October 15, 2005 and the craziest afternoon in modern college football history

Three classics with lasting implications for the sport finished within 20 minutes of one another

Editor’s note: My wife, son and I were out of town last week, which made getting two posts up incredibly difficult. While we’re home for the foreseeable future, we’ll follow what should be a regular posting schedule of two newsletters a week, typically publishing on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

By mid-October on the college football calendar, what was murky and jumbled one month earlier starts to make some sense.

Teams that were once deemed contenders fade. Matchups between ranked teams help add some clarity to chaotic conference races. And with a large enough sample size, it becomes increasingly clear what teams, programs and players have the potential to win the sport’s most sought-after prizes.

During that decisive time of the season, there’s occasionally a weekend or a set of games that stays with fans years and even decades later. With the benefit of hindsight, it became apparent that the events of that day had a profound effect on particular teams, players, coaches, programs and even the sport as a whole.

Really, this is a long-winded way of bringing us to Oct. 15, 2005. There’s not a particular reason to be writing about that day on this day, 18 years and two days later. It’s not the exact date. Even if it were, it’s not a nice, round anniversary, like a 15th or 20th, making this newsletter no better than the random Twitter accounts that like to commemorate some relatively obscure event like a Montreal Expos double play that happened on this day 27 years ago.

But with Notre Dame facing off against USC in South Bend in a meeting of ranked teams last weekend, there was something about the power of that day that I couldn’t shake, which I guess speaks to why it’s worth remembering.

On that fateful fall day, No. 1 USC beat No. 9 Notre Dame in the famous (or, if you live in northern Indiana or are of a particular religious persuasion, infamous) “Bush Push” game. No. 8 Penn State lost its first game of the season, as Michigan beat it with a go-ahead touchdown with no time remaining. And unranked West Virginia came back from a 17-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat No. 19 Louisville in a triple-overtime thriller.

The games not only took place on the same day, but in the same afternoon time window, with each contest ending within 20 minutes of each other.

One game kept a dynasty alive while simultaneously dooming a hated rival. One was the catalyst for the most successful run in the history of a proud program. Another deprived one of the sport’s most decorated coaches from what would have been his final run at a national title.

Other notable games occurred that day. LSU edged Florida in a matchup of top-15 teams. Virginia upset No. 4 Florida State. A sophomore named Matt Ryan came off the bench to help Boston College dig out of a 17-point hole against Wake Forest.

But with this trio of games, though, there was something different, something more inherently thrilling and impactful. Each had its own fascinating and unique hand in shaping the sport in the years that followed and to where we are now, nearly two full decades later.

USC 34, Notre Dame 31

On that fateful afternoon, most of the college football world was fixated on South Bend. An astonishing 10.1 million viewers tuned in to follow along with the action, making it the most-watched college football game in nine years.

It spoke to the history and lore of the two programs, yes, but their presents were just as much a part of the draw as their pasts. These were two damn good football teams.

The night before the game, Notre Dame held a pep rally in which first-year coach Charlie Weis brought back Joe Montana, Tim Brown and noted white-collar criminal Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger to fire up the crowd. Watching from a local hotel, USC was unfazed.

"We saw the rally on the news that night,” Trojans coach Pete Carroll told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. “I told our guys Joe Montana isn't going to play, Lou Holtz isn't going to coach and Jesus isn't going to play, either."

The Trojans had every reason to be confident. The program returned to and even surpassed the heights it reached in the 1960s and 1970s, winning back-to-back national championships in 2003 and 2004 while producing three Heisman Trophy winners in a four-year span. They entered their matchup against Notre Dame riding a 27-game win streak.

But unlike the previous two meetings, when they pantsed the Fighting Irish by a combined 62 points, they were facing a resurgent program. Under Weis, an alum who was the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots’ first three Super Bowl teams, Notre Dame quickly returned to prominence, coming into the game with USC with a 4-1 record and a top-10 ranking.

There was precedent for what the Irish were trying to do. For being one of the sport’s most accomplished programs, it had a habit of being a hell of a spoiler. In 1957, Notre Dame ended Oklahoma’s NCAA-record 47-game win streak. Eleven years earlier, it tied Army to snap the Cadets’ 25-game win streak. Texas had won 30 in a row before losing to the Irish in 1971. Two years after that, USC’s 23-game win streak died at Notre Dame Stadium.

The Irish seemed determined to make it happen again, even down to the conditions of its home field. Even on television, in an era when high-definition broadcasts still weren’t the norm, the grass at Notre Dame Stadium appeared unusually tall and unkempt. According to Steven Travers’s book Pigskin Warriors, Weis instructed the groundskeeper to “grow the grass as high as the Indiana wheat fields at harvest time.” A university-sponsored publication later conceded that the grass was “purposefully uncut” to try to slow down a speedy Trojans team.

It didn’t hinder the game from becoming a classic.

The contest featured four ties and four lead changes, with neither team ever leading by more than seven. In a game that solidified his status as the Heisman front-runner, Reggie Bush ran for 160 yards and three touchdowns on just 15 carries, along with four catches for 35 yards, tall Indiana grass be damned.

In the final two minutes, though, it appeared as though those heroics would be for naught. A Brady Quinn touchdown run gave the Irish a 31-28 lead with 2:04 remaining and on USC’s ensuing drive, it was faced with a fourth-and-9 on its own 26-yard line. From there, reigning Heisman winner Matt Leinart lobbed a beautiful pass right into the arms of a streaking Dwayne Jarrett, who took it down to the Notre Dame 13 for a 61-yard gain.

Four plays later, on a first-and-goal from the two, Leinart lunged for the end zone on a roll out and was stopped short by Notre Dame defenders, who popped the ball out of Leinart’s hands and out of bounds. Despite the ball landing with 10 seconds remaining, the clock continued to run until it expired, with Weis lifting his arms in celebration and onlookers beginning to rush the field. The only problem? The game wasn’t yet over.

After the officials put seven seconds back on the clock, Leinart tried to sneak in from the one, only to be met by a strong push from the Notre Dame defensive line. He spun and turned his back to the end zone to try to wiggle his way in and with a push from Bush, he was able to cross the goal line for the winning touchdown. 

The score counted, but the play itself was illegal, as Section 3, Article 2b of the NCAA rule book states that, "[t]he runner shall not grasp a teammate; and no other player of his team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist him in forward progress." If the flag had been thrown, the push would have resulted in a five-yard penalty and another play for USC. The call itself was a bold one, as the Trojans were out of timeouts, so if the run failed, it would have meant the end of the game. Carroll, a man now infamous for failed goal-line gambits, said after the game he never considered kicking a field goal to send it to overtime.

"If you're waiting for me to say it's a good loss, you won't hear that here," Weis said after the game.

Michigan 27, Penn State 25

Heading into the 2005 season, it looked like Joe Paterno’s Penn State tenure would end the way those of so many of the sport’s most legendary coaches typically do – with a whimper that sends a revered figure into an ignominious exit that’s often against their will.

(That, of course, would come six years later for Paterno for entirely different, much more unseemly reasons than not winning enough football games.)

The Nittany Lions, once one of college football’s domineering forces, had faded in recent years. Over the previous five seasons, they had gone 26-33 and finished with a losing record four times. Coming off a 4-7 finish in 2004, Penn State was unranked coming into 2005, expected to finish well behind Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and even Purdue and Minnesota in the Big Ten.