Opening up the mailbag
For four days, I didn't get much e-mail about The 100, which baffled me. Readers clicked on the feature by the millions.
Then I realized that everyone was waiting for the final 20. Sure enough, the e-mail surged on Friday, June 29 and didn't stop for several days. To summarize your reaction, I would say this:
Hey, I get it. My list is different from yours.
That's the fun of it, although fun is not necessarily a component of the e-mails.
Many of you wrote to complain about too many plays from Notre Dame. Others, first and foremost my colleague and former partner in For Argument's Sake, Gene Whine-ciechowski, accused me of home-state bias with too many plays from Alabama.
The Irish and the Tide have combined to win 14 AP national championships, which I say as prelude to my response: I didn't write the history of college football. I read it.
Others wrote to ask how come I didn't have more positive plays for Ohio State/Oklahoma/the West Coast. Confession: I thought about breaking down the plays by school, and then by whether the plays I selected went more in favor of a school or against it. I decided against it.
I picked what I thought were the best plays. Period.
Well, almost period -- in a couple of instances, we took out plays from the early part of the 20th century because we had no way of illustrating them. That means there's a slight tilt toward this generation of football, beyond the obvious tilt that these are the plays with which we are most familiar.
I tried to guard against that -- as editors David Duffey and Anna Gramling will attest, since they had to track down the photos for plays at least 80 years old -- and I think the early part of the 20th century is represented.
Among the most nominated plays that I excluded were the Snow Bowl, the 1950 Ohio State-Michigan game and the Bluegrass Miracle, LSU's Hail Mary defeat of Kentucky in 2002. I don't know if the Miracle was the very last play I took out, but it was among the last.
And I'm still getting e-mail about the June 21 mailbag, in which readers roasted me for my metaphorical reference to presidential advisor Karl Rove. Only now, I'm hearing from the other side.
A couple of reminders: some e-mails are edited for space, style, spelling and grammar. And unless you tell me not to include your e-mail in a column, I just might do it. On we go.
Greg Owen, Argo, Ala.: I just wanted to let you know, that I thoroughly enjoyed your list, iconic moments for college football's time capsule. I feel you got all of the plays in the right order. Don't change a thing.
Ivan Maisel: And that concludes this version of Maisel E-mails. Thank you for clicking on it. Drive home safely, and join us again --
Oh, wait. There are a couple of more letters …TSgt S. Andrew Alexander, USAFR, Schriever AFB, Colo: It's a shame that for all your well-roundedness on every other team in your Top 100 plays, that not one single positive light was shown on Ohio State, despite seven Heisman winners and at least five national championships. I believe the count was five plays involving Ohio State and not one a positive one.
Yes, the BCS title game was won in 2003, but offering up the pass interference as critical plays much more to Miami fans. Equally critical (and likely a pick for this list had Ohio State lost) was that Bobby Carpenter was clipped (clearly evident on replay) on the long punt return that set up Miami's game-tying field goal at the end of regulation.
Also a shame that you placed coach Hayes' downfall so highly and emphasized his temper by the remark of his hitting [Charlie] Bauman as "It wasn't Ohio State coach Woody Hayes' first tirade …".
Sure, you'll get a lot of e-mail from a lot of fan bases arguing this or that, but given Ohio State's record as one of the top six winningest schools of all time, I'd think you could have found at least one positive-light play to show them in.
Maisel: Sgt. Alexander makes a good point, although it may not be the one he intended. Every fan has plays from his school's history that reside in the family Bible. But the rest of us don't have that frame of reference, and respond more to what history suggests. And no one outside of Ohio remembers a play from that Fiesta Bowl more than the pass interference call.
Tom Smith, Chicago: I really enjoyed this feature and, from the beginning, correctly predicted the No. 1 moment (Flutie to Phelan). Here's one you missed :
The Army-Navy game -- traditionally played in front of huge crowds in Philadelphia -- was played at Annapolis in 1942 because of wartime restrictions on travel. The crowd, which had for decades included both student bodies, was limited to a small number of West Point officials, newspapermen, local residents and the brigade of midshipmen. With no West Point cadets permitted to attend, the Naval Academy in the interest of sportsmanship ordered half the midshipmen to cheer for the Army. Army returned the favor the following year, when the Navy squad traveled to West Point, unaccompanied by the brigade of midshipmen. While the cheers were probably a bit half-hearted, this practice is symbolic of the most sportsmanlike of all college rivalries -- the rivalry which John Feinstein once called college football's purest.
Once again, nice job on a great feature.
Maisel: To be honest, I shied away from the wartime plays because of the specious quality of the football. But Tom makes a compelling case to include that one.
Michael F. Crowley, La Jolla, Calif.: I briefly searched through the top 100 games and think you hit nail right on the head with one exception. I may have missed it, but what about the first game, Rutgers vs. Princeton? And yes, I am a Rutgers grad (maybe the only people who care about that game other than Princetonians) whose great uncle was Jim Crowley (one of the Four Horsemen).
Maisel: Beano was there, and he told me it wasn't that good of a game.
Michael McKenzie, Keuka Park, N.Y.: I like the concept of building and keeping interest going in offseason for college football, but your ESPN's top-100 plays are at times more politics than athletics. No. 97 -- the woman place-kicker for perennial powerhouse New Mexico. I'm sure your ancestors said the same for "vertically challenged people" when Bill Veeck put the midget in to bat. A stunt is a stunt is a stunt, whether prompted by Barnum & Bailey, Veeck or the PC attitudes of our time. College football is still a man's game and always will be.
Also, in the future, why not just simply drop any discussion of comparing "greatest football plays of all time" when bringing in games before desegregation, or say, 1950? Setting the acutely rare Jim Thorpes and Red Granges aside, most good high-school teams of today would wipe the field with the archaic (and undersized) college teams of the ancient past. Bringing in those old grainy pics and plays is just another way to smuggle in pseudo-athletics, when college football (and all sports) did not have the best athletes anywhere NEAR the field (unless they were selling hot dogs).
Ever since the game desegregated, it took a quantum leap forward, and bringing in games in which 175-pound tackles blocked for 165-pound running backs, and in which the forward pass was looked upon as a miracle of physics simply misses the point and takes away better games.
Start the comparisons in, say, 1950 (even though many teams were de facto segregated) and it would be closer to reality, and comparing apples to apples. Keep the stunts and ancient history to their own categories, but don't sully the category of "greatest plays ever" by such shenanigans!
Michael McKenzie, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion
Keuka College
Maisel: Interesting point. To extend it to its logical conclusion, we separate the records of Babe Ruth and Cy Young (no African-American players), and we don't take seriously the four presidential elections of FDR (few African-American voters).
Why stop there? What about rules changes? Should we have pre-DH records and post-DH? Pre-3-point shot and post-3-three-point shot? How about lifestyle changes? Can you compare the records of teams traveling in private jets to those that went by train in the 1950s? And changes in medicine: pre-Tommy-John surgery vs. post-Tommy-John surgery?
Pretty soon, every record will have its own asterisk.
Sports evolve. Life evolves. You can't compare apples to apples, and I'm O.K. with that. I'll take history for what it is. But you sound like an interesting professor. Thanks for writing.
Patrick Harris: Putting "The Play" number 2 to Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass is like putting Larry Bird ahead of Michael Jordan in NBA history.
Both were good plays. Both were good players. It's obvious though that Jordan was better than Bird.
But "The Play", with five laterals and a touchdown scored running through the Stanford Band to win the game, vs. one Hail Mary pass to win the game, [it] is even more obvious which one is better, more significant, and more dramatic in the history of college football.
By putting "The Play" No. 2, you also cheapen the great last-minute scoring drive that John Elway put together for Stanford to set up the drama of "The Play."
Maybe you should forget that you are a Stanford Alum and simply write feature articles that show better judgement before most people start to think you're a dumb-ass.
Maisel: These are my favorite kinds of letters. If I agree with you, I have better judgement, and if I don't, I'm a dumb-ass?
You must lead an interesting life.
Drew De Vun, McKinney, Texas: My all-time favorite moment is the Cal-Stanford game, but mostly because of the call (on the radio by the Bears' Joe Starkey). I was wondering why the earthquake game in Baton Rouge, La., didn't make the list? Just a thought, but it was fun anyway.
Maisel: The more I thought about it, I came to this conclusion: If every game had a Richter scale attached to it, LSU-Auburn wouldn't be the only "Earthquake Game." It's a great anecdote, but I decided against including it.
Cary Croft, West Monroe, La.: Listen, I am a huge LSU fan and I can understand you not wanting to include the Bluegrass Miracle in the top 10, but not even in the top 100? Please! If that had been USC, it would have been the GREATEST play in the history of college football. Please explain to me your dislike for LSU and the SEC?
Maisel: Longtime readers of this column -- hey, I can pretend there are some -- will recall that LSU fans lit out after me for a couple of seasons. I assume we had signed a truce, but for old time's sake, I threw this one in. As for my SEC dislike, my unofficial count has 23 SEC games among the 100, and that excludes the South Carolina and Arkansas entries before they entered the league. I hate to throw the water of facts on your fiery anger, but …
Christopher Smith, Rancho Cordova, Calif.: Thanks for the list. You've probably gotten 500,000 similar types of e-mail as this one but I was surprised that the 1931 SC-ND game didn't make it on there. Context behind the game was that ND hadn't lost at home in three years, they were undefeated and in the country and favored to win. SC had one loss. The game was real stomach turner and SC came out on top, 16-14. SC had a gigantic welcome when they got back to Union Station (newspapers were reporting like 50 or 100K showed to greet them home) and from what I understand, this was SC first real big win and established SC as a West Coast football school.
Maisel: Chris may have been the only reader to ask for more Notre Dame. That's a new definition of tunnel vision, don't you think?
Brandon Buehler: You've got to be an idiot!!! How do you rank the Bush Push at #65? That was the second biggest play of the year (next to higher ranked Vince Young Rose Bowl TD), but somehow it fell all the way to 65? How can you justify this?
Maisel: Brandon, ease up on the Red Bulls, dude. Let's take your premise: it was the second-biggest play of the year. If you took two plays from every season, you'd have nearly 300 plays. From that perspective, 65 ain't bad.
Rich O'Brien, Pittsburgh: No Dan Marino to John Brown (the 33-yard touchdown pass that won the 1982 Sugar Bowl for Pittsburgh, 27-23, over No. 2 Georgia). This is one of the five greatest plays in Pitt football history and it doesn't make your top 100?
Maisel: And if you take the top five plays from every Bowl Subdivision (gee, I miss I-A) school, you'd have 600 plays. C'mon, guys: 100 isn't as much as you think.
Willie Carmichael: I found "Bang the Drum Slowly" in my high school library when I was 16. I'd been sent to the library for screwing around in class. Then "The Southpaw." They both killed me and still do.
I've read them many times; I'm also on my third copies. You're the second writer I've ever written; the first was Mark Harris. He didn't write back, but it didn't and doesn't matter. I've read both books out loud to my wife, who doesn't care about baseball -- I don't anymore either, at least not pro ball -- but she loves the books almost as much as I do.
The other day I read the last two pages of BTDS to a friend of mine. He's 67, I'm 50. I couldn't get through [them] without crying. I never do.
Thanks for taking time to mention somebody most fans won't care about or read. The youthful joy of sports has pretty much left me, but these books just get better.
And Holly says the same.
Maisel: I received quite a few letters from readers who joined me in my reverence for Mark Harris' baseball novels. They are my are age or older and we all sounded like misty-eyed old farts. When it comes to "The Southpaw," I guess we are.
And if I had had a teacher who sent me to the library for punishment. I would have gotten in a lot more trouble.
David Kern, Boston: I guess I'm a little late on this one, but I just got around to reading your June 21 mailbag. I just wanted to say that I appreciate your writing style, your point of view, and all those wonderfully flattering things I could say.
Mostly, I just wanted to thank you for using the metaphors you want to use. Too often these days, it seems to me, public figures, writers, athletes, professors, co-workers (you name it) don't say the things they want to say for fear of rustling anyone's feathers or losing sponsors etc.
You know your audience and I think I know a good deal of them too. I was born and raised in New Orleans on LSU football and firmly believe in everything that is SEC football. With that said, I also know that there are a lot of SEC fans (and college football fans in general) who aren't going to be winning any awards for their "enlightened" view points any time soon. You must have known, to a certain extent, that your reference to (presidential advisor Karl) Rove would get some attention, but you did it anyway. Thank you.
As far as everyone who attacked your "right" to make a political reference, thank you for effectively telling them to cram it. What an absurd position for them to take on every level. I can't stand when people are in such a hurry to "wrap themselves in the flag" that they soil it in the process. I especially enjoyed your several barbs toward them in the mailbag.
Thanks and please keep up the good work.
Maisel: Plenty of you rose to my defense after I revealed the roasting I took for my metaphoric reference to Rove in a story about Arkansas coach Houston Nutt. Speaking as a native Alabaman living in Connecticut, I would warn David to watch it: these people up here talk funny.
Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Send your questions and comments to Ivan at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.
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