“Game of the century” still one of the best games ever
Spartan fans under the age of 50 probably don’t remember the 1966 game between #1 Notre Dame and #2 Michigan State, and might not know why it’s a big deal around East Lansing as the Fighting Irish come to town on Saturday.
The “Game of the Century” opened with the Spartans rolling out to a 10-0 lead, before Notre Dame rallied to tie it. Late in the contest, Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian had the ball at his own 30-yard line but elected to run the clock out and force a tie, since the Irish still had one more game (against Southern California) on their schedule. Parseghian and Notre Dame won that matchup 51-0, claiming a national championship in the process. The matchup between #1 and #2, the tie, and the controversy behind Parseghian’s strategy all contributed to make that game the classic of classics.
Steve Grinczel, of MLive.com writes that if either team had won, the game probably wouldn’t have been as famous.
The game between No. 1-ranked Notre Dame and No. 2 MSU on Nov. 19, 1966 may not have been the greatest game ever played, and yet its claim to the title, the “Game of the Century,” has gone largely unchallenged.
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Had either Notre Dame or Michigan State won in ‘66, Jones reasoned, the game would have been long relegated to the small print in record books.
Jack Ebling also has a column on the “Game of the Century”. Part 1 and Part 2 can be found on MSUSpartans.com.
“You can never take away the things that are accomplished,” Cavender said. “They’re locked up and stored forever. But there’s a lot of truth to it when people talk about the value of the 10-10 tie. When the game ended and people sat there like someone had died, it was hard to see that. But we went down in the history books because of that. A lot of important lessons were learned.”
From part 2 of Jack Ebling’s “1966 Game of the Century Revisited” column