduation rate of the players never wavered, suddenly Penn State players started piling up as many off the field incidents as they were scoring points on the field. A 2008 investigation revealed 46 Penn State players faced a total of 163 criminal charges. Read the rest of this entry →