Drive-Thru: Piling it on Northwestern
You have no idea how hard it was to find such a game… that wasn’t 2004. Grr…
Anyways, for your viewing pleasure, I uploaded the 1989 contest between the Wildcats and the visiting Ohio State Buckeyes. Consistent with the history of this series, it was a lopsided affair that got real ugly in the second quarter. The Buckeyes only punted once (their second series of the game). They had no turnovers and only settled for a field goal once. Yeah, really.
Northwestern and Ohio State entered the game from two different sides the week prior. In their last game, Northwestern dropped a home decision to the Iowa Hawkeyes 35-22. In their previous game the week earlier, Ohio State played Minnesota and staged, at the time, the largest comeback in college football history.
Northwestern got the game started in dubious fashion. Ohio State won the coin toss and deferred. Northwestern, instead of taking the ball and getting their offense going, opted to pick a side of the field. Ohio State took the kickoff, and pounded Scottie Graham and Carlos Snow down Northwestern’s defense for an easy touchdown. They wouldn’t let up. Northwestern’s defense allowed 37 points a game before this match; Ohio State would run up 52 on the Wildcats.
The strength of Northwestern’s team… if there was one for the 1989 season… was its offense. In order to keep Northwestern’s offense off the field, Ohio State leaned very heavily on the ground game. In spite of injuries to Carlos Snow and James Bryant this game, the Buckeyes were more than successful in playing to the clock this game. Official stats elude me, but the combination of Carlos Snow, James Bryant, Scottie Graham, Dante Lee and Greg Frey/Kirk Herbstreit had to run up about 400 rushing yards. Snow, Graham and Lee all went over 100 yards. Bryant was really close before getting injured. Until that point, Hayden-Brockington-Kern in 1970 were the last trio to all get over 100 yards rushing. Northwestern’s otherwise decent-to-good offense did garner 27 points, with 8 of those coming on an untimed down. Basically, as good as Northwestern’s offense was, it wasn’t capable of vouching for the 37 ppg hole that its defense kept putting it in.
Ohio State’s 1989 season was basically a microcosm of some of the current problems we face now. They were run over 42-3 by USC, a team that ended up going to the Rose Bowl. It played 3 other top teams in the season and lost to them all. Illinois beat them 34-14. Michigan, the Big Ten’s Rose Bowl representative, beat them 28-18… a problem which I can only hope we don’t develop now. They went to the Hall of Fame Bowl and, yes, lost to an SEC team (Auburn). Fortunately, there was no internet meme to be made of it by that time and the Buckeyes had only had 4 post-Fesler SEC encounters before this game and was 1-2-1 at that point (2 losses to Alabama [78 Sugar Bowl, 85 Kickoff Classic], victory and tie over LSU). Of all the SEC losses, I’m more than fine with this one on account of Zack Dumas manslaughtering Stacey Danley. They can have the victory after that because that Dumas hit is much more memorable. Is it wrong that hit keeps playing in my mind any time one of my co-workers comes to bother me about something?
Northwestern, on the other hand, had much, much better seasons. That is: it went winless in 1989 for the first time since 1981. They’ve come a long way, baby.
Other things to note during this game:
- Bo Pelini, then known only as Mark Pelini, was the starting safety for this game
- Kirk Herbstreit, then a redshirt (I think) freshman QB, was the second option QB. He gets put in on the Buckeyes’ last drive and leads them to a touchdown.
- Northwestern fans were clearly not into this game. I actually saw a person in this game wearing his Alabama Crimson Tide gear to the game. Shame.
- Ohio State’s placekicker, Pat O’Morrow, surpassed Matthew Frantz in the record books after making his 53rd straight PAT after the Buckeyes’ last touchdown.
At long last, here’s the game.