Other games are important, too

Only once since 1956 has Sports Illustrated devoted an entire article. 12 pages in all, to a single football play. The one magazine finally chose, this September, was the incredible five-lateral finish to California's 25-20 squeaker over Stanford last year.

The Big Play of the Big Game has become legend on the West Coast. It was greeted with jubilation in Berkeley, which had gone into the game 13-point underdogs to the John Elway-led Cardinals. Prominently displayed on California chests this summer were T-shirts diagraming the entire miracle run. The loss brought shock and dismay to the Stanford fans, who immediately began slotting revenge.

Only five days after the game The Stanford Daily published a fake Daily Californian telling of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) decision to disallow the play and award the same to Stanford. Luckily for the Stanford pranksters, the Californian's press broke down the night before the parody's publication, so the parody succeeded and cheerleaders wept in public.

Such is the stuff of which rivalries are made. The play would have been in all the highlight films anyway, but since Stanford and Cal are traditional rivals it had special meaning for both schools.

Harvard's annual battle with Yale is only one of the hundreds of hard-fought rivalries in the country. Almost every school has a rivalry, and most of them are centered on football. Rivalries take three general forms. League or conference rivalries, like Harvard and Yale, are usually the last game of the year and can make or break a season. Regional or instate rivalries like Texas-Oklahoma or Miami-Florida can be among the most hotly contested. Most of the students have friends at the other schools, and the coaches annually vie for the best recruits in the area. Third are the historic grudges like Army-Navy or Notre Dame-Southern California, non-conference show-downs built on a tradition of excellent football. Any rivalry can turn a season around; a team with a losing record likes nothing better than to trip up frontrunner and it is that much sweeter if it's their rival.

For the players it's the most intense game of the season, it's the one the alumni care the most about and the one at which student attendance is close to mandatory. Rivalries have split families, saved or fired coaches and inspired the most creative pranks.

Statues at many schools get unwelcome coats of paint the week before the game, something John Harvard is all too familiar with. One of the fiercest small college rivalries in the country is between Wabash and De Pauw Colleges in Indiana. Each year the two schools vie for the Monon Bell--donated to the two schools by the Monon Railroad Co. in 1932--the winner holding the bell until the next game. Not surprisingly, many times students from the losing school have tried to steal the bell. The last successful attempt came in the late '60s when a Wabash student disguised himself as a Mexican reporter and secured an interview with De Pauw's president. He apparently went to great lengths, even obtaining press credentials from a Mexican newspaper. During the interview the president made the mistake of revealing the bell's hiding place. It was gone the next day.

Such heists are common of great rivalries. West Point cadets have frequently managed to steal Navy's mascot goat before the Army-Navy game. Once they even went so far as to take out an ad in The New York Times taunting the Midshipmen. "Hey Navy! Do your know where you 'kid' is today?...The Corps does."

As well as pranks and plots for revenge, rivalries have produced some of the most exciting college football. In 1972 sophomore Anthony Davis burst onto the national scene by scoring six touchdowns to lead the University of Southern California over Notre Dame, 45-23. Two years later the Trojans trailed 24-0 at halftime but Davis ran the second half kickoff back for a touchdown and lead a USC rally to a 55-25 drubbing.

Of course Fighting Irish fans prefer to remember the intervening year when Notre Dame broke USC's 23-game winning streak enroute to the National Championship. Eight times since 1926, the National Championship has been decided in a USC-Notre Dame game. To win this year's game. 27-6. Notre-Dame pulled a psychological trick out of the bag. The school colors are gold and blue, but the Irish showed up on the field dressed in green jerseys for only the third time in 20 years. The last time they wore green was the last time they beat USC, in 1977, when the San Francisco 49ers current quarterback, Joe Montana, came off the bench in the second quarter and led the team to a 49-19 win and the national championship.

One of the finest individual performances ever by a college football player was in a traditional rivalry in 1940. Michigan's Tom Harmon, who won the Heisman Trophy that year, led the Wolverines to a 40-0 win over Ohio State. In the game he rushed for 138 yards, passed for 151, had a 75-yard punt return for one of his three touchdowns, returned two kickoffs, had two interceptions totalling 60 yds., kicked four PATs and had three punts averaging 50 yds.

The Michigan-Ohio State rivalry is one of the great conference rivalries. This year is only the second time since 1968 that the game will not decide the Big Ten championship and who goes to the Rose Bowl. The rivalry is so intense "The two schools could play tiddlywinks at 30 paces and it would still draw a crowd," says one long-time Ohio State fan.

Some of the most zealous Buckeye fans are the band members who cap their halftime show each week. While playing the school's fight song, they march out the word Ohio. The greatest honor a band member can receive is to dot the "I" in "Ohio" during the Michigan game. "Dotting the "I" has been a goal of mine for 12 years and to get to do it at the Michigan game is just incredible," says one of this year's co-"I"-dotters senior sousaphone player Brad McDavid.

Probably the ones who care the most about football rivalries, maybe even more than the players, are the alumni Every year. Auburn University's War Eagles and the Alabama Crimson Tide play for that state's championship Lots of people take football seriously, but in Dixie it is close to religion. The late Coach Bear Bryant once endorsed the man running against former Alabama Governor Bob James because he played halfback for Auburn in the '50s In Alabama, everybody has an opinion and the rivalry has been known to divide families.

"My daddy took me to see Auburn play Alabama in 1955. I didn't know which team was which but I stood up everytime my daddy did and finally figured out that Auburn was the team in the blue. The next year Auburn won the national championship and I've been an Auburn fan ever since," says David Housel, Auburn class of '69.

He says he knows it isn't really true but "for one brief moment on Saturday afternoon the whole world depends on whether or not Auburn wins or loses."

The Big Play of the Big Game has become legend on the West Coast. It was greeted with jubilation in Berkeley, which had gone into the game 13-point underdogs to the John Elway-led Cardinals. Prominently displayed on California chests this summer were T-shirts diagraming the entire miracle run. The loss brought shock and dismay to the Stanford fans, who immediately began slotting revenge.

Only five days after the game The Stanford Daily published a fake Daily Californian telling of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) decision to disallow the play and award the same to Stanford. Luckily for the Stanford pranksters, the Californian's press broke down the night before the parody's publication, so the parody succeeded and cheerleaders wept in public.

Such is the stuff of which rivalries are made. The play would have been in all the highlight films anyway, but since Stanford and Cal are traditional rivals it had special meaning for both schools.

Harvard's annual battle with Yale is only one of the hundreds of hard-fought rivalries in the country. Almost every school has a rivalry, and most of them are centered on football. Rivalries take three general forms. League or conference rivalries, like Harvard and Yale, are usually the last game of the year and can make or break a season. Regional or instate rivalries like Texas-Oklahoma or Miami-Florida can be among the most hotly contested. Most of the students have friends at the other schools, and the coaches annually vie for the best recruits in the area. Third are the historic grudges like Army-Navy or Notre Dame-Southern California, non-conference show-downs built on a tradition of excellent football. Any rivalry can turn a season around; a team with a losing record likes nothing better than to trip up frontrunner and it is that much sweeter if it's their rival.

For the players it's the most intense game of the season, it's the one the alumni care the most about and the one at which student attendance is close to mandatory. Rivalries have split families, saved or fired coaches and inspired the most creative pranks.

Statues at many schools get unwelcome coats of paint the week before the game, something John Harvard is all too familiar with. One of the fiercest small college rivalries in the country is between Wabash and De Pauw Colleges in Indiana. Each year the two schools vie for the Monon Bell--donated to the two schools by the Monon Railroad Co. in 1932--the winner holding the bell until the next game. Not surprisingly, many times students from the losing school have tried to steal the bell. The last successful attempt came in the late '60s when a Wabash student disguised himself as a Mexican reporter and secured an interview with De Pauw's president. He apparently went to great lengths, even obtaining press credentials from a Mexican newspaper. During the interview the president made the mistake of revealing the bell's hiding place. It was gone the next day.

Such heists are common of great rivalries. West Point cadets have frequently managed to steal Navy's mascot goat before the Army-Navy game. Once they even went so far as to take out an ad in The New York Times taunting the Midshipmen. "Hey Navy! Do your know where you 'kid' is today?...The Corps does."

As well as pranks and plots for revenge, rivalries have produced some of the most exciting college football. In 1972 sophomore Anthony Davis burst onto the national scene by scoring six touchdowns to lead the University of Southern California over Notre Dame, 45-23. Two years later the Trojans trailed 24-0 at halftime but Davis ran the second half kickoff back for a touchdown and lead a USC rally to a 55-25 drubbing.

Of course Fighting Irish fans prefer to remember the intervening year when Notre Dame broke USC's 23-game winning streak enroute to the National Championship. Eight times since 1926, the National Championship has been decided in a USC-Notre Dame game. To win this year's game. 27-6. Notre-Dame pulled a psychological trick out of the bag. The school colors are gold and blue, but the Irish showed up on the field dressed in green jerseys for only the third time in 20 years. The last time they wore green was the last time they beat USC, in 1977, when the San Francisco 49ers current quarterback, Joe Montana, came off the bench in the second quarter and led the team to a 49-19 win and the national championship.

One of the finest individual performances ever by a college football player was in a traditional rivalry in 1940. Michigan's Tom Harmon, who won the Heisman Trophy that year, led the Wolverines to a 40-0 win over Ohio State. In the game he rushed for 138 yards, passed for 151, had a 75-yard punt return for one of his three touchdowns, returned two kickoffs, had two interceptions totalling 60 yds., kicked four PATs and had three punts averaging 50 yds.

The Michigan-Ohio State rivalry is one of the great conference rivalries. This year is only the second time since 1968 that the game will not decide the Big Ten championship and who goes to the Rose Bowl. The rivalry is so intense "The two schools could play tiddlywinks at 30 paces and it would still draw a crowd," says one long-time Ohio State fan.

Some of the most zealous Buckeye fans are the band members who cap their halftime show each week. While playing the school's fight song, they march out the word Ohio. The greatest honor a band member can receive is to dot the "I" in "Ohio" during the Michigan game. "Dotting the "I" has been a goal of mine for 12 years and to get to do it at the Michigan game is just incredible," says one of this year's co-"I"-dotters senior sousaphone player Brad McDavid.

Probably the ones who care the most about football rivalries, maybe even more than the players, are the alumni Every year. Auburn University's War Eagles and the Alabama Crimson Tide play for that state's championship Lots of people take football seriously, but in Dixie it is close to religion. The late Coach Bear Bryant once endorsed the man running against former Alabama Governor Bob James because he played halfback for Auburn in the '50s In Alabama, everybody has an opinion and the rivalry has been known to divide families.

"My daddy took me to see Auburn play Alabama in 1955. I didn't know which team was which but I stood up everytime my daddy did and finally figured out that Auburn was the team in the blue. The next year Auburn won the national championship and I've been an Auburn fan ever since," says David Housel, Auburn class of '69.

He says he knows it isn't really true but "for one brief moment on Saturday afternoon the whole world depends on whether or not Auburn wins or loses."