Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by Bacon, John U.

  O’Brien addressed the entire team one last time. “Thirty minutes of your best fucking football! We’ve figured out a few things on offense. Defense, keep holding ’em. And we got this! Thirty of your best fucking football. Right now!”

  This was a conductor who had his orchestra in the palm of his hand. There was no translation needed between them. They had always been in this together, but by their last half as a team, you could barely feel a line between them.

  They knew their entire twelve-month odyssey was going to end in half an hour, one way or the other.

  • • •

  The Lions started the second half on their own 17-yard line—about the same spot they started the second half against Ohio State, when they promptly gave up a pick-6, and the game.

  This time, McGloin calmly hit passes of 14, 6, and 37 yards, in between six runs by the workhorse Zwinak for a hard-fought 20 yards, leaving the Lions with third and goal from Wisconsin’s 6-yard line. McGloin’s pass to Moseby-Felder fell incomplete, setting up a fourth and goal from the 6.

  A couple months earlier, after Sam Ficken had gone 1 for 5 on field goals and 1 for 2 on extra points against Virginia, O’Brien would have been sorely tempted to go for it. But since the Lions’ fifth game against Illinois, Ficken had quietly hit nine of his next ten field goals, including his last seven straight.

  He had improved so much, Ted Roof had been sufficiently impressed to tell Jim Bernhardt before the game, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fitting if Sam Ficken got a chance and won the game for us, today?” It says enough about Ficken’s turnaround that no one thought Roof was joking.

  O’Brien sent Ficken out, without fear, and Ficken nailed it: 14–10. After Hill’s defense delivered two more three-and-outs, Ficken kicked another field goal, this one from 32 yards, with confidence: 14–13. It extended his streak to nine straight field goals.

  After Penn State’s defense sent Wisconsin’s offense back with yet another three-and-out, McGloin went for the kill, passing to Allen Robinson—who was having a breakout season—for 19 yards, then 15, before hitting true freshman Jesse James, who was wide-open on the left side. McGloin was rewarded with the pleasure of watching James run all the way down to the 3-yard line. From there, probably everyone in the building knew Zwinak was getting the ball, including the Badgers, but no one could stop him.

  Penn State 19, Wisconsin 14, with 13-plus minutes left.

  What to do? Kick the extra point, or go for the 2-point conversion and the 7-point lead?

  “Bill made the decision to send out the offense for the two-point conversion,” Jim Bernhardt recalled. “And he made it decisively. But then he seemed to play devil’s advocate, just to see if he’d made the right call. He said, ‘It’s just the beginning of the fourth quarter.’

  “I said, through the headset, ‘Hey, this isn’t a basketball game. You might not get another chance at this.’ ”

  O’Brien stuck to his guns. Once again, there probably wasn’t a great deal of mystery about who would get the ball—and once again, it didn’t matter. Zach Zwinak pounded up the middle for the 2-point conversion.

  Penn State, 21–14, with 13:19 remaining.

  After Wisconsin’s two quick touchdowns, everyone could see Penn State’s defense had settled down and kept them out of the end zone. But probably few realized they had forced Wisconsin to punt the ball eight straight times, five of them after three-and-outs. And the key, by all accounts, was Jordan Hill.

  Like just about everyone else on the Lions, Hill had a few motives for giving everything he had in those final minutes. In his case, that included his father, Larry, who had grilled him after every high school game so intensely, Jordan admitted with a laugh, that sometimes he stayed at his cousins’ house Friday nights just to avoid it. On his recruiting visit to State College, right when they were getting out of the car in the Lasch Football Building parking lot, Larry collapsed in Jordan’s arms, suffering a stroke. He’d spent the last three years in a wheelchair, which is where he was sitting in the front row of seats right behind Penn State’s bench. After everything these players had been through, good and bad, it was hard to imagine anyone needing additional motivation not to “bring anything back,” in Coach Roof’s words, but Hill had it.

  If the Illinois game was Mauti’s, the Wisconsin game was Hill’s.

  “That was his Michael Jordan ‘flu game,’ ” Zordich told me. “He played, man. He played.”

  That he did, notching 12 tackles and 3 tackles for a loss, including 2 sacks.

  “For a D-lineman, those are good numbers for a season,” Mike Farrell said. “Jordan did that in a game. He was possessed.”

  “I just didn’t want to lose,” Hill told me a few days later. “I just didn’t want to lose. That’s all it came down to. The whole time, I had last year’s Wisconsin game in my head. And I’m just not going out like that. We came too far.”

  On the Badgers’ ninth possession after its two touchdowns, they whittled their way down to Penn State’s 20-yard line, poised, it seemed, to tie the game. But when Phillips fired the ball near the end zone, Jacob Fagnano, a walk-on from State College, stepped up to intercept the ball and return it to the 19.

  With exactly five minutes left, Wisconsin still had all three time-outs, but Penn State could probably kill the clock—and secure the win—with a couple first downs. Three downs later, however, the Lions had to punt, leaving Wisconsin with an ample 3:51 to cover 66 yards.

  Despite another Jordan Hill sack, the Badgers conducted their best drive of the day, chipping away with simple passes by Phillips and solid runs by Ball, to get down to Penn State’s 2-yard line, on third down, with less than a minute left.

  With all the surprise of a Zach Zwinak run up the middle, Phillips gave the ball to Montee Ball. Hill knew the Badgers would double-team him, but he had a plan.

  “I watched a ton of film on them, and you don’t have to watch too much to know what they’re going to do on the goal line,” he explained. “All the times they played teams who used four-three defenses, like ours, only one time they didn’t run to the left. I thought, ‘All right, they’re not gonna change because it’s Penn State. That’s what they’re gonna do.’

  “I was supposed to split the guard and center—but I knew they’d come after me, so instead of doing that, I faked to that gap and cut to the left of the center, and I got him.” Ball, that is—for a loss of 2 yards, forcing the Badgers to use their third and final time-out, with 23 seconds left, to set up their fourth-and-goal play from the 4-yard line.

  In a do-or-die situation, Phillips dropped back and fired quickly to Jeff Duckworth, right on the goal line—as far from Hill as they could get. It was enough for the touchdown. Wisconsin didn’t feel like testing their luck twice, opting for the extra point to tie the game 21–21, with 18 seconds left.

  • • •

  Just a few days earlier, McGloin had told quarterback coach Charlie Fisher that he had never played in an overtime game. Well, this was his chance.

  Penn State went first. In three plays, they could only gain 6 yards on a Zwinak run. O’Brien did not hesitate to send out Ficken for the 37-yard attempt. Ficken’s kick curved left, but slipped just inside the upright for 3 points and his tenth straight field goal.

  Penn State, 24–21.

  Now, which Penn State defense would show up—the one that had let the Badgers slice through on their first two possessions, or the one that stymied Wisconsin for nine straight scoreless possessions?

  On first down, Montee Ball could only gain one yard before Hill stuffed him.

  On second down, Penn State’s Sean Stanley got into the backfield, sacked Phillips, and forced a fumble. The ball spun around on the grass for a few seconds, with a couple Lions missing chances to grab it, before Wisconsin recovered it.

  On third down and 9, Phillips dropped back, intending to throw the ball to Jordan Fredrick on the left side—but whipped it right into the belly of Penn State’s Glenn Carson.

  �
�I thought it was over!” Hill said. “I started running off the field!” But Carson was so surprised by the misdirected pass, he failed to drop his arms down fast enough to secure the ball, which bounced off his gut to the ground. A stadium full of fans held their heads.

  Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema had little choice but to attempt a 44-yard field goal, while Carson stewed on the sidelines, beside himself.

  “Glenn was a mess,” Mauti said, recalling seeing the conscientious Carson on the sideline, distraught. Mauti yelled to the coaches, “Get Jesse James in there!” Craig Fitzgerald and John Butler did a 40-yard sprint, grabbed James, and threw him into Carson’s spot on the field-goal defense unit.

  “If we had to go into double overtime,” Mauti said, “Glenn was done.”

  The snap was good, the hold was perfect. Kyle French stepped in to kick it.

  • • •

  Days later, Urschel recalled the moment in slow motion.

  He was next to Mike Farrell on the sideline, “sitting with the O-line group, hand in hand, eyes closed. We couldn’t even watch the kick. I don’t know if I was praying,” the mathematician said, “but I was doing something of the sort.”

  The Lions’ defenders charged and jumped. DaQuan Jones’s hand, and Jesse James’s elbow, looked to be in perfect position to make the block. If the kick were straight, they probably would have knocked it down. But it twisted left, left, left—and sailed wide of the pipe.

  “Then we heard the crowd,” Urschel said, “and we knew.”

  • • •

  “They all came hard, and Jesse just barely missed it!” Coach Johnson recalled. “Then they all looked at the goalposts—and they all had eleven separate reactions. Scattered! Amazing.”

  While his teammates jumped up and down, spun in circles, and hugged, Jordan Hill knew exactly where he was going.

  “I took my helmet off and threw it. I was out there like a running back dodging people, to run up on the stands to see my father. I jumped on our little speaker box and jumped over the rail.”

  He found his father, in his wheelchair. Jordan hugged him and thanked him for being there for him. “That was really it, man. My best moment at Penn State.

  “Yeah,” Jordan said, nodding with the deepest of smiles. “Yeah.”

  • • •

  After minutes of mayhem, the team finally gathered in front of the student section, arms on shoulders, to sing the alma mater.

  “The alma mater’s been there for a long time,” Zordich told me later.

  “But it sounds like it’s written for us,” Hill said, referring to the now famous line “May no act of ours bring shame.”

  “It gives me goose bumps when we get to that part,” Mauti said. “At the end of the day it wasn’t us who did the shaming, but we’re there to say, ‘We’re doing the good things. We’re keeping our word.’ ”

  But the Lions had won more than a football game, gained more than an 8-4 overall record, and accomplished more than a 6-2 conference mark, which was good enough for second place in their division, right behind Ohio State and one game ahead of Wisconsin, which would go on to the Big Ten title game.

  The players had achieved their primary goal, stated in front of the ESPN cameras on the practice field in July, of simply sticking together and not giving up, no matter what happened.

  In the process, they accomplished far more. They had saved the program and helped restore their university.

  • • •

  The victory bell rang out for minutes, with each player giving it a pull before running up the tunnel to the locker room. The scene inside was as wild as a party can get without music, women, or alcohol. The players and coaches and managers jumped around, hugging, high-fiving, hooting and hollering.

  If you wanted to see what twelve months of pent-up frustration, anger, effort, determination, and desire look like when fulfillment of a distant dream finally pops the cork, this would be it.

  After a few minutes of mayhem, John Butler and Craig Fitzgerald got the players to form a mosh pit in the center of the room and coaxed Bill O’Brien to run into the middle of it.

  “Every time he looks at you, he’s intense,” Zordich said of O’Brien.

  “Even after a touchdown,” Hill added, “he throws his arms up, but he’s already looking at the clock, thinking about the next play.”

  Not this time—for once.

  He ran into the middle of the mosh pit, twisting on his fall to face the ceiling.

  “He had both of his arms up,” Mauti recalled, “and his eyes were closed, and he was smiling. That was the first time I ever saw him relaxed! A completely euphoric smile, nothing else on his mind. Almost like he went weak in the knees, letting everyone just hold him up.

  “That’s easily my best memory.”

  “That game was basically our whole story,” Hill said. “If we had to pick one game to represent everything we’ve been through? Easy. Wisconsin. They punched us in the face, they did what they wanted—and then we fought back.”

  “When we come back twenty years from now,” McGloin said, “this is the game we’ll be talking about.”

  • • •

  The late November night was pitch dark and getting cold, but the happy tailgaters showed no signs of leaving.

  The coaches and their families went to O’Brien’s house for a celebration that was more relief than revelry, while the seniors had rented out the Gingerbread Man in town for an invitation-only party. Players and parents, brothers and sisters, friends and girlfriends—just about everyone they cared about was in that room.

  Coach Larry Johnson was not there, which didn’t surprise anyone. He is not a big drinker, and it’s not how he wanted to end the night. But he might have stayed up longer than any of them.

  He got to bed early. But, he said, “I couldn’t sleep all night. Tossing and turning. Thinking of this play and that. Thinking about the last field goal.

  “I tried to envision every kid’s face after the game—their reaction, their smiles. I wanted to see them all before I went to sleep. I thought of Jordan climbing up to his father in his wheelchair in the stands.

  “When I was leaving the locker room, Zordich grabbed me. ‘Coach Johnson, I just want you to know, you were always there. You mean so much to me.’

  “And I walked out with tears in my eyes.

  “For me, the 2012 season was the best season I’ve ever had as a coach, at any level. Maybe the highlight of my life, outside the birth of my kids.

  “I’ve had a few sleepless nights this year. I carry things with me. I take everything personal. I take the weight of the world on my shoulders.

  “But that was the best sleepless night I ever had.”

  EPILOGUE: “HOW MUCH MONEY DO THEY NEED?”

  By the end of the 2012 season, Ohio State fans got exactly what they wanted: the enmity of everyone else in the Big Ten. And they savored it.

  Urban Meyer knew his undefeated inaugural season would only crank up expectations for his second year as head coach. Buckeye fans would want not just another perfect record—including a victory over That Team Up North—but their thirty-fifth Big Ten title, and a national crown to go with it.

  When Meyer had returned home to Ohio, that was exactly the problem he had wanted.

  When he stood up to give his “team toast” the morning of their game against Michigan State, he promised his players they would not be forgotten.

  They’d kept their end of the deal by letting the coaches coach them, and going undefeated. He kept his by hoisting a huge scarlet banner in their field house—2012 12-0—right alongside the banners commemorating Ohio State’s national titles. He also ordered championship rings, with Ohio State’s trademark big block O at the center replaced with 12-0. On one side, the engraving said LEADERS [DIVISION] CHAMPIONS; on the other, O.S.U. 26, T.U.N. 21—with TUN standing for “Team Up North.”

  Naturally, their website, programs, and other official publications were all singing the same song, to
o—one Michigan fans hoped not to hear again.

  • • •

  Two weeks after Michigan’s loss to Ohio State, the Michigan athletic department sent letters to season-ticket holders, announcing that their “Personal Seat Donation” levels were being “adjusted”—upward, of course.

  Michigan’s record of 8-4 had not been as good as Northwestern’s 9-3. But it was close enough to allow the sponsors of Tampa’s Outback Bowl to pick the Wolverines—and their 2.9 million followers—over Northwestern’s much smaller fan base.

  Michigan’s reward was facing an SEC powerhouse, the tenth-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks. But even that appealing matchup couldn’t sell out Tampa’s 65,857-seat Raymond James Stadium. The official attendance of 54,527 seemed substantially higher than the actual attendance, which left balconies and end zones barren.

  As the designated home team, the Wolverines were expected to wear their classic dark-blue home uniforms. Instead, they wore their eighth different look in the past two seasons: snow-white jerseys with yellow numbers, which were impossible to read, in person or on TV. Michigan fought hard, but lost to South Carolina in the final seconds.

  Michigan’s junior left tackle, Taylor Lewan, was named the Big Ten’s offensive lineman of the year and a first-team all-American. He was a likely first-round NFL draft pick, which would be worth many millions of dollars to the young man.

  When Lewan called a press conference in January, everyone expected him to announce he would forgo his senior year for an NFL contract. Instead, he said he had decided to stick with his teammates and graduate on time. For this, the experts said he was stupid or crazy, or both. He did not seem to care.

  Over the winter, Brady Hoke appeared at a clinic for high school coaches in Kalamazoo. He spoke with admirable candor:

  “We had a shitty season, to be honest with you. Proud of the kids, how they kept moving forward, but it wasn’t the year Michigan deserves.”

  Hoke took a big step toward better years with his second top-ten recruiting class, and was shooting for the nation’s number-one class for 2014.