Golden magic

Sporting News, The, Oct 3, 1994 by Mark Blaudschun

It's part of history now. Part of the collection of videotapes and sound bites that will be shown on highlights shows and recaps of the great moments from seasons gone by.

Defining moments in college football games are easy to spot. They can be fumbles, interceptions, and in those refreshing moments when games are won rather than lost, they can be last-second touchdown passes that fly through the air and cause wild jubilation as well as stunned disbelief.

Thrill of victory, agony of defeat? Say hello to Colorado and Michigan, who submitted their nominations for the game of year, decade, century.

Surely, you've seen it by now. Colorado's Kordell Stewart faced with the desperation of having to throw a winning touchdown pass against all odds, rolling to his right and then to his left and then simply throwing the ball as far as he could, hoping someone other than the four Michigan defenders waiting in the end zone 64 yards away (actually, almost 74 from where he stood) would catch it.

And, of course, someone did. A kid named Michael Westbrook, who grew up in Detroit dreaming about making a winning catch at Michigan Stadium and being carried off the field by his Wolverine teammates.

Only problem for the Wolverines was that Westbrook wound up playing for Colorado, and it was his stunning last-second, in-your-face catch of Stewart's tipped pass that gave the Buffaloes their 27-26 victory.

It's not as if something like this hadn't been done before. Roll the tape back 10 years to Miami-Boston College in the Orange Bowl, where the Doug Flutie-led Eagles and Bernie Kosar-led Hurricanes played a game of last-team-to-have-the-ball-wins.

In that post-Thanksgiving contest with the nation watching, it was Flutie who threw the ball not quite as far as he could in connecting on a 48-yard touchdown to Gerard Phelan falling backwards to end the game.

Game, set and match to Boston College in a 47-45 victory, as the Hail Flutie replaced the Hail Mary in the lexicon of sports cliches.

So there were the Buffaloes, ranked seventh by TSN and about to drop out of the top 10 and probably out of the national championship picture, trailing Michigan, 26-14, with less than three minutes to play.

"Coach (Bill McCartney) was saying just stick with it and pray and hope to get it done," said Stewart, who completed 21 of 32 pass attempts for 294 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Praying has become big business at Colorado. McCartney wears his religious beliefs on his sleeve, and the Buffaloes have become a team that has done a lot of praying the last few years.

Check back to Colorado's 1990 national co-championship season that was about to end in the Orange Bowl with a 10-9 victory over Notre Dame. With less than a minute left, all the Buffaloes had to do was kick the ball away and prevent Notre Dame from moving 75 or 80 yards for a winning score. The only problem was Colorado kicked to Notre Dame's Rocket Ismail, who ran 91 yards for a touchdown. Only a miracle could save Colorado. Sure enough, way back downfield was a flag, signifying a Notre Dame clip that wiped out the touchdown and the Notre Dame victory.

And there was the game earlier that season against Missouri, when the Buffaloes were trailing in the final seconds and needed another miracle. So a confused crew of officials gave them a fifth down on the winning drive that allowed them to pull out a 33-31 victory.

Last season was marked by more than a few last-minute decisions, but many of those went against the Buffaloes, who dealt with the disappointment of an 8-3-1 season.

This season, even with players such as Stewart, Westbrook and defensive lineman Shannon Clavelle, there was some question of how the season would unfold. It wasn't that people didn't like Colorado. It was that the schedule looked too tough, especially the first month when a home game against Big Ten champion Wisconsin would be followed by road games against Michigan and Texas, followed by the rigors of the Big Eight season and a road trip to rival Nebraska, where Colorado has won once since 1967.

So there was some history to all of this when Stewart broke the huddle for the final time last Saturday with 6 seconds left and no timeouts remaining, knowing the play called Jet Rocket Left would let Colorado's national championship hopes continue or evaporate.

"We work on that play every Thursday in practice," says Westbrook, whose role on the play was to be a tipper. "Of course, we don't have everyone jumping because someone might get hurt."

Freeze the moment. Stewart standing at his 27-yard line, watching and hoping. Westbrook in the end zone, knowing the ball has gone too deep for him to tip it to anybody and that he must now catch it. More than 106,000 watching, some of them as they move up the aisles, feeling secure about another Michigan victory.

Westbrook took the ball, which was tipped by teammate Blake Anderson, and hugged it. Fans stifled cheers in their throats. An eerie instant of silence was punctuated only by the cheers of disbelief of the few thousand Colorado fans who had prepared to go home.