About the game and not arguing about national championships, the game was a fantastic one. It had stopped raining right before the game but I remember being stuck on hwy 11 bridge and it was coming down in buckets. The temp also dropped like 20 degrees after the rain had quit.

Basically, we couldn't stop ND when we had to. I also believe had we played Todd the entire game we might win. ND was struggling mightily when he was in. He was more mistake prone but was big time as he would prove later on. Rutledge was the calculating, textbook guy but ND was by far the best team we had played and we needed athletes to match them and Todd would have brought that. We also needed Wayne Wheeler to step up big in this game as ND sold out on the run and Wheeler was not very effective.

In the first two national title games against ND they just had a better team, much like we were just better in '12. I would have loved to have seen what we could do with Todd in 73 but we played them again the next season in the Orange bowl with Todd and lost again. ND was just a little better than us at that time.

I'll tell you what, nobody and I mean nobody sat down for one second in that game. To this day, it's the best game I've ever been to in person. Only the SC-Texas national championship was a better one. That old rickety stadium in uptown was vibrating the whole game. It was an atmosphere that you rarely see. I hated that we lost but am glad I was there for one of college football's all-time classic games.