Drive-Thru: 1987 Cotton Bowl
This time, I look over the 1987 Cotton Bowl, which is my second straight YouTube upload of a victory over Texas A&M. This might seem cruel; it may seem like some vendetta. Truth be told, Texas A&M fans are by far the coolest I’ve met since I moved South after college at Ohio State. Their fans are delightfully strange and they have a plethora of weird traditions that definitely make them one of the cooler programs south of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s nothing personal; it’s just that I have our games against A&M on DVD and am uploading them. After watching this, and the 1999 Sugar Bowl, I definitely feel that there should be some kind of rematch between the two tradition-laden schools.
The game itself is an important one in Ohio State lore, and yet it gets lost in the shuffle for a variety of reasons. Chief among them: sometimes I wonder if I’m the only Buckeye fan to embrace Earle Bruce’s legacy and the 1980s in general. That aside, the college football fan with an interest in the history of the game should know why this is important for Ohio State: it’s the first time a Big Ten team was represented in the Cotton Bowl. The Cotton Bowl has largely been consigned in the BCS era to a second-tier snoozer between the second option SEC West school and a Big 12 school to be named later. Back in the glory days of the Southwest Conference, the bowl game was always an instant inter-regional classic. Several big names have played in this game. Notre Dame QB Joe Montana played a game for the ages in 1979. Georgia thwarted Texas’ aspirations of a national title in 1984. Joe Paterno’s Nittany Lions and Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide were frequent guests. Considering the Big Ten’s bowl limitations, this just happened to be the first time the conference was able to put its stamp on the 73 year old classic.
1986 was a screwy year for the Buckeyes. They opened the campaign with an unfortunate last minute loss to the Crimson Tide in the 1986 Kickoff Classic in New Jersey. Next week, they lost 40-7 to Washington. After that: they almost ran the table and made it to Pasadena. They finished their nonconference lineup, narrowly besting Colorado 13-10 on the return leg of the home-and-home that began in 1985. They then bludgeoned Utah 64-6. They ran over everyone else in the Big Ten by a combined score of 201-69, with the only close call in the bunch being a 24-22 away result against — oddly enough — Indiana. The smothering 3-4 defense, anchored by senior Darryl Lee (from Columbus, Ohio), linebacker studs Eric Kumerow, Chris Spielman and Michael Kee and ballhawks William White, Sonny Gordon and Greg Rogan pitched two shutouts in the process. This setup a showdown in Columbus, Ohio against Michigan; winner goes to Pasadena. Luck was not on Ohio State’s side, however. Jim Harbaugh, who infamously predicted victory, was able to rally Michigan to victory, putting the Wolvereenies in the Rose Bowl against… wait for it… John Cooper’s Arizona State Sun Devils. Cooper… wait for it… beat Michigan in that game. As a consolation prize, the Big Ten co-champions accepted a bid to travel to Dallas and carry the conference banner for the first time in the bowl’s illustrious history. They drew the defending Cotton Bowl champion Aggies, led by Jackie Sherrill.
Where Ohio State’s offense was not up to the task, it’s defense was. Ohio State’s defense, behind the aforementioned motley crew of Darryl Lee, Mike Showalter, Fred Ridder, Eric Kumerow, Chris Spielman, Derek Isaman, Michael Kee, William White, Greg Rogan, David Brown and Sonny Gordon stuffed A&M repeatedly through the first half. A&M could only muster 2 field goals. The first came on the Aggies’ opening drive of the game. The second came off a poor Tupa punt shortened the field considerably.
With Ohio State’s offense unable to reliably move an inch in the first half, and Ohio State’s defense unwilling to give an inch, it took some gifts from Texas A&M’s offense to blow the game wide open. Texas A&M threw five… count them: five second half interceptions to set an all-time Cotton Bowl record. It was record-breaking then; I’d be stunned to learn that any offense since then could be that bad to match it. The festivities started on A&M’s first drive of the second half, when Chris Spielman picked off a pass and returned it to the house to push the margin to 14-6. Spielman said after the game that it was his first interception return for a touchdown since his pee-wee days. The next drive, Sonny Gordon made an acrobatic mid-air strip of an A&M receiver that was called an interception. It was soooo not an interception (still great defense), but this was in the days before instant replay made games near insufferable. Ohio State relied on some spectacular routes and running by little-discussed flanker Nate Harris (from Akron) to set up a Vince Workman goalline run for six. Not long thereafter, A&M again turned the ball over for the third interception of the game. This time, Eric Kumerow was the benefactor. Ohio State sadly turned it right back, allowing for the ground game — behind Roger Vick1, who was the offensive MVP for the Aggies — to carry the Aggies into the end zone in the 4th quarter. The Aggies tried for two and failed, leaving the score at 21-12. The momentum from that touchdown failed to carry over into their next possession. That drive ended in another interception. It was Chris Spielman’s second and A&M’s fourth on the day.
Ohio State, unable to generate some offense, punted to the Aggies with under four minutes remaining. It was the Aggies’ last prayer and it fell on deaf ears. Senior Darryl Lee blew up the first down play, putting A&M behind down and distance. On 3rd and long, A&M broke the Cotton Bowl record with the fifth interception toss of the game. Michael Kee turned it in for six and a 28-12 margin, which was the final score.
Buckeye fans that know what happened next for Earle Bruce’s Buckeyes will probably get a few goosebumps from watching the final seconds. Cris Carter waives goodbye to the camera at the end, right as commentators discuss how potent the offense should be in 1987. In that offseason, Cris Carter secretly signed with an agent. When news broke of the incident, he was denied eligibility for his senior campaign. The Buckeye offense suffered mightily for it. They were unable to move the ball through the air in his absence, relying on its ground game to get what yards it could. Its offense became predictable; its staunch defense was overtaxed. It suffered a strange loss to Indiana early in the season and lost three straight to Michigan State, Wisconsin and Iowa. Earle Bruce, who signed a three year extension before the 1986 season, was controversially fired before the end of the season and the Buckeyes were without a postseason game.
For the bittersweetness of that year, and what followed for the Buckeyes that game, this 1987 Cotton Bowl is still definitely a keeper in Buckeye lore. You can watch it below.
Miscellany
- Everyone remembers Cris Carter from the season. Other wideouts Nate Harris (Akron, OH) and Jamie Holland (Winston-Salem, NC) had huge plays that were vital for the Buckeyes in this game. Considering my fascination with obscure topics and forgotten players, I demand to know more about these two. I think Jamie Holland was a walk-on, who (I know) received his first letter his senior year in 1986. I think he was brought in initially to run track. He also had a few years in the NFL, but that’s about all I know about him. If either party (Harris or Holland) is out there and wants to tell their Buckeye story, please… please share.
- Bring back the Southwest Conference! I miss that conference and all its corrupt glory. Bring them back. Bring back the pony express. Bring back the widespread institutional cheating. Bring it all back.
- Ohio State whipped out the scarlet sneakers for this game. Archie Griffin, who was interviewed on the sideline early in the game, said it was the first time he had seen it since apparently his Buckeyes wore them in his early years. I was surprised to hear that.
- Speaking of which: Pat O’Brien… yes: that Pat O’Brien… was the sideline commentator (the pre-Erin Andrews if you will) for this game.
- I believe this was the game where Earle Bruce became the fedora’d one. Previously, Earle Bruce had a standard ballcap, scarlet polo, gray pants look. Apparently suffering from criticism for the look, he donned the more dapper suit, tie and fedora in this game. Ara Parseghian suggested it was an homage to Tom Landry.
- Roger Vick was unstoppable this game. Why A&M insisted on throwing the ball when he was plowing through Ohio State’s front seven is something that only Sherrill would know. [↩]
I don’t know if freshman English classes work this way anymore, but when I matriculated to Miami University (Cradle, y’all) in the Fall of ’87, the way it worked was that you took College Comp Fall semester and Lit Comp in the Spring. It just so happened that the week we were assigned to write an “opinion” piece, if you will, was the same week that fucker Ed Jennings fired Earle Bruce. I decided to write mine on the injustice that had been done to ol’ Earle.
I focused a lot on the shadiness of it (Jennings presenting it to the Board of Trustees as a fait accompli), the discord the act had sown (AD Rick Bay resigning in protest), and went into great detail on the subject of Bruce having mostly reversed the decline of the Ohio State football program’s fortunes during the last years of Woody’s (blessings and peace be upon him) tenure. I even quoted Hayden Fry’s statement that if you had asked him (Fry) to name a “Big Ten Coach of the Decade”, he’d give the honor to Earle Bruce.
My instructor told me that in 10+ years of teaching freshman English, that was the best paper she’d ever read, and she used it as an exemplar in her teaching materials for the rest of her career (or so she told me some years later).
I’ve never been as angry at the University as I was when Earle was fired – not even when they told me in 2001 that the 3.5 I’d pulled in 2 and a half years @ OSU couldn’t get me into grad school there because the 1.7 I pulled over three years between ’87 and ’91 @ Miami meant that my cumulative GPA was <3. It speaks well of Bruce’s character that he’s willing to associate with the University the way he does now, even in an unofficial capacity, after the way they done him wrong.
Also: my memory of the Fall of ’87 is a little foggy (lots of malted barley and bong resin to slog through), Vico, but I’m pretty sure that Bruce sported the dark suit and fedora for THE GAME as well – as a sort of “eff you” to the haters that had been hating on his schlumpy appearance all those years.
yep, he donned the fedora and suit and tie for the 1987 game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Wu7hSGivs
I’m under the impression that the 1987 Cotton Bowl was his first go-around with that look, though.
Trivia: Derek Isaman managed to not get knocked out by Mike Tyson in a Golden Gloves bout. YouTube Tyson v. Berbick if you want to know how hard it was to avoid that fate in the late ’80′s.
Yeah, in the Golden Gloves semi-finals, right? I think you can count non-KO victims for Tyson in the 1980s on a single hand.
I loved Mike back then the way my Dad loved Cassius Clay back in the ’60′s. I still remember the day I read the SI with him on the cover (they called him “Kid Dynamite”) over breakfast before school.
m-tizzle represent
Kinda creepy to think that O’Brien spent most of the time on the sideline asking cheerleaders to suck his…
you get the pic
Ewwwwwww
P.s. was Tarvaris Jackson the a&m qb??? Horrible
Earle also wore the fedora for his sojourn to SEC country and the tie vs LSU. I remember him (equally cloudy memories) standing in the tunnel defiantly telling the officials that nope, we aren’t coming out first.
My parents (aforementioned Grandma Buckeye) were friends and confidants of the Jennings. The only thing I am free to say is that there were non-football reasons for the firing. I give credit to Mr. Jennings for taking the heat without making thiings worse for good ol 9-3 Earle.
People forget that the underclassment behind Spielmann and friends were an underwhelming group. Recruiting had deteriorated in the last years of Earle’s tenure. He had alienated the high school coaches in Ohio. The evil empire up north was starting to take waaaay too much talent out of this state. Remember, SPielmann wanted to play for them too, and it was only the threatened ass-kicking by his Dad Sonny that made him come to Ohio State.
It was pretty much time for Earle when he was fired. The controversy really blew up over Rick Bay’s grandstand play to the papers.
I hear you, T(nB). There’s enough time and distance from events now for a more sober view of the whole Bruce/Jennings/Bay fracas; I was mainly trying to convey what things were like at the time. I remember hearing stories afterward about Earle taking Schlichter to the track with him – which if true, certainly calls SOME aspects of Bruce’s character and judgment into question given everything that’s happened to Art (note that I’m NOT blaming Earle at all – Art’s problems were/are his own – just saying that enabling’s nothing to be proud of). And you’re absolutely right that talent-wise, his regime was beginning to stagger by 1987. If I could, I’d probably amend the sentence above to read “…after the way HE THINKS they done him wrong.”
That said, you can’t really help but admire ol’ Earle’s motivational skills – the atmosphere for THE GAME after the firing was much more electric than usual, and the players were pretty obviously amped up to send him off a winner.
On the subject of Jennings, I guess I’ll just note that the idea of REAL, “non-football” reasons he fired Bruce, and that he deserves credit for taking the heat is something I’ve heard before, but you said yourself that you got that information from Jennings’ “friends and confidants”. I know people who knew Jennings that don’t really have anything good to say about the guy – maybe because they weren’t his friends. Who’s right? Who cares? If there isn’t public information on the subject of the “real” reasons – and I’m not aware of any – all this barely rises above the level of pure gossip. But that’s all right – I think this episode is fated to remain a controversial and colorful piece of Buckeye lore for good, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Competing versions of past events like this are part of what makes College football so fun and compelling, right?
Texas is a weird place, but I think it might be unfair to consider them “southern.” They’re more like their own nation. It’s giving the true “southern” fans a lot of undue credit.
Also, don’t worry about posting bowl wins – they’re hard to come by these days, so let’s revel in the ones we have!
I was in Ann ARbor that day, ECdS, and the whole day had a surreal aspect to it. We in the stands, weren’t even aware of the headbands until afterwards. Earle is a classic old school coach. People forget that he got into hotwater at Colorado State for being too tough on his players. He was a great motivator.
To me, a head football coach needs to be judged on four things:
Recruiting
Teaching/Development of Talent
Motivation
game day/gameplan
Earle was an above average teacher. A tremendous motivator. An average game day coach and a substandard recruiter.
As far as Ed jennings is concerned, he made as many enemies as he did friends long before the firing. I always thought he was a classy guy. But he wasn’t afraid to make some tough decisions.
Couple few things:
1) Eww on the gushing over the Aggies. You should try them more than once a decade and see how much you like their fans.
2) The ’87 Cotton Bowl was indeed the first game in which Earle wore the fedora and dark suit. He wore it throughout the subsequent season.
3) Vico, re: Indiana– actually, neither of those results (1986 or 1987) against the Hoosiers should be considered all that surprising in the analysis of perfect hindsight. Bill Mallory was building Indiana into a competitive program. 1986 was a hint of what was to come; the Hoosiers were still too young to knock off Ohio State, Michigan, or Florida State, but they were largely competitive in those games. In 1987, they managed to beat OSU and Michigan, and their 1988 team was a one-point loss to Illinois and a John Kolesar TD vs Ohio State away from sharing the Big Ten title. We were all shocked at the time, whether it was 24-22, 31-10, or (WTF) 41-7, but the fact is Indiana was close to as talented as Ohio State from 1987-1990, generally better coached, and much, much hungrier.
Indiana was 2-1-1 against Ohio State from 1987 through 1990 before the program began to settle and then sag. That was the high point of Mallory’s efforts to build that program. Take away that brief window, and Ohio State is 44-0-1 against Indiana since losing to the Hoosiers in Woody’s first year. Wow.
4) The scarlet shoes– yes, the ’87 Cotton was the first time they’d been worn since Earle took over and, I believe, since Archie was on campus.
Disregard the following:
“their 1988 team was a one-point loss to Illinois and a John Kolesar TD vs Ohio State away from sharing the Big Ten title”
A Michigan loss would have made them 6-1-1 in conference and an IU win over Illinois would have made them 6-2, so I’m wrong there. They were good enough to win the Big Ten in 87 and 88, though; I stand by that.