Many of you may not have even been born when this game was played. But it has been talked about here time and time again. For me, it was a very interesting game. Back in those days, ESPN did not exist and the chance of seeing an LSU game on TV while I was out here (since 1977) in California was remote. However, I had my first date that night with the mother of my three boys that night to see the movie "The In-laws" with Peter Falk. As we were driving to the movie, I stumbled on the game being broadcast live as the CBS "Game of the Week" on radio. The Tigers were leading 12-3 as we pulled into the parking lot and we went into the theater. I was there about 5 minutes and said "I'm sorry, but I have to go out to the car and listen to the game". As everyone knows, LSU lost 17-12 with 32 seconds left helped by a dubious penalty against the Tigers. I was going through some old stuff tonight and found a newspaper from the Los Angeles Times dated "October 2, 1979" (the game was played September 29, 1979) and thought I'd take the time to retype the whole article into this board. It is amazing how we were viewed and how I wish we would be viewed going forward. The beginning of the article starts with some quotes, so bear with me until I get to the main part. It was written by John Hall, a very respected college football writer in those days in Los Angeles... Enough with the intro... here is the article...
"DeeFence".... Geaux Tigers!!... Fantastic!... Beautiful!!... Terrific.... Go Get' Em."
The Original talking scoreboard
"LSU faces America's Team"
Saturday Morning headline in the Baton Rouge Advocate
"The most important game ever playes
Another headline
"Please Lord, help our throats to make it"
Pregame prayer by honorary chaplin
The NFL has numerous roles and probably a few too many, according to some. But there ought to be at least one more. It should be against the law to watch a pro football game in the Coliseum the day after spending a Saturday night in Baton Rouge with Louisiana State entertaining house guests.
Compared to the music LSU and USC danced to last weekend in Tiger Stadium, alias Death Valley and a few other descriptions of insanity, Sundays's exercise between the Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals seemed so tame and so distant, it didn't even appear to be the same sport.
Somebody must have switched off the sound the Coliseum. Event the customary booing of quarterback Pat Haden when a pass was dropped or Frank Corral when the snaps were low and he missed a field goal were so polite and uninspired.
But it's hardly fair to judge the excitement quotient of a Rams crowd so soon after surviving a visit with the Fighting Tigers and the Trojans, sometimes also known as Numero Uno.
USC had been told what to expect in Louisiana, got exactly what it expected and still wasn't ready for the impossibility of the possibility - or vice versa.
Notre Dame's Roger Valdiserri issued one of the most ominous warnings. The Fighting Irish are noted themselves for having something of a noisy stadium. "Compared to Tiger Stadium, we're just kindergarten" Valdiserri said as an old earwitness going back to 1971 when LSU stunned shell-shocked Notre Dame, 28-8, in Baton Rouge.
Well, LSU does that to a lot of people and it's probably not just pro football that suffers by comparison in the matter of blood-curdling yells, chills, and thrills. The screaming Tigers do that to most of the rest of college football, too - and thereby lies the latest challenge for John Robinson.
The USC coach last week got his team ready for LSU by turning the practice field into a sound stage. He had four loudspeakers installed at Howard Jones field on campus and a tape of "crowd noise" borrowed from a television studio was played constantly during practice sessions.
"At first, it didn't work so good," reported Dennis Kirkpatrick of the publicity department. "It sounded like wind. Then it got to be a big wind, like maybe Hurricane David." Either way, it was enough to help the Trojans breeze home with a 17-12 victory in the final 32 seconds. Before that, though, they almost blew it.
Now, what to do about Washington State Saturday in the quiet home park Presumably, Robinson will have the 4-0 Trojans tuning up in an isolation booth. Otherwise, the quick change in pressure from hysterical Louisiana to the ho-hums for the expected Coliseum landslide could be worse than the bends.
That, of course, is just the kind of "awesome USC" comment that drives the coach crazy. He beings making gulping and gasping noises and sound like Hurricane David himself.
If anything was proved in Baton Rouge about No. 1 USC, it was that honest John Robinson was right in expecting a contest and in being so reticent to accept the national championship before USC's schedule is complete.
Some were chuckling, but Robinson was so right in saying that any team before being identified as great and grand must get through all types of tests and be able to win the hard way as well as coast home the easy way when all the luck is good.
That, for sure, was the LSU story. Under the circumstances, it was one of the most impressive wins in USC's long, impressive football history - impressive because of the way it was won, the hard way - with nothing going right on a foreign field against an able, inspired opponent in front of a hostile crowd.
Most significant, perhaps, was the evidence that emotion is still a large part of football. It is still the mightiest of weapons.
USC's narrow escape in the bayou snake pit was a more worthy qualification for a high national ranking than a runaway 50-point ax murder over something less. Those who cried "pour it on" regarding both the final score and Charles White's rushing total for the sake of No. 1 and the Heisman trophy in the earlier eased up romps over Oregon State and Minnesota sadly just don't get it.
In the first place, Robinson is too good a coach and too good a man to deliberately embarrass anybody while keeping his first string kicking away at a dead horse while the hungry reserves remain hungry and unfulfilled. His "humanity" that was showing in the Beaver and Gopher bench clearings wasn't unusual for Robinson, merely par for his course. Good for him, good for USC. They make an attractive couple.
There were several remarkable things about the hairbreadth passing of the LSU test, none the least of which was the jelling of the young defense coaching by Don Lindsay's corps of defensive specialists - Marv Goux, Artie Gigantino, John Marshall, Harold Steele, and Mike Carey.
Aside from White's power running, quarterback Paul McDonald's continued cool in the hottest of kitchens and the winning catch by Kevin Williams, cornerback Herm Ward provided the single biggest lift with the breaking up of a sure touchdown catch via a spectacular individual effort in the end zone.
Well, back to the isolation booth. One night in Death Valley will be enough for a lifetime of memories and the telling and re-telling of a thousand horror stories - the wild evening all the hearing aids blew out in Screamville, U.S.A.
-end-
"DeeFence".... Geaux Tigers!!... Fantastic!... Beautiful!!... Terrific.... Go Get' Em."
The Original talking scoreboard
"LSU faces America's Team"
Saturday Morning headline in the Baton Rouge Advocate
"The most important game ever playes
Another headline
"Please Lord, help our throats to make it"
Pregame prayer by honorary chaplin
The NFL has numerous roles and probably a few too many, according to some. But there ought to be at least one more. It should be against the law to watch a pro football game in the Coliseum the day after spending a Saturday night in Baton Rouge with Louisiana State entertaining house guests.
Compared to the music LSU and USC danced to last weekend in Tiger Stadium, alias Death Valley and a few other descriptions of insanity, Sundays's exercise between the Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals seemed so tame and so distant, it didn't even appear to be the same sport.
Somebody must have switched off the sound the Coliseum. Event the customary booing of quarterback Pat Haden when a pass was dropped or Frank Corral when the snaps were low and he missed a field goal were so polite and uninspired.
But it's hardly fair to judge the excitement quotient of a Rams crowd so soon after surviving a visit with the Fighting Tigers and the Trojans, sometimes also known as Numero Uno.
USC had been told what to expect in Louisiana, got exactly what it expected and still wasn't ready for the impossibility of the possibility - or vice versa.
Notre Dame's Roger Valdiserri issued one of the most ominous warnings. The Fighting Irish are noted themselves for having something of a noisy stadium. "Compared to Tiger Stadium, we're just kindergarten" Valdiserri said as an old earwitness going back to 1971 when LSU stunned shell-shocked Notre Dame, 28-8, in Baton Rouge.
Well, LSU does that to a lot of people and it's probably not just pro football that suffers by comparison in the matter of blood-curdling yells, chills, and thrills. The screaming Tigers do that to most of the rest of college football, too - and thereby lies the latest challenge for John Robinson.
The USC coach last week got his team ready for LSU by turning the practice field into a sound stage. He had four loudspeakers installed at Howard Jones field on campus and a tape of "crowd noise" borrowed from a television studio was played constantly during practice sessions.
"At first, it didn't work so good," reported Dennis Kirkpatrick of the publicity department. "It sounded like wind. Then it got to be a big wind, like maybe Hurricane David." Either way, it was enough to help the Trojans breeze home with a 17-12 victory in the final 32 seconds. Before that, though, they almost blew it.
Now, what to do about Washington State Saturday in the quiet home park Presumably, Robinson will have the 4-0 Trojans tuning up in an isolation booth. Otherwise, the quick change in pressure from hysterical Louisiana to the ho-hums for the expected Coliseum landslide could be worse than the bends.
That, of course, is just the kind of "awesome USC" comment that drives the coach crazy. He beings making gulping and gasping noises and sound like Hurricane David himself.
If anything was proved in Baton Rouge about No. 1 USC, it was that honest John Robinson was right in expecting a contest and in being so reticent to accept the national championship before USC's schedule is complete.
Some were chuckling, but Robinson was so right in saying that any team before being identified as great and grand must get through all types of tests and be able to win the hard way as well as coast home the easy way when all the luck is good.
That, for sure, was the LSU story. Under the circumstances, it was one of the most impressive wins in USC's long, impressive football history - impressive because of the way it was won, the hard way - with nothing going right on a foreign field against an able, inspired opponent in front of a hostile crowd.
Most significant, perhaps, was the evidence that emotion is still a large part of football. It is still the mightiest of weapons.
USC's narrow escape in the bayou snake pit was a more worthy qualification for a high national ranking than a runaway 50-point ax murder over something less. Those who cried "pour it on" regarding both the final score and Charles White's rushing total for the sake of No. 1 and the Heisman trophy in the earlier eased up romps over Oregon State and Minnesota sadly just don't get it.
In the first place, Robinson is too good a coach and too good a man to deliberately embarrass anybody while keeping his first string kicking away at a dead horse while the hungry reserves remain hungry and unfulfilled. His "humanity" that was showing in the Beaver and Gopher bench clearings wasn't unusual for Robinson, merely par for his course. Good for him, good for USC. They make an attractive couple.
There were several remarkable things about the hairbreadth passing of the LSU test, none the least of which was the jelling of the young defense coaching by Don Lindsay's corps of defensive specialists - Marv Goux, Artie Gigantino, John Marshall, Harold Steele, and Mike Carey.
Aside from White's power running, quarterback Paul McDonald's continued cool in the hottest of kitchens and the winning catch by Kevin Williams, cornerback Herm Ward provided the single biggest lift with the breaking up of a sure touchdown catch via a spectacular individual effort in the end zone.
Well, back to the isolation booth. One night in Death Valley will be enough for a lifetime of memories and the telling and re-telling of a thousand horror stories - the wild evening all the hearing aids blew out in Screamville, U.S.A.
-end-
