Supporting actors enliven The Play
Backup, saxophonist, field judge recount their parts in Big Game history
Forty years later, the images and soundtrack remain seared into the mind’s eye: Kevin Moen with the ball, Gary Tyrrell about to fall, Joe Starkey on the call.
They were the central characters in a sporting drama forever known as The Play, enduring shorthand for Cal’s outlandish, five-lateral, bandscattering kickoff return to beat Stanford in the 1982 Big Game. Now, on the brink of this year’s anniversary — officially Sunday, though the Bears and Cardinal meet on the same field Saturday — The Chronicle sought a fresh way to reflect on The Play.
After all, most fans know about Moen, a Cal safety in 1982. He fielded the squib kickoff, threw the first lateral, shrewdly trailed the play, caught the last lateral and famously barged through the Stanford band and into college football lore. Cal will unveil a statue of Moen outside Memorial Stadium on Friday.
Tyrrell, a Stanford trombonist 40 years ago, landed the most awkward slice of fame. He unwittingly drifted into Moen’s path in the end zone and got crushed by the exultant (and much larger) athlete. Tyrrell has handled his unfortunate role with grace and good humor, but Stanford will not build a statue of him.
Starkey, Cal’s longtime radio broadcaster, became the voice of The Play with his storied if not entirely informative call. As saxophonists and tuba players wandered into the action in premature celebration, Starkey shrieked with suitable hysteria, “Oh, the band is out on the field!” Soon, he declared Cal’s improbable touchdown “the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football.” And he wasn’t wrong. Moen, Tyrrell and Starkey understandably waded in attention over the past four decades, including during the build-up to this weekend’s anniversary. So we tried to find some fringe characters, people who filled small roles on the field during those long-ago 23 seconds of mayhem — but without whom The Play might
not have unfolded the way it did. Here are their stories:
Steve Dunn brought deep family history to Cal. All four of his grandparents were alums, as were both of his parents. One grandfather, Emery Curtice, threw the javelin, served as captain of the 1929 track and field team and earned induction into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame.
Not surprisingly, then, Dunn embraced his below-the-radar role for the ’82 Bears: He was a backup safety who played mostly on special teams. That included the kickoff-return team, though Dunn initially stayed on the sideline ahead of the final play of the Big Game because Cal’s coaches called for the “hands team” to handle the anticipated short kick.
Dunn remained ready, just in case.
Confusion and frustration reigned after Stanford’s goahead field goal with four seconds left. One member of Cal’s hands team, wide receiver Andy Bark, had started walking toward the locker room and didn’t hear the coaches. Another player also didn’t join his teammates for the kickoff, so Cal originally had only nine men on the field.
Richard Rodgers, who would be involved in four of the five laterals, shouted, “We don’t have enough guys!” Then the coaches on the sideline also started yelling. At some point, Cal’s Scott Smith ran onto the field.
Dunn, standing near the sideline, thought he heard head coach Joe Kapp scream his name (he never did confirm this). Dunn hurried onto the field a moment before Stanford’s Mark Harmon kicked the ball — even though Dunn didn’t have his chin strap attached to his helmet.
He started to run toward the front line of the return team, where he played on “normal” kickoffs. Then he stopped and turned because the ball was coming his way.
“I ran right into the action,” Dunn said.
He was so close, he could have caught the first lateral from Moen. Dunn didn’t try because he knew Rodgers was nearby, so Dunn moved forward and delivered a key block on a Stanford player, pushing him back several yards as Rodgers caught the ball and pondered his next move.
“I think I provided Richard just a little more time,” Dunn said in a Chronicle interview last week. “Then he gave it to (Dwight) Garner, who ran into the teeth of it.”
Garner would become the source of everlasting debate, because he pitched the ball back to Rodgers just as his knee hit the ground. Dunn, meantime, scraped himself off the ground, raced across the field, leveled another Stanford player and watched in amazement as Moen weaved through the band.
Dunn ended up near the officials’ huddle, listening in as they contemplated the craziness. Footage showed him raising his arms to signal “touchdown” right along with referee Charles Moffett.
“Pretty cool moment,” Dunn said. “And then it was bedlam.”
Dunn, now 60 and a commercial real-estate developer who lives in Lafayette, seldom brings up The Play in conversation. Friends occasionally introduce him as “the guy who was in The Play,” sometimes embellishing the tale to suggest he scored the touchdown.
He didn’t, but maybe this whole thing doesn’t happen unless Dunn hustles out there at the last moment. Maybe the dynamic changes if he tries to catch the first lateral. Maybe Rodgers gets tackled without Dunn’s timely block, before chaos erupts.
“Hey, I wasn’t even supposed to be on the field,” Dunn said.
Asked if he thinks The Play might not have happened without him, Dunn replied, “I believe it. Everyone does. We all get the fact it’s never just one person. It’s a team game. We respect that.”
BBB
Even without musical intruders, the ending of the ’82 Big Game would have been wildly memorable. A five-lateral, 57yard kickoff return for a touchdown, ending with no time on the clock? To beat your archrival and keep John Elway, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, out of a bowl game? Absolutely memorable.
But what elevates the play into The Play — what prompted ESPN to produce a one-hour documentary on the 40th anniversary, what compelled the “Today” show to visit Berkeley for a retrospective story — is the band, clearly.
Jim Kohn understands all too well, because he was one of the first Stanford band members to rush onto the field. He reflected on his experience with a mix of sheepishness, guilt and amusement.
Kohn was a sophomore in November 1982, playing saxophone. He also played high school football in St. Louis, so he knew a game wasn’t necessarily over when the clock reached 0:00. Kohn realized the Cardinal needed to make one more tackle before the band had license to storm the field.
But Kohn and his bandmates stood restlessly around the southwest corner of the end zone, eager (or overzealous) to get the party started. And then, as Cal began pitching the ball all over the place, the band took off.
“I was in a sprint,” Kohn said. “I wanted to be the first one out there.”
He can’t remember exactly what triggered the band’s mad dash. Maybe it was the sight of several Stanford players tackling Garner. Or the sight of other Cardinal players leaving the sideline, thinking the game was over.
That’s what Scott Gode, another band member, recalled. Gode said seeing Stanford players bolt from the sideline onto the field prompted band members — “being the lemmings we were,” as he jokingly put it — to follow suit.
Except …
“They were peak athletes, at the top of their game, and we were tired, drunk band members,” Gode said. “They were able to get back pretty quickly and we were stuck out in the middle of the field.”
Kohn’s excitement vanished when he saw the ball pop out of the pile around Garner. And then another lateral, and another, and Cal players suddenly were charging toward the band.
He panicked, galloping sideways trying to avoid fellow band members who were mostly unaware of what was happening. Kohn didn’t know exactly what was happening, either, but he did understand one thing.
“I knew I was where I shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I felt like a guilty perpetrator.”
Gode similarly realized he was in the wrong place when he looked straight at Moen barreling toward him. Gode, much like Kohn, instinctively tried to scramble out of the way.
As the years passed, Gode started to harbor a tinge of regret. He stood 6-foot-6 and was a member of the Stanford crew team. Maybe he should have moved toward Moen, not away from him.
When Gode tells the story of his bit part in the most famous play in college football history, he often wonders, “How much different would The Play have been if I had tried to tackle the guy? Not that I would have or could have, but … ”
He’ll never know, of course. But Gode, now a 59-year-old marketing executive living outside Seattle, and Kohn (also 59), a retired actor in Pasadena, look back on The Play in good spirit. Time eased any guilt about the band’s role.
“In life, you always remember your mistakes,” Kohn said. “This was a colossal mistake, and I can’t imagine making a more fun colossal mistake.”
Just imagine if the officials wiped away The Play.
Even after all this zaniness came together — Dunn belatedly racing onto the field, the five laterals, Kohn and Gode and the rest of the band crashing the show, Moen steamrolling Tyrrell — Moffett, the ref, convened his crew to decide if it counted.
Jim Fogltance, the field judge, was in the huddle. He and the other officials told Moffett there was no penalty on Cal (two flags were thrown on Stanford for extra players coming onto the field). Each official assured Moffett he hadn’t blown his whistle during the kickoff return.
Moffett threw his arms skyward. Touchdown.
Forty years later, Fogltance, now 79 and living in Tucson, wants to say unequivocally: The Play would have been reversed on replay.
First, the back story. Fogltance, a Pac-10 official starting in 1978, wasn’t originally scheduled to work the ‘82 Big Game. Bill Richardson was supposed to be the field judge, but he was a fireman and had to take a test Nov. 20 to become fire chief. Fogltance stepped in. Richardson never let him forget it.
Fogltance was positioned behind Cal’s kickoff-return team, so he had a decent view of the third lateral, when Garner’s knee was oh-so-close to being down before he pitched the ball back to Rodgers. (Another official was closer to the play.)
“I thought it was very, very close at the time,” Fogltance said. “There’s an old adage in football (officiating): If you don’t know 100%, you don’t make the call. I wasn’t 100% sure his knee had touched.”
Replay review didn’t exist in 1982, giving the officials no recourse beyond what they saw in real time. Even so, Fogltance later worked as a replay official for 17 seasons. He’s watched video of The Play countless times, and he doesn’t think it would have been overturned on replay because of Garner’s lateral. Not conclusive.
But the final lateral, the one Ford flung over his shoulder to Moen, is a different matter. Fogltance didn’t see that one live — he was on the other side of the field, behind the play, blocked by the cluster of players and Stanford band members — but the replay seems clear in his mind.
Ford released the ball about the 27-yard line. Even if he tossed it backward, as he dove forward and his momentum thrust him into two Stanford players, Moen caught the ball at the 25. Those numbers are damning.
“It was definitely forward, in retrospect,” Fogltance said. “I think (the touchdown) would have been reversed because of the last lateral.”
Fogltance based his statement, in part, on then-replay supervisor Verle Sorgen’s comments in 2007, on The Play’s 25th anniversary. Sorgen analyzed the replay for Bay Area News Group and, after some wavering, concluded “it was a forward pass and therefore illegal.”
Worth noting: Gordon Riese, the line judge, normally would have had the best view of the last lateral. He still laments being out of position, according to Jim Rainey’s piece in the Cal alumni association magazine in September; Riese told of getting stuck behind Stanford players who prematurely had come onto the field.
Riese worried the last lateral might have been forward, but he didn’t see it clearly enough to call a penalty. He did not respond to multiple text and voicemail messages left by The Chronicle for this story.
For his part, Fogltance long ago accepted The Play and his small role. It comes up at banquets and football clinics, and he’s fine reflecting on it. He knows the officials handled it properly, and only a replay system would have caused them to reverse their call.
“If somebody had to be on the field, I’m glad it was me,” Fogltance said, “but it’s not something I would want every weekend.”
There’s no chance of that.