Seasons I still can’t believe actually happened: Barry Sanders in ‘88

Back in the glorious decade of the 80’s, my friends and I played a computer game by Epyx called “Summer Games.” There’s a clip of the actual game below, but before you start laughing hysterically while watching it, keep in mind it was the friggin’ 80’s.  Back then, this damn thing might as well have been “Halo”:

If you skip to the 1:30 mark of the video, you’ll see the 100 meter dash portion of the game.  It was painful watching that pixelated guy take upwards of 11 or 12 seconds to finish the race when I knew good and well Carl Lewis could do it in 10.

So I devoted an inordinate amount of time to getting this bastard to move faster.  Oh yes, this is what passed for an actual, honest to goodness goal during my wasted youth.  Practice my jump shot?  Get better at math?  Help the elderly?  Nah, those pursuits were of no interest to me, I was much more concerned with doing better at a crappy video game.

After much trial and error, I figured out that I could (try to follow this) bend my knees, force the joystick snugly between the calf and thigh of my left leg (with the stick pointed at my other leg) and then use a rapid up and down motion with my right hand to make the guy run faster…MUCH faster.  If my mom had walked in, she would have thought I had a masturbation problem, but that was still at least two years down the road.

My somewhat vulgar but effective method yielded a 7.37 time (yes, I remember it to the tenth of a second) that the game saved as a world record.  When my friends saw that number on the screen they stared in amazement.  You know that look of awe the nerds had when they saw Molly Ringwald’s underwear in “Sixteen Candles?”  That’s the same reaction that a 7.37 in “Summer Games” generated.

I bring that story up because it’s the only frame of reference I have for the numbers Barry Sanders put up at Oklahoma State in 1988, the year he won the Heisman.  Whenever I come across them in print I get a slack jawed look of wonder.

That season, if you count the bowl game, Sanders ran for 2,850 yards.  TWO THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY YARDS.  He had nearly as many games of 300+ rushing yards (4) as he had games in which he ran for between 150 and 200 yards (5).  The guy gained 1,152 yards in OSU’s last five regular season games alone.

His regular season total of 2,628 yards came in the old days when the only way you got a 12th game on your schedule was to get into the Kickoff Classic in the Meadowlands or play a road game against Hawaii.  Yup, Barry blew it up against the old fashioned 11-game schedule. What he could have done with an extra game or two, as players get these days…

This was the old Big 8, before Bill McCartney got Colorado’s house in order and Nebraska and Oklahoma shared dominion over the league.  Against the Huskers on October 15, Sanders put up 189 yards and 4 scores.  Three weeks later he ran for 215 yards and 2 touchdowns against the Sooners.

Oklahoma State lost both of those contests (their only losses that season), but Sanders sent a message to the league’s power duo.  Not since Gale Sayers had an opposing player in the Big 8’s little six bombarded the Huskers and Sooners that way.

I’ve basically only touched on the yardage to this point, but the number of times Sanders found the end zone was just as impressive.  He broke the single season TD record of 31 in OSU’s ninth game.  He would push that record to 37 once the dust had settled.

Then came five more touchdowns in Oklahoma State’s Holiday Bowl win over a hopelessly outmatched Wyoming team. That’s a total of 42 touchdowns that season.  FORTY FRIGGIN’ TWO.  At this moment, if you don’t look as if you’ve just seen Molly Ringwald’s underwear, then you’re not much of a college football fan.

Here’s Rick Reilly singing Sanders’s praises in October of that year, before most of America realized how special the guy was (that would be Sanders, not Reilly).  You’ll notice in his writing that Reilly hadn’t fully committed to the general douchebaggery that’s come to dominate his persona.

The reference I made to my goofy “Summer Games” obsession is relevant not just because of the impressive nature of the numbers, but also for how unattainable they are.  Back then I taught everyone my pseudo-masturbatory 100-meter method, but try as they might, they couldn’t match that 7.37.  Oh, there were some low 8’s and such generated by others, but they couldn’t quite get to the promised land.

It’s been two plus decades since Sanders ran wild across the heartland, but nobody’s really come close to matching his production.  In the pantheon of sports records, 2,850 yards rushing in a college football season is looking as unbreakable as Rickey Henderson’s 1,406 career stolen bases or Latrell Sprewell’s track record of knuckleheadedness.

Plays I still can’t believe actually happened: Miracle at the Meadowlands

Plays I still can’t believe actually happened: Matt Davison in ‘97

Plays I still can’t believe actually happened: Matt Davison in ‘97

It was pretty damn tough being a fan of Missouri football in the 90’s.  Coming out of the disastrous Woody Widenhofer era of the 80’s, Bob Stull assumed the head coaching reins in 1989 and really didn’t do a whole hell of a lot better himself.  Here’s how he fared in Columbia: 2-9, 4-7, 3-7-1, 3-8 and 3-7-1.

Stull is now the athletic director at UTEP, where he’s proven to be just as big a boob in administration after hiring both Mike Price and Tim Floyd.  I guess his odyssey proves that there is a career path for failed coaches, that being the opportunity to hire and fire your very own coaching failures.

Larry Smith took over from Stull in 1993 and in his first three years on the job he averaged just a hair under 4 wins. He gave the faithful something to smile about in ‘97 and ‘98, though, posting 7-5 and 8-4 efforts, the second of which ended with a win in the Insight.com Bowl over West Virginia.

However, the turnaround didn’t last and Smith followed those two winning seasons with two losing ones. He was fired in 2000, bringing to a close a coaching career that began as an assistant to Bo Schembechler, first at Miami of Ohio and later at Michigan. Smith passed away a few years ago at the age of 68 following a long battle with leukemia.

Looking back over that decade, Mizzou fans don’t necessarily lament all the losses or savor the glimmer of hope that Smith provided. Instead, they shake their heads over just how snakebit their team was at times. That’s because the Tigers were victimized not once but twice by eventual national champions on game ending plays that live on in college football lore.

The first was the infamous 5th Down game against Colorado in 1990.  That year, Missouri was 2-2 and coming off of a win over Arizona State.  Colorado came to town with a shaky 3-1-1 record and on the brink of having a promising season spiral out of control.

Missouri was up 31-27 when Colorado got the ball late in the game and drove the length of the field.   With time running out, Colorado inexplicably got five cracks at the Tiger doorstep instead of four.  Not only did the Buffs’ Charles Johnson score on 5th down, I’m not even sure he broke the plane of the goal line.  Check out the video of that entire final drive right here.

Colorado “won” the game 33-31 and went on to share the national title that season.  If Mizzou fans thought that the powers that be were out to get them after that one, then events that transpired seven years later made those same people believe that no less a power than God himself had it out for their beloved Tigers.

On November 8, 1997, Missouri was a team coming off three straight shootout wins (37-29 over Texas, 51-50 over Oklahoma State and 41-31 over Colorado).  To make it four in a row, they’d have to take out a Nebraska team that was undefeated and had won its last three games by a combined score of 133-7.

Missouri took it to the Huskers that day, with quarterback Corby Jones leading an offensive charge that put his team up 24-21 at halftime.  Just as they had done inside Faurot Stadium seven years earlier against Colorado, the Tigers grabbed a late fourth quarter lead and left it up to the defense to secure the victory.

Down 38-31 with 1:02 remaining and no time outs, Scott Frost and the Nebraska offense got the ball back at their own 33-yard line.  He calmly directed them down the field and with :07 on the clock the Huskers were sitting at the Missouri 12-yard line.

Nebraska coach Tom Osborne debated before the play whether or not to call an option out of the shotgun.  Quarterbacks coach Turner Gill convinced Osborne to call a passing play, though, and the one the offense ended up running was Shotgun 99 Double Slant.  Frost took the snap, looked left, then fired over the middle in the direction of Shevin Wiggins.  This is what ensued: