Watching the M-OSU 1973 game on BTN

Didn't realize it was on so missed 1st half. Anyway watching the last 3 mins of game, it seemed M was in no hurry, huddling up still running option. Hadn't watch game in yrs., had forgotten M tried 58yd FG, w/ just over a min. left., had distance but wide. OSU throws INT on their next possession, M proceeds to miss a 44yd FG.

I was a 13 yr old kid at the time, listened to Bob Ufer on radio with my dad. Remember being devastated when M was not voted to go to Rose Bowl & the rumors that sparty AD voted for OSU. I guess my hatred of sparty probably started right then, haha!

I was at that game and it was a very intense atmosphere. Heartbreaking not to get the win magnified with the news the next day that our 10-0-1 team would have no bowl game (Rose) to go to. I was just a poor student at the time but I had resolved to find a way to go if we had made it.

'shoes

I was there too, 'Shoes...as a senior. Lantry's first miss was little more than a crapshoot (58 yards)...and it came remarkably close. From where I sat, it passed maybe two feet under the "L" of the crossbar and left (his left) upright. The second was a very bad miss the other way...perhaps due to his "over-compensation"?

Of course, as you and I (and anyone there or who has read about it) well know, the second attempt came after a short possession (following the INT) led by our backup QB, Larry Cipa, after Denny Franklin's shoulder had been separated just before the 58-yard try.

What I recall pissed me off about the ADs' Rose Bowl vote (6-4 for OSU) more than anything was bourne out by an article in the Daily the following Monday: "XXX  and XXX (one of them being MSU's AD) cited the injury to Franklin, saying Michigan would clearly not be the same team sans him, and the B-10 needs a Rose victory badly."

OK, jackass ADs, suppose either of Lantry's kicks had succeeded?  U-M would still have gone to Pasadena MINUS Denny Franklin.  And as a rare objective writer in the OSU Lantern said, "And they are penalizing Michigan for Franklin's injury?  Was he the one who stopped OSU cold in the second half?"

Just a very bitter, controversial ending to a fantastic game...though in fairness and honesty, I have to remove the blame from the ADs, and place it squarely on the most assinine rule in college football (during my time)...allowing only one team from the B10 allowed to go to any bowl.  (So Michigan's '70, '72, '73 and '74 teams, a combined 39-3-1, spend the holidays at home, watching countless 8-3 or 7-4 teams play...)

Mike, as I think you know (I was also a senior). In those days potential student seating wrapped all of the way to the home 50 yard line. (not all of the seats top to bottom, but some). I was part of a group that stood in line for days in order to get a seat on the 50, maybe halfway up.

Former MSU coach Duffy Daugherty was doing pre-game work for ABC. Duffy had been down on the field for a pre-game interview and was walking to an aisle to head up to the press box when a student yelled "pass him up" (you will know what passing someone up entailed). There was very briefly a look of terror in Duffy's eyes before he hustled himself up to the press box.

'shoes

Oh, yes...I'm fully aware of what it entailed. And it was the "tails" of some of the
"victims" which felt the brunt of the "pressure" (from passers' hands)...eh?

Also, Shoes---remember the 1972 Purdue game?  9-6, on a late Mike Lantry field goal (after he muffed a point-after that allowed Purdue to tie it with a FG)?  Dickhead Danielson was Purdue's QB, Denny Franklin ours.

For me, it was one of the two most memorable games that season, when I had a seat in the north endzone maybe five(5) rows up---so almost on the playing field. In the game I mention, I got to exercise my pitching arm by beating Purdue's "World's Largest Drum" several times...with snowballs. Made a pretty good "thud-bong", I must say!!!!

(The other memorable moment was about a month earlier, in our 1-0 win over MSU in Duffy's final UM-MSU game, when Gil Chapman practically ran into my lap on the clinching touchdown, a 58-yard end-around).

I was a junior that year. I think the game was on Thanksgiving weekend because I know I drove to AA that morning from home and it rained all the way down to about Hamburg, then stopped. During the game it was mostly damp and semi-warm, considering, but not raining. To me, Lantry's second attempt looked good, but I often drank a 12-pack of Stroh's and smoked a lot of weed during the games, so my perception was somewhat unreliable. What I remember most was what seemed like almost total silence as the crowd drifted out of the House afterwards.

Mike, I remember both of those well. The Jersey Jet (Gil Chapman was an electrifying player that we under-utilized).

dwoody- I am "shocked" that there was pot-smoking going on during those years.

'shoes

DWood, you must REALLY have been drunk and/or stoned. (Did you have to pay $5, by mail?) Lantry's second attempt (at the end of the game) wasn't even close. It was wide right by a good two yards. And it was 14 yards shorter than his missed-by-18-inches effort.

I just wanted it to be good sooo bad, and had a bad angle cuz I was in the NW side of the stadium. Also, back then I weighed only 140 and so I was pretty f'd up, coloring my normally acute powers of observation.