Divine Intervention? When the Ball Bounced Notre Dame’s Way Against Michigan State

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There are games you win because you execute the game plan perfectly. There are games you win because you are simply the better team. And then there are games when a football takes a strange bounce, somehow lands in exactly the right pair of hands, and leaves everyone wondering whether something—or Someone—might have been looking out for you.

On September 22, 1990, Notre Dame may have experienced a little bit of all three.

I was a sophomore at Notre Dame that fall, and it was an extraordinary time to be a student beneath the Golden Dome. The Irish had won the national championship just two seasons earlier, had spent much of 1989 ranked No. 1, and opened the 1990 season back on top of the polls. But holding onto that No. 1 ranking was already proving considerably more difficult than earning it.

I didn’t make the road trip to East Lansing for this particular game. I didn’t have a car, and neither did many of my friends, so away games often meant gathering in our dorm rooms and watching together. We may have been hundreds of miles from Spartan Stadium, but that didn’t make us any less invested. We watched, yelled at the television, celebrated the good plays and agonized over the bad ones, cheering on the Irish from our little corner of campus.

And on this particular Saturday, there would be plenty to agonize over.

One week earlier, Notre Dame had survived No. 4 Michigan, 28-24, in a thriller at Notre Dame Stadium. During the Irish’s fourth-quarter comeback, quarterback Rick Mirer faced third-and-15 and fired a pass toward Raghib “Rocket” Ismail. The ball bounced off Ismail’s hands and somehow found freshman Lake Dawson for a 41-yard gain, keeping alive the drive that ultimately gave Notre Dame the victory.

Lucky? Maybe. But surely something that improbable couldn’t happen again seven days later.

Could it?

No. 1 Goes to East Lansing

Notre Dame arrived at Spartan Stadium with a 1-0 record and its No. 1 ranking intact. Waiting for the Irish was No. 24 Michigan State, a team that had no intention of making Notre Dame’s stay at the top comfortable.

The Irish started well. On Notre Dame’s second possession, Mirer directed the offense down the field, and Ricky Watters finished the drive with a five-yard touchdown run to give the Irish a 7-0 lead. Michigan State answered with a field goal, and midway through the second quarter came one of the afternoon’s most damaging Irish mistakes.

Facing fourth-and-22 from the Notre Dame 20, Craig Hentrich dropped back to punt. Michigan State broke through the protection and blocked the kick, sending the ball out of the end zone for a safety and cutting Notre Dame’s lead to 7-5. Worse yet, Michigan State received Hentrich’s ensuing free kick and drove 56 yards in seven plays, finishing with a one-yard Hyland Hickson touchdown run. In a matter of minutes, Notre Dame had gone from leading 7-0 to trailing 12-7.

Holtz later lamented the breakdown in punt protection. The Irish had corrected one player’s blocking mistake from the previous punt, only to have another player misunderstand his assignment on the next one. “And we ended up with a blocked kick,” Holtz said, “and those things are disastrous.”

This one certainly was, and Michigan State wasn’t finished. The Spartans added another touchdown in the third quarter when Tico Duckett scored from a yard out, stretching the lead to 19-7. For the second Saturday in a row, the No. 1 team in the country was in serious trouble.

Finding a Way

Notre Dame desperately needed something to change, and late in the third quarter the Irish finally began putting together the kind of drive they had been searching for. One of its biggest moments came on fourth-and-eight from the Michigan State 27, when Holtz showed his confidence in his young quarterback and decided to go for it.

Mirer found fullback Rodney Culver around the 20-yard line, still short of the first down. Michigan State linebacker Chuck Bullough appeared to have him stopped, but Culver had other ideas. He spun away and bulldozed his way to the 18, fighting for the first down and keeping Notre Dame’s drive alive.

Early in the fourth quarter, Watters finished the drive with his second touchdown of the afternoon, this one from two yards out. Notre Dame had pulled within 19-14 with 13:13 remaining. Suddenly, a game that had appeared to be slipping away was within reach again.

The Irish got the opportunity they needed when they took possession at their own 19-yard line with 5:15 remaining. Eighty-one yards stood between Notre Dame and another improbable comeback, and Rick Mirer went to work.

The sophomore quarterback had struggled through the middle portion of the game, much as he had against Michigan the previous week. But when Notre Dame needed him most, Mirer came alive. He completed six of eight passes for 84 yards in the fourth quarter, with 80 of those yards coming on the final drive.

That drive eventually brought Notre Dame into Michigan State territory, where one throw would change everything.

The Immaculate Deflection

Mirer dropped back and looked toward sophomore receiver Adrian Jarrell along the right side. He fired the ball and almost immediately realized he had made a terrible mistake. He hadn’t seen Michigan State cornerback Troy Murray lurking near the sideline.

Jarrell saw him. Mirer saw him too, but only after the football had left his hand. Both Irish players believed the same thing was about to happen: interception.

“I missed the defender, he was so close to the sideline,” Mirer recalled. “For a second, I thought I was gonna’ have to play defense, but Adrian was there.”

Jarrell had much the same reaction. He was already preparing to make the tackle when the football hit Murray squarely in the chest. Instead of securing the interception that might have ended Notre Dame’s hopes, however, the ball ricocheted backward over Murray’s head.

Jarrell was waiting.

He grabbed the deflection and carried it to the Michigan State 2-yard line, giving Notre Dame an improbable first-and-goal. A week after a deflected Mirer pass had landed in Lake Dawson’s hands to help save the Irish against Michigan, another deflected Mirer pass had somehow found a Notre Dame receiver at exactly the moment the Irish needed it most.

Two plays later, Culver went off right tackle and into the end zone from one yard out. Notre Dame had taken a 20-19 lead, and after the conversion attempt failed, Michigan State had one final opportunity with only seconds remaining.

The Irish defense held. Notre Dame had survived again.

Luck o’ the Irish?

Afterward, everyone seemed to have a slightly different explanation for what had happened.

Ricky Watters wasn’t particularly interested in calling it luck. “I don’t like to think about luck,” the senior captain said. To Watters, Notre Dame had put itself in position to win. Players had run their routes, maintained their concentration and been ready when the opportunity presented itself.

Michigan State coach George Perles offered a more pragmatic assessment. His Spartans weren’t snakebitten, he insisted; sometimes the ball simply bounced in funny ways. “We played our hearts out and Notre Dame played their hearts out,” Perles said. “They were good enough to win by a point today.”

Holtz seemed willing to entertain the possibility that there was something a little harder to explain happening around his football team. After two remarkable victories in two weeks, even he couldn’t completely dismiss the idea of the famous “Luck o’ the Irish.”

“What a football game,” Holtz said. “I’ve been involved in two of them and I haven’t figured it out yet. You can say we had the ‘Luck o’ the Irish,’ but this isn’t something that happens every single day. There is a mystique about Notre Dame, make no mistake about it.”

At the same time, Holtz understood that his team couldn’t expect a miracle every Saturday. Notre Dame had struggled offensively for long stretches. The defense had bent for the second consecutive week, this time playing without All-American cornerback Todd Lyght, who was sidelined by a hamstring injury suffered against Michigan. And special teams had surrendered the blocked punt that helped Michigan State take control of the game.

“I never said we were number one,” Holtz said afterward. “You have to be lucky to do some of the things we’ve done.” But he also hoped his players wouldn’t begin taking that good fortune for granted and assume they could simply “make something happen” whenever they desperately needed it.

At 2-0, Notre Dame was still No. 1. Perhaps a fortunate 2-0, but 2-0 nonetheless.

“It looks like we’ll be a football team that has to find a way to win every week,” Holtz said.

Maybe That’s the Mystique

Looking back 36 years later, it’s easy to see Notre Dame’s 20-19 victory over Michigan State as simply another line in the record book. But when I think about that game, I also think about being a sophomore at Notre Dame, sitting in a dorm room with friends and watching it all unfold.

We weren’t in East Lansing that afternoon. We didn’t have cars to hop into and follow the Irish wherever they went. But we didn’t need to be inside Spartan Stadium to feel every momentum swing. When you’re a student at Notre Dame, especially during football season, an away game doesn’t feel very far away. For a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, whatever dorm room had the television became our own little section of the stadium.

And what a time it was to be a Notre Dame student. Lou Holtz was on the sideline. Rocket Ismail was one of the most electrifying players in college football. Rick Mirer was emerging as Notre Dame’s next star quarterback. The Irish were ranked No. 1, and somehow, when they desperately needed something to happen, it happened.

Against Michigan, a pass bounced off Rocket’s hands and into Lake Dawson’s. Seven days later in East Lansing, a pass that looked destined for a Michigan State interception bounced off Troy Murray and into Adrian Jarrell’s hands.

Two games, two deflections, two fourth-quarter comebacks and two Notre Dame victories.

I can only imagine the reaction inside Spartan Stadium when Jarrell came down with that football. But I don’t have to imagine the reaction back on campus. Somewhere in a Notre Dame dorm, a group of college kids who couldn’t make the road trip had just watched the impossible happen again.

Was it preparation and perseverance? Was it simply the famous Luck o’ the Irish? Or was there maybe even a little divine intervention?

Thirty-six years later, I’m still not sure.

But Lou Holtz may have said it best: There is a mystique about Notre Dame.

Make no mistake about it.

Go Irish! Beat Sparty!

(Research gathered from The Scholastic: 1990 Notre Dame Football Review, and the Notre Dame Observer.)

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