Sport: The Streak Ends

Grey clouds scudded across the autumn sun, and the largest crowd (62,000) ever to watch a college football game in Oklahoma shuddered in an even greyer silence. Out there on the patchwork turf of the University of Oklahoma’s stadium, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were doing the undoable. It was bad enough that they had the Sooners beaten, 7-0, that they were breaking the longest winning streak (47 games) in intercollegiate football history. Now, with less than two minutes to go they were firing long, dangerous passes in a bold try for another touchdown.

Soberer citizens would have busied themselves running out the clock. But this was an afternoon on which the Irish could be forgiven anything. They were the last team to have beaten Oklahoma (in the opening game of 1953, 28-21), and the years between had left them a lot to atone for. Their young Coach Terry Brennan, 29. was literally fighting for his future. Last year he had led Notre Dame to its most disastrous season (2 won, 8 lost) since it started playing football in 1887. This season his team had begun by winning four straight, but in the last two weeks they had been beaten twice. For days the campus at South Bend had echoed with pep rallies; the underdog Irish knew that this was the one to win. All through three quarters the hopped-up Irish line hammered at Coach Bud Wilkinson’s well-drilled Sooners. For all their consummate fakery, none of Oklahoma’s quarterbacks could shake loose on their famed run-pass option play. The lean, long-muscled Oklahomans who had never played on a losing team were hard put to hold the game to a scoreless tie. And in the fourth quarter, they could no longer do that. Notre Dame Fullback Nick Pietrosante shared with Halfback Pat Doyle the joy of bulling for steady yardage through the outcharged Oklahoma line. They brought the ball all the way down to the three-yard line. Then, when the Sooners jammed the middle to stop them, Irish Quarterback Bob Williams pitched out to Halfback Dick Lynch for the game-winning touchdown.

On the way back to their dressing room, most of the Oklahoma men broke into tears. “We should have pulled it out. We’ve been doing it for a long time,” the Sooners muttered between their sobs. Was it a relief to have the long winning streak ended and the pressure off?

‘That’s one question I can answer unequivocally,” said sad, 41-year-old Coach Wilkinson promptly. “No.”

“For us,” said Notre Dame’s Dick Lynch, “it was a do-or-die game, and we did it.” Explained his teammate Nick Pietrosante: “We did it for all the Catholics in Oklahoma (total: about 91,000 in a population of 2,245,000).”