Penn State vs. Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl national semifinal game… the words alone send chills along the spine of any college football fan.
But for Penn State fans of a certain age, the match-up between Penn State and Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl has an extra meaning, a mystique and a nostalgia to a time when Penn State vs. Notre Dame was the world.
In the mid-to-late 1970s, long before college football playoffs, Penn State had gone undefeated in 1968, 1969 and 1973 and finished No. 2 behind schools from the heavily respected Southwest Conference, the Big Ten and a 1973 split national championship between Alabama and Notre Dame.
Penn State was still an independent school playing the teams in the east as a de facto conference schedule. Between 1966 and 1992 (Penn State’s last year as an independent) PSU racked up a 136-15-2 record in the annual games against the eastern independents and Maryland. Eastern football was not respected, but during that stretch Penn State was one of four different eastern teams that would play for a national championship.
Without the backing and hype of a major conference, Penn State always tried to schedule national home-and-home games. Most of the SEC teams declined to play home-and-home games with Penn State with one notable exception: Alabama. Penn State added games that would come on the schedule in the 1980s and early 1990s against Texas A&M, Nebraska, Texas and USC.
During Penn State’s dominant run, there was another independent team that was also dominant and more established: Notre Dame. For the current generation that looks at Alabama as the gold standard, in the 1970s Notre Dame was that team.
It was fueled by TV. Back then, the NCAA controlled all the TV rights and limited the number of live TV games each team played. Notre Dame understood the power of television and made an end run around those rules. They created a weekly highlight show condensing the game into an hour-long program.
I still remember seeing highlights of Joe Montana and a running back named Vagas Ferguson, among others. That show was syndicated to stations across the country, making the Fighting Irish an even bigger national presence than they had been before. They were in front of recruits all over America.
Enter Nelson Goldberg, a great Penn Stater from Pittsburgh who truly understood that concept. Nelson helped PSU create a similar weekly hourlong telecast and got it slotted on stations across the Northeast. He scored a Monday night slot for Penn State on WWOR in the New York City market. WOR also aired on cable stations all over the country. It planted a recruiting flag as home turf for Penn State in all of New Jersey and across the Northeast. On that telecast were Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Ray Scott and George Paterno.
That show and success on the field had Penn State placed as one of the two dominant independent teams in the country.
In the late 1970s, there was just one thing to do: schedule Notre Dame. The two teams scheduled a home-and-home series to begin in 1981. Ultimately it would run from 1981 through 1992 and be played as a late November showdown, usually right before the Nittany Lions’ season-ending game with Pitt. In those same 12 seasons, Penn State played 10 home-and-home games with Alabama.
Around that same time, Nelson Goldberg and his company, TCS Sports, merged with Metro Sports. Goldberg was one of the unsung driving forces that elevated Penn State football’s media presence.
Goldberg saw that the Supreme Court had blown up the NCAA TV monopoly and the combined forces of TCS and Metro Sports produced and got live Penn State and Notre Dame games syndicated on stations nationally at a time when teams were fighting to get on TV. The two teams became something akin to TV media partners after that merger.
That model carried the two teams through the 1980s until Penn State accepted an invitation in 1989 to join the Big Ten. A few months later Notre Dame signed a deal with NBC Sports to air its games.
Those developments ended talks of extending the annual November game between the two teams. The series would end in 1992 after 12 glorious years.
The first game was in 1981 in Beaver Stadium. It was, at that time, the toughest ticket in a long time at Penn State. Monsignor Fleming from our home parish even called up my father for tickets. Penn State won that game on the way to a No. 3 finish in the polls that would set up a national title run in 1982.
But the biggest surprise was that when my uncles went to their seats, they found a small band of Notre Dame fans seated next to them. Those fans informed my uncles that their brother was the monsignor at Joe Paterno’s parish and had gotten the seats for them.
When the offseason rolled around Joe had a conversation with the Irish-Catholic monsignor and asked that he not give tickets to relatives rooting for Notre Dame. The monsignor had a couple of nuns and priests in his family who were in those seats.
“Look monsignor,” Joe said, “it’s hard enough to beat Notre Dame without you adding priests and nuns in our seats praying for them too.”
To his credit, the monsignor asked his family to convert to Penn State for those future games. Maybe he figured more PSU wins would be good for the weekly collection plate at Our Lady of Victory (for those unfamiliar with State College, yes that is the name of our home parish).
In 1982, Penn State made its first-ever trip to play in Notre Dame Stadium. Penn State had been to South Bend in the 1920s, but those were all before the stadium was built in 1930. No team had ever won in its first trip to Notre Dame Stadium. Legends of the Ghosts of Rockne, and The Gipper and The Four Horsemen hung over every inch of the place.
This was like going into Yankee Stadium with all its tradition. But was this Notre Dame the same as those fabled old teams of yore?
All week long the same storyline was a constant: How would Penn State overcome Notre Dame and all those ghosts in the shadow of the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus? When Penn State’s team plane landed on a late November afternoon, local TV stations were there and asked Joe Paterno “Do you think your team can win at Notre Dame with all the history here?”
That got him fired up. That night Joe told his team that if the Gipper or the Four Horsemen rose from the earth and made a tackle or scored a touchdown, he would believe. The focus was to be on the here-and-now, not the afterlife.
John Robinson from USC had also called Joe to give him a tip. Right before the game, both teams shared the same tunnel. When the teams would come off the field after pregame warm-ups, the Notre Dame band would be positioned right where the visiting team would walk in. Part of the gamesmanship was to have the band strike up the fight song at full volume to remind the teams where they were and to intimidate them with one of the most recognizable fight songs in all of college football.
That afternoon, as a tense Penn State team came into the tunnel to go to the locker room after warm-ups, Joe saw one of the kilted band leaders. With the bulk of his team right there, that band leader started to turn to begin the fight song. Joe yanked on his kilt to startle him. He whirled around and never started the fight song.
The players that saw it went into the locker room laughing rather than tense. Sixty-minutes of football later Penn State became the first team to win their first game in Notre Dame Stadium. Penn State won the game and in the merry post-game Penn State section a fan held up a sign that said, “Jesus Saves, But Not Today.”
Over that 12-year run, it was one of THE games on the college football calendar every year. But it was also part of a massive, yearlong recruiting rivalry. At that time, almost every major recruit in the fertile recruiting grounds of Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and the entire Mid-Atlantic region had battles between Penn State and Notre Dame.
One of the reasons Joe Paterno pioneered what were then “early” commitments from juniors was to beat Notre Dame to the punch in our home recruiting footprint. The Penn State-Notre Dame recruiting rivalry fueled an innovation that changed recruiting forever.
Penn State won far more of those recruiting battles on their home turf than they lost. But there were notable exceptions. Ricky Watters from Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg and Raghib “Rocket” Ismail from Meyers High School in Wilkes-Barre were two notable defections.
And for the current generation, the Rocket was as electric as any player you’ve ever seen. He returned kicks, played WR and running back and made you hold your breath every time he got into the open field.
At the time, Pennsylvania was the most Catholic state in the country. There were two main college football allegiances: Penn State and Notre Dame. Irish Catholics skewed toward ND with Italians skewing toward PSU. This was particularly pronounced in Northeastern Pennsylvania, as anyone living up there will see in the next few days.
And while Notre Dame fans in PA may not have seen this as a rivalry at the outset, when Penn State racked up eight wins in those 12 games, the intensity really ramped up. During that stretch, Penn State won or played for a national title three times (winning two), while Notre Dame won the title in 1988, was ranked No. 1 in 1988, 1989 and 1990 and was in contention to play for the national title in 1987.
If the Bo Schembechler/Woody Hayes era was the 10-year war, this was a 12-year war. You can talk Notre Dame-Miami and “Catholics vs. Convicts” all you want, but that run didn’t last 12 years. And the mutual respect between the coaches in that stretch was remarkable. It upped in intensity when Lou Holtz arrived at Notre Dame in 1986.
For Penn State fans, three of the later games stand out. In 1986, Penn State was on its way to an undefeated season before a late-season trip to Notre Dame. The underdog Irish were driving behind QB Steve Beuerlein to upset No. 2 Penn State. The Nittany Lion defense was in the shadows of its own goal line when defensive tackle Bob White sacked Beuerlein. The Irish faced a long fourth-and-goal and when Penn State stopped them, the season was saved.
One year later, in what remains the coldest home game at Penn State, the Nittany Lions battled the Irish and led by seven late in the game. There were no upper decks, and the wind just howled across the field of the bowl-like structure of Beaver Stadium. Passing into the wind was unthinkable. Notre Dame had the eventual Heisman Trophy winner WR Tim Brown. There were times on fourth and short and even third and very long heading into the wind when Penn State rushed the punt team onto the field to avoid punting to Brown.
RB Blair Thomas carried Penn State on his back, in a game where the ball simply could not be thrown into the wind. He ran 35 times for 214 yards. And this was all done in an era before heated benches. But late in the fourth quarter, with several PSU players (like LB Trey Bauer) having frostbite on bare midriffs exposed to the elements by short porous mesh jerseys, PSU turned away a two-point conversion to win the game and wreck Notre Dame’s shot at a national title.
Fast forward to 1990. Penn State opened the season with narrow losses to Texas and at USC. The team would win the next seven games, including a victory at Alabama, before heading to South Bend to play No. 1 Notre Dame.
It’s important to know that during that 12-year run, Joe Paterno subscribed to both the South Bend newspaper and the Notre Dame student newspaper. They were mailed to his home, because he did not want anyone at the football office to know he had a year-round focus on that game. It was all designed to give him every edge, to understand what the roster moves were all about, to read what coaches and players were saying. Above all it was to put himself in the mindset of his opponent.
That would all play out late in that 1990 game.
In a crazy 1990 season that saw several different teams take their place at No. 1 in the country, Notre Dame entered that game at No. 1 with one loss. They had to win this game.
Penn State trailed 21-7 at halftime but roared back. Late in the 4th quarter Penn State QB Tony Sacca fired the game-tying TD to tight end Al Golden. (Circle of Life moment: Al is Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator now and Tony Sacca’s son is a senior LB from St Joe’s Prep who signed with Notre Dame a month ago).
There was no overtime back then, and late in the game Penn State was driving to kick a game-winning field goal. Facing a fourth-and-4 near the Notre Dame 40-yard line, Joe Paterno elected to punt Notre Dame inside the 10 with 2:15 to play.
As the punt team ran on the field, several coaches and players were pleading with him to go for it, to play for the win.
But the months of studying his opponent’s mindset allowed him to realize that Notre Dame’s singular focus was on winning the national championship. There was no overtime then, and a tie was the same as a loss for Notre Dame.
Joe turned to the coaches and said “Relax. Notre Dame HAS to WIN this game. They’ll throw the ball. And their QB will throw one to us.”
Sure enough, a few plays later Penn State safety Darren Perry picked off a pass and returned it to the Notre Dame 20 with 1:00 to go. Penn State ran the ball twice and, on third down with nine seconds left, sent out the field goal team.
It is important to note that when that field goal team was sent out, Penn State had a freshman kicker, Craig Fayak, a walk-on holder named Bill Spoor and long-snapper Bobby Ceh. Bobby Ceh had started the season as a team manager, but injuries created a problem at long-snapper. Bobby mentioned that he’d been one in high school. A guy who just a few weeks ago had been handing out jerseys and helping organize practice now had on a jersey of his own and the upset of the year in his hands.
As they headed onto the field, Joe reminded Bill Spoor that it was third down. With those nine seconds left if anything went wrong, he could throw the ball away and kick it on 4th down.
The fourth down wasn’t necessary. Sure enough, that group of unsung heroes under immense pressure completed the perfect snap, hold and kick to beat No. 1 Notre Dame on a late chilly South Bend night and step into the fabled lore of that 12-year war.
Back home in State College, giddy students broke into empty Beaver Stadium to tear down the goal posts. Sue Paterno was at her home three blocks from campus. After the game she turned off the TV and went to the basement to sew on her vintage Singer sewing machine. The doorbell rang and as she turned on the front porch lights, she was startled to see a uniformed police officer standing there. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw a throng of students, with goalposts held aloft.
To be fair to Notre Dame fans, that 12-year run ended in 1992 in South Bend. The snow fell most of the afternoon and Penn State held a slim lead late in the game. The same QB, Rick Mirer, who’d thrown that ill-fated INT in 1990 was leading the Irish on a late drive. On one play he scrambled outside the pocket, helped by an obvious and uncalled hold by RB Jerome Bettis. To this day when I run into him, we laugh as he openly admits he got away with it.
Notre Dame scored a TD to close within 16-15 on that cold and snowy day. Lou Holtz opted to go for two. On a scramble, Mirer lofted a pass to RB Reggie Brooks who had a reputation for shaky hands. Brooks bobbled the pass in the corner of the end zone before hauling it in to win 17-16. Of the seven games in that 12-game stretch that were decided late in the fourth quarter it was the only one of those seven that Notre Dame won.
But the 12-year war was over. The era when the independent world of college football was led by Penn State and Notre Dame was over.
In 2006 and 2007, the two teams played again, with Notre Dame winning in South Bend in 2006 and Penn State winning in the first-ever full stadium White Out in 2007. The games were played in September and lacked the late-season, cold weather drama of that 12-year war.
The all-time series remains tied at 9-9-1 but the modern, post-WWII era matchups which began in the 1976 Gator Bowl stand in Penn State’s favor 9-6.
Now we get a late-season matchup with a shot at a national title on the line. It may not be cold, it may not be November, but the stakes are huge. Both of these teams have fought a long road to this point. The eyes of generations of past players and coaches living and dead are on this game.
And despite all the changes across the last three decades of history, for one January night in South Florida, Penn State and Notre Dame are once again the world and are once again reigniting the passions of that 12-year war.
