Reflections from the Dome

This edition of Reflections from the Dome will be a collection of game articles, excerpts from books on the game, and a touching recollection of Ara's last words to the team in the somber lockerroom at Spartan Stadium...

First is an article by W. Hudson Giles, sports editor of the Notre Dame campus newspaper, The Observer. It gives some very interesting insights about the big game...

A COLLSION OF TWO TEAMS --- AND TWO WORLDS

History is marked with titanic struggles Rome vs. Carthage, Don Juan vs. the Turks, North vs. South, East vs. West, (Robert) Kennedy vs. Johnson. And this Saturday at East Lansing comes the biggest confrontation since the Berlin Wall Notre Dame vs. Michigan State....

The difference will be in the breeding The worlds from which they have been sired will mark the champion. And it is here, in a comparison of the worlds, that the competitors are contrasted.

The people who shall represent State have much to be proud of. One of the ten biggest universities in the nation ... Lots of nice trees and shrubs. Football players from Hawaii. Students from 50 states and 90 foreign nations, 17,000 research projects. A 56-million-dollar cyclotron. According to Ramparts, a campus home for the CIA ... a hedonistic paradise. A tradition as a party school and a football factory. Loyal fans. An excellent football team. And a coach who says, "The Notre Dame football team can do everything with a football but autograph it."

Notre Dame has many of these things. Lots of nice trees and shrubs. Students from many states and nations. An eight-million-dollar library. A nuclear reactor. A tradition as a football factory. An excellent football team.

But through the years the Irish have picked up some things no one-not even almighty State-can hope to equate. One of the greatest collegiate histories and traditions in the world. Knute Rockne, more than a football coach. Tom Dooley, more than a man. Academic excellence and athletic excellence together. 7,000 of the finest men God has put on earth. Fans who have never seen a campus or a college but who clamor for the chance to glory in that name. A coach, articulate, marked in every sense as a man of distinction. A Grotto. A magic name.

Next is the post game article by Joe Falls, long time sports editor, and highly regarded writer for the Detroit Free Press. Here is Joe's "There is a time to gamble..."

BLESS ME, FATHER for I have sinned ...

I rooted for Michigan State. But now I would like to repent. The winner, and it hurts to say it, was Notre Dame.

On Monday morning the vote will go out to the Associated Press in New York I-Notre Dame, 2-Michigan State, etc., etc.

And let's not hear any of that tripe from Birmingham that Alabama is the best team in the nation. Bear Bryant's boys snuck in the back door when the AP held that ridiculous poll last January.

Make no mistake about it - the two best teams in the land were on display here Saturday and our grudging admiration goes to the Fighting Irish.

They were up against everything and still managed to pull off a tie in the most nerve-wracking football game that could possibly be played. It was a classic in the truest sense of the word.

The Irish lost their quarterback, Terry Hanratty, early in the game. Their best runner, and maybe the best runner in the country, Nick Eddy, never got onto the field.

George Goeddeke, their first-string center, also went out early in the action. And here they were, with only half a backfield, in a bull ring that rivaled anything Madrid or Mexico City could offer, with a 10-0 score against them . . . and they came back and got a 10-10 standoff and barely missed winning it with five minutes to go on Joe Azzaro's field goal try from 41 yards out.

A lesser team could have collapsed when Dick Kenney put that 47-yard field goal through the bars midway in the second quarter ... because here Michigan State had all the momentum, all the drive and almost all the fans behind it.

In that moment they waited the kickoff after Kenney's field goal, my heart was pounding at the prospect of a rout, which would have made this the sweetest day of the season, and the feeling came on strong that Michigan State might even have shut out this team that was running up those ridiculous 64-0 scores against people like Duke.

From then on you had to give your admiration to these Notre Dame players. Quit? Why, they came back and played their best ball of the day through those final 40 minutes.

And as the pressure mounted, until it became almost unbearable to sit still in your seat, the Irish made all the big plays.

It was magnificent the way this little Coley O'Brien immediately rallied the Irish for their touchdown, because, simply, ask yourself this question - who is Coley O'Brien?

He looks like a tumbleweed being blown across the flat prairie lands, no bigger than the quarterback at North Farmington High. And certainly, no cover boy. The people at Time probably never heard of him.

But he fused the spark in his team and before you could utter the magic words, "We're No. I," the Irish were on the scoreboard and back in the game.

He led them 54 yards in three quick strikes and you just can't be any more authoritative than the way he hit the streaking Bob Gladieux on the goal line for the touchdown.

Right then, I started getting seared.

You can stack up the statistics and arrange them in any order that you want but the Irish won this one and even if it might put the Spartans on top, I hope Notre Dame closes out with a victory over Southern Cal. They deserve the No. 1 ranking.

This is not an attempt to demean Michigan State, to get off the hook for all the needling I've given the Irish fans in the last few weeks. But it would be less than fair to be prejudiced at a time like this. You've got to give them their due.

It was regrettable that the game ended in a chorus of boos from the highly partisan crowd as Ara Parseghian chose to settle for the tie instead of trying for a bolt of lightning in the last minute.

It would have been far better to see the Irish making an all-out effort to break the tie. But there is a time to gamble, and there isn't a time to gamble.

This wasn't the time.

It was impressive the way Michigan State kept calling time out with the seconds ticking away. But to ridicule the Irish for killing the clock. . . . Well, it's just sour grapes.

Seldom - in fact never - has a game affected me the way this one did. You can believe this or not, but I awoke with a knot in my stomach Saturday morning.

I wanted Michigan State to win so badly, it hurt. If the Spartans lost, I had my lines rehearsed. . . 

AAARGH I would say, humble pie tastes awful . . . and don't bother writing your nasty letters, Duffy and I were taking a vacation in the upper Peninsula to see who could make the biggest splash from the middle of the Mackinac Bridge.

Well, Daugherty doesn't have to apologize for anything, or explain anything. He showed more guts in this one afternoon than many coaches do in an entire career.

Fourth and one on his 30 ... three minutes left...

go for it and risk the chance of blowing the game and the whole season and leave yourself wide open to be second guessed the rest of your natural life?

Or punt?

Duffy didn't hesitate. He sent in a play, a keeper by Jimmie Raye, and whether it worked or not, and it did, it was the boldest move any coach could make.

And then, unwilling to settle for the tie, Daugherty kept ordering those time outs in the fading moments, hoping somehow his boys would wrest the ball loose from the Irish.

They took the coach-of-the-year honors away from Daugherty when the Spartans lost to UCLA in the Rose Bowl last January. But if there's any justice left in the land, they should give it to him this time around.

You see, Michigan State played a helluva ball game, too. The Spartans are a superb team.

In fact, they're the No. 2 team in the land.

Here is an account of the game from the 1966 Notre Dame yearbook, The Dome.

A week of rallies climaxed by the hanging of a Spartan in effigy before 5,000 screaming students in the field house prefaced the 1966 Remember Game- against Number 2 ranked Michigan State. Hired planes littered the ND and MSU campuses with "demoralizing" propaganda, announcing the "Intercontinental Ballistic Bubba" and the "Ara Force." Some 500 student-trippers and more than a thousand other students traveled to East Lansing for the November 19 battle for the national championship.

An inspired comeback by an injury-riddled offense and two interceptions by Tom Schoen were not enough to beat the Spartans. Joe Azzaro's long field goal attempt, with 439 left to play, strayed a few feet to the right, and the "poll bowl" ended in a mute 10-10 draw.

Eddy, still troubled by his bruised shoulder, never entered the game. Before the first quarter had ended, MSU end Bubba Smith sidelined Terry Hanratty with a shoulder separation, and two plays later George Goedekke limped out with an injured ankle. An understandably demoralized defense was surprised by the Spartans twice, for a touchdown and a field goal. But the extensive reserve exposure of previous weeks paid off, as Coley O'Brien, center Tim Monty and halfback Bob Gladieux took over the vacant positions. In quick rebuttal to the Spartan field goal, O'Brien passed three times for 54 yards. Gladieux caught the third pass on the goal line and stepped in for six points, and Azzaro's extra point cut State's lead to three points at the half.

A revived Irish defense, undoubtedly heartened by the endurance of the offense and adjusted to the Spartan's style, dominated the second half. John Horney recovered a Spartan fumble on the first play of the half, only to see it lost on Notre Dame's first play. But MSU never crossed the Irish 45 in the second half, and as the third quarter ended, O'Brien guided the team into scoring position. With three seconds of the fourth period gone, Azzaro tied the score with a 28-yard field goal.

The scoring ended there, but the last fourteen nerve wracking minutes were beautiful, if fruitless, football. With Gladieux and Bleier also injured, the withered offense could not capitalize on Schoen's two spectacular interceptions. The emptiness which most fans felt at the game's end gradually turned to respect for a team and a coaching staff that could overcome the tremendous set-backs the Irish suffered in the game.But Monday brought an unexpected second place rating by the UPI poll, and thousands of Notre Dame students prepared arguments in defense of the Associated Press Number 1 rating to carry home for Thanksgiving.

Subway alumni, UCLA hecklers, bitter over their loss of the Rose Bowl bid, and Notre Dame students on the senior trip drowned out the Trojan fans in the Los Angeles Colisseum, as the Irish handed bowl-bound Southern Cal the worst defeat in their history, 51-0. 

The Southern Cal rout easily swayed the UPI vote, and Notre Dame became the unchallenged Number 1 team. A final field house ovation by some 4,000 students welcomed the team on their Monday return from the coast. The spirit and ability of the 1966 Fighting Irish had carried them through an undefeated season to the national championship, and the return to glory begun with the arrival of Ara in 1964 was fulfilled.

And finally, Coach Ara Parseghian's poignant lockerroom talk to his team after the game...

In our lockerroom there was a quiet, indefinable air of emptiness. Each had played his best. They were spent, they were hurt, they were proud, troubled, tearful, and angered.

No one was undressing each slumped in his own place waiting, not really sure for what.

Ara himself need a few moments to gather himself and then he spoke

"Men, I'm proud of you. God knows I've never been more proud of any group of young men in my life. Get one thing straight though. We did not lose." His voice rose here. "We were number one when we came, we fell behind, had some tough things happen, but you overcame it. No one could have wanted to win this one more than I. We didn't win, but by golly, we did not lose. They're crying about a tie, trying to detract from your efforts, they're trying to make it come out a win. Well, don't you believe it. Their season is over; they can't go anywhere. It is all over and we are still number one. Time will prove everything that has happened here today, and you'll see that after the rabble-rousers have their say, cooler minds who understand the true odds will know that Notre Dame is a team of champions."