LOOKING BACK IN THE SWAC: SOUTHERN VERSUS AIR MCNAIR
SWAC.org
Sept. 23, 2009
By Roscoe Nance
Special to SWAC.org
Alcorn State and Southern University are heading in opposite directions as they square off Saturday in Baton Rouge, La.
Alcorn (0-2) is winless and scoreless this season. Southern (2-1) has won its last two games and is one of the top offensive teams in the Football Championship Subdivision, averaging 36 points a game.
But the scenario was far different when the teams met at Jack Spinks Stadium in Lorman, Miss., 15 years ago on ESPN2. It was the irresistible force - Alcorn's high-scoring offense led by quarterback Steve McNair - going against the immovable object - Southern's defense, ranked in the top five in what was then-Division IAA allowing just 170 yards a game.
The teams had been on a collision course all season, and the irresistible force prevailed when they met.
Beating '12 or 13 guys on defense'
McNair - who was third in the Heisman Trophy balloting that year, the highest finish for athlete from an HBCU - led Alcorn to a heart-stopping 41-37 victory with a performance for the ages. He befuddled the Jaguars with his passing and running while racking up 649 total yards - a SWAC and IAA record that has since been broken. He also scored the winning touchdown with 10 seconds left in the game on a one-yard run.
"He had a field day,'' says Cardell Jones, the head coach at Alcorn during the McNair era.
McNair passed 583 yards and four touchdowns. He added another 62 yards on 14 rushing attempts.
"It got to the point that Southern didn't know whether to rush him or stay on line and try to contain him,'' Jones says. "When they rushed, he killed them with his speed.''
Jones recalls a play that Southern's rush forced McNair to scramble and appeared to have him sacked. McNair made at least eight Jaguar defenders miss him and turned the play into a long gain.
"There were so many guys around him that it looked like Southern was playing with 12 or 13 guys on defense,'' says Mario Kirksey, who was Alcorn's defensive coordinator a the time. "He would come out of the pack dancing and spinning. The next thing you know, the ball is coming out for a touchdown. It was the most amazing thing a coach or spectator could see.
"They'd have him pinned for a sack, and he would pick up 10-15 yards. He would elude tackles from one side of the field to he other and launch a missile for a touchdown.''
McNair moved ahead of 1990 Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer as the NCAA career leader with 15,049 total yards with his performance against Southern.
"We didn't know what game he was going to do it, but knew he was going to break the record,'' says Ricky Taylor, Alcorn's offensive coordinator at the time, who is now principal at Gentry High in Indianola, Miss. "It just happened to be the Southern game.''
Jones says he had an inkling McNair was going to have big game, but he had no idea that it would as huge as it was. The Braves, he says, had a good week of practice and were in an emotional frenzy by game time.
The Jaguar Nation rolls into town
Southern came into the game as the reigning SWAC champion and Black College National champion and was 6-0. Jaguar Nation began invading the Reservation Thursday; smoke from tailgate parties billowed from one end of campus the entire weekend, and trash talk between fans of both schools flowed like water from a broken spigot.
"By Friday they had almost taken over campus,'' Kirksey says. "Southern took over the stadium that Saturday. You looked in the stands and all you saw was powder blue.''
On game day, the atmosphere was electric. Spinks Stadium was filled to capacity when the teams took the field for pre-game warm-ups. By kickoff, the standing room only crowd had spilled onto the hillsides surrounding the stadium.
Kirksey recalls Alcorn team members getting caught up in the excitement of the moment..
"The atmosphere was so over hyped that we had to tone them down,'' Kirksey says. "They were like they were going to play the game in the locker room.''
The lone exception was McNair, who couldn't have been more relaxed if he were about to go through a 7-on-7 drill.
"He was an even keel guy,'' Jones says. "He very seldom got excited about anything. That's what helped him to be such a great quarterback, not only at the college level but in the NFL.''
McNair went on to play 13 seasons in the NFL after the Houston Oilers made him the third player picked in the 1995 draft.
The final drive
Games seldom live up to the hype. This one was an exception, however, mostly because of McNair. The lead changed four times in the final 5:58. McNair was at his best when the game was on the line, and he rallied the Braves from behind twice in the last four minutes.
. On Alcorn's final drive, he scrambled left and unloaded a bomb to a receiver who had gotten behind future NFL cornerback Jerry Wilson. The play gave Alcorn a first-and-goal at the one.
"That's one of the best plays I've seen,'' says Southern coach Pete Richardson, who was in his second season as coach of the Jaguars. "That's when I knew he had the capability of playing on the next level.
"He was in a zone. I don't care what we did defensively he was able to negate it. He made the plays. He had answer for it no matter what our defense did. He had the unique ability to stay in the pocket and create plays on flank.''
Prairie View defensive coordinator Heishma Northern was a safety on the 1994 Southern team. He has vivid memories of the Alcorn game and that play in particular.
"Everything seemed to be in slow motion,'' Northern says. "I was like `No, Jerry, no!' when McNair scrambled.''
Northern had been victimized earlier in the game when McNair scrambled before finding a receiver for a big game.
"The guy I was covering ran down field about 40 yards,'' Northern says. "McNair was scrambling and I hear he crowd screaming. I say `I know he's not throwing the ball to my guy.'' Then I feel the guy push off and catch the ball. He made amazing play after amazing play.''
Northern still questions if McNair really got into the end zone for the winning touchdown.
"By our calculation, we stopped him,'' Northern says. "But we were playing at Alcorn.''
That was just one of number of a number of questionable calls in Southern's estimation. Earlier the Jaguars appeared to score a touchdown on pass into the end zone. One official said the receiver was in bounds; another said he wasn't. After the officials huddled, the receiver was ruled out of bounds.
"There was a whole lot of crazy stuff from the beginning of the end to the end of the game,'' Northern says. "That's the only game that I've ever been in where they stopped play (when McNair broke Detmer's record) and released balloons and his mother came on the field.''
Alcorn fans greeted McNair with high fives as he left the field after he scored the winning touchdown. As McNair approached the Alcorn bench, he struck a Heisman pose.
But the game wasn't quite over.
Southern returned the ensuing kickoff deep into Alcorn territory as time expired. Fans stormed the field, thinking the game had ended. However, referee Harold Cooper whistled Alcorn for being offside on the kickoff, and the Braves had to kick the ball again once the field was cleared.
Southern had a modest return on the second kickoff to end the game.
Southern University National Alumni Association President Domoine Rutledge grew up 200 yards from Mumford Stadium, where he sold sodas on game day and sometimes jumped the fence to get in games when he didn't have money to pay. He says he has watched SWAC football since he was about four, but McNair's performance in the 1994 Southern-Alcorn game is unmatched.
"Even though he literally beat us, you left with inner smile and appreciation for his talent,'' Rutledge says. "I knew I saw something special on the Reservation. On that day, at that moment, he was a force of nature. Alcorn didn't beat us. Air McNair beat us. It was hell of a game.''
Roscoe Nance is a sports journalist with 34 years experience who most recently wrote for USA TODAY.