By Gaylon Krizak-Guest Writer
(first in a three-part series on 1984)
It was probably less Orwellian than Lewis Carroll-ish; more a trip through the looking glass than anything that paralleled “1984”, the 1949 George Orwell tome overwritten about throughout the year.
Strike that. It was more akin to a line from “JFK” referencing Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
On second thought, maybe there was some Orwell mixed in: In at least one case, true believers eventually were forced to denounce something they had considered sacrosanct.
Mix in a biblical parable, and you have 1984 — one of college football’s strangest seasons.
David and Goliath do Miami
Spoiler alert: In 1 Samuel 17:1-58, young David — either a young man or a boy (depending on the account) armed only with his staff, sling and five stones — takes down the Philistine Goliath (estimated in various telling as anywhere from 6-foot-7 to 9-foot-6). His trophy is Goliath’s head, and David goes on to become king of Israel.
Spoiler alert II (for those who don’t get ESPN Classic): In Miami’s Orange Bowl, 5-foot-10 Doug Flutie caps one of the wildest games on record by throwing a final-play 48-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass to Gerard Phelan, giving Boston College a 47-45 victory over Miami, the defending national champion. Flutie’s trophy is the Heisman, and he goes on to play in three pro leagues and have a cereal named after him.
The Eagles had won just two of 10 previous meetings with Miami and was an underdog the day after Thanksgiving, 1984. In truth, BC probably had a better team than Miami in 1984, though not by much. The Eagles were 8-2 and ranked No. 10 when they visited the Hurricanes, 8-3 and ranked No. 12. But Miami already had cultivated a reputation of being tough at home, and the field by game time was a swamp from steady rain.
In future retellings, the first 59 minutes, 54 seconds of the game became an indistinguishable offense-filled blur, and with good reason. BC led 14-0 early, but Miami scrambled back and took a 45-41 lead with less than a minute to play.
Flutie prepares to hail mary
Flutie moved the Eagles from their 28-yard line to the Miami 48, but only six seconds remained when he dropped back to run “55 flood tip.” Hail Mary time. Flutie’s 46th pass of the day, thrown into a wind gusting up to 30 mph, sailed more than 60 yards in the air. The ball skimmed over a pack of Eagles and ’Canes gathered around the goal line and into Phelan’s arms in the end zone.
It would be BC’s last victory over Miami until 2007, by which time both schools had helped symbolize the shift in the sport’s landscape with their moves from independent status to the Big East and, finally, to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
One unexpected effect, as chronicled in Murray Sperber’s 2001 book, “Beer and Circus”: “A surprising result of Flutie’s triumph, never previously seen in American higher education, was that applications for admission to BC spurted upward during 1985-86; hence the term ‘Flutie Factor’ for application jumps sparked by nationally televised college sports victories. (Subsequently, when BC’s football fortunes declined, so did applications, yet they remained higher than before the ‘Hail Mary’ touchdown.)”
(Sperber went on to add this criticism: The “Flutie Factor” at BC and other schools also led to an increase in the “party atmosphere” at each campus.)
Back to ’84: Miami, which that season already had yielded the biggest comeback in NCAA history in losing to Maryland (up 31-0, the ’Canes lost 42-40), went on to drop a 39-37 decision to UCLA in the Fiesta Bowl at sunny Tempe, Ariz.
BC’s reward? Dallas in January.