Irish Wake : Notre Dame Still Hasn’t Forgotten Loss to USC 30 Years Ago That Ended Almost-Perfect Season

Think the Coliseum took a big hit last Jan. 17? You should have felt the old gray lady rockin’ & rollin’ late on the afternoon of Nov. 28, 1964.

The aftershocks even rattled the golden dome in South Bend, Ind.

On that day, USC registered one of its best remembered football victories, a 20-17 shocker over a Notre Dame team that was 9-0 . . . and 1 minute 33 seconds away from a national championship.

With that much time remaining and USC trailing, 17-13, Trojan quarterback Craig Fertig called a play thousands of Trojan alumni can still call: 84Z-delay.

Fertig passed to Rod Sherman, who took the ball away from Notre Dame defensive back Tony Carey and scored, triggering one of the greatest Coliseum ovations ever.

Recalling the game recently, Fertig said he didn’t see the play for which he is best remembered.

“I would have loved to have seen it, but I was laying on my back, seeing stars,” he said.

“Lying on top of me was the future chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. When I heard that roar from the crowd, I figured something good had happened.”

Fertig meant Alan Page, the Notre Dame defensive end and future NFL star who in 1993 became Minnesota’s top judge.

The Notre Dame quarterback that day, John Huarte, had been awarded the Heisman Trophy the week of the game.

He was asked recently to recall the most vivid memory from his most painful loss at Notre Dame.

“The Sherman touchdown, I can well remember,” he said. “But the play I remember most was my touchdown pass to Jack Snow in the first half.

“The sight of Jack stretched out parallel to the ground, making a great catch. . . . I ran off the field thinking, ‘There’s no stopping us now.’ I was really excited, because we’d practiced that play all week and it worked exactly the way we wanted it to.

“After that play, we played with the momentum on our side. We were playing well and we were playing hard. We felt great at the half (leading, 17-0). Then it all got away from us.”

Despite their unexpected victory, the Trojans tumbled from joy to despair in two hours. Thirty years later, many still feel the pain of learning in a South Gate restaurant that Oregon State, not USC, was Rose Bowl-bound.

“We were led to believe if we beat Notre Dame, we’d go to the Rose Bowl,” Fertig said. “You talk about letting the air out of a victory party, that really did it.”

Huarte, an Anaheim athlete who had played high school football at Santa Ana Mater Dei, sought solitude to ease the hurt.

Fertig had been a star at Huntington Park High, had known Huarte, and went into the Notre Dame locker room to seek out his old rival.

“I found him sitting on a stool, all alone, under a shower,” Fertig said.

“I knew how bad he felt, and I started to say something, but he waved me off and said, ‘We had a hell of a run, and you spoiled it.’ ”

In 1964, in John McKay’s fifth season at USC, the Trojans were 6-3 at the start of Notre Dame week, having lost to Michigan State, Ohio State and Washington.

Ara Parseghian was in his first year at Notre Dame, and in a season many had expected would be dedicated to rebuilding, the Irish streaked to nine consecutive victories. In fact, Notre Dame had had only one close game all season, a 17-15 victory at Pittsburgh.

No team had scored more than two touchdowns against a formidable Irish defense, which had posted three shutouts. Notre Dame had beaten UCLA at South Bend, 24-0.

And running the offense was a six-foot senior who as recently as spring practice had been either the fourth- or fifth-string quarterback, depending on who was doping the depth chart.

The film “Rudy” was largely fiction. John Huarte’s story is closer to the real thing.

In separate interviews recently, Huarte, 51, and Fertig, 52, talked about events leading up to their final college game:

JOHN HUARTE

“For a long time, it looked like I was going to be one of those high school stars who disappeared at Notre Dame. There’ve been a lot of those.

“I just never got to play under Joe Kuharich. My junior year, under Hugh Devore, I started one game. But I’d never even won a letter until my senior year.

“It was a shock, not getting to play. Like a lot of young athletes, I went to Notre Dame seeing myself as all-world. I’d never lost faith in my ability, but I was afraid I’d never get my chance.

“So when Ara came in (Parseghian replaced Devore after the 1963 season), things started to change in my favor.

“More and more in spring practice that year, I was running the first-team offense. One day in preseason practice, August or early September, I walked off the practice field with Ara and he put his arm around my shoulder.

“He told me, ‘John, you’re my quarterback. And I don’t want you to worry if you make mistakes. I’m still going with you, no matter what.’

“To this day, I have no idea why he picked me. And I’ve never asked him.

“That was an amazing year at Notre Dame.

“Under Kuharich and Devore (who had replaced Kuharich after the 1962 season), we hadn’t even had a winning season. In the student newspaper, there was talk about de-emphasizing football at Notre Dame. That’s how bad things really were.

“All of a sudden, we’re winning every weekend. We go 9-0. It was terribly exciting. That’s what made the loss to SC so painful.

“We were really rolling on SC in the first half. We were mixing in some option stuff to our regular offense, and they hadn’t expected that.

“Then they took some of what we were doing offensively away after the half.

“USC took the momentum away from us with their first drive of the second half, and we never got it back. I remember, all of a sudden Mike Garrett was getting eight, 10, 12 yards every carry.

“On the touchdown play that beat us, Tony Carey made a play for the ball, kind of a lunge, and he went down. It was a gamble on his part, on the kind of play where there’s an awful big downside. It’s a wide field.

“Another clear memory I have is the look on Ara’s face when we walked off the field. I still remember the shock on his face, that the national championship had slipped away from us. “We all got together for a 30-year reunion earlier this season at Notre Dame. All we talked about was that SC game.

“I said to a couple of guys, ‘Do you realize if we’d won that game, we’d have nothing to talk about today?’ ”

CRAIG FERTIG

“McKay was upset all week. I still don’t know how it happened, but Notre Dame somehow wound up in our hotel, the Sheraton West. We always stayed there the Friday night before the home games, and McKay was really (angry) when he found out about it.

“He made a big thing in the meetings about it. ‘They’ve kicked you out of your own hotel!’ he said. We stayed at the Olympic hotel.

“The morning of the game, we had the same thing for breakfast we always had under McKay--steak, peas, dry toast and tea. He talked a little about the series and said that no matter what, he wanted us to remember this game the rest of our lives.

“He got that right. We did.

“Anyhow, the next thing is, we’re in the bus, riding to the Coliseum. The starting quarterback always sits in the front row, with McKay, and goes over the game plan one last time.

“As we pulled into the Coliseum, I’ll never forget McKay saying to me, ‘Craig, remember one thing: There’s a hell of a difference between being 10-0 and 9-1. The odds are with us today.’

“Well, Notre Dame goes up, 17-0, in the first half, but we’re not playing all that badly. We go up the tunnel thinking, ‘Hey, they’re not that great.’

“McKay comes in and says, ‘Gentlemen, if we don’t score more than 17 points, we’re going to lose. We’re getting the second-half kickoff. Let’s take it down and go in for a score on the first drive. And remember, there’re no rules against blocking.’

“We scored the first two times we had the ball after halftime, and at that point I was confident we were going to win the game.

“We dodged a bullet when Notre Dame got to our one and apparently scored on a run, but an official, Jack Springer, called holding on Notre Dame’s Jack Meeker. That took them out to the 16 and they didn’t get a score.

“On our films, we couldn’t tell if it was a hold (Notre Dame coaches later said their films showed no infraction). All I can say is, thank God for Jack Springer.

“One night in 1984, in a Chicago restaurant, a guy comes up from behind me and starts shaking my shoulders and yelling, ‘Gimme my national championship ring!’ It was Meeker.

“We called a timeout before the winning play. We were at the Notre Dame 15, fourth and eight. There was 1:33 left.

“Sherman, who was a sophomore, came over to McKay and said, ‘Coach, I can get open on 84Z-delay.’ And McKay showed his strength as a coach. He listened to Rod, and said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’

“I mean, think about it! Sophomore receivers will tell you they’ve never been covered in their lives. But McKay listened to him.

“And Sherman really wanted the ball. He’d coughed up the ball twice in the first half on big hits. He deserved to win it for us.

“Sherman was in Carey’s arms when he caught it on the two, but kind of squirmed away, as Carey fell down. We’d run Garrett in motion to the other side, helping make sure Sherman got one-on-one with Carey.

“I got whacked by Page as soon as I threw it, and I really did see stars. I saw Page at the SC-Notre Dame game a year ago and he said, ‘Watch out, I’m still just a half-step from you!’

“I got to the postgame party that night just before 6 o’clock. It was at Enoch’s Restaurant in South Gate. I was in charge of the party and we’d chipped in to get beer and pop.

“Then we turn on the TV to hear about us getting the Rose Bowl bid, and there’s Fred Hessler, the voice of the Bruins, as he’s handed a bulletin.

“He says, ‘This is a disgrace! Oregon State is going to the Rose Bowl!’

“Well, you talk about the air going out of a room, that did it. Some lawyers went out and wheeled in some champagne. The party got a little better after that.

“I’ve thought many times about that game, about how we got the momentum in the second half. It’s an old coaching maxim that momentum never changes twice in a football game.

“It’s chiseled in granite.”

*

Fertig, who from 1976 to 1979 was the coach at Oregon State, lives in Newport Beach. He’s a public relations executive for an insurance company and broadcasts USC games.

Huarte lives in Pacific Palisades. He owns a Tucson tile distribution firm with 120 employees.