Old National Legend: Homecoming nostalgia
Saturday's game with Iowa marks the 50th anniversary of my first Purdue Homecoming football game. Here's a look back, at least from my perspective, at the five best Homecoming games I have seen from 1966-2015:
No. 5: Wisconsin 20, Purdue 17, Oct. 16, 2004
No Purdue fan likes to relive this painful memory. Yet, the fact that this was a battle between two teams ranked in the top 10, with ESPN's "College GameDay" in attendance, made it a memorable experience, and it would have been especially so for Purdue fans had the game been about 58 minutes and not the full 60.
The pain lingers 12 years later for those that have closely followed Purdue football. And the program has not been the same since the loss. The collective groan of the Ross-Ade Stadium crowd after Scott Starks' 40-yard scoop-and-score off Kyle Orton's fumble is a sound I haven't forgotten 12 years later.
No. 4: Purdue 34, Iowas 21, Oct. 22, 1977
Jim Young was ahead of his time as a football coach, a reason why he later earned a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame.
In the '77 Homecoming game, he introduced the shotgun formation to the Big Ten, and it worked great for his freshman quarterback, Mark Herrmann. On that gray afternoon, Herrmann tied a school record with five touchdown passes, on just 13 completions, as the Boilermakers rolled to a 34-21 win over Iowa, their 17th straight victory over the Hawkeyes. Herrmann made a career of destroying Iowa, winning four straight over the Hawkeyes and setting records in the process.
No. 3: Purdue 45, Wisconsin 20, Oct. 18, 1997
Purdue hadn't posted a winning season in 13 years, but Coach Joe Tiller and Co., were about to change that. On a beautiful sunny afternoon, the Boilermaker offense, led by upstart quarterback Billy Dicken, were nearly impossible to stop.
Purdue scored on its first three possessions and never looked back. Dicken was nearly perfect, completing 16-of-22 passes for 311 yards and three scores, helping him him rise from a virtual unknown to earn first-team All-Big Ten honors. As Joe Tiller said, "It was like Christmas every week" during the '97 season, and this game was no exception.
No. 2: Purdue 52, Michigan State 28, Oct. 16, 1999
Purdue's never blown out a top-five-ranked team they way it did on Homecoming 17 years ago. And to boot, Joe Tiller became the first coach to defeat Nick Saban three consecutive years as Purdue's high-powered offense was too much for the team the legendary Alabama coach was leading at that time.
It was a strange game in some ways, as the Spartans had not one, but two pick-sixes against Brees, but that wasn't near enough. In the end, Brees completed 40-of-57 passes for 509 yards and five touchdowns. Senior receiver Chris Daniels set a still-standing Big Ten record with 21 catches for a school-record 301 yards.
No. 1: Purdue 25, Illinois 21, Oct. 29, 1966
I admit to being partial to this game, because it was the first Purdue football game I ever attended. But it was a classic, and I had some sense of it despite being just 6 years old. Because without this victory over the Illini, the Boilermakers might not have earned their first Rose Bowl appearance.
It didn't look good until the closing minutes. After All-America quarterback Bob Griese tossed his fifth interception late in the third quarter, a pick-six by Illinois linebacker Bruce Sullivan, things looked gloomy for Purdue as it trailed 21-10. Yet Griese engineered two fourth-quarter scoring drives, including a last-minute 32-yard scoring pass to Jim Finley, to deliver Purdue to victory. Two weeks later, the Boilermakers had punched their ticket to Pasadena, and finished the regular season ranked fifth, their highest end-of-season ranking in the last five decades.
