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Welcome

Welcome to Hidden Yardage. I’m your host, Joe Moore. This podcast is a journey back to the

1980 Season through the memories of those that played, coached and covered it. New episodes, released each week, will carry listeners through that season, one week at a time. For more information, please visit the website at www.hiddenyardagepodcast.com. If this is your first time listening you may want to go back and start with Episode One.

This is Episode Six, “On the Warpath.”

Opener

The Houston Cougars 1980 season had not gotten off to a great start. The team was 11-1 in

1979 and won a second-straight conference championship and started this season ranked in the top ten. Back-to-back season-opening losses dropped them out of the rankings entirely and a third loss to Baylor had them reeling at 1-3. So when long-time Bill Yeoman was given the option to move his scheduled home game against Texas A&M to nearby Rice

Stadium, he declined. He wasn’t going to give up any possible advantage.

The offer was made because the Houston , where the school played its home games, was set to host game four of the 1980 National League Championship Series between the Astros and the Phillies the same afternoon as the Aggies and Cougars football game.

Instead of moving the game to a different day or a different venue, Yeoman elected to kickoff after the baseball game ended. Then first pitch of the NLCS was at 3:15 but it would take nearly four hours before Pete Rose scored the game-winning run in the tenth inning for the Phillies.

Around 7:30, the grounds crew started to get the field ready for football. It had to cover the

2 warning track with turf, excavate the pitcher’s mound, board up the dugouts and re-line the field with chalk. The transformation took another four hours and it wasn’t until after 11:30 pm that

Houston and Texas A&M could start their game. The contest wore on into the wee hours of the morning. Many of the more than 35,000 fans that attended had brought pillows with them and a local sports publicist served a champagne breakfast at halftime for the exhausted sports writers that had been there all day to cover the unconventional doubleheader. At 2:43 in the morning on

Sunday, the final gun sounded and the Cougars had beaten the Aggies, 17-7, even though it took them two days to do it. The worst part of all was that Phillies victory forced a game five

Sunday evening and the grounds crew would have to work through the morning to get the field ready for baseball again.

That wasn’t the only game of note in the Lonestar state that day. Texas and Oklahoma had renewed their hostilities in Dallas - albeit at the much more traditional time of 11:50 in the morning. The two schools combined for 14 turnovers and Texas remained unbeaten while handing Oklahoma its second loss of the year. In Waco, the Baylor Bears kept pace with the

Longhorns and preserved their perfect season by erasing a 21-point deficit against SMU. Texas and Baylor were two of the eleven teams that entered week six undefeated and it’s probably helpful to recap how we got to this point in the season. In the SEC, Alabama is 4-0 and ranked number one with a devastating ground attack. The Tide have one of the country’s easiest schedules and will not play the other unbeaten team in the conference, Georgia. The Bulldogs have climbed into the top ten after four straight wins to start the season and their star freshman,

Herschel Walker, is proving to be better than advertised. In the ACC, North Carolina is still undefeated and its defense, led by Lawrence Taylor, hasn’t allowed a touchdown all year. The

Tarheels don’t figure to be tested before their November 1 game in Norman against Oklahoma.

The Pac-10 declared half of its teams ineligible for the conference championship or a 3 postseason bowl game, but two of them, USC and UCLA, are undefeated and ranked in the top six - threatening to muddy the national title picture. The Big Ten’s Ohio State started the year ranked number one but, like every other team in the conference, has at least one loss. The Big

8 had only Iowa State with a perfect record, though Nebraska’s narrow loss to Florida State hasn’t completely snuffed out its chances at number 1. The eleventh-ranked Seminoles are one of four contending independent teams joining unbeaten Miami, #7 Notre Dame and #4 Pitt. And it just so happens that in week six, the Pitt Panthers and Florida State Seminoles will do battle in

Tallahassee on Saturday night.

Pittsburgh vs Florida State Part 1

Chuck Bonasorte grew up in and won a national championship in 1976 playing for the Panthers. Now, in 1980, he and his mother ran the Chasmar, a restaurant near campus that was always full of Pitt players and fans. One of the Panther’s biggest stars, Hugh Green, would often eat there and even called Mrs. Bonasorte his second mom. Chuck’s younger brother would love to playing football with Hugh Green, but when he finished his senior year of high school, the Panthers didn’t offer him a scholarship. Nobody did. That’s when Francis Joseph

Bonasorte, nicknamed Monk, took an unlikely path to an All-American career in Tallahassee. He started playing semi-pro football in sandlot leagues. A friend contacted the Seminoles’ defensive coordinator, Jack Stanton, also a native to let him know about Monk and Stanton encouraged him to try and walk on to the team in 1977. Monk made the team and before the first kickoff that season, he had earned a scholarship. He led the team in interceptions as a junior in 1979 and returned to Pittsburgh during the off-season to work at the Chasmar while conditioning himself for the upcoming season and engaging in plenty of good-natured trash talking with players on the Pitt team. It was after some of these trash-talking sessions that Monk was working out inside Pitt’s and he found himself being approached by Panthers head 4 coach, Jackie Sherrill. A newspaper reporter had published some of Monk’s comments about

Pitt - who was garnering a lot of pre-season hype and would face the Seminoles during the

1980 season. Sherrill had seen the article and said to Monk, “Don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash.” On October 11th, 1980, at 7:00 pm, payment was due.

FLORIDA STATE VS PITTSBURGH TV INTRO

Sports Illustrated placed Pittsburgh’s star defensive end Hugh Green on the cover of its 1980

College Preview Magazine with an 80-pound female panther named Orpheus. Green remembered that during the photo shoot, the jungle cat tore his shirt in two places and wouldn’t stop licking his ear. The caption on the photo said, “the baddest cat in the game” and you can add Orpheus to the list of creatures that had tried unsuccessfully to unseat Green from his perch. He signed with Pittsburgh out of Natches, Mississippi and had built one of the most dominant careers in college football history. Incredibly fast, he could chase down ball carriers from sideline to sideline and he always arrived with violently bad intentions. On a team of stars, he shone brightest and his Panthers defense was dominant through the first four games of the

1980 season. The team was undefeated, ranked fourth and Green’s improbable Heisman campaign was alive and well. Right around the time of the Florida State game, the University of

Pittsburgh had printed out posters to announce Green’s candidacy for the prestigious award. A defensive player had never won the award before and the promotional piece contained a message to would-be voters that might shy away from breaking with tradition - “The conclusion is simple. If logic be your guide, and justice your conscience, why not a defensive player - if he so merits - for the Heisman Trophy in 1980?” 5

The matchup with the Seminoles would be the toughest test of the year for Pitt. The Panthers had not yet played a ranked team and the largest crowd in Tallahassee history promised to add to the challenge of a night time road game against the number eleven team in the country. The late kickoff time meant that head coach Jackie Sherrill could give his Panthers’ team more time to relax at the hotel with family before the game. It’s a decision that head coach Jackie Sherrill still regrets making.

JACKIE SHERRILL

If the leisurely pre-game routine had dulled the Panthers’ edge, it wasn’t clear on the first play of the game. The Seminoles called a pass play, confident in the defense it expected Pittsburgh to play. They were wrong. Rick Stockstill realized the miscalculation as Hugh Green was barreling in on him after a naked bootleg and slung him down to the turf at the one yard line. The ​ ​ Seminoles would go three and out and Pittsburgh would take over at midfield. As Florida State’s defense looked to stem the Panthers momentum, it would do so without the hero of the

Nebraska game, Paul Piurowski. The senior linebacker was in surgery just 24 hours after learning he had won several national player of the week honors for his clutch sack to end the game in Lincoln. He had awoken early on Wednesday morning with pain in his side and after a few tests and visits with doctors, he was on the operating table to have his appendix taken out.

So determined to play was Piurowski that he got out of his hospital bed and started doing jumping jacks to prove he wasn’t too hurt to suit up. The team wouldn’t let him dress for the game and he would be forced to watch from the sidelines, sitting on the bench wearing a cowboy hat and chewing tobacco. The next week he sneaked on to the practice field and begged his coaches for a chance to go into the game against Boston College, even if just for 6 one play. They let him and Piurowski trotted back to the bench smiling. What he didn’t tell his coaches is that he had made a bet with several teammates that he would only miss one game for having the appendectomy and his appearance against the Eagle had won him a steak and a case of beer. Ron Simmons was suited up to play but he had reinjured his ankle on the artificial turf against Nebraska and was limited throughout the week in practice. The explosive Panthers’ offense showed no mercy on the shorthanded Seminoles and it struck paydirt on just its second play of the game.

PITT TOUCHDOWN

Dan Marino’s pass was dropped perfectly between two Seminole defenders for an early 7-0 lead. When the next two Florida State drives went nowhere, it seemed that back-to-back-to-back games against undefeated, ranked teams had caught up with the Noles.

Then, a Pitt fumble changed everything and forecasted a night of mistakes for the Panthers.

The Seminoles recovered and kicker Bill Capece picked up where he left off the week before by booting a 24-yard field goal to make the score 7-3. Pitt threatened on its next drive but fumbled again to give it back to Florida State. After the Panther defense forced another three and out, their returner dropped the punt to once again set up the Seminoles with great field position. Rick

Stockstill stood tall against heavy pressure and found Horace Johnson in the back of the end zone for a 10-7 lead. Now it was Florida State’s defense that was riding a wave of momentum. It forced the Panthers to punt from their own end zone and another Stockstill touchdown pass made it 17-7 for the home team. Bill Capece would add two more field goals in a frantic last minute that included another Marino turnover and Florida State had scored 23 points in two quarters against a Pitt defense that had allowed only a total of 20 points in four games. The 7 offensive outburst was shocking but perhaps even more notable was the play of the Florida

State special teams. Capece was 3 for 3 on field goal attempts, including a fifty-yarder to end the half. Punter Rohn Stark had punts of 51, 67 and 60 yards on his way to earning southeastern defensive player of the week honors. It had been an opportunistic first half for

Florida State and the Panthers, winners of 14 straight games, were trailing for the first time all season. There was still a half of football to be played and Marino would lead his team to a third quarter rally that would once again turn the tide in this heavyweight fight. And speaking of tide,

Pitt wasn’t the only top five team struggling on the road this Saturday.

Alabama vs Rutgers

Paul “Bear” Bryant and his Alabama football team were in New York City to play Rutgers in the

Meadowlands. For his players, the shock of the skyscrapers and commotion of the city that never sleeps was just as eye-popping as it was when their legendary coach first witnessed it as a player in 1933. Many of these players grew up in small towns throughout the southeast before coming to play football for the Alabama Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa, just as Bryant had done.

Paul Bryant found his way to the from his hometown of Moro Bottom,

Arkansas where he was born in 1913 . It’s a small creekside settlement that is likely only included on maps today because he was born there. Summarizing Bryant’s life and his impact across an entire region of the United States is a monumental undertaking so I’ll stick to a few entertaining anecdotes. There are two versions of the story about how he got the nickname,

Bear. The first says that Bryant and his friends headed over to the Lyric Theater which featured a bonus act on its small stage. It was a dollar-a-minute bear wrestling match but the man scheduled to take on the animal didn’t show up. Bryant was encouraged by his friends, and the opportunity to impress a pretty red-haired girl who worked at the theater, to fill-in. In another accounting, a traveling carnival came to town and offered anybody a dollar a minute to wrestle a 8 muzzled bear. Bryant was dared to take the offer and did. By the time the match started at 8 pm that night, the auditorium was packed. The fourteen-year-old Bryant charged the animal and held him on the floor, content to hold on for dear life and collect as much money as he could.

The bear squirmed free and Bryant tried his tactic again. It worked momentarily until the bear’s muzzle fell off. His sister in the audience screamed and Bryant felt a burning sensation on his ear and warm blood running down his neck. He jumped off the stage and into the front row to escape. He had lasted at least two minutes and so had earned a decent wage but the owner and the bear skipped town. Bryant was left with nothing but a few scars and a nickname that would last a lifetime. Bear played at Alabama under head coach Wallace Wade. He won a national championship in 1934 and played with a broken leg against Tennessee in 1935. As a senior, he played USC in the Rose Bowl and was asked to do a screen test by Paramount

Pictures. He was offered a contract but his wife didn’t want to move out west so he had to turn it down, opting instead for a life in coaching. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he turned down a chance to be the head coach at Arkansas and volunteered to join the Navy. After his service, he coached at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M before Alabama famously came calling. His first year as head coach of the Crimson Tide was 1958 and by 1961, he had won his first national championship for his alma mater. Over his 24 year tenure he would reinvent himself time and time again and become the winningest coach in college football history. In

1978, Alabama beat Penn State in one of the most highly-regarded championship games ever.

Afterwards, Bryant, by now one of the most famous personalities in American sports, was seen celebrating while wearing a new t-shirt with a tear in it. When others pointed out that his shirt had a hole, Bear said, “Yeah, I know. I always tear a small hole in my t-shirts so I’ll never forget where I came from.” 9

Sometime in the mid-1970s, Bryant was having at New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin’s home in Florida when he was shown an architect’s drawing of the new Meadowlands Stadium.

Werblin remarked that he couldn’t wait to see Alabama play Rutgers there and Bryant scoffed, telling Werblin that schedules were made years in advance. Werlin responded that nobody would be stupid enough to turn down a game in front of 78,000 fans at ten dollars a head. And so, Alabama dropped two games against Miami to make room on its schedule for the match with Rutgers, the Tide’s first game in the East since 1960. The Scarlet Knights were unbeaten but figured to offer little resistance against Alabama. The Tide led the nation in points and rushing yards and Rutgers, though statistically ranked as one of the toughest defenders of the run, had played Cincinnati, Temple, Princeton and Cornell. Bryant had been excited to bring his team north so it could both see the Big Apple and be seen by New York and its media. And

Rutgers planned to take full advantage of the big stage and the David vs Goliath moment.

The two teams exchanged punts to begin the game and then the Knights started to move the ball against the number one team in the country. Towards the end of the first quarter, Rutgers got on the scoreboard first.

RUTGERS FIELD GOAL

It was the first time this season that anybody had scored on Alabama in the first quarter and the

Tide answered with a field goal of its own to tie the game at three. Rutgers was playing inspired football and making the Tide earn every inch. Eventually, the visitors broke through with a touchdown before halftime but midway through the third quarter, Alabama only led 10-6. With his run game held in check by the Knights, Bryant called back-to-back pass plays that covered

79 yards and proved to be the difference in the game. Rutgers would score again to cut the lead 10 to 17-13 but a final drive would end in a sack and Alabama would escape with its number one ranking and a 26-game winning streak still in tact. After the game, Bryant would say, “We didn’t beat anyone today. We didn’t beat Rutgers, that’s for sure. I’d say they beat us but we won the game.” Rutgers could not sustain the momentum and lost to William and Mary the next week before finishing 7-4. It would have only four winning seasons in the next 24 years.

UCLA vs Stanford

UCLA had made headlines the previous week by going into the Horseshoe and shutting out unbeaten and second-ranked Ohio State. Now, the fifth-ranked Bruins were set to take on

16th-ranked Stanford. During the off-season, when UCLA head coach Terry Donahue was looking for an offensive assistant, he decided to reach out to the highest authority. Homer Smith had played football at Princeton before earning an MBA from Stanford while coaching the freshman football team. He served as head coach at Army during the tumultuous years following the Vietnam War. After five years, he was fired from West Point and enrolled at

Harvard Divinity School. He was pursuing a masters degree in theological studies when

Donahue came calling to ask Smith to take over running the offense to free him up to do more of his head coaching responsibilities. The impact was immediate. UCLA was now scoring over

30 points per game after averaging just 23 the year before. But this week’s game would come down to how well the Bruins could stop sophomore John Elway and they’d have to do it without an injured Kenny Easley.

UCLA scored an early touchdown and was looking for more when a Freeman MacNeil fumble set up the Cardinals’ tying touchdown. Stanford would score again to make it 14-7 and then turn another Bruins fumble into a third touchdown and a 21-7 lead at halftime. MacNeil had gained only 28 yards rushing for UCLA in the first two quarters but a confusing zone defense slowed down Elway and the Cardinals and McNeil took over. At halftime, UCLA’s running backs coach 11 had told his star senior that the game was in his hands but he’d have to start running north and south. McNeil took the advice to heart and galloped for 220 yards and four touchdowns in the second half as the Bruins pulled away for the victory, 35-21. It was during one of McNeil’s long runs that legendary UCLA basketball coach almost lost his $5,000 ring. It was a ring adorned with ten diamonds - one for each of the championships he won at the school - given to him by the university upon his retirement. Watching the game from the press box,

Wooden tossed a roll of streamer paper to celebrate McNeil’s second-half outburst and the ring came off with it. It struck an 18-year old in the back who picked it up and turned around to see

Coach Wooden waving so he tossed it back to him. The Bruins had jumped six spots last week after two top-five teams lost and they stood to gain more ground if number four Pitt couldn’t find a way out of a 16-point hole in Tallahassee.

Pittsburgh vs Florida State Part 2

Marino and the Panthers got the ball first to start the second half and wasted no time finding the end zone, covering 80 yards in 1:51. They added the two point conversion to cut the lead to

23-15. Two more Bill Capece field goals to tie a school record with five in a game push the advantage back to 14 before another Pitt touchdown at the end of the quarter makes it 29-22 with 15 minutes left to go. Pitt’s defense held to give the offense the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead. Marino moved the team out past the thirty yard line but a fumbled handoff, the fifth turnover of the night for Pitt, gave it back to the Seminoles. Stockstill continued to frustrate one of the most talented defenses in the country with his third touchdown pass to make the score 36-22. All night long, Florida State had employed a strategy of calling a play that could be run to the left or the right. Stockstill would approach the line of scrimmage and, based on what look Pitt’s defense presented, would call out the direction of the play. After the game, Bowden would say that his team couldn’t have won without that plan. Marino would try to rally his team 12 once again but with six minutes to go in the game, his pass was intercepted by Monk Bonasorte to slam the door shut on the comeback attempt. For Bonasorte, it was sweet revenge against the school that didn’t want him and the coach that warned him to be careful what he said. On this night, he could say that his Seminoles had just knocked off their second straight top five opponent and had proved themselves a legitimate title contender. Bonasorte would eventually be inducted into the Florida State hall of fame and enjoy a long career working for the university.

In November of 2016 just before his beloved Seminoles were to take on the University of

Florida, he succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 59. Bonasorte, who was 4-0 as a player against the University of Florida, had some of his ashes spread on tip of Chief Osceola’s spear as he threw it into the turf at the 50-yard line before the game against the Gators. With the 42 yard line painted black in memory of their deceased legend, the Seminoles won 31-13. Back in

1980, it was Pittsburgh that was mourning the loss of its undefeated season as it limped back to campus to regroup. Florida State had survived the toughest part of its schedule. It had the resume to claim a national championship but with several undefeated teams still in front of it, it was going to need some help. Blood week was coming.

Closer

Next week on Hidden Yardage: The Story of the 1980 College Football Season:

The Pitt Panthers had lost their undefeated season in Tallahassee, now they would lose their quarterback as they tried to survive the against West Virginia. Passing offenses take center stage as Purdue and Illinois set the Big Ten passing record twice in the same game and Jim McMahon’s BYU Cougars hang 70 in a home game against Utah State. Plus, can

Southern Cal’s undefeated season survive a test by the Oregon Ducks?

13

Credits

The Hidden Yardage Podcast is researched, written, narrated and produced by me, Joe Moore.

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review wherever you listen to podcasts. For a list of everybody that appeared in this episode and special acknowledgements, visit the website at www.hiddenyardagepodcast.com. There you’ll find a full transcript of every show as well as schedules, stats and standings from the 1980 season. Please email your questions and comments to me at [email protected]. This podcast is made possible through

Moonlight Magic Productions. Thank you for listening.