Thanksgiving classics
November 21st, 2007, 8:59 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Dan Zeiger
For years, Rudy Carpenter has watched football on Thanksgiving Day. This year, the Arizona State quarterback will be busy, as the Sun Devils host Southern California at 6 p.m. Thursday in a nationally-televised game with Bowl Championship Series implications.
“I saw all of those games on TV and kind of hoped and wished to have a chance to play in a game like that,” Carpenter said. “Fortunately for us, we’re going to have a chance to be the national game on TV that day and play in front of the entire United States. It’s going to be fun.”
The USC game is ASU’s first on Thanksgiving.
Much of football’s Turkey Day history is rooted in the NFL. Clint Longley, for example, will forever be instantly associated with Thanksgiving 1974, when the brief-career quarterback replaced an injured Roger Staubach and rallied the Dallas Cowboys to a dramatic win against the Washington Redskins.
College football has just two classic contests tied to Thanksgiving. But oh, what significant games they are:
Johnny Rodgers
On Thanksgiving Day 1971, Nebraska defeated Oklahoma, 35-31, in a showdown of unbeatens promoted as the “Game of the Century.” Cornhuskers running back Jeff Kinney scored four touchdowns, but the most famous score in the game is, far and away, wingback Johnny Rodgers’ electrifying 72-yard punt return in the first quarter.
I was 10 months old when this game was played but have seen the ESPN Classic rebroadcast several times. The game deserved its billing, with two great teams going back and forth with TDs, as if raising the bar for one another.
It was the de facto 1971 national championship game, as both schools drilled their bowl-game opponents, Nebraska beating Alabama 38-6 in the Orange Bowl to finish No. 1. The next year, Rodgers won the Heisman Trophy.
Doug Flutie
On Nov. 23, 1984 — the day after Thanksgiving — quarterback Doug Flutie rolled right on the last play of the game and heaved the ball deep into the night, where it eluded three Miami (Fla.) defenders and settled into the arms of receiver Gerard Phelan, giving Boston College an improbable 47-45 victory.
The win sealed the Heisman Trophy for Flutie, who will attend Thursday’s USC-ASU game as an analyst for ESPN. He will be one of at least three Heisman winners in the Sun Devil Stadium press box.
Gino Torretta, who won in 1992 as quarterback of a Dennis Erickson-coached Miami (Fla.) squad, will provide color commentary on the national radio broadcast. Mike Garrett, who won in 1965 as running back at USC, is now the school’s athletic director.
Will they be on hand for another Thanksgiving college football classic? The answer will be known at about 10 p.m. on Thursday.
