Five Laterals and a Trombone
On the day after the game, Joe Kapp’s home phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Word of Cal’s improbable last-second triumph had spread throughout the country the old-fashioned way—through newspaper articles, phone calls, radio news and some TV broadcasts. Brent Musburger introduced the play to his national audience by showing it twice that Sunday on CBS’s top-rated pregame show, , which he hosted. Sportswriters, TV producers, radio announcers, former teammates, longtime friends—all called Kapp wanting to hear how Cal had pulled it off. Kapp spoke into one of the bulky, cordless phones from the era that allowed him to roam around the house as long as he didn’t stray too far from the phone’s base. Because of the calls, he didn’t get to bed until late that night.
On Monday morning, two days after the game, a houseguest named Ned Averbuck offered to drive Kapp to the Berkeley campus. Averbuck and Kapp had played basketball together at Cal in the late 1950s and remained close. On the drive over, they talked about the game and the immediate aftermath. “Did you see [John] Elway’s comments after the game?” Averbuck asked his friend. “He said that the officials ‘ruined’ his last college game! What sour grapes!”
Kapp was silent for a few seconds. “Did I say anything to you about the Stanford drive before The Play?” Kapp finally asked.
“No,” Averbuck replied.
“I’ve been telling every journalist to look at that final drive,” Kapp said. When they arrived at Cal, Kapp insisted that Averbuck accompany him inside to watch the fourth-and-17 pass completion. An equipment manager wheeled in a little portable TV and cued up the video.
“Watch this,” Kapp told Averbuck. He held a remote control in his hand, replaying the video twice. “Watch this pass!” Kapp said. “Watch his feet! Look at the release of the ball! He put the ball where the receiver couldn’t drop it!”
Kapp paused as they turned off the TV. “Did you just see that? That is the greatest quarterback of a college football team I have ever seen!” He paused again and added, “They made only one mistake. They celebrated too early. They went against everything we’ve been taught. I understand the young man’s disappointment. I really do. Because what he did was magnificent. I can’t take that away from him.”
Averbuck asked Kapp whether he voted for Georgia running back Herschel Walker for the Heisman Trophy. “I proudly voted for John Elway,” Kapp said.
“You mean you didn’t vote for Herschel Walker?” Averbuck asked.
“Ned,” Kapp replied, “take Herschel Walker off Georgia, and they’re still pretty damn good. You take John Elway off Stanford? We would have beaten them by a lot.”
A little later that day, the Axe reappeared in public during a noon rally at Sproul Plaza in the middle of the Berkeley campus. Naturally, Cal students remained ecstatic after Saturday’s victory, and members of the Rally Committee’s Axe Guard were more than happy to supercharge the celebration by bringing the trophy out of its hiding place. The Cal Straw Hat Band played spirit songs, and everyone reveled in the Big Game triumph. Afterward, the Axe Guard and the band paraded around campus, bursting into lecture halls to display the return of their prize. Students loved it. Even serious professors didn’t mind the interruption.
Controversy over whether Cal had scored a legitimate touchdown continued to cast a cloud over the Bears’ victory, at least in the eyes of some. John Crumpacker gave credence to Stanford’s argument in a story published in the on Monday. “Careful inspection of the kickoff on video tape in ultra-slow motion shows that [Dwight] Garner’s progress was definitely halted by four Stanford tacklers, and his knee appeared to hit the AstroTurf a fraction of a second before he lateraled back to [Richard] Rodgers at the Cal 48,” reported Crumpacker, who, as a Cal graduate, was no Stanford partisan. “At best, Garner’s lateral was simultaneous to his knee hitting the ground. Regardless, the play was not whistled dead.”
Crumpacker quoted Paul Wiggin, still angry but calmer than on Saturday. “He was stopped, held, turned back and down on his knees and then lateraled,” Wiggin said. “It’s too bad the game had to be determined by the officials. I know of no appeal. Andy [Geiger] knows of no appeal, but the damage is done. The bowl game is out, a winning season is out and probably some honors for John Elway are out. It was a very costly play for Stanford’s football program.”
On Sunday, Geiger appealed the call to the Pac-10. He knew his chances of overturning the result were slim to none, but he still had to try. A retired referee working for the Pac-10 had already backed up the officials in his postgame report. “A very well worked ball game,” wrote Chad Reade. The form included a box to indicate the type of game it had been. Reade checked the “routine” box and added in an enormous understatement, “except for last four seconds.” Reade wrote that the six officials believed that Garner “was still squirming with the possibility of still going” when he lateraled the ball. Reade did not address whether Mariet Ford’s final lateral had been forward.
On Monday, Wiles Hallock, the Pac-10’s executive director, did not even address those two issues. His one-page statement only acknowledged that Cal had four players—not the required five—within five yards of the restraining area for the final kickoff. But, Hallock added, the official was supposed to tell Cal to move up a player to get to five. It was not something that would draw a flag and force a re-kick. “The official,” who was Jack Langley, “was subject only to human imperfection, imperfection under circumstances even the least charitable might be expected to understand. All officials and those responsible for officiating feel as deeply as the participants affected the impact of their human frailty on the outcome of games.”
Hallock added a last word. “This incredible final play of the 1982 Big Game and the scrutiny it has received apart from its uniqueness provide proof … that officiating is an element not to be set apart from but always considered as part of the game,” he wrote. “That’s one of the reasons why the Pac-10 Conference permits no protests in the sports of football and basketball.”
