Notre Dame’s Irv Smith grabs onto a desperation onside kick in the last minute to seal a 24-20 victory over the Trojans of USC
By Jon Paul Potts
1991 Scholastic Football Review
1991 NDFB Southern Cal Final Stats
It was just another routine onside kick that any team losing in the last second attempts. The kicking team all rush one side, the kicker duffs it, hoping to get that one lucky bounce, and the players converge on the ball. Usually, the receiving team gets it easily and the game ends in a flurry of time outs.
So it was that with 1:50 to go in the ·game and the Irish leading 24-20, University of Southern California coach Larry Smith sent his kicker out and Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz countered with his “hands”team – quarterback Rick Mirer, fullback Jerome Bettis, tight end Irv Smith – all the skill players who, due to the nature of their positions, are relied upon for their sure and reliable ability to grasp onto a bouncing football.
But this was not a routine on side kick. USC kicker Cole Ford hit a beauty and as it took a high bounce, Irish flanker Lake Dawson missed it and the free-for-all that ensued resulted in a huge pile right in front of Holtz on the Notre Dame sideline. Irish fans gasped: had this hard-fought game come to this, with the Trojans recovering an on side kick with a chance to score the upset touchdown?
“On the onside kick, I was privy to be rather close to it,” said Holtz. “I thought we played it very well, we just didn’t catch the ball. Right in front of our bench, Irv Smith and the young man from Southern Cal had the ball. Irv had it just as much as anybody else.”
After they piled them out, the referee signaled it was our ball, but Irv still wouldn’t let it go,” continued Holtz. “But we patted Irv on the back and said it was our ball, and he finally let it go.”
On the bottom of the pile, Smith was battling USC’s Marvin Pollard and the big tight end finally managed to pull it to his chest.
“I think he (Pollard) might have had a little better handle on the ball than I did at first, but I had about all of it when it was over” said the unlikely hero Irv Smith. “He [Pollard] kept saying, ‘Let it go, I got it;’ but I kept telling him I had it We weren’t going to let it go until all the people in the stadium had gone home.”
When Holtz told Smith to let go, the player did as his coach said, but Pollard emerged from the pile jumping in the air cradling the football. The stadium had no clue what was going on.
“All I saw was my guy come up with the ball,” said a frustrated Larry Smith who drew a penalty when he ran all the way across the field to yell at the official’s final decision. “In a big pile like that, a lot of things can happen. I don’t know exactly what happened.”
But the officiating crew finally signaled Irish ball and, thanks to the soft hands of a tight end/outfielder, Notre Dame had pulled out a 24-20 victory that resulted in more than a few sighs of relief from the Irish coaching staff.
Until the last quarter, including the suspenseful onside kick, this game had lacked dramatics. About the biggest thrill of the first three stanzas had come from – who else? Jerome “They Call him Mr. Touchdown” Bettis.
The sophomore fullback had galloped for a 53-yard score in the first quarter. On the Irish’s third possession of the opening 15 minutes, Notre Dame started a drive from their own 26. After senior captain Rodney Culver was dropped for a 3-yard loss, Mirer hit Bettis over the middle on a play-action fake for a gain of 22 yards. Then, two plays later, Bettis took a handoff from Mirer, cut back left and bounced off a group of Trojan tacklers to sprint the 53 yards to the end zone.
“I heard a little voice when I made my cut,” the bruising fullback said. “I wanted to go outside, but I kept hearing the coaches in practice telling me to run north and south. A lot of people think that a big guy doesn’t have a lot of speed. I don’t have too much speed, but it’s deceptive speed.”
On this day, Bettis did a lot of running in those two directions. Despite one fumble in the third quarter that was recovered by the Trojans, Bettis had another stellar afternoon on what was to be a truly outstanding sophomore campaign. He rushed for 78 yards on 24 attempts and two touchdowns – the fifth straight contest in which he scored two or more times, dating back to the Sept. 28 destruction of the Purdue Boilermakers. This effort prompted the highest praise from the opposition’s coach.
“He’s a great fullback, the best I’ve ever seen;” gushed Smith. “He is the core of the Notre Dame offense. He was the difference, without him Notre Dame would have lost the game.”
The game was a 14-0 Irish shutout at the half and stood a boring 21-7 with 8:18 to go in the game when inconsistent USC decided to stage their comeback. After Bettis’ fumble, the Trojans took over on the Notre Dame 20-yard line. It only took two plays for USC to cash in on the Irish miscue. On first down, tailback Mazio Royster took the ball on a delay and danced for six yards before he was brought down by defensive back Jeff Burris. Then, on second-and-four from the Irish 14, Royster burst up the middle, juked linebacker Demetrius DuBose, and hit pay dirt to pull the Trojans, with the PAT, to within seven at 21-14.
“We were up 21-7 at one point but we could never take control of the game,” said Holtz. “We had problems with their counter in the second half and we just could not disrupt their rhythm. That’s a credit to Southern Cal.”
The Irish converted on a 34-yard field goal by Craig Hentrich to put a little room between themselves and the hard-pressing Trojans, but USC took the kickoff determined to score again. Royster ran for a 14-yard gain. Sophomore quarterback Reggie Perry hit his wide-open tight end Yannie Jackson for nine yards. Petry hit split end Johnnie Morton on an inside screen for 15 more and suddenly, it was first-and-ten Trojans from the Irish 4-yard line. With 1:50 to go, USC fullback Raoul Spears took the handoff and blasted off left tackle for the score. The two-point conversion failed, but it was a slim four point lead that Notre Dame held onto as Larry Smith sent out his onside kick formation.
Luckily, Irv Smith grabbed the ball and the victory was sealed.
“We wanted to win this one, very much,” said Perry who had matured a lot in one game, hitting on 20 of his 35 passes for 222 yards. “We wanted to win not just for ourselves, but for the seniors who have never beaten Notre Dame. Sure, it hurts us [the younger players], but I feel even worse for them.”
The last Trojan team to beat the Irish was the 1982 squad which defeated a Gerry Faust-coached squad 17-13. The victory extended the Notre Dame winning streak to nine straight against its great rival USC. But both coaches downplayed the significance of the recent Irish dominance in this historical college football series.
“This one is out the window and we just go on from here,” said Larry Smith. “I am not worried about ‘The Series’ at all.”
“There are too many class people on that side of the ball for that program to fail,” said Holtz when asked about his perfect 6-0 record as Notre Dame coach against USC. “By the time we get to the year 2000, maybe things will be going the other way. This series will even out – it always has.”
And so the Irish continued on. Next Saturday, the Midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy would come to town to warm up Notre Dame on a cold day.
“It was a hard-fought football game, but we’re happy to win – it gives us a winning season,” as Lou Holtz said.