Eastern Michigan Athletics
A Walk Through History: Eastern Beats Central, 16-16
9/19/2019 1:30:00 PM | Football, General
Author T.C. Cameron tells unknown tales from EMU Football's Past
The last time a tie game occurred in major college football, the oldest player on Eastern Michigan's current roster was 54 days old.
Some of college football's infamous stalemates include Michigan State's 10-10 tie with Notre Dame in 1966 and a 10-10 draw between Michigan and Ohio State that sent the Buckeyes to the Rose Bowl in 1973.
EMU has played 47 such games, none bigger than Oct. 6,
Wait…what?
It's true. Mario Ferretti's 35-yard field goal on the next-to-last play gave EMU a 16-16 win over Central. News reports the day after the game and media guides from both schools report a tie, but to those who played, coached or watched from the stands, Eastern won.
Even the losing coach acknowledges the result, albeit grudgingly.
"I can understand why someone who went to or played for Eastern sees the game with that perspective," says Herb Deromedi, CMU's head coach from 1978-1993 and the winningest coach in Mid-American Conference history.
The incredible backstory of this game — the most important chapter of the Eastern-Central rivalry, the MAC's longest-running rivalry at 96 games — starts in three months earlier at the MAC Council of Presidents meeting in Toledo, Ohio.
The Vote
In the spring of 1984, as the Detroit Tigers raced to a major league-record 35-5 start that captured the nation's attention, few were paying attention to the NCAA requirements required to maintain Division-I status. At stake was this: six of the MAC's 10 members had to qualify under one of three different criteria to satisfy the NCAA's majority qualification standards: possess a stadium capacity of 30,000 and average 17,000 spectators per home game for one year; average 20,000 or more in attendance for home and away games; average 17,000 for all games for four years.
Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Miami, Northern Illinois and Toledo would qualify; Ball State, EMU, Kent State and Ohio would not. On the bubble was Western Michigan, until the Broncos informed the league they would come up short.
Staring at losing their Division-I status, the MAC's presidents panicked. In the pre-historic age before the Internet, it's safe to assume a healthy number of clandestine phone calls took place between the presidents and then-MAC Commissioner Jim Lessig. The solution they hashed out was to ambush and remove EMU at the Council of Presidents meeting, July 16, in Toledo.
The presidents likely picked EMU because the football program was struggling more than any of the five member schools who wouldn't make the certification mark. It's also likely the five Ohio schools weren't interested in cannibalizing one of their own. But this hastily-planned, out-patient surgery kind of solution created another problem: the MAC charter prevented the presidents from removing a member in good standing; seven of the 10 schools had to vote 'Yes' to any proposed charter change.
No one in Ypsilanti had any warning of the tornado about to drop out of the sky. EMU didn't send president John Porter to the meeting; Provost Ron Collins went in his place. When the motion to change the MAC's charter was brought forward, Eastern and Western voted 'No.' Central Michigan abstained. The five schools from Ohio, plus Ball State and Northern Illinois voted 'yes' to pass the amendment, 7-2-1.
The ultimatum to EMU: drop football by Aug. 1 or be removed from the MAC entirely, just six weeks before the season's first game.
Professional and major college sports are littered with cringe-worthy moments like this. Army once fired football coach Bob Sutton on a Manhattan street corner. Navy once fired Ken Niumatalolo, now their all-time leader in wins, in the dining room of a McDonald's when he was an offensive coordinator.
So when the MAC presidents tried to railroad a school out of their league just six weeks before the football season, news of the vote ran on the front page of every sports page in Michigan. Wire stories ran inside almost every outlying paper in the Great Lakes and Midwest, too.
Opinion columns overwhelmingly lambasted the vote. The Detroit Free Press' Johnette Howard wrote she hoped the presidents felt "sharp pangs of conscious for the unceremonious decree." Dave Matthews from the Lansing State Journal penned: "I can't think of any recent action, by any conference, more selfish or more morally wrong."
Similar op-eds ran in the Ypsilanti Press and Ann Arbor News. Western Michigan coach Jack Harbaugh described the vote as "disdain for the educational values of intercollegiate athletics." A few days later, a story was published that revealed Western, upon learning of the presidents' preference to remove Eastern, offering to cancel the home game with the lowest anticipated draw to save EMU from this embarrassment. The offer fell on deaf ears, further proving the presidents' resolve to carry out the ridiculous plan.
Porter publicly chastised the decision while EMU's administration and legal team poured through documents and potential strategies. An avalanche of speculative reports began flooding the news cycle about what might happen next. The conference made an untenable situation worse when it refused to allow EMU to take part in the MAC Media Day.
But after sending a team of administrators to the NCAA headquarters to discuss their options, EMU administrators discovered the national governing board was incensed about what had happened in Toledo. Allowing an entire league to qualify for or retain D-I status was intended to give conferences stability, not create instability. The NCAA quickly issued a re-interpretation of the rules that qualified the MAC's Division-I status; the NCAA wouldn't rule on the MAC until at least September of 1985, rendering the presidents' July 16 vote moot.
Now emboldened, EMU's Regents voted unanimously to keep football. The MAC could still boot Eastern if they wanted, but football — a campus tradition dating back almost 130 seasons to 1891 — would remain. The MAC presidents backtracked sheepishly, wishing the sordid episode had never happened.
But it had happened, and it lit a fire in Ypsilanti. EMU hired an Ann Arbor marketing firm to help solve EMU's attendance problem. It was called "Eastern Energy" and signs, posters and bumper stickers promoting the campaign were omnipresent in every corner east of US-23 and south of Washtenaw Road.
The Game
EMU was racking up victories off the field, but the season started disastrously. A crowd of 18,000 showed up at Rynearson to see Eastern lose, 31-7, to Youngstown State. After a 24-7 drubbing at Marshall, EMU returned home to a crowd of 19,281 for Ohio — then a stadium record — but the Bobcats kicked a field goal with one second left to hand Eastern a 16-13 loss. A week later, Eastern fell to 0-4 at Bowling Green, 35-27, the team's 14th straight loss.
"The kids hear coach saying it's getting better, but when you lose, the doubt remains," Harkema remembers. "We were getting closer, but the team, and really, the entire EMU community was desperate."
Up next was undefeated Central Michigan, the rival who refused to stand with Eastern in Toledo and the preseason pick to win the MAC.
"I don't know the reasons why our school chose to vote the way they did, but in the football room, we could care less," Deromedi said. "We were going to play Eastern, and they were a rival."
The overflow crowd of 21,245 had barely sat down when CMU took control, taking their first possession 97 yards in 12 plays to take a 7-0 lead. A booming 47-yard field goal by Ferretti got Eastern on the board, but two plays later, CMU's Curtis Adams gained the corner on a sweep and bolted 81 yards to make it 13-3 at half.
Eastern got the break it needed when a quirky bounce of the third quarter kickoff found the leg of Central's Clint Wilkerson. Vince Evans pounced on it for the Hurons and Ferretti banged another kick home to make it 13-6. On the ensuing possession, EMU forced and recovered another fumble, this time at Central's 12-yard line. A few plays later, Jerry Gaydash reached the end zone and inexplicably, the game was tied at 13.
The remarkable finish awaited. CMU took possession with 7:41 to play, and although Eastern stopped the Chippewas short of the end zone, Dan Flower's 34-yard kick put Central up, 16-13. An audible groan of frustration descended from the stands.
Staring at another heartbreaking loss with just 2:15 to play, EMU and quarterback Robert Gordon would have none of it. Gordon pushed the Hurons 51 yards downfield, the buzz within the crowd growing louder and more intense with each yard Eastern gained. The two biggest plays were a 16-yard completion to Marcus Matthews and a draw to Gary Patton for 17 to put the ball on the CMU 15.
Now the crowd roared back to insane life — "They really might do it!" — but hopes were stunted when Gordon was sacked. Staring at 4th down from the CMU 18 with just eight seconds remaining, Harkema called timeout to ask his team what they wanted to do.
"The players showed a lot of maturity in that moment because the impulsive thing to do would have been to go for the touchdown," Harkema said, "but after everything the team and school had gone through, they realized we had to show something that night. It didn't have to be everything, but it had to be something."
Out trotted Ferretti, the unflappable transfer from Northern Michigan University.
"As we positioned to take the kick, (holder) Bobby Hirschmann looked at me and said, 'I'm a little nervous about you.' I said to him, 'Bobby, relax. Let's have a little fun with this,'" Ferretti said. "Usually you hear just the snap, the ball getting set and the sound of your foot striking the ball. But I remember the roar of the crowd breaking that silence as I saw the ball go through the dark sky and between the uprights. It's the sweetest thing I ever heard. That moment that has never left me."
Because two seconds remained, EMU would have to kickoff, leaving time for a CMU miracle. But lining up for the kickoff, EMU's Brad Coldiron realized the game was already over.
"We're waiting for the referee's whistle and Brad is looking at me, smiling ear to ear. He said, 'Look at them — they're crying,'" Ferretti said. "It was emphatic; there was no doubt we had won the game. It was a pivotal point for the program and the university."
After the game, CMU's Brian McPherson, Ferretti's former Northern Michigan teammate, shook his hand and said, "I've never seen a team play as hard as you guys did tonight. Congrats." In the locker room, Harkema told the Free Press' Mick McCabe: "The best thing about this is everyone knows there's a football team here."
The Start of Something Special
The next week, Ferretti kicked another 35-yard field goal in the waning seconds to tie Lee Corso and Northern Illinois, 10-10.
"Corso told the media after the game, 'EMU's probably thrilled with another tie' but I was mad. We were the better team that day," Harkema recalled. "However, as we got on the bus, one of our seniors told me, 'Coach, that's the first time in five years I got on a bus after a game and we didn't lose.' I was blown away. Winning was important, but so was changing perceptions and expectations."
Outside Ypsilanti, most midwest newspapers and some larger, metro dailies led their college football roundups with EMU's second-straight tie. You could almost hear editors saying, "That school that was almost kicked out of their league is a scrappy bunch. Let's lead the college football recap with EMU."
It's hard to imagine the local and national media literally rooting for Eastern — especially after the avalanche of negativity EMU's athletic department has endured the last handful of years — but that's exactly what was happening in 1984. Three weeks after back-to-back ties, EMU beat Kent State in the rain at Rynearson, 20-18. The goal posts, along with that winless streak, came down. The questions about attendance and MAC membership were history, too.
Ironically, in 2019, one school owns more MAC titles in all sports combined than any other: Eastern Michigan.
The season ended 2-7-2 after a 24-14 victory at Western Michigan. The record obscured two important facts: Eastern won twice and tied twice in the final seven games and showed everyone there was a will to succeed in Ypsilanti.
"After the season, I ended up in a car with CMU athletic director Dave Keilitz, and he said, 'I can't remember seeing a team so happy not to lose'" Harkema said. "I shot back, 'I don't ever remember a team so disappointed with not winning!' That game kickstarted the five-year climb we made to winning the MAC title."
EMU went 33-20-2 (.618) from 1985-89, winning more games than any other MAC school, including the 1987 MAC title and the California Bowl. That '87 season is best remembered as the ultimate revenge tour; EMU defeated each school which voted it out of the MAC four years earlier en route to that championship.
The heart of those Hurons now soars with Eagles, as current head coach Chris Creighton has rebuilt the Eastern program into one that has earned two bowl bids in the last three seasons and three consecutive wins over Big Ten schools. In the last five years, 15 Eagles signed with NFL teams.
Harkema said it in 1984 and it's true for Creighton's crew, too: there's a football team to be reckoned with again in Ypsilanti.
— T.C. Cameron is the author of Miracle Maples (2019) and Navy Football: Return to Glory (2017). A 1995 graduate of EMU, he's lived in Annapolis, MD since 2009. Twitter: @ByTCCameron
