Blair Kiel, 50, died yesterday at the home of a friend in his home-town of Columbus, IN. Kiel played from 1980 to 1983 at Notre Dame and was the only four-year starter for the Fighting Irish since 1913. Kiel went onto to a seven-year pro career with the Buccaneers, Colts and Packers.
Whatever ups and downs he may have had since his first season as a college quarterback, Blair Kiel is largely responsible for my attending Notre Dame. For that he has my thanks.
I was all set to go to Georgetown when my Dad insisted I first go visit Notre Dame. He took me to the Notre Dame – Michigan game in 1980 with Dan Devine’s Irish squad taking on Bo Schembechler’s Wolverines. Notre Dame and Michigan are two of the oldest programs in college football with more wins than any other and have had an intense rivalry off the field as well as on.
Notre Dame fans don’t like Michigan and Michigan fans don’t like Notre Dame. That’s just the way it is.
The game was intense. The lead changed hands many times in what is widely considered one of the greatest games ever played at Notre Dame.
The two top-ranked teams went back and forth for four quarters with lead changing hands several times. Notre Dame took a 14-0 lead early in the game but Michigan rallied to go into halftime leading 21-14. In the third quarter a Notre Dame interception was run back for a touchdown but a missed extra point left the Wolverines still leading by one. Notre Dame scored another TD to go up 26-21. Michigan scored another touchdown with under a minute to play to take a 27-26 lead.
With 41 seconds left Kiel took the field and drove the Irish to the outer edge of field goal range. On the last play of the game, with 4 seconds left on the clock, the Irish sent out junior kicker Harry Oliver to try a desperation 51-yard field goal. Oliver had just one previous attempt at a field goal in his college career and had missed an extra point earlier in the game, the reason Michigan was up by 1 point as the clock ran down.
I was sitting with my Dad in seats along the goal line on the Michigan side of the field, directly in line with the crossbars of the uprights in the end zone. The kick was made into a stiff breeze that had been blowing all day. As the ball sailed through the air the wind stopped. As my Dad and I watched, the ball momentarily stopped dropping down and, ever so briefly, moved horizontally, carried forward by the momentum from Oliver’s booming soccer-style kick. It was enough.
By a matter of inches the ball cleared the crossbar. The stadium erupted. Pandemonium ensued.
Players and fans alike stormed the field to experience the greatest feeling a Notre Dame fan can have.
Today there is an elaborate, organized ceremony at the end of football games. In 1980 there was just pure joy and chaos. The win is one of only 7 times in the 125-year history of Notre Dame football that they won the game on the final play of regulation.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I left my Dad sitting in his seat and ran down onto the field to join the celebration. It was a madhouse on the field with players, coaches, the marching band and fans intermingled. Somehow the band got organized, struck up the Notre Dame fight song and began marching off the field into the tunnel leading under and then out of the stadium.
As I marched out of the stadium with thousands of screaming fans I joined in the shouting.
Outside the stadium, I looked back down the tunnel as the crowd streamed past me.
“I am going here!” I said, determined and emphatic, to no one in particular.
Any thought of attending Georgetown University was driven from my mind. Less than a year later I was attending the freshman orientation program as a newly enrolled Notre Dame student. I graduated in 1985. Along the way I developed the lifelong love of learning I have today. Many of those students I met that first day on campus are still my friends today.
Of course, the following year Notre Dame hired Gerry Faust, the team went into a steep decline, and Notre Dame did not win another big home game like that the entire time I was there. It was never like that again for my entire 4 years as a student.
But for that one brief, glorious moment Notre Dame football was all it was supposed to be, thanks to Blair Kiel, Harry Oliver and the 1980 Fighting Irish football team.
RELATED:
Notre Dame Official Announcement: Blair Kiel, Former Notre Dame Quarterback, Passes Away At Age 50
A 2005 survey by the University of Notre Dame ranked the Michigan v. Notre Dame game in 1980 as the 10th greatest game of all-time at Rockne Stadium.
10. 1980 Sept. 20 Notre Dame (ranked #8) v. Michigan (ranked #14) 29-27
This game forever will be remembered for Harry Oliver’s 51-yard field goal just clearing the north goalpost as time expires to push Notre Dame to a miracle two-point victory. Not only did the more than 59,000 fans profess that the afternoon’s persistent wind, which was blowing against Oliver, stops before his kick, they also see Michigan denied on key two-point conversion try with 0:41 seconds remaining that would have made Oliver’s kick a game-tying conversion instead of the gamewinner. The two teams answer each other with two touchdowns in the second quarter, but Michigan holds a one-point lead when Oliver misses a PAT attempt following John Krimm’s 49-yard interception return in the third quarter. Notre Dame inches ahead 26-21 after Bob Crable’s forced fumble sets up a Phil Carter touchdown. Michigan, however, answers with a pass from John Wangler to Craig Dunaway, setting the stage for Oliver’s heroics.
Harry Oliver, who lived in Grace Hall, my dorm, died in 2007.
Oliver’s memorable leftfooted, soccer-style kick remains one of the longest ever by a Notre Dame player (at any point in a game) and represents one of only seven times in the program’s 120-year history that the Irish have won on the final play of regulation. Despite having attempted only one previous field goal in a Notre Dame varsity game, Oliver was up to the task in the waning second versus Michigan and went on to have a record-setting junior season in 1980 that included making 18-of-23 field goals, highlighted by two different games when he sent four through the uprights (tying what then was the Irish single-game record).