Indiana University Athletics
Great Games in IU History
7/8/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
July 8, 2005
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Over the month of July, IUHOOSIERS.com shines the spotlight on five unforgettable games in IU football history. This set of five contests came from an incredible interview with long-time radio personality Don Fischer. Each week, we will include not only the game recap from that season, but also thoughts straight from the Fischer interview. The second in our series is the Cream and Crimson's 1979 loss to Michigan.
1979 MICHIGAN 27, INDIANA 21
Oct. 27 - Ann Arbor, Mich.
Attendance - 104,832
The Hoosiers played gallantly, and seemingly had a tie in hand when they drove 79 yards to score with only 55 seconds remaining. But the Wolverines won it on the game's final play, a 45-yard pass from reserve quarterback John Wangler to split end Anthony Carter, who eluded three IU defenders to score. IU held a 14-7 halftime lead but the Wolverines bounced back behind Wangler to go up 21-14, before the heroic final drive by the Hoosiers and Tim Clifford. Clifford hit 12-26 passes for 232 yards and two touchdowns, including strikes of 36 and 54 yards to Nate Lundy that set up touchdowns. In fact, IU's touchdowns came on drives of 98, 69 and 79 yards. Wangler was 10-14 for 163 yards, while Butch Woolfolk and Lawrence Reid rushed for 127 yards and 99 yards, respectively.
 Clifford connected on 12-26 passes for 232 yards and two touchdowns against Michigan.  |
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DON FISCHER'S THOUGHTS
One of the most memorable ballgames I have ever been involved with was the Michigan game. At any rate, that game was phenomenal in many respects. In this particular game, we hung with Michigan the whole game. We went into the locker room up at halftime, 14-7. They came back and scored twice to take the lead, 21-14. Then we go into the fourth quarter and we got the football with about four-and-half minutes to go. We started down the field. We get the ball to midfield and we have a third down play. Tim Clifford drops back and throws a pass to Nate Lundy, who catches the ball at the two-yard line. He goes out of bounds. We thought he had scored, but the official said he stepped out of bounds.
We run a play, fumble, but recover it. In a handoff from Clifford to Lonnie Johnson, he fumbled the football. They fumbled the handoff. Clifford recovered the ball. He is hurt, by the way. Clifford hurt his shoulder at some point in this ballgame. I don't know when it happened, but he hurt his shoulder. He threw this deep ball to Lundy, and he caught the ball at the seven or eight-yard line and went out at the two. He did this with a bad left shoulder.
 Lundy snared a pair of Clifford strikes for 36 and 54 yards to set up scores. |
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At any rate, we fumble the first possession as we try to score here. Clifford recovers it. Then he drops back and throws a dump pass to David Harangody in the end zone for the touchdown. In fact, we lost a yard and put us back to the three. He dumps it in the end zone. We have scored and now we kick the extra point to tie the ballgame, 21-21. It is down to 55 seconds in the ballgame. These 55 seconds took at least 15 minutes. It just took forever. They used all three of their timeouts. They had a couple of penalties in the series. The play that changed the game, they had a screen pass to Lawrence Reid, the fullback, and Michigan still had a timeout left with 13 seconds left to go. I don't know if Reid didn't think they had a timeout left or what, but he caught the screen pass. He saw he was going nowhere and he lateraled the ball out of bounds. He almost was acting like he tripped and fell. He threw the ball out of bounds and Lee Corso caught it. He threw it right at him. He threw it, he didn't fumble it. He tried to make it look that way, but he didn't. It was an obvious throw. He threw the ball to the sideline. There is six seconds left and the officials don't rule it that way. It is a penalty. It is illegal to throw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock, which is what he did. The officials let it stand as a fumble that got away and went out of bounds.
They get one more play. We were nailed for a penalty that put the ball at our 49-yard line. We lined up, they threw the flag and we had an encroachment penalty. On the ensuing play, John Wangler throws a ball to Anthony Carter. Carter catches the ball. Tim Wilbur and either Chuck Alexander or Dart Ramsey, I don't remember, banged into each other and Carter split them. He is off to the races for a touchdown. They never kicked the extra point because the fans charged the field. There are more than 104,000 fans in the stadium and they charged the field against Indiana. They called this the greatest comeback win in Michigan history.
That was the first time under Corso that we played a big-time opponent and really competed. It proved that we could play with people. That ballgame to me was very significant.
