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1981 college football season

The Cinderella Rose Bowl Run Of 1981 Iowa Football

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Iowa was a dead program when Hayden Fry took over in 1979. No Rose Bowl appearances since 1958 and not even a winning season since 1961. Fry didn’t break either streak his first two years, going 9-13.

So when 1981 Iowa football opened the season by upsetting seventh-ranked Nebraska 10-7 it came out of nowhere. When the Hawkeyes lost at Iowa State the following week, it was just Iowa returning to earth. Then Iowa pulled another big non-conference upset, stunning sixth-ranked UCLA 20-7. This upset got Fry’s team into the rankings at #18. But who were these guys?

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There was some good talent on defense, most notably defensive end Andre Tippett. He would make the NFL, convert to outside linebacker and become a Hall of Fame player for the New England Patriots. Iowa defensive back Lou King was a ballhawk, intercepting eight passes.

A balanced running attack, with Phil Blatcher and Eddie Phillips—who ranked fourth and sixth among Big Ten runners respectively—worked in tandem with the defense and with All-American punter Reggie Roby to control field position.

Iowa’s quarterback was Gordy Bohannon, who didn’t throw a lot, but he was reasonably effective. His 51 percent completion rate was acceptable by the standards of the time, and his 7.0 yards-per-attempt was pretty good.

So could this Hawkeye team sustain the magic during Big Ten play? Iowa started by crushing Northwestern 64-0—the Wildcats were awful to be sure, but that sort of beatdown was normally reserved for the Michigans and Ohio States, who had represented this league in Pasadena every year since 1967. Iowa then beat Indiana 42-28 and moved up to #12 in the polls.

A road trip to fifth-ranked Michigan was next and the formula of defense, punting and running the ball was able to get it done. The Wolverines made the game’s biggest error—a fumbled punt that set up a field goal. Iowa’s offense used clock-chewing drives to get two more field goals and they pulled out a 9-7 upset.

That was three wins against Top 10 teams with brand-name pedigrees, but games against Minnesota and Illinois didn’t go quite as well. The Hawks lost 12-10 and 24-7 respectively. The Illini, we should note, were a good team and joined the Hawkeyes and the Wisconsin Badgers as teams challenging Michigan-Ohio State hegemony in the conference. Iowa’s loss to Illinois was also on the road.

Iowa bounced back with a 33-7 home win over Purdue. There were two games left and the Big Ten race was complete chaos. Of the five contenders mentioned above, four were tied in the loss column with two defeats apiece and Illinois had three losses.

The Hawkeyes faced a must-win game in Wisconsin. Blatcher ran for a pair of early touchdowns and Iowa took a 17-0 lead. Fry turned the game over to his defense and Roby.

An ultra-conservative strategy meant the Hawkeyes only got seven first downs for the game. But Roby dominated, airing out seven punts that averaged nearly 54 yards a pop. Fry insisted the game be put in the defense’s hands and they delivered 17-7—with the UW touchdown coming only in the late moments.

Iowa, Ohio State and Michigan all had two losses, but due to unequal scheduling, the Wolverines played one more conference game and thereby had a half-game lead. Iowa needed to beat Michigan State and hope Ohio State beat Michigan.

If that happened, the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes would be co-champs. They had not played head-to-head, and the Big Ten’s next tiebreaker would be to simply send the team that had waited the longest since last going to Pasadena. Iowa owned this tiebreaker.

And they got what they wanted. Ohio State won 14-9, while Iowa easily rolled Michigan State 36-21. The improbable season of the 1981 Iowa Hawkeyes was going to end in the Rose Bowl.

Maybe it was asking too much for Iowa to continue the magic against Washington in Pasadena. The Hawkeye offense never got untracked. The defense kept them in the game through three quarters, at a deficit of 13-0. But a couple fourth-quarter TDs for the Huskies finally blew it open in a 28-0 final.

The dream season might have ended with a Rose Bowl loss, but Iowa wasn’t going anywhere. They continued to be a contender under Fry and got to Pasadena again in both 1985 and 1990.

The Harbinger: The Ominous Struggles Of 1981 Notre Dame Football

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The 1981 Notre Dame football team came into the season brimming with optimism. The program had won national titles as recently as 1973 and 1977. The 1980 Irish contended for #1 deep into the season. Even a coaching change didn’t dim the good feeling. In fact, the hiring of uber-optimistic Gerry Faust only enhanced it. Faust’s love for the school, his devout Catholicism and his hiring straight out of the high school ranks, where he was a record-setting coach in Ohio, seemed like a storybook tale come true. But this storybook tale went terribly wrong and 1981 was the harbinger of a tough five-year stretch in South Bend.

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It wasn’t for lack of personnel. Notre Dame had a nice running back combination of Phil Carter and Greg Bell, the latter headed for a nice pro career. Senior linebacker Bob Crable was an All-American and would become a first-round NFL draft choice the following spring. The secondary had talented future pros in Dave Duerson and Stacey Toran.

Throwing the football was a problem. While Tony Hunter was a versatile tight end and freshman receiver Joe Howard a deep threat, the Irish did not get consistent play at quarterback. Blair Kiel and Tim Koegel spent the season shuttling back and forth and nothing really clicked. Notre Dame ended the season ranked 66th in the country in points scored.

None of it seemed to matter early on. The Irish were ranked #3 in the preseason polls. When heavyweights Michigan and Alabama suffered early upset losses and Notre Dame crushed lowly LSU 27-9, Faust’s team was elevated to #1.

The road trip to Ann Arbor a week later was an unmitigated disaster. Even though this Michigan team wasn’t anything vintage and ended up losing three games, the Irish never had a chance. They started their first twelve possessions backed up behind their own 25-yard line and lost the game 25-7. Pollsters responded by dropping Notre Dame all the way to #13.

Another rankings hit came after a heartbreaking loss at mediocre Purdue. The Irish had taken a 14-7 lead late in the game. The Boilermakers drove 80 yards, but faced 4th-and-goal from the nine-yard line in the final minute. No matter. Notre Dame gave up the touchdown, the two-point conversion, lost 15-14 and fell out of the national polls.

What was then a traditional Big Ten trifecta of Michigan, Purdue and Michigan State on the early season schedule came to an end when an average Spartan team came to South Bend. Notre Dame got back on track with a 20-7 win. They were headed into a key schedule stretch against ranked teams from Florida State and USC with both games at home and a chance to get back in the major bowl picture.

More difficult losses awaited. ND led FSU 13-12 midway through the fourth quarter before giving up the go-ahead touchdown and losing 19-13. The loss to the fifth-ranked Trojans was by a 14-7 count.

At 2-4, there was no way the season could be considered a success by Notre Dame standards. But for all the problems Faust encountered, one thing remains true—neither he nor his players ever quit. They hosted a good Navy team and delivered a 38-0 rout. Consecutive blowouts of bad teams from Georgia Tech and Air Force got the record up to 5-4.

The final two road games, at Penn State and Miami, represented a chance to at least go into the offseason with some positive momentum. Instead, there was more heartbreak.

Notre Dame went into State College, led 21-17 in the fourth quarter and were driving for a lockup touchdown. Kiel threw a red-zone interception. The Lions drove the distance and took a 24-21 lead. The Irish reached the PSU 39-yard line on their last gasp before a fourth down pass to Howard fell incomplete. Penn State accepted a bid to the Fiesta Bowl where they beat USC and ended up third in the nation.

The season ended with a thud on Black Friday. Notre Dame was never in the game and lost to Miami 37-15. The Hurricanes completed a 9-2 season and sent a message to the college football world that they were coming.

Even after the bleak 5-6 campaign there was still hope that Faust would turn it all around. Notre Dame did get better and had winning seasons each of the next three years. But they never made a major bowl game under Faust and his tenure was bookended with another 5-6 season in 1985 that also ended with a blowout loss at Miami. 1981 was the warning that the bright optimism of Faust’s hiring would go unfulfilled.

1981 Alabama Football: A Championship Drive Misses & An Era Ends

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1981 Alabama football wasn’t the same loaded team that won back-to-back national titles in 1978-79. They had slipped a bit in 1980, though they still went to the Cotton Bowl and crushed Baylor. The offense lacked explosiveness. Starting quarterback Walter Lewis only threw 66 passes and the Tide relied on a rushing attack where five different backs, along with Lewis ran for between 300-400 yards on the season.

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Defensively, the Tide had two players that got All-American recognition, defensive back Tommy Wilcox and linebacker Tom Boyd. And the respect the legendary head coach Bear Bryant commanded still had Alabama ranked fourth to start the season, even as SEC rival and defending national champion Georgia—with much more talent in the cupboard—was ranked tenth.

Alabama opened the season at LSU, though the Tigers weren’t very good at this time and the result was an easy 24-7 win. It moved the Tide to #2. No one could have expected what happened next. Georgia Tech was a terrible team in 1981 and they won only one game. That game was their September 12 visit to Alabama, a 24-21 shocker that shook up the polls (top-ranked Michigan lost the same day). The Tide were down to #10.

Pedestrian victories over bad teams in Kentucky and Vanderbilt followed, and a 38-7 blowout of Ole Miss, another shaky team, lifted ‘Bama to #7. But their second visit outside the SEC went almost as bad as the first. Alabama played Southern Miss, a team that would finish the year with a losing record, to a 13-13 tie and plummeted back to #15.

A game with Tennessee, a pretty good team that would make a bowl game at a time when such was a bigger accomplishment than it is today, now loomed even bigger. Alabama got back on track with a 38-19 win.

Normally, a non-conference home win over Rutgers wouldn’t mean much, but given the way non-conference games had gone for ‘Bama, this 31-7 victory surely brought relief. It also got them back into the Top 10.

Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi State were all unbeaten in conference play on October 31, and the Tide would host seventh-ranked Mississippi State. One year earlier, MSU, coached by former Bryant assistant Emory Bellard, had upset the Tide. And this game would be another tough battle.

Tough should not be equated with well-played and there were a combined 13 turnovers. Alabama clung to a 13-10 lead when Bulldog quarterback John Bond suddenly rifled three straight completions for a combined 69 yards and put Mississippi State on the Alabama 9-yard line in the closing seconds. Bond stepped back one more time. This time Wilcox was waiting and his interception at the one-yard line preserved the win.

After a week off, Alabama traveled to face fifth-ranked Penn State, who was still in the national championship picture. History was also in the making. All season long, Bryant’s pursuit of the career victories record held by Amos Alonzo Stagg had been on the front-burner of media coverage. The old head coach was only two wins away…and there were only two games left in the regular season.

The Tide did their coach proud, defeating the Lions with surprising ease, 31-16. The respect Bryant commanded was made apparent when he left the field and Penn State fans crowded around the tunnel to give him an ovation as he left.

It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving that Alabama hosted Auburn in the Iron Bowl. The Tide was playing for at least a share of the SEC title with Georgia. The Tigers were 5-5 and playing for a winning season. To say nothing of the rivalry stakes. But the nation was watching to see if Bear would break the record, and he did with a 28-17 win.

Alabama and Georgia were both unbeaten in league play, and the Tide had to play one more conference game (7-0 vs 6-0), but with winning percentage being tied and the Bulldogs ranked #2, while the Tide were #3, it was Georgia chosen for the Sugar Bowl. Alabama still got another Cotton Bowl bid and were hoping for the right confluence of circumstances to win a national championship.

The circumstances were this—‘Bama had to take care of its business against Texas and then hope for Georgia to lose to Pitt and #1 Clemson to lose to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. Those games would take place in prime-time, while the Cotton Bowl was in the early time slot. So the hope for the Tide was to get a win and then sit back and hope for chaos at night.

Texas had finished 9-1-1, but also needed the probation of SMU—the actual regular season champion of the old Southwest Conference—to punch its ticket to Dallas. And for three quarters, Alabama looked the part of a team that had a lot on the line, and Texas looked the part of a team that needed the probation of a rival to be here.

The Tide were moving it up and down the field, but couldn’t put the game away. Alan Gray, who shared quarterback time with Lewis killed one drive with a fumble on the Longhorn 15-yard line. Consequently, the score was only 10-0 when the fourth quarter began.

Texas was built on running the ball and playing defense and you would think a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter was secure. But this Longhorn team had already rallied from behind in two of their biggest regular season games. And in the postgame words of Bryant, they “whipped” the Crimson Tide in the fourth quarter of this Cotton Bowl.

A backup quarterback, Robert Brewer, threw for over 200 yards against the ‘Bama defense. He cut the lead to 10-7 and then led a drive to the Alabama 30-yard line. Brewer took off on a quarterback draw for a touchdown. The Tide trailed 14-10.  

Alabama still rallied, starting the final drive with a big kickoff return.  But the season ended with an interception on the one-yard line to preserve the win. After a voluntary safety by Texas, the final was 14-12.

The loss didn’t cost the Tide a national title—while Georgia lost that night, Clemson won and took home an undisputed championship. But it was the end of an era. It was the final time Bear Bryant would coach a team in a major bowl game. The aging Bear only had one more year left in him. He retired following a tough 1982 season and passed away shortly after.

1981 Texas Football: Getting A Proud Program Back On The Map

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The proud Texas football program was struggling–at least by the standards of a national power since the regular season ended in 1977. Texas concluded that year, the first season for head coach Fred Akers, undefeated and ranked #1 in the country. They were promptly blown out by Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl and over the next three seasons went 25-11. The 1981 Texas football team needed to reverse the negative momentum.

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New contenders in the old Southwest Conference were rising. Houston went to consecutive Cotton Bowls and Baylor also reached the league’s showcase bowl game. SMU was moving on up, to say nothing of traditional power Arkansas.

The Longhorns still had respect and were still ranked #9 to start the 1981 season. They rolled over Rice and then looked sluggish in beating North Texas to start the season, but with upsets going down around the country, the Longhorns still rose to #4 in the polls.

Texas beat Miami, a rising national power with Jim Kelly at quarterback, 14-7 at home. September ended with the Longhorns ranked third in the nation and their traditional rivalry game with Oklahoma was next.

The Sooners would not have a good year in 1981, but they were still ranked #10 when the Red River Rivalry went down on October 10th. And Oklahoma started the game quickly, jumping out to a 14-3 lead at halftime.

Texas wasn’t ideally suited to make a comeback. Rick McIvor only completed 40 percent of his passes, and while the standards of 1981 were considerably different then today, this would still be the worst completion percentage of any quarterback of the ten teams who made major bowl games. Nor did McIvor make up for it with big plays, averaging a mediocre 6.6 yards-per-attempt.

The Longhorns did have a well-balanced rushing attack, with Jam Jones and John Walker each finishing in the top eight of the SWC in rush yardage, running behind an offensive line anchored by All-American tackle Terry Tausch. The defense was led by tackle Kenneth Sims, the best interior lineman in the country and soon-to-be #1 overall pick in the NFL draft.

It was Jones who stepped up and took over the Oklahoma game. He got the ball 36 times and gained 137 yards. Jones scored a touchdown to cut the lead to 14-10 and Texas never stopped. The game turned into a rout, 34-14 and when it was all over the Longhorns were ranked #1 in the country.

But it only lasted a week. Even though Arkansas would have a fairly average team and lose three league games, Lou Holtz had his Razorbacks ready for this one, and they hung a 42-11 shellacking on Texas. The Longhorns dropped all the way to #10.

SMU was ranked eighth in the country and undefeated when the Longhorns traveled to play the Mustangs. But SMU was also on probation. They could be ranked, and their games counted in the league standings, but the Mustangs were not eligible for the Cotton Bowl. Texas came up with a big 9-7 win, then came home to beat lowly Texas Tech 26-9.

It set up a big prime-time game at the Astrodome against Houston. Both teams, along with Arkansas, were fighting for the Cotton Bowl slot and ideally to do it by finishing ahead of SMU. The Longhorns fell behind the Cougars 14-3 in the fourth quarter. Once again, the team whose offense wasn’t built to come from behind did exactly that.

Walker ran for a touchdown and then threw a pass that converted the two-point play, cutting the lead to three points. With 2:40 left, kicker Raul Allegre, who would eventually kick for the New York Giants, hit a 47-yarder that tied the game 14-14. That’s where it ended. Texas was a game ahead of Houston and Arkansas, and a half-game back of SMU.

SMU’s probation made the end of the season a little anticlimactic. Texas beat up TCU and Baylor easily, the latter struggling to a 5-6 record after winning the conference in a runaway in 1980. When Arkansas lost to SMU it eliminated the Razorbacks. With one week to go, the Longhorns would not catch the Mustangs for the true league championship. They had at least a tie for second place with Houston clinched. But Texas needed to beat Texas A&M to remove all doubt.

A loss to the Aggies would create a second-place tie and with head-to-head unable to settle it between Texas and Houston, the Cotton Bowl would get to pick who it wanted. Now the nod would likely go to Texas anyway, ranked #7 in the polls, the more marquee program and hungry for their first trip to the league’s flagship bowl in four years. So while not overstating the drama of what was at stake, we can still say that Texas wanted to eliminate any doubt about their Cotton Bowl trip–and beat their archrival. They did just that with a 21-13 win on Thanksgiving the ensured sole possession of second place behind SMU.

The Cotton Bowl would feature two of the nation’s great programs. Bear Bryant was bringing in Alabama. The Tide had won national titles in 1978 and 1979, and won this very bowl game a year earlier. Alabama was also ranked #3 in the country and hoping for the right confluence of circumstances to win the national championship.

For three quarters in Dallas, Alabama looked the part of a team that had a lot on the line, and Texas looked like the part of a team that needed the probation of a rival to be here. The Tide were moving it up and down the field, but couldn’t put the game away. Consequently, the score was only 10-0 when the fourth quarter began.

It was fitting end for Texas, in a year where they came from behind to beat Oklahoma and to tie Houston. They “whipped”, to use Bryant’s postgame words, the Crimson Tide in the fourth quarter.

Backup quarterback Robert Brewer got the opportunity here and while he threw for over 200 yards to help the comeback cause, his biggest play came with his feet. With the lead cut to 10-7, and Texas on the Alabama 30-yard line, Brewer took off on a quarterback draw for a touchdown.

The Tide still rallied, with the final drive starting with a big kickoff return. Longhorn defensive back William Graham led the team with seven interceptions this season and the last one came on the one-yard line to preserve the win. After a voluntary safety by Texas, the game ended 14-12.

When second-ranked Georgia lost the Sugar Bowl that night, the door was open for Texas to rise all the way to #2 in the final polls. The Longhorns were back on the national map.

1981 Nebraska Football Gets Over The Oklahoma Hump

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1981 Nebraska football was looking to get some separation from Oklahoma. Tom Osborne became the head coach in 1973 at a time when the program had two recent national championships (1970-71). Osborne continued to win at a high level, but not only were national titles not forthcoming, he couldn’t get past Barry Switzer’s Sooners in the old Big Eight Conference.

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The only year Osborne beat Switzer was 1978, and even that year they still shared the conference title and were forced into a rematch at the Orange Bowl…which Oklahoma won. The Cornhuskers were ranked #6 coming into the 1981 college football season and anxious to finally get over the hump that was the Sooners.

It was all about line play at Nebraska and that started with center Dave Rimington, who won the Outland Trophy. On defense, Jimmy Williams was an All-American at end, while Rodney Lewis was the same in the secondary.

Nebraska didn’t throw the ball match, with Turner Gill and Mark Mauer splitting duty. And when you have running backs like Roger Craig and Mike Rozier, why bother? Craig, a future NFL star with the San Francisco 49ers, rolled up over 1,000 yards and his 12 catches in this ultra-conservative offense were a foreshadowing of the versatility he would show playing with Joe Montana. Rozier ran for 943 yards and the sophomore got rolling on the college career that would lead him to a Heisman Trophy two years later.

The Cornhuskers had a difficult non-conference schedule with Florida State—fresh off back-to-back Orange Bowl appearances—and Penn State. What Nebraska hadn’t counted on was that the season opener at Iowa would also prove to be tough. The previously dormant Hawkeye program came to life this year with a run to the Rose Bowl and they upset Nebraska 10-7.

Osborne’s team bounced back with a 34-14 blasting of Florida State at home, but they next week, the Huskers let Penn State come into their house and control the fourth quarter. Nebraska lost 30-24 and fell out of the national rankings.

A 17-3 win over Auburn and consecutive blowouts of bad Big Eight teams in Colorado and Kansas State got Nebraska back up to #15. The Big Eight was shaping up to be a balanced race, with Oklahoma also having relative struggles and it heightened the importance of Nebraska’s October 24 visit to 19th-ranked Missouri.

The game was scoreless was 2:36 left and it looked like the Cornhuskers were headed for a third blemish on their record. They got the ball on their own 36-yard line, when Gill began to showcase the arm that would be such a weapon for this team in the coming two years. He hit Irving Fryar and Todd Brown on key passes that got the ball to the 3-yard line. Phil Bates blasted it over for the winning touchdown.

Gill’s arm, combined with Nebraska’s 222-85 edge in rush yardage gave them a 6-0 win. In spite of the early losses, the Cornhuskers were still unbeaten in league play. And while OU struggled to a 6-4-1 season, Nebraska rolled past Kansas, Oklahoma State and Iowa State to wrap up the outright conference championship and automatic Orange Bowl spot.

There was still the matter of beating Oklahoma on the football field and with Nebraska now #5 in the polls, they were back in the national championship discussion when they visited Norman for the regular season finale. When the Sooners scored on the first drive, there had to be at least some “here we go again” laments going through Husker Nation.

But this time, Nebraska took over the football game. They ran for 314 yards. Mauer was in at quarterback for this one and he went 11/16 for 148 yards. Rozier and Craig both cleared the 100-yard mark. Nebraska’s power-I formation attack trumped Oklahoma’s wishbone option, and the Cornhuskers won 37-14. They concluded the regular season ranked #4.

The opponent in Miami would be top-ranked Clemson. At the time, the Tigers were a Cinderella program and it taken a crazy and chaotic year in college football as a whole to get Clemson to the top of the polls. A lot of observers were expecting Nebraska to enforce the old traditional order on New Year’s Night.

By the time the Orange Bowl kicked off, everyone knew third-ranked Alabama had lost. Georgia was ranked #2 in playing in the Sugar Bowl at the same time. It turns out, the Bulldogs would also lose.

There’s nothing saying for sure that Nebraska would have vaulted to #1 with a win—Texas was also in the discussion—and the Cornhuskers’ two defeats would surely have come under greater scrutiny. But a championship was definitely in play for both teams, not just Clemson.

Nebraska seemed to have control of the line of the scrimmage in the early going, but two drives inside the 30-yard line ended with lost fumbles. Meanwhile, Clemson put it on the ground three times for the game, but recovered each one. The breaks were going Clemson’s way, and eventually the flow of play did too. A 75-yard touchdown drive from the Tigers in the third quarter was the decisive blow and put Clemson in control. Nebraska lost 22-15.

The Cornhuskers might have come up short of the national championship, but in 1981 it was enough to finally clear the Oklahoma hurdle and get back to playing in the Orange Bowl. And the next two years would be even better.

The Seasonal Narrative Of 1981 Georgia Football

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The 1981 Georgia football team was the defending national champions and had one of the country’s great running backs in sophomore Herschel Walker. The SEC Player of the Year, Walker rolled up nearly 1900 yards (the second-best back in the SEC finished with 622 yards), carried the ball 385 times (the second-best in the SEC was 166) and still finished fourth in the conference in yards-per-attempt at 4.9.

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Walker finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting to USC’s record-setting back Marcus Allen, as the two runners were clearly head-and-shoulders above the field in the Heisman race.

Buck Belue did a decent job providing some air support for Walker. He attempted 188 passes, a moderate number in this era and completed a solid 61%. Even more important was that the completions counted for something, as Belue’s 8.5 yards-per-pass was the SEC’s best. His best weapon in that regard was Lindsay Scott, who finished third in the league in receiving yardage.

What the Bulldogs did not have was national respect. In spite of winning a championship and bringing Walker back, they were still perceived as the inferior to Bear Bryant’s Alabama. Georgia opened the season ranked #10 while ‘Bama was ranked fourth.

Georgia gave the pollsters something to think about in their opener at home against a pretty good Tennessee team. Walker rolled up 161 yards on the ground. Belue was 10/15 for 140 yards and twice hooked up with Scott for touchdown passes. The Bulldog offense churned out thirty first downs, 563 total yards and mauled the Vols 44-0 for their worst defeat in 58 years. After a win over lowly Cal the following week, the Dawgs were up to #4.

Then a road trip to Clemson brought Georgia back down to earth and proved to be one of the decisive moments in the national championship race. The Dawgs lost 13-3. Clemson would finish the season undefeated and ranked #1.

Georgia rolled through mediocre teams in South Carolina and Ole Miss by a combined 61-7, then blasted bad teams in Vanderbilt and Kentucky by a combined 74-21. After closing by October with a 49-3 demolition of Temple, the Bulldogs were back up to #4 and were making their annual trip to Jacksonville for the neutral-site rivalry game against Florida.

The Gators were a good team that would win seven games and had the conference’s best pure dropback passer in Wayne Peace. A year ago, they came the closest to defeating Georgia, with only an epic 93-yard Belue-to-Scott touchdown pass saving the Dawgs in a 26-21 win.

This one wasn’t quite as dramatic, but it came close. Walker put on show and had caught two touchdowns and ran for another, but Georgia still trailed 21-20, just as they had in 1980. This time they drove 95 yards to win it, with Herschel tacking on one more rushing touchdown to close his day. He finished with 192 yards and once again, Georgia had escaped their rival in a 26-21 final.

The Bulldogs beat mediocre Auburn 24-13. The victory moved Georgia to #2 in the polls and also assured them of a share of the SEC title—they and Alabama were both unbeaten in league play, though the Tide had a loss and a tie in non-conference games.

Georgia would get the SEC’s Sugar Bowl nod and finished the year by trouncing an awful Georgia Tech team 44-7. Although we should note that the Yellow Jackets lone victory in 1981 did come at the expense of Alabama.

The opponent was Dan Marino’s Pitt Panthers, 10-1 and ranked tenth in the nation. For Georgia, their national title scenario was simple—beat Pitt and hope for Clemson lose to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. Both games would be in prime-time on New Year’s Night.

Walker didn’t run well against a good Pitt defense and was kept under 100 yards. Both teams were sloppy, with a combined nine turnovers. What Georgia had been able to do was recover a fumbled punt and turn it into a touchdown. As a result, they held a 20-17 lead and had the ball with 5:29 left.

It was the perfect time for Walker to slam the door shut, but he couldn’t close it out. The Dawg defense had to come back on the field with 3:46 left. Marino moved the Panthers methodically to the Georgia 33-yard line. There was 0:34 left. A tie was as good as a loss for Georgia.

To Pitt’s credit—they had nothing to gain from a tie—they went for the win. To the regret of Georgia, it paid off. Marino hit his tight end, John Brown, with a perfect strike to the deep post for a touchdown. The Dawgs fell 24-20.

If nothing else, Clemson won in the Orange Bowl, so the loss didn’t cost Georgia a national championship. And they would be back in 1982, for another big year with Walker in the backfield.

1981 Pitt Football: The Road To Marino-To-Brown Magic

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The Pitt Panthers were coming off a 1980 season where they finished #2 in the country and had the pieces in place to take the final step in ’81. The program was in the midst of real glory days, going back to its national championship run of 1976. The 1981 Pitt football team continued the pattern, with a dramatic Sugar Bowl win that lives on in program lore.

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They had Dan Marino at quarterback and the junior completed nearly 60 percent of his passes and threw 37 touchdowns. Marino’s top target was All-American receiver Julius Dawkins, who averaged 16.7 yards-per-catch. Tight end John Brown was reliable in short-yardage situations—and would make one particularly big catch from longer range before the season was over.

Bryan Thomas was a versatile back, who ran for over 1,100 yards and caught 46 passes out of the backfield. Wayne DiBartola was the #2 back, whose productivity both running and receiving exceeded that of most starters elsewhere in the country. Up front, Jimbo Covert, a future staple of Chicago Bears’ offensive lines, was an anchor at tackle and linebacker Sal Sunseri got some love in All-American voting.

The Panthers opened the season ranked #8 and opened with decisive victories over winning teams in Illinois and Cincinnati, by a combined 64-13 and they nudged up to #7. A 42-38 shootout win at mediocre South Carolina got Pitt to 3-0 by the time they went to West Virginia on October 10.

West Virginia was a good team, the third-best in the East behind Pitt and traditional power Penn State. What’s more, Marino was injured and Danny Daniels had to go in his stead. To say the Panthers found a new identity understates the case—Daniels did not complete a single pass. The defense delivered this one and Pitt won the heated “Backyard Brawl” 17-0. They were now up to third in the national polls.

Florida State came to town the following week and it was revenge time. One year ago, the Seminoles had been the only team to defeat the Panthers, en route to an undefeated season of their own. Florida State wasn’t as good this year—they would only finish 6-5—but that record came against a brutal schedule. In fact, when Bobby Bowden brought his team to the Steel City, they were fresh off wins at Ohio State and Notre Dame.

Pitt had to make a goal-line stand on the game’s first possession, but they took over after that. Marino was back in the lineup and he threw three touchdown passes. Sunseri took an interception in for a score and Tom Flynn brought a punt return back to the house, completing the trifecta as the Panthers scored in all three phases. The final was 42-14.

Over the next five weeks, Pitt played other Eastern independents rolling through Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, Army and Temple. None of the teams finished the year with winning records, though only Army was really bad. BC was the only team to challenge Pitt, with that game ending 29-24.

In the midst of the stretch the Panthers ascended to the top of the polls. They were undefeated when it was time to host Penn State on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Pitt jumped out to a 14-0 and was driving for more when Marino threw an interception in the end zone. To the disbelief of the crowd and quite probably the entire nation, the Panthers came unraveled. They never scored again and Penn State never stopped.

The result was a stunning 48-14 defeat. In one fell swoop, Pitt had lost a rivalry game, the Lambert Trophy as the best team in the East and any shot at a national title as they slipped to #10 in the polls.

Pitt had already accepted a bid to the Sugar Bowl to play Georgia and their great running back, Herschel Walker. Now the Panthers would go to New Orleans looking for redemption rather than a championship. And there was a chance this game would still impact the national title. Clemson was ranked #1 and playing Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. If they lost, the second-ranked Bulldogs were the logical heir to the throne.

This was the first year the Sugar Bowl played on prime-time on January 1 and they gave the nation a great show. Pitt’s defense came up with a strong outing, holding Walker to under 100 yards. But they made a critical special teams blunder, as Flynn fumbled a punt and set up a Georgia touchdown. Overall, each team was sloppy and after a game with nine combined turnovers, the Bulldogs were still clinging to a 20-17 lead, with the ball and only 5:29 left.

Walker was not able to close the deal and Pitt got it back quickly, giving Marino 3:46 to work with. He moved his offense methodically to the Georgia 33-yard line, but there were only 34 seconds left. A tie was as good as a loss for Georgia, and Pitt had nothing to gain by settling for a deadlock.

The Panthers needed a big play, and while Dawkins was a natural target, they called for Brown to go to the post. Marino fired a perfect strike, hit his tight end in stride near the goal line and Brown took it in.

For Georgia, the pain could be somewhat mitigated by the fact that Clemson ended up beating Nebraska anyway. For Pitt, Marino-to-Brown for the 24-20 win is one of the great moments in their football heritage.

1981 Penn State Football: Setting The Stage For Greatness

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Penn State had gone 18-6 in the two years since 1978, when they came up a yard short of the national title in a Sugar Bowl clash with Alabama. Averaging three losses per year was high for PSU in this era, but they had finished in the Top 10 in 1980. The 1981 Penn State edition went one level higher, finishing in the top five, winning a major bowl game and setting the stage for the program’s first national championship a year later.

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The Lions’ offense was keyed by a strong running game led by 1,000-yard rusher Curt Warner, and supported by Jon Williams. Warner was the third-best back in the country, behind USC’s Marcus Allen and Georgia’s Herschel Walker and the Lion back would go on to a good pro career with the Seattle Seahawks. Warner’s offensive line was led by consensus All-American guard Sean Farrell.

Todd Blackledge was the quarterback, and his 50 percent completion rate was good enough by the passing standards of 1981, and his 7.5 yards-per-attempt was pretty good for any era. The receiving corps was led by receivers Kenny Jackson and Greg Garrity, along with tight end Mike McCloskey.

They began the 1981 season ranked #7 and promptly blew out a respectable Cincinnati team 52-0. A week off, combined with a series of upsets, had the Lions ranked #3 when they visited Nebraska on September 26.

The Cornhuskers would win the Big Eight title, but they had already lost to Iowa. Nebraska needed this game and they led 24-20 after three quarters. But Warner was running at will and he finished with 238 yards in an amazing display. Penn State played like the hungrier team on the road and ended up with a 30-24 win.

Penn State rolled through Temple, Boston College and Syracuse, all teams that hovered around the .500 mark and when that stretch concluded the Nittany Lions were ranked #1 in the country. They followed it up with a home win over a good West Virginia team, 30-7. But one week later in Miami, the run at the top came to an end.

The Hurricanes had Jim Kelly at quarterback and head coach Howard Schnellenberger was building the dynasty that would eventually transform college football. Penn State lost 17-14 and slipped to #6.

An unimpressive road win at lowly N.C. State kept Penn State in the title chase, but was a warning sign as they prepared to host Alabama on November 14. The Crimson Tide were on their way to a Cotton Bowl bid and the Lions got manhandled, 31-16 on their homefield. A 24-21 win over fading Notre Dame, who ended the year 5-6, set up the season finale with Pitt.

Penn State was ranked #13, while the rivals from western Pennsylvania were undefeated, ranked #1 and had Dan Marino at quarterback. Playing at old Pitt Stadium, the Lions fell behind 14-0 in the first quarter and Marino was driving for more points. Roger Jackson then made the play of the season.

Jackson intercepted a pass in the back of the end zone to kill the threat. Penn State promptly drove down and scored. Warner, playing hurt, was able to rush for 104 yards, but the big story was that Blackledge played the best game of his career to date.

The Lion quarterback went 12/23 for 262 yards and twice hooked up with Kenny Jackson for touchdowns. The game was tied 14-14 by halftime and then the avalanche started in the second half. Penn State stunned the Pitt crowd and the entire nation with 34 more points and a 48-14 win.

In one fell swoop, Penn State moved back into the Top 10, won the Lambert Trophy as the top team in the East and destroyed the title hopes of their archrival. They were riding a wave of momentum as they accepted a bid to the Fiesta Bowl to play #8 USC.

This season was a new era for the Tempe-based bowl game. It represented the effort of the Fiesta to turn itself into a “major bowl”, as they moved their game to January 1.  Penn State had actually won this game a year earlier when it was played on Christmas Day.

A spot in the final Top 10 was on the line when Penn State and USC met. There were also rumors flying as it was being reported—correctly—that the New England Patriots wanted Paterno as their head coach and that the Lion mentor was genuinely interested. In the end, Paterno of course decided to stay at Penn State and with a team like the one that took the field in this game, why not?

Fifteen seconds into the game, Allen fumbled and Penn State recovered. Warner ran in for a touchdown on the next play. It was the first blow in a day when Warner would completely outplay the Heisman Trophy winner, outrushing Allen 145-85. When USC threatened to make a game of it, Blackledge put it away with a long touchdown pass to Garrity. The final was 26-10.

Ironically that same formula—Warner outplaying a Heisman winner and a Blackledge-to-Garrity touchdown pass sealing the win—was what would play out one year later when Penn State beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship. For now, in Tempe, Penn State would be happy with a #3 national finish to end 1981.

The 1981 College Football Season’s Road To The Major Bowls

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The 1981 college football season can be marked as the year parity arrived. College football had long been the province of a few exclusive powers, but the effects of scholarship limits began to take hold and new teams rose up to challenge the establishment. Nowhere was that more evident than the Clemson Tigers coming out of nowhere to win the national championship.

A look at the preseason polls in 1981 show how dramatic the change was. The top three teams when the season opened were Michigan, Oklahoma and Notre Dame. All traditional powers. And none would end up playing in any of the major bowl games.

Conversely, Clemson was joined by Iowa and SMU as the fresh young challengers. Iowa broke the Michigan-Ohio State hold on the Rose Bowl bid and went to Pasadena.

SMU won the old Southwest Conference, although probation kept them out of the Cotton Bowl. As for Clemson, they began the season unranked before finishing on top.

Even the very structure of New Year’s Day was part of the change. January 1 had been the province of four bowls, the Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange. The Fiesta Bowl is now one of the big players on the college football stage and they made their first move upward when they got their game onto New Year’s Day this season.

The Fiesta then went and got two marquee programs, Penn State and USC to play, with the Trojans having Heisman Trophy winning running back Marcus Allen.

Other notable developments in the 1981 college football season include…

*Nebraska got the best of Oklahoma, finally winning the Big Eight title outright. The Cornhuskers eventually fell to Clemson in the Orange Bowl.

*Pitt and Penn State were great teams in the East, with Dan Marino behind center for the Panthers and Curt Warner in the backfield for the Nittany Lions. Pitt was ranked #1 deep into the season and ended up in the Sugar Bowl, while Penn State went to the Fiesta.

*Georgia and Alabama each dominated the SEC, going undefeated in conference play, but non-conference games tripped up the national title hopes of each. Both still ended up playing on New Year’s, the Bulldogs in the Sugar and the Tide in the Cotton. The latter would prove to be the final major bowl appearance for Alabama legend Bear Bryant.

*There were wild races in the Big Ten & Pac-10. Iowa wasn’t the only challenger to Michigan-Ohio State hegemony. Wisconsin and Illinois were in the mix, while the Wolverines and Buckeyes didn’t disappear. And the Pac-10 had perhaps its best ending ever, with two big rivalry games, USC-UCLA and Washington-Washington State settling the Rose Bowl bid. It was Washington who ended up in Pasadena for the second straight year.

*And Texas took full advantage of SMU’s probation. The Longhorns were able to get the Cotton Bowl bid and their win over Alabama completed a year where Texas also defeated Oklahoma. The ‘Horns actually ended up #2 in the polls though they did not enter January 1 with a chance at the crown.

This compilation describes the journey of the ten teams that made major bowl games and the roads they took to get January 1. Each article in is published individually on The Sports Notebook, and then pulled together and edited in this compilation. Together, they serve to tell the story of the 1981 college football season through the eyes of its best teams.

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The Seasonal Narrative Of 1981 Ohio State Football

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Earle Bruce was in his third year as head coach at Ohio State. After a sterling start to his tenure in Columbus with an 11-0 regular season in 1979, Bruce lost the national championship in the Rose Bowl. Ohio State lost the Fiesta Bowl following the 1980 season and continued a downward trend in 1981, settling for a Liberty Bowl bid. But beating Michigan soothes all wounds and the 1981 Ohio State football team put that feather in their cap before the year was over.

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Ohio State was led by quarterback Art Schlichter, about to be top five overall pick in the coming NFL draft. Schlichter had a bit of a disappointing senior season though. His stats of a 52% completion rate, 7.3 yards-per-attempt and 17/10 TD-INT ratio were middle of the pack in the Big Ten. Not bad, but not the stuff of the Heisman contender he had been the previous two years and was expected to be again in 1981.

Schlichter’s primary targets were wide receiver Gary Williams, who caught 50 passes for 941 yards and tight end John Franks who caught 45 more. Franks would end up being a second-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers of Bill Walsh and Joe Montana. Cedric Anderson, another big-play threat, rounded out the receiving corps.

Tim Spencer led the way in the ground game, rushing for over 1,200 yards and gaining 5.4 yards-per-carry. Jimmy Gayle was a solid #2 running back, with 732 yards at 4.8 a pop. The Ohio State offense was just fine—it was the defense that had problems. Ohio State had no defensive personnel show up in any of the All-American lists and they finished a woeful 83rd in the country in points allowed.

Ohio State opened the season ranked #11 and began by easily knocking off two mediocre opponents, Duke and Michigan State by 34-13 and 27-13 counts. The Buckeyes did not play well at subpar Stanford, but survived 24-19. The poor performance was a foreshadowing though. Florida State came to Columbus on October 3. The Seminoles were destined for a 6-5 year, but they won this game 36-27. Ohio State dropped to #18 in the polls.

Things didn’t get any better on a road trip to Wisconsin. The Buckeyes had beaten the Badgers 21 straight times, including consecutive shutouts, but this was an improved Wisconsin team that would win seven games and get a bowl bid.

In the final thirty seconds of the first half, Ohio State fumbled a punt to that set up a quick UW touchdown. Then Schlichter made an errant pitch to Spencer resulting in another turnover and a last-second Badger field goal. The Buckeyes trailed 24-14 late in the fourth quarter before a touchdown with 1:30 left made the final score cosmetically closer at 24-21. Ohio State disappeared from the national rankings.

A 34-27 win over a pretty good Illinois team restored some order and the Buckeyes then blew out lowly Indiana 29-10. Ohio State outgunned Purdue 45-33 and closed October atop the Big Ten standings at 4-1.

1981 was a year of change in the Big Ten after twelve years of things coming down to the Ohio State-Michigan game. This year, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois were all packed within a game of the lead. And the Buckeyes shot themselves in the foot when they were upset 35-31 at mediocre Minnesota.

Even though Ohio State massacred winless Northwestern 70-6, the Rose Bowl was a longshot when the Buckeyes went to Ann Arbor on November 21. Michigan controlled its destiny for Pasadena, but if Ohio State won they needed help—Iowa needed to lose to Michigan State.

The Buckeyes trailed 3-0 in the second quarter and Michigan was driving, but Ohio State got an interception at their own 18-yard line to kill the threat. Then they put together a 13-play/82-yard drive to get a 7-3 lead.

Ohio State was able to run the ball, with Spencer gaining 110 yards in a battle with Michigan counterpart Butch Woolfolk, who won the conference rushing title. And the defense was finally coming through. Even though they gave up a couple field goals, the Buckeyes picked off two more passes. The biggest one came in the end zone by Kelvin Bell in the fourth quarter.

The turnovers allowed the Buckeyes to put together one more drive and they reached the Michigan six-yard line with less than three minutes to play. Schlichter had a run-pass option play called for him and made a nice pump fake to create space and then bolted into the end zone. Ohio State had a 14-9 win. Even though Iowa also won, the Buckeyes had beaten their archrival and redeemed the season.

A Liberty Bowl date with Navy came on December 30. Schlichter struck first, hitting Williams on a 50-yard touchdown strike and a blocked punt set up a Buckeye field goal. The Midshipmen clawed back to tie the game 10-10 in the second quarter, but Ohio State recovered a fumble to set up another touchdown and they led 17-13 at the half.

It was Ohio State’s turn for a special teams gaffe in the third quarter, as they allowed a blocked punt to the Mids and fell behind 20-17. Navy was getting a good running effort from Eddie Meyers, who rushed for 117 yards. But the prolific Buckeye offense fought back.

Spencer carried 22 times for 96 yards and he got valuable help from Gayle, who added 88 yards on 15 carries. It was Gayle who scored the go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, Schlichter tossed a nine-yard touchdown pass to Anderson for a touchdown that all but sealed the deal. Navy scored another touchdown and two-point conversion, but not until there were just eight seconds left and Ohio State won 31-28.

The victories over Michigan and in the Liberty Bowl ended the season on an up note, but Ohio State was settling into a pattern of three-loss seasons. That’s a pattern that eventually cost Bruce his job at the end of the 1987 season.

The Disappointment Of 1981 Michigan Football

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The 1981 Michigan football team entered the season on a high. They had concluded the 1980 season with nine straight wins and captured the Rose Bowl for the first time under head coach Bo Schembecler. They entered 1981 ranked #1 in the polls. But the season just didn’t go the way anyone in Ann Arbor was hoping.

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Michigan was built on the powerful running attack that Schembecler loved. Butch Woolfolk ran for 1,459 yards and won the Big Ten rushing title. He also averaged 5.8 yards-per-attempt, the best in the conference. Nor did the running game stop with Woolfolk—Stan Edwards and Lawrence Ricks each ran for over 400 yards and averaged nearly five yards a pop. And the second-best rusher was actually quarterback Steve Smith, who rolled up 674 yards.

When you have that many quality runners, there has to be some blocking and the Wolverines were loaded up front. Kurt Becker was a consensus All-American at guard. Tackle Bubba Paris ended up enjoying a good career with Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers. Ed Muransky, the tackle on the opposite side, got some All-American mention. Michigan’s offensive line could knock anyone off the football.

Smith wasn’t renowned as a passer and he had his problems in some key games this season. The completion percentage of 46% was near the bottom of the Big Ten, but Smith made the most of the ones he did complete, with a solid 7.9 yards-per-attempt. And that’s because he had Anthony Carter.

Carter was perhaps the best wide receiver in the country, finishing the season as a consensus All-American and placing seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting. He caught 50 passes for over 1,900 yards and single-handedly made the Michigan passing attack.

Michigan opened the season at Wisconsin, against a team they had beaten by a combined score of 176-0 in the last four meetings. This would be an improved Badger team though, one that would win seven games and vault into a bowl game. Their rise, and the Wolverine disappointment, began on a shocking afternoon in Camp Randall.

Smith had a horrible passing day, completing 3-for-18 for just 39 yards. And he threw as many to Wisconsin players as he did to his own, with three interceptions. Even so, when Woolfolk took off an 89-yard touchdown run in the third quarter, the game was tied 14-14 and Michigan could still assert themselves. Instead, they gave up a 71-yard screen pass for a touchdown and suffered a stunning 21-14 loss.

The Wolverines were replaced atop the polls by Notre Dame and the Fighting Irish were coming to Ann Arbor. Smith got going quickly when he threw a 71-yard touchdown pass to Carter and the Wolverines led 7-0 at the half. They took over in the third quarter and built up a 25-0 lead before the Irish scored a meaningless touchdown.

This would be prove to be a mediocre Notre Dame, who ended the season 5-6, but for the time being the win was a big one to get Michigan back on track. They continued with a 21-16 home victory over a good Navy team that ended the short non-conference schedule.

Michigan’s offense rolled in road wins over sub-.500 teams Indiana and Michigan State, 38-17 and 38-20 respectively. The Wolverines were back to #5 in the polls and all their preseason aspirations were still within reach. Then they lost at home to Iowa 9-7 as the offense again sputtered.

The national championship was out of reach, but a 38-0 blowout of winless Northwestern and a 34-13 beatdown of an average Minnesota team had Michigan still poised to reach the Rose Bowl as October drew to a close. Ohio State led the way in the Big Ten with a 4-1 conference record, but Michigan was right behind at 4-2. Illinois and Wisconsin were also 4-2, with Iowa at 3-2. After twelve years of the conference being dominated by Michigan and Ohio State, it was a fresh dose of parity.

It made the November 7 home game with Illinois all the more important and all the more impressive when Michigan dropped 70 points in a blowout win. Ohio State was upset at Minnesota, so now the Wolverines and Badgers were in a tie for first, with the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes a half-game back.

Michigan moved into sole possession of first place a week later when they beat Purdue 28-10 and Iowa won at Wisconsin. Due to a scheduling oddity, the Wolverines controlled their own destiny for the Rose Bowl. Even though Michigan and Iowa were tied in the loss column and the Hawkeyes had the head-to-head win, the Wolverines would play one additional league game—they could finish 7-2 and trump Iowa’s potential 6-2.

It meant that this non-traditional Big Ten year would have one traditional aspect to its ending—Michigan was playing for a Rose Bowl bid when Ohio State came to Ann Arbor on November 21. And it was time for one more disappointment. Smith threw three interceptions, one in the red zone and another in the end zone and the Wolverines lost 14-9. Iowa went to Pasadena.

Michigan slipped to #15 in the polls and settled for a Bluebonnet Bowl date with UCLA. Ironically, the Bruins had also played themselves out of the Rose Bowl on November 21, in their case by losing to USC. Neither team was really happy to be in Houston on New Year’s Eve, but they made the most of it.

The Wolverine offense controlled the first quarter, driving inside the 10-yard line before settling for a field goal by future NFL kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh. Smith then went hit Carter for a 50-yard touchdown pass and a 10-0 lead.

The offense began to bog down over the next two quarters, with only a 47-yard field goal by Haji-Sheikh. The defense was holding its own though and Michigan led 13-7 going into the fourth quarter.

Finally, the floodgates opened. A short touchdown run by Woolfolk gave Michigan command. When UCLA answered by cutting the lead to 19-14, the Wolverines drove right back and got a nine-yard touchdown run from Smith. One more touchdown put it away and Michigan had a 33-14 win.

Unbeknownst to anyone in the Michigan program, they were under threat of losing their head coach. Schembecler was being courted by Texas A&M and he was invited to meet the boosters while he was down in Texas. The Aggies offered to nearly quadruple Bo’s salary. He turned it down and chose to stay a Michigan man.

And two major bowl bids were immediately around the corner—Michigan made it back to the Rose Bowl in 1982 and they got a Sugar Bowl spot in 1983.

The Road To The 1982 Orange Bowl: Clemson & Nebraska

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The 1982 Orange Bowl saw the completion of Clemson’s Cinderella journey for a national championship and Nebraska finally get some separation from Oklahoma. Here’s a look back on the journey Clemson and Nebraska took through the 1981 college football season before finally meeting on New Year’s Night in Miami.

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Danny Ford had become head coach of a Clemson program that was on the rise under Charley Pell, before the latter took the job at Florida. But the first two years under Ford saw some regression, as he went 8-3 and then 6-5. The Tigers were not on anyone’s radar when the 1981 college football season began, unranked in the national polls.

Ford had a talented and versatile quarterback in Homer Jordan, who completed a decent percentage of his passes (54.6), got big plays (8.3 yards-per-attempt) and was also an effective runner (in the top 10 among ACC rushers). Jordan had a terrific target in All-American receiver Perry Tuttle, who led the conference in both catches and yards.

The running game was balanced, with Cliff Austin and Chuck McSwain leading the way and joining Jordan in carrying the load. But the real stars of this team were on defense.

Terry Kinard was an All-American defensive back and a real playmaker, and Kinard wasn’t even the best player on the D. That honor belonged to linebacker Jeff Davis, whose dominance was so thorough that he not only made All-American, but he won the ACC’s MVP award—this in a league where Jordan would have been a solid choice and Maryland had a quarterback of some note named Boomer Esiason.

The Tigers warmed up by blasting Wofford, but an unimpressive win at Tulane did nothing to get them in the polls. It was their September 19 home game against defending national champion Georgia that changed the equation.

It was a defensive battle and both teams had problems taking care of the ball, with a combined nine turnovers. But Jordan found Tuttle in the corner of the end zone for the game’s only touchdown and Clemson won 13-3. They were ranked #14 when the next polls came out.

Clemson beat poor teams in Kentucky and Virginia, 21-3 and 27-0 respectively. Then they went to Duke and blasted a respectable Blue Devils’ team 38-10. In a year where chaos was breaking out at the top of the polls, the room was there for the Tigers to be movin’ on up.

They were now #4 and two more soft opponents were ahead. Clemson beat N.C. State 17-7. To date, all the scores look typical for a team that relies on its defense. That’s what makes the home game with Wake Forest on October 31 jump out even more drastically than it otherwise would—Clemson won 82-24, matching its offensive output of the previous three weeks.

The Tigers were ranked second in the nation, but a road trip to North Carolina was next. The Tar Heels were also in the Top 10 and like Clemson, angling for a prestigious January 1 bowl slot. UNC had an excellent running back in Kelvin Bryant, who went on to the NFL where he could do everything on a football field except stay healthy. The Clemson defense delivered another big-time performance in a 10-8 win.

Another impressive shutdown of an offensive star was next, as Clemson beat Esiason’s Maryland by a 21-7 count. The Tigers closed with a 29-13 win over mediocre South Carolina. One week later, they watched as Pitt fell to Penn State. Suddenly, the team that still had a hard time getting respect was ranked #1 and playing in the Orange Bowl for a national championship.

Tom Osborne became the head coach of Nebraska in 1973 at a time when the program had two recent national championships (1970-71). Osborne continued to win at a high level, but not only were national titles not forthcoming, but he couldn’t get past Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma in the old Big Eight Conference.

The only year Osborne had beat Switzer was 1978, and even that year they still shared the conference title and were forced into a rematch at the Orange Bowl…which Oklahoma won. The Cornhuskers were ranked #6 and anxious to finally get over the hump that was the Sooners.

It was all about line play at Nebraska and that started with center Dave Rimington, who won the Outland Trophy. On defense, Jimmy Williams was an All-American at end, while Rodney Lewis was the same in the secondary.

Nebraska didn’t throw the ball match, with Turner Gill and Mark Mauer splitting duty. And when you have running backs like Roger Craig and Mike Rozier, why bother? Craig, a future NFL star with the San Francisco 49ers, rolled up over 1,000 yards and his 12 catches in this ultra-conservative offense were a foreshadowing of the versatility he would show playing with Joe Montana.

Rozier ran for 943 yards and the sophomore got rolling on the college career that would lead him to a Heisman Trophy two years later.

The Cornhuskers had a difficult non-conference schedule with Florida State—fresh off back-to-back Orange Bowl appearances—and Penn State. What Nebraska hadn’t counted on was that the season opener at Iowa would also prove to be tough. The previously dormant Hawkeye program came to life this year with a run to the Rose Bowl and they upset Nebraska 10-7.

Osborne’s team bounced back with a 34-14 blasting of Florida State at home, but they next week, the Huskers let Penn State come into their house and control the fourth quarter. Nebraska lost 30-24 and fell out of the national rankings.

A 17-3 win over Auburn and consecutive blowouts of bad Big Eight teams in Colorado and Kansas State got Nebraska back up to #15. The Big Eight was shaping up to be a balanced race, with Oklahoma also having relative struggles and it heightened the importance of Nebraska’s October 24 visit to 19th-ranked Missouri.

The game was scoreless was 2:36 left and it looked like the Cornhuskers were headed for a third blemish on their record. They got the ball on their own 36-yard line, when Gill began to showcase the arm that would be such a weapon for this team in the coming two years. He hit Irving Fryar and Todd Brown on key passes that got the ball to the 3-yard line. Phil Bates blasted it over for the winning touchdown.

Gill’s arm, combined with Nebraska’s 222-85 edge in rush yardage gave them a 6-0 win. In spite of the early losses, the Cornhuskers were still unbeaten in league play. And while OU struggled to a 6-4-1 season, Nebraska rolled past Kansas, Oklahoma State and Iowa State to wrap up the outright conference championship and automatic Orange Bowl spot.

There was still the matter of beating Oklahoma on the football field and with Nebraska now #5 in the polls, they were back in the national championship discussion when they visited Norman for the regular season finale. When the Sooners scored on the first drive, there had to be at least some “here we go again” laments going through Husker Nation.

But this time, Nebraska took over the football game. They ran for 314 yards. Mauer was in at quarterback for this one and he went 11/16 for 148 yards. Rozier and Craig both cleared the 100-yard mark. Nebraska’s power-I formation attack trumped Oklahoma’s wishbone option, and the Cornhuskers won 37-14. They concluded the regular season ranked #4.

By the time the Orange Bowl kicked off, everyone knew third-ranked Alabama had lost. Georgia was ranked #2 in playing in the Sugar Bowl at the same time. It turns out, the Bulldogs would also lose.

There’s nothing saying for sure that Nebraska would have vaulted to #1 with a win—Texas was also in the discussion—and the Cornhuskers’ two defeats would surely have come under greater scrutiny. But a championship was definitely in play for both teams, not just Clemson.

Nebraska seemed to have control of the line of the scrimmage in the early going, but two drives inside the 30-yard line ended with lost fumbles. Meanwhile, Clemson put it on the ground three times for the game, but recovered each one. The breaks were going Clemson’s way, and eventually the flow of play did too.

It was a 75-yard drive in the third quarter that was the decisive blow. Jordan found Tuttle near the pylon for the touchdown pass that finished the drive and put Clemson in control. They held on to win 22-15 and college football’s chaotic season had ended with a Cinderella national champion.

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