Long game is long remembered

John Severance

I was fortunate to be around Penn State football when the Nittany Lions won and competed for national championships and rallied for miraculous victories.

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It would be easy to single out the 1982 Nebraska game, the 1986 Orange Bowl, the 1987 Fiesta Bowl or the 1990 Notre Dame game in South Bend when the Lions upended the No. 1 Irish on a last-second field goal by Craig Fayak. The 1995 Rose Bowl also was special: I’ll never forget sitting high atop that day and witnessing Ki-Jana Carter blast through the Oregon defense for an 83-

yard touchdown run on the Lions’ first play from scrimmage.

All are great memories, but there is one game that stands out.

It was not for a national championship, but it certainly was one of the most exciting games in Penn State history.

Living out here in New Mexico, the Big Ten Network is my lifeline to Penn State football. The network has been airing the 1989 Holiday Bowl between Brigham Young and Penn State, and the memories came flooding back.

Legendary photographer Dick Brown and I caught areallyearly flight out of State College. We got to San Diego about noon and we rushed to Sea World for a news conferences featuring Joe Paterno and BYU coach LaVell Edwards. We barely got there in time. When it was over, we walked back to the car. But there was a problem; we couldn’t find it. In our rush to get out there, we forgot to write down what aisle number we were in. We finally found it after about an hour. But I just knew it was going to be one of those trips where nothing would go right.

After writing about six more stories and after surviving two more days of news conferences, game day finally arrived. Kickoff was at 5 p.m. Pacific and I was told by my editors that deadline was going to be midnight EST. I knew it was going to be close but I had been in this situation countless times.

Brigham Young quarterback Ty Detmer, though, had other ideas.

Sure, no one will forget David Daniels’ acrobatic touchdown catch, Blair Thomas’ 186 yards rushing, Andre Collins’ return of a two-point conversion or Gary Brown taking the ball away from Detmer to cap a 50-39 Nittany Lion win.

With Detmer throwing the ball close to 60 times and for close to 600 yards, the Holiday Bowl took almost five hours to play.

So much for the midnight deadline. I finally did file about 1 a.m. after a lot of consternation, and I am still not sure how many newspapers it made. The next day, I could not stop writing about the game because there was so much to it. I wrote five more stories on the long plane ride back.

It’s something I will never forget and I am sure most die-hard Penn State fans will never forget this classic either.

John Severance graduated from Penn State in 1985 and worked on the Centre Daily Times sports staff from 1988 to 1996. Look for Penn State football memories columns each home weekend.