Saturday, May 2, 2015.
For months, it’s been a day filled with promise, a day overflowing with possibility for all kinds of sports fans. May 2 — this Saturday — is as large a crossover sports day as we’ve seen in some time.
Yes, the Kentucky Derby will always coexist with the NBA and NHL playoffs. That seasonal convergence marks an annual occurrence. However, the recent move of the NFL Draft to May, combined with the announcement of the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, catapults May 2 into an entirely different league as far as sports days are concerned.
This Saturday is not just a packed sports day the way a May Saturday has always been crammed with tasty offerings; it’s beyond the usual fare for one thing, but the added events are top-of-the-line showcases. The NFL draft features the nation’s most popular professional sports league. The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is incredibly rare in modern boxing, the kind of super-event blockbuster fight fans rarely get to see.
It’s true that the NBA playoffs (which are being covered at Bloguin partner site Crossover Chronicles) have not lit a spark in a largely non-competitive first round. However, we could very well have a Game 7 of the series between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers. That would add to the aura surrounding May 2.
It’s also true that on Saturday, the NHL playoffs will be in the early stages of their second-round series, meaning that we won’t get the Game 6 or Game 7 situations that make playoff hockey crackle to an extra extent. In this respect, Saturday will pack less of a punch than it otherwise might have. Yet, there are still enough championship challenges on May 2, 2015 — combined with dozens of doses of draft drama — to make it the kind of day we’ll be talking about well after it’s over.
It’s not a certainty that we’ll remember May 2, 2015 for a long time, but the ingredients for lifelong memories are there.
This is why another sports Saturday — October 15, 2005 — is so special for those who love college football so much.
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The arrival of May 2, 2015 provides a moment and a context in which to look back 10 years, to the best college football Saturday in a still-young 21st century.
Wisconsin blocked a punt to stun Minnesota in the Metrodome.
Ohio State blocked a field goal to swing a game against Michigan State and provide yet another indelible John L. Smith moment of vivid on-camera frustration.
Michigan — granted an extra second by a friendly home-clock operator (in a reversal of fortune relative to a 2001 loss at Michigan State) — defeated Penn State on the last play of the game, capping a fourth quarter in which 39 total points were scored.
No. 4 Florida State — in an echo of 1995 — was ambushed by Virginia in Charlottesville.
UCLA — unbeaten at the time — outscored Washington State 17-0 in the fourth quarter to take the Cougars into overtime and eventually beat them.
Les Miles and LSU defeated Urban Meyer’s first Florida team in a tense nighttime thriller at Tiger Stadium, the game made famous by Jacob Hester’s fourth-down heroics.
Those six games and all the storylines they generated were considerably compelling… and yet they weren’t part of the two best games of October 15, 2005.
In Morgantown, West Virginia, a coach — Rich Rodriguez — watched his career change forever when Adam Bednarik went down, and a skinny backup named Pat White was inserted into the Mountaineers’ lineup. UCLA’s 17-0 fourth quarter against Washington State was entertaining, but West Virginia’s 17-0 fourth quarter against Bobby Petrino and Louisville changed the course of the West Virginia program and the Big East.
It was West Virginia which would use a wild 46-44 triple-overtime win to gain a spot in the Sugar Bowl, defeat Georgia, and bolster the Big East’s sagging reputation. It was on October 15, 2005, that Rodriguez began to ascend the coaching ranks, and it was only because of a lucky accident that Pat White enabled his coach to acquire the prominence he enjoys today. The resonance of West Virginia-Louisville can still be felt in the present moment, 10 years later. That’s part of why October 15, 2005, can legitimately claim to be the best day of college football the current century has ever witnessed.
The large and sprawling nature of WVU-Louisville — as a present-tense drama, but also as a catalyst for future events and a shaper of men’s reputations — only served to underscore why that day’s crown jewel stands as one of the best college football games ever played.
Here are select YouTube cuts from USC 34, Notre Dame 31, one of the seminally superb showcases in the life of a 146-year-old sport:
USC-Notre Dame. The rivalry’s stature was never greater than it was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when John McKay and Ara Parseghian matched wits in storied contests that electrified the nation. When these teams met in 2005, they were hoping to rekindle the magic that briefly resurfaced when Lou Holtz came to South Bend and confronted Larry Smith in the late 1980s.
The Trojans and Irish surpassed everyone’s wildest imaginations on that October evening 10 years ago.
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Pete Carroll and Charlie Weis traded fourth-down gambles in their own territory. Two coaching staffs pursued victory with an abandon that should make present-day coaches take notice. Notre Dame played at a level worthy of a national champion, carrying its underdog status as well as one could possibly expect. USC, perched on the knife-edge of failure, uncorked Fourth And Nine — the Matt Leinart pass to Dwayne Jarrett — followed by the Bush Push, an illegal but hardly-ever-called maneuver, to stomach-punch the Irish in the final seconds.
It was messy and controversial — which is entirely in step with college football’s entire history — but it was also remarkably great football played under suffocating pressure.
One wonders how Charlie Weis’s career arc and reputation might have been reshaped with a victory in this game, and what’s more is that the Texas-USC Rose Bowl might never have happened. History was considerably altered in this game, such that Vince Young might have won the Heisman Trophy as well. In USC-Notre Dame 2005, college football met a game — and a moment — for the ages.
That it shared the same Saturday as so many other remarkable games and plot twists puts October 15, 2005, in a league of its own:
We’ll see if Saturday, May 2, 2015 can stand as tall… much as Mayweather and Pacquiao hope to be the last men standing that night.
