Taking the Purple to Pasadena

 

By 1995, Northwestern University’s football team had not had a winning season since 1971 (but had had four winless seasons since then), had not been to the Rose Bowl since 1949, and had not won the Big Ten championship since 1936. So which goals did coach Gary Barnett give his players on the first day of practice? 1) To have a winning season, 2) To go to the Rose Bowl, and 3) To win the Big Ten championship.

After their 7-4 campaign in 1971, the Wildcats had won a total of 38 games over the next 20 years. In the meantime they’d lost 179 games, for a winning percentage of .175. They’d lost 71 of 75 between 1975 and 1982, including 34 in a row. They’d gone five years without a single win in the Big Ten. Attendance had gotten so bad that Northwestern sold a home game to Michigan in 1980 and to Ohio State in 1990.

A parade of coaches—Alex Agase, John Pont, Rick Venturi, Dennis Green, Francis Peay—had come and gone, but the losing had continued unabated. Northwestern’s recruiting woes were usually blamed on its rigorous admission standards; it was suggested that the university simply couldn’t find enough top-flight football players who also excelled in the classroom. Northwestern students reflected this attitude with the chant they would direct at opponents in the waning minutes of the Wildcats’ frequent defeats: “That’s all right, that’s okay; you’re gonna work for us one day!” 

Many observers, including some influential alumni, believed that the time had come for Northwestern to drop out of the Big Ten (the University of Chicago had done just that when it de-emphasized athletics in the 1930s). 

Barnett would have none of it. “We’ll take the purple to Pasadena,” he said when he was hired in 1992—referring, of course, to the site of the Rose Bowl, which in those days was contested between the Big Ten and Pac Ten champions.

Despite his bravado, Barnett’s early years at Northwestern did not indicate a change in the right direction. His first game was a resounding 42-7 loss to Notre Dame. After a 56-14 drubbing by Iowa, Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry told Barnett, “I hope we didn’t hurt any of your boys.”  

The Wildcats finished the year at 3-8. They slipped to 2-9 in 1993, failing to win a conference game. In 1994, Northwestern won three and tied one of its first seven games. But, with visions of a bowl bid dancing in their heads, the Wildcats were blown out in each of the last four games, and finished 3-7-1 (2-6 in the Big Ten).

 

GARY BARNETT

There was nowhere to go but up. The 1995 Wildcats opened the season on September 2 at Notre Dame. The Irish had bombed the Wildcats in each of Barnett’s first three years, by a combined score of 111-34. As Rick Telander wrote, the Irish were “supposed to be on their way to a national title, the Wildcats to grad school.” Most of the 59,075 Irish faithful who came out to enjoy the perfect sun-kissed afternoon were only mildly perturbed when the first half ended with Northwestern leading 10-9; they were confident that the upstarts would shortly be put in their place. Those fans who’d wagered on the Irish were somewhat more concerned, having laid 28 points to the Wildcats. 

Clinging to a precarious 17-15 lead with four minutes left in the game, the Wildcats stopped Notre Dame on a fourth down near midfield. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” Irish coach Lou Holtz said later. “We probably should have punted.” The Wildcats took over with 4:02 remaining, and the Irish never got their hands on the ball again. Tailback Darnell Autry saw to that; he carried the ball repeatedly as the minutes dwindled down, and his 26-yard burst in the closing seconds ensured Northwestern’s victory. He finished the day with 33 rushes for 160 yards.

To describe the outcome as stunning would be an understatement. The Sun-Times called it “the upset of the century.” It was the Wildcats’ first triumph over Notre Dame since 1962 and their first season-opening win since 1975. Kicker Sam Valenzisi tore up a chunk of sod for a souvenir. For linebacker and future head coach Pat Fitzgerald, among others, the victory was especially sweet. He had always wanted to play for Notre Dame, but the talent-laden Irish didn’t want him. “The reason I came to Northwestern,” said Fitzgerald, “was to beat Notre Dame.”

 

The Wildcats had a layoff of 13 days between their historic win in South Bend and their home opener against Miami of Ohio. During this interval they appeared in the national rankings for the first time in a quarter century, eking out the 25th and final spot in the Associated Press poll.  

Fans in Evanston were withholding judgment, and only 26,352 turned out for the Miami game on a golden, 75-degree day. The Wildcats exploded for three touchdowns in the first 20 minutes as two long passes from Steve Schnur to D’Wayne Bates sandwiched a shorter strike to Autry.

By the end of the third quarter, Northwestern had a seemingly safe 28-7 lead. Then the roof caved in. Miami scored three touchdowns in less than nine minutes, drawing to within one point with 2:22 remaining. A two-point conversion that would have put Miami ahead was no good. But in the final minute, an errant snap on an attempted punt gave Miami the ball on Northwestern’s one-yard line. A chip-shot field goal as time expired gave Miami a 30-28 win.

“This is about as low as it gets,” said Barnett. 

 

The momentum generated by the Notre Dame upset was gone after the Miami game, but the Wildcats resolved to resurrect it somehow. The extent to which they succeeded surprised even themselves.  

In back-to-back games at Dyche Stadium, Autry ran wild as the Wildcats blistered Air Force (30-6), then Indiana (31-7). The Wildcats popped back into the No. 25 spot in the AP poll. Then it was on to Michigan, where they hadn’t won since 1959. The Wolverines were 5-0 and ranked seventh in the nation. The night before the game, Barnett denied that his players would be intimidated by the maize-and-blue mystique or by the 104,000 fans in Michigan Stadium. “We plan on winning this football game,” he said.

It was an old-school contest from the start, with both teams producing most of their offense on the ground. Michigan tailback Tim Biakabutuka rushed for 222 yards, but his apparent touchdown scamper late in the third quarter was called back for holding. 

 The Wildcats trailed 13-9 early in the fourth quarter when Eric Collier’s interception set them up at Michigan’s 31-yard line. Four plays and an extra point later, Northwestern led 16-13. Valenzisi later added a field goal—his fourth of the day—to make the final score 19-13 in favor of the Wildcats. 

 

DARNELL AUTRY

Now ranked 14th in the nation, Northwestern journeyed to Minnesota on October 14. Autry rushed for 169 yards and three touchdowns, including one on a 73-yard jaunt that put the game away in the fourth quarter, as the Wildcats won 27-17. 

On October 21, Wisconsin visited Dyche Stadium. So did 49,256 fans; it was Northwestern’s first home sellout since 1983 (when a capacity crowd had shown up to cheer the Pasadena-bound Illinois team). Northwestern fans were coming around, but the bookmakers weren’t—the 11th-ranked Wildcats, playing at home against the 24th-ranked Badgers, were two-point underdogs. Wisconsin had, after all, pasted Northwestern 53-14 and 46-14, respectively, in 1993 and 1994. As was becoming more and more evident, though, 1995 was different. The Wildcats forced seven turnovers and dominated throughout, winning 35-0. Their entire defensive unit shared Big Ten player-of-the-week honors.

After their rout of Wisconsin, there was no denying that the Wildcats were for real. Their six victories had assured them of a winning season, and they’d moved up to No. 8 in the AP poll.

The confident Wildcats breezed into Champaign to battle Illinois amidst 25-mile-per-hour winds and light drizzle on October 28. The weather seemed not to affect the Illini, who executed a long drive with the wind in the first quarter and another into the wind in the second to grab a 14-0 lead. Thereafter, Northwestern scored 17 unanswered points. Autry carried 41 times for 151 yards, but it was his shortest run of the day, a one-yard touchdown dive with 6:14 remaining, that completed the comeback. “I think we’ve pretty much locked ourselves into a bowl game now,” he said. “We’re definitely going to try to run the table.”

 

PAT FITZGERALD

Running the table would entail beating Penn State, Iowa, and Purdue to extend the winning streak to nine. The Wildcats themselves were sure that it could be done, and they were pulling many converts from the ranks of the erstwhile skeptics. 

When 12th-ranked Penn State came to Evanston on November 4, Keith Jackson, “the voice of college football,” was on hand to broadcast the game from coast-to-coast. “Often, television used to come here because of the opposition,” Jackson said. “Today, we’re here because of Northwestern.” The Wildcats had climbed to sixth in the national rankings, but even so they were seven-point underdogs. 

 “People just don’t seem to want to admit they’re good,” said Penn State coach Joe Paterno. There was no way to escape the fact after Northwestern manhandled the Nittany Lions 21-10. Autry rushed 36 times for 139 yards and three touchdowns, and Fitzgerald was involved in a season-high 17 tackles (11 of them unassisted).

Barnett was ecstatic at his team’s performance and at the way the community had responded. “That was a home-field advantage with a raucous home crowd,” he said. “It was ours, it was purple, and it was loud.”

On November 11, the Wildcats hosted Iowa, to whom they had lost 21 straight since 1973. Despite the temperature of only 26 degrees and a wind-chill factor of zero, another sellout crowd filled every corner of venerable Dyche Stadium for the final home game of the season. Northwestern stormed back from a 20-17 halftime deficit to win 31-20 on a three-yard run by Autry in the third quarter and a 31-yard fumble return by Hudhaifa Ismaeli in the fourth. 

The 9-1 record and eight-game winning streak were both unprecedented in Northwestern annals. The bad news was that Fitzgerald, inspirational leader of the Wildcats’ swarming defense, had broken his left leg and would be out for the year. The Wildcats dedicated the season finale at Purdue to Fitzgerald, and Autry played like a man possessed. He gained 226 yards on 32 attempts as Northwestern subdued the Boilermakers 23-8. Autry finished the season with 1,675 yards, 15 touchdowns, and a grand total of one turnover in 376 times handling the ball.

 

With an 8-0 slate in the Big Ten, the Wildcats could do no worse than tie for the conference championship. But they didn’t know yet whether they’d be going to the Rose Bowl or to the less glamorous Florida Citrus Bowl. Worse, they could do nothing further to influence how it turned out. The Big Ten schedule was such that each team played every conference rival but two in any given year. As luck would have it, Ohio State and Northwestern missed one another in 1995, perhaps the only year in history that a matchup between them would have meant something. Second-ranked Ohio State was 7-0 in the Big Ten and 10-0 overall. The Buckeyes had one game remaining—their traditional season-ending contest with Michigan. If they won, they’d be headed to Pasadena; if they lost, all of Barnett’s lofty preseason goals would have been fulfilled.

On November 25, the Wildcats’ players and coaches gathered to watch the Ohio State-Michigan game on TV. The Wildcats found themselves rooting for Michigan tailback Tim Biakabutuka, who had shredded their top-ranked defense on October 7, and Biakabutuka did not disappoint. He ran for 313 yards—the greatest performance by a running back in the history of the century-old rivalry. Ohio State’s Eddie George (who would receive that year’s Heisman Trophy) was held to a relatively modest 104. Michigan won 31-23.

Rose Bowl president Bud Greist was at the game, ready to invite Ohio State in person if the Buckeyes had won. Instead, he was connected via a video and audio hookup to Evanston so he could invite Northwestern electronically. Barnett milked the moment he had dreamed of for all it was worth. After a pregnant pause, he said, “I’ll ask our guys if they want to go to Pasadena.”

He didn’t have to ask twice.

 

Northwestern’s Cinderella story almost had a perfect ending. In the Rose Bowl, the Wildcats trailed USC 24-7 in the second quarter. They launched a stirring comeback, scoring on five straight possessions to take a 32-31 edge early in the fourth—but they didn’t quite get it done. A late Wildcat touchdown was called back for holding, and the Trojans eventually prevailed 41-32.  

“Our kids fought hard enough,” said Barnett. “There isn’t anything I’d do over.” He was justly proud of having kept his audacious promise to take the purple to Pasadena, and it was no disgrace that the Wildcats had narrowly failed to bring home a victory. After 47 years, getting there had been considerably more than half the fun.

 

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