After the game.

Same thing...bawling his eyes out. Apparently, even Al Davis was touched.

They were all arrested. About 7 in total. Did alot of spray painting before ND Security arrived. Mostly "ND Sucks. Vols Rule" kind of stuff. Next day ND maintenance had gray painted over the graffiti

white jerseys, only orange. I guess they figured the orange was light enough that it could be used for both home and road uniforms. They also must've thought that orange on white numerals would not stand out enough to be easily readable, because when they did finally go to whites, they outlined the numerals in black, which was not in their traditional color scheme.

I believe UCLA did a similar thing in the mid sixties, wearing only a very pale powder blue for both home and road games.

Except, oddly, the Tennessee band before the game. Back then they didn't play "Rocky Top".

It was my senior year, and it was Senior Day.

I was probably hungover.

Pretty much a blur for a lot of us.

I don't remember anything about their band from that game, except that they were there, as most visiting bands seemed to make the trip to ND. (Miami's stood out as one that never came, at least not to any game I remember.)

I also have seen footage from earlier Tennessee games and there was no "Rocky Top" to be heard. But they sure as hell played it when they returned to ND in 1991.

EDIT: Per Wikipedia, "Rocky Top" was first recorded by the Osborne Brothers in 1967 and first played by the UT band in 1972 at a game versus Alabama. It became an official Tennessee state song in 1982, so it seems likely the UT band began playing it incessantly shortly after that. At least it's catchier than USC's infamous "Only Song You Know."

if you could make an accurate prediction how many times Tennessee's band will play Rocky Top in the course of a season. 400,000 500,000? Any number is possible.

head back out to the backstop on Green Field after enjoying a few brews that were cleverly snuck in.

Now Sunday AM is another story....

You are correct on heading to the Green Field backstop. What a glorious place.

That was our final home game though. I'm certain we started on Thursday. Not that I remember that either.

Warchant music. Is it unorthodox for a Priest to take a mid mass timeout?Jenky was on a total "warpath" as his service could not be heard over music like below. As I sat I in the chapel, praying for my knucklehead friends and all their sins, I almost had a coronary from watching his despair escalate. He also broke from the Dillon Chapel like Haines being sent deep. That record didn't last long. "We gather today..." Cue Amercian Indian warchants. Holy sh** that was funny...

Wasn't that record owned by one of the roommates of the guy you had lunch with last week?

It was blared at Alumni like the US Army would blare disco music at the Taliban in Afghanistan.

His version is priceless.

who can get me laughing harder than our friend from the Bronx.

with my high school teammate for one of his recruiting trips to ND. Sat in Jim Johnson's office before the game to get tickets and talk. Great day!

to wear dark jerseys.

The Tennessee game in '78 and Mirage Bowl against Miami in '79 were exceptions in the Devine era where both teams wore home jerseys, with ND being the home team in '78 and Miami the designated home team in '79. Coincidentally, the opponents wore orange.

Before those two games the last time ND faced an opponent also dressed in their home jerseys was in 1963 against Syracuse (who also wore orange while the Irish wore green). Three games that looked like Irish religious wars.

LSU wore yellow jerseys in the 1997 season Independence Bowl while ND wore Navy blue.

that the green beat the orange, which they appreciated. It was the final home game for Montana, Golic, Heavens, Huffman, and other highly talented players.

1978-Nov 11: Notre Dame vs. Tennessee

Notre Dame 31-14

South Bend

1st Quarter

ND: Male 24 yard field goal

TENN: Foxx 5 yard run (Duncan kick)

2nd Quarter

ND: Male 37 yard field goal

3rd Quarter

ND: Buchanan 2 yard run (Montana to Holohan pass)

ND: Male 37 yard field goal

ND: Montana 5 yard run (Male kick)

4th Quarter

TEN: P. Ingram 73 yard pass from Streater (Duncan kick)

ND: Restic 30 yard interception return (Male kick)


-- ND was a 21 point favorite, but were trailing 7-6 at halftime. Tennessee was 2-4-1 coming into that game and ended up 5-5-1--winning their last 3 after losing to ND.

--#14 was Roland James who was an AA DB from Jamestown OH who ended up being a #1 pick for the New England Patriots.

--#78 was OT Tim Irwin who was a starting OT many years for the Vikings.

--#28 was speedster WR Anthony Hancock from Cleveland OH who was a #1 draft choice by the KC Chiefs. He was only a FR that year and did some damage the following year when Tennesse beat ND in Knoxville.

how far into the 3rd quarter we were before scoring and taking the lead. Based only on memory, I would guess we were close to half way into the 3rd quarter before scoring.

My recollection is that ND still trailed and was not doing particularly well even in the 3rd quarter when Tim Huffman got hurt. He was a starting OG and his brother, the late Dave Huffman, was the starting C. Even though he was actively in the lineup at the time, Dave was one of the two players that helped walk Tim all the way to sit down on the bench, given Tim's leg injury. Dave then sprinted out from the bench back into the huddle and from the huddle sprinted to the line of scrimmage. His being fired up since his brother had just been injured energized what had been a lethargic crowd and, in my opinion, altered the momentum of the game. I believe that this all occurred on what turned out to be our first scoring drive of the second half.

If anyone recalls better, please let me know, as I'd be interested. But to me that is always the Dave Huffman game, for the reason I outlined above.

Tenn

Didn't we start 0-2 after going into that year as the pre-season #1 team?

We also got hosed that year at USC.

deleted

Springsteen hit the stage that night.

day. Devine kept pissing away points. "What's Devine doing?" was the lament from the stands. After rolling the dice multiple times I kept figuring, "okay we're due to convert...." It never happened and it was miserable.

but Devine was also late to the party on realizing what a good kicker Male was.

I've always thought we lost that Missouri game because Devine had no faith in Unis, so he kept going for it on fourth down. Had he used Male out of the chute that year, we'd have won that game fairly easily.

That game was pure torture. I thought we'd win it half a dozen times....

the one where holder Restic bobbled the snap

I left out of my post above:
after the failed FG attempt Nd got the ball back and Heavens was stopped for NG on 4th and 1 at the Missouri 28

Next series-Ferguson fumbled at the Missouri 25

With 1:15 left, Missouri was forced to punt to ND (one last chance for ND and Montana) but Randy Harrison fumbled the punt and Missouri recovered

cards....

We were defending national champs, but were ranked No. 5 in the preseason poll. The 3-0 loss to Mizzou (in 95-degree heat, in what was then the earliest home opener in ND history) dropped us to #15, and the 28-14 loss to Michigan dropped us out of the poll entirely. We returned to the poll at #20 after a 26-17 win over Pitt (one of Montana's rallies, after trailing 17-7 in the 4th). We rose to #8, then got absolutely screwed by the refs at USC to drop to 10th, and ended at #7 after the "Chicken Soup" win over Houston.

Four of ND's wins that year were by single digits. We could have finished 6-5 almost as easily as we could have finished 11-1. And the Michigan game was close until the 4th quarter.

On the way to the LSU game.

Dave was my classmate and dormmate from Dillon Hall. I remember we had a great win that day, and then being absolutely stunned hearing the news after the game.

It doesn't go into detail though of how far into the 3rd Q it took ND to take the lead.

Sounds like the game was much closer than the final score would lead one to believe. BTW--Tennessee QB Jimmy Streater passed away in 2004. He led Tennessee over ND in 1979 in Knoxville. He was recruited to Tennessee from a small NC town and supposedly had too many demons in his life:



• No. 14 Notre Dame 31, Tennessee 14 (Nov. 11, 1978 at Notre Dame Stadium)
Tennessee lost despite a 299-286 edge in total yards, with the Irish making several big plays on defense (three interceptions and a fumble recovery).

Notre Dame's Vagas Ferguson picked up 97 yards on 20 rushes while Joe Montana completed 11 of 25 passes for 144 yards. Chuck Male kicked three field goals (from 24, 37 and 37 yards), with the first two giving the Irish a 7-6 halftime lead (UT's Frank Foxx had scored on a
five-yard run). Pete Buchanan (two yards) and Montana (five yards) scored rushing TDs in Notre Dame's 17-point third quarter.

Tennessee cut the lead to 24-14 with 8:10 left to play, after Jim Streater hooked up with Phil Ingram for a 73-yard pass play. Joe Restic sealed the win with a 30-yard interception return for a touchdown.

The game featured a coaching matchup between Dan Devine of the defending national championship Irish and Tennessee's Johnny Majors.

Even in the bowl game it was defense and special teams that drove the comeback.

*

It was a NCAA-sanctioned homage to the Canadian Football League.

In fact I might be in that picture. But weren't most pre-TV games color on color?

on a postgame concert..."Fans tonight after the game Foreigner will play at the ACC tickets are available at the ACC box office"...we went to both....ooooo double vision.

I think Joe Restic had a Pick-6 to ice the game...right in front of me and my brothers.

The vast majority were color-on-color. In fact, it's how ND developed the green jersey tradition -- they were ND's alternate uniform when playing dark-jerseyed opponents like Army and Navy.

White road jerseys became much more prevalent beginning in the 1950s. ND actually wore white at home once, in the 1955 opener versus SMU.

By the 1970s, it was relatively unusual, but hardly unheard of, for teams like Tennessee and UCLA with light-colored home jerseys to wear them on the road -- or, alternatively, for the visiting teams to wear their "home" jerseys at UT and UCLA. (ND did wear white at Tennessee in 1979.) I think Georgia Tech wore gold jerseys and white helmets at ND in 1970.

In 1983, the NCAA implemented a kill-joy rule requiring the visiting team to wear white and the home team to wear colored jerseys in every game. Teams like Georgia Tech and LSU, which traditionally had worn white at home, had to switch to blue or gold and purple, respectively. In 1997, the NCAA relaxed the rule and allowed the home team to wear white, but only if the visiting team consented. In 2010, after UCLA and USC had skirted the rules by agreeing to wear light blue and cardinal in their rivalry game (as had been tradition through 1982), the NCAA passed the current rule allowing both teams to wear colored jerseys if both consent and if the colors sufficiently contrast.

Aside from the fact that I can't believe that Roone and Beano didn't make that a national game, I think someone in the ND athletic office should have told them to go back to Knoxville and bring back their white jerseys.

This white jersey stuff only started in the 1950's because of black & white TV. Even all the poor people have color TV's these days - you can get one for $100. My dad said that back in the 1930's & 40's you wore your school color jerseys every week (as other posters have noted). I was super-bummed that we couldn't wear our "Green Machine" jerseys for the Cotton Bowl after the 1977 season. To my recollection the Cotton Bowl wanted to do this but was nixed by Network TV. Even in the 1970's almost everybody had color.

with Michigan, Pitt and USC. Tennessee was a middling team that year, and ND won easily, 31-14. The 1979 game in Knoxville also wasn't on network TV (thankfully, as ND was blown out, 40-18).

so correct me if I am wrong, but the TV limit rule was actually five times over the course of two seasons, correct?

But I think there was a max of 3 in any season. So if you had only a single TV game one year, you couldn't have 4 the next year. Of course, ND always had either 2 or 3 per year.

ND had only two TV games in its 1977 NC season -- at Pitt and vs. USC. The most attractive game that year not on TV was at Clemson. So that meant ND had an allotment of 3 in 1978, and then 2 again in 1979 (at Michigan and vs. USC).

1980 was another 3-TV-game season. ABC decided to move the Purdue game from Sept. 27 to Sept. 6 and nationally televise it, and also moved the USC game from Nov. 29 to Dec. 6. With our first-ever trip to Alabama in November an obvious TV choice, this meant the Michigan game was not televised -- the only time since the 1978 renewal of the series that has happened. It turned out to be the best game of the entire series, with Harry Oliver winning it on the miraculous 51-yard field goal.

... along with eight others not televised anywhere?

I know WGN picked up a few games in 1988 but pre-cable TV, if a game wasn't on national television was it radio only?

No wonder the Sunday morning highlights with Linsey Nelson were so popular.

except locally, in South Bend (WNDU-Ch. 16), and only if the game was either sold out or beyond a 400-mile radius from South Bend. Luckily, I lived in South Bend, so I got to see the vast majority of ND games on TV, with most of them on Ch. 16 with Tom Dennin doing the play-by-play. We still watched Lindsey Nelson on Sunday morning, but for most of the nation that was their primary source of exposure to ND football.

From the time I started watching ND games in 1972 until the NCAA restrictions on TV were voided by the Supreme Court in 1984 on antitrust grounds, only a handful of games were not televised in South Bend. These included some of the games at Northwestern, and the 1976 and 1978 Navy games at Cleveland, which didn't sell out and were inside 400 miles from South Bend. By comparison, games at Purdue and MSU typically sold out and were televised to South Bend. (Sometimes ABC picked those games up; the sellout/400 mile rule didn't apply to them.)

Also, the 1979 game versus Miami in Tokyo wasn't televised, but presumably that was due to a cost-benefit analysis -- very expensive, especially then, to broadcast a game from Japan, and the game started at 11:30 ET Saturday night (Sunday afternoon in Tokyo).

was the 1978 game at Michigan State, because the Spartans were on probation. I remember listening to that one on the radio in my dorm.