ND 10 Michigan St 10

[Boom_70]

Fantastic story by Michael Weinreb in Grantland on the "Game of The Century" and the politics behind the decision of Ara Parseghian to play for a tie instead of trying to win at end of game when ND got the ball with 2 minutes to go on their 30.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9221734/college-football-games-century-notre-dame-michigan-st-play-tie-1966

A couple of interesting quotes from the late Bubba Smith spoken in the last 2 minutes:

"If this game ends in a tie, Notre Dame is going to win. All the sportswriters are Catholic."

"Do you think we're going to win the national championship even if they run the clock out? We got too many ******s on this team to win the national championship. We have to find a way."

Understand that this story has a political slant and hits the southern race hot button so I hope that we can keep discussion civil and football oriented and that the mods won't see a need to slap the padlock on it.

 

[Songbird]

It'll be an SEC Football thread by the end of the page.

 

[Dick Whitman]

The late Mike Celicic wrote a pretty outstanding book on this game a few years back that was heavy on the race issue - kind of like Halberstam's book on the Yankees-Cardinals World Series.

I ran into a guy at one of those little outdoor hotel bars in Hawaii a few years back. He was wearing a Notre Dame cap, and I asked him why the allegiance. He said it was because the '66 game was the first ever broadcast live in Hawaii.

 

[Boom_70]

The late Mike Celicic wrote a pretty outstanding book on this game a few years back that was heavy on the race issue - kind of like Halberstam's book on the Yankees-Cardinals World Series.

I ran into a guy at one of those little outdoor hotel bars in Hawaii a few years back. He was wearing a Notre Dame cap, and I asked him why the allegiance. He said it was because the '66 game was the first ever broadcast live in Hawaii.

And as Weinreb mentions the broadcast was tape delayed because at that time there was a policy to only show a team on one national game a year. Pretty amazing given where we are now. I remember being a youngster at high school football game and many of the adults had transistors to their ear listening to game.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Hard to top the original:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079307/

 

[shockey]

Hard to top the original:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079307/

sportswriting at it best. dan jenkins kicked the snot out of this. geez. i feel unworthy of reading it, let alone aspiring to even write a game story. effin' jenkins....

 

[Michael_ Gee]

One of Jenkins' very best SI stories, which is a pretty rarefied level of achievement. Vividly remember watching the game on TV. Philadelphia was not then as it is not now a college town, but my high school, faculty included, debated the game for several weeks before it took place.

 

[Boom_70]

Hard to top the original:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079307/

Now that's how to write a gamer. 47 years later you can read it and get a complete sense of exactly how the game went.

Jenkins was certainly right with this observation:

"suddenly all it had was this enormous emptiness for which the Irish will be forever blamed."