Memories of The Catch: Texas vs UCLA 1970

Fantastic.

More, Grandpa, more!

I was at the game as a freshman in the Longhorn Band. Not a football fan, I had yet to “get it.”
I remember the scoring play. Everybody suddenly was going crazy and I asked, “What happened?”

Some things DO change. I eventually “got it.”
Some things stay the same. I’m still not a “football fan.”
I’m a LONGHORN FOOTBALL fan.

My dad always talked about that game. He, and everyone else in the press box, had to rewrite their stories. And the noise from the stadium during and after that play was said to have been heard all over town. Perhaps even louder than a Bob Cole promo from Godzillatron!

i was up high in the western third of the horseshoe—about as far from the action as you could get, but being up high i saw it all play out. the sick feeling of the whole game, knowing the winning streak was over, pervaded everything. all hope was lost until that moment.

i’ll never forget the feeling when time kind of stopped. the catch was made, and there was nothing but air and green grass between cotton and the goal line. it was like like moment froze.

then the noise. i had never heard anything like it. absolute strangers were slapping each other on the back, and the joy was all-consuming.

now, where i got the great seats was at an ou game a good many years later when a neighbor and i got stuck fairly low in the middle of the end zone. with time running out, we were nursing a small lead and ou had it on the doorstop. they executed a smooth sweep to the right with a reverse to a rb coming around right at us, headed through a huge hole. we couldn’t tell what happened, but a mass of humanity came out of the white pile and everything stopped right there.

i couldn’t talk for hours after either of those games.

I was there . I was still in High School, but was hooked on the Horns already. We went with my cousins from California that were in the Army in San Antonio. We also saw Vince together in the Rose Bowl. Great memories.

I was 13 years old and was sitting in Section 1. Up until I watched VY take it in on 4th down against USC, that TD by Speyrer was the most exciting play I had ever witnessed in person. The Texas crowd went absolutely just as crazy after that play as it did at the Rose Bowl after Vince’s run.

I was living in Houston and, as I remember, the game wasn’t televised. I listened to it on the radio, though, and was frustrated at the lack of dominance shown by the Horns.

Late in the 4th quarter I had essentially conceded defeat and left before the game ended. I had heard about a joint on Westheimer that showed porn (including woman-horse porn) on the walls inside the bar. This was the infamous, but short-lived, Zipper Lounge, and I only went there to make sure it had redeeming social value.

Just as I arrived at the ZL, there were about 30 seconds left in the game, so I sat in my car in the parking lot and listened to the finale. Glorious!!! I yelled and bellowed so much that, to quench my thirst I finally went into said lounge.

It was a real dump, but definitely had redeeming social value!

I sat at the 50 ( we squeezed four into two seats) on the east side. What made the spontaneous stomping so unusual was that the crowd had been dead all afternoon and then it just happened.
Not a great game but a great moment. Still remains one of my best Longhorn memories. It also may be the longest that I have ever stayed in the stadium after the game was over.

I was there . . . midfield, west side, down low (had to stand much of the the game because the Longhorn bench brigade obscured the near side of the field). I’d graduated three months earlier. Five days later, I boarded the big iron bird for SE Asia to do my part in that skirmish.

One of the major stories of the early part of the 1970 season was Phillips replacing James Street. UCLA evidently decided to make Phillips beat them, and they nearly succeeded. The big discussion point, then and in the following week, was whether Phillips actually fumbled just before the winning pass play — or just heaved the ball out of bounds to stop the clock. He was going down, but the "fumble"was more like a hard lateral. I always thought we caught a break on that one.

I was in the east stands about 1/3rd up on about the 30 yard line. The closer the game, the more I drank. I was so drunk I fell back in my seat when Cotton caught the ball so I never saw the touch down. On the way home the next day we saw Cotton at the gas station we stopped at and mobbed him. GESIS, I am getting old.

Thanks for the great post. I agree with Vasherized, more, more! Post more pics of the old stadium if you’ve got them. My first UT game was as a four-year old, the 1967 Tech game, which we lost. I was talking with my dad just the other day about that and we were wondering what the stadium looked like back then.

I’ve talked to people who were there and they also mention the stomping on the seats and that it was the loudest single moment they’ve heard at DKR.

I wonder why you no longer see both teams wearing home uni’s like you see in the video?

That clip looks like a snuff film.

Great story.
 
And the clip really does show what a freak pass play it was.
 
It’s interesting to me that Eddie Philips never got his due as a wishbone QB coming after Street.
He looks like a much better runner.

It’s interesting to me that Eddie Philips never got his due as a wishbone QB coming after Street.

 For me Scip:

 James Street is to Eddie Phillips as

Joe Montana is to Steve Young

I will take a close win over UCLA if it means duplicating what we did to OU that year, 41-9.

Scip,

I remember my dad and I talking at the time about how Eddie Phillips seemed to run the wishbone offense more effectively than Street did – he indeed was an excellent wishbone QB and IMO probably only Marty Akins might have been as good of a wishbone QB as Phillips during the time we ran that offense. We really thought we had a great shot at another national title in 1971 until Phillips suffered a severe pulled hamstring early that season and saw limited action thereafter. Had we beaten ND in the 1971 Cotton Bowl, kept our winning streak alive, and been the undisputed NC that year, Phillips’s stature amongst Longhorn fans unquestionably would be very high.

srr,

Really enjoy and appreciate you reprising the great Longhorn games of my youth. I was a junior in high school in 1970. Also fun to see the stadium much as it was the first time I ever attended a game there a few years before. Unfortunately, I didn’t attend this one but remember it well. Thanks for the memories!

Hmmmm…….zipper lounge? woman- horse porn? snuff films? Either one of you followed me that time that I got lost on East Lancaster and had to ask directions for three hours in that one bar with the black shoe polish on the windows or you just recapped the typical weekend at Henry James’.

I was there with my Dad and will never forget it; even got a copy on VHS. Never heard Memorial Stadium that loud, maybe even more than 1990 night game vs. UH. What an unexpected ending, particulary since we passed very little in the Bone. What I’ll really never forget and burned into me forever, was that my father hugged me harder on than one play then at any other time in his long life. A special memory! And, of course, a memory associated with the Horns. Always the best.

I wuz about 30 rows up behind you on the 10—senior year. The TD took place right in front of us (though I barely recognize the video—in the 40 years since, my mind simplified it to just Speyrer and the two defenders just missing tipping the ball away). What stood out for me was the travesty that the stands were a good third empty, even the student section. That made the racket we created in the stadium all the more satisfying. Then, when Speyrer scored, the parking lot exploded in a cacophony of yelling and car horns that equaled the sound in the stadium. How I laughed at those people.

Thanks, SRR.

Great game that day, or rather, shitty game, fabulous ending. My seats were about the 30, pretty much where Cotton caught the pass.

Yes, that was the loudest the stadium was while I was a student. And the noise really surprised everyone in attendance. This was just not the typical Memorial Stadium crowd. It was desperation, it was gut-level emotion. It was home field advantage like we hadn’t enjoyed too often.

Houston in 1990? That was 3 hours of greatest noise ever at UT. The UCLA decibels were only several minutes. Several unbelievable, emotional, unexpected minutes.

Both days … it’s good to be HornFan!

Wow, that photo of the Austin skyline brings back memories. It really hadn’t changed much at all when I got there in the fall of ’79.

Great post. That was amazing.

Cotton hangs out sometimes at the Posse East just off-campus. I met him once, but didn’t realize who he was until after he was gone (“Wait, that was THAT Cotton?!”), and of course I haven’t seen him since. My buddy in the kitchen positively delights in telling me that I “just missed Cotton.”

Scip:

Phillips was an absolute stud for the wishbone offense. He was bigger, faster, and had two years (RS in 1968, backup in 1969) to learn the ’bone, where Street had it thrust on him at the start of his junior season in ’68. But James was a better passer, more on touch and the intangible of knowing when to release and where to place the ball than on pure arm strength. (Though he could throw a nice deep ball when the national championship was on the line.)

The 1970 team was a hard one to figure — they by far out-personneled every opponent except Notre Dame, but needed the miracle to beat UCLA and barely struggled past Baylor before a pile of first-half turnovers handed the Irish some easy points and snapped the win streak at 30.

Marty Akins (1973-75) was probably a better wishbone QB (athlete, runner, passer) than Street or Phillips, but Akins’ support (especially at the halfback spots) was far weaker than Chris Gilbert, Ted Koy and Jim Bertelsen, who manned those spots from 1968-71.

edsp: I think the 1970 wasn’t that hard to figure out — I think it had a bad case of “entitlement.”

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Why are BOTH teams wearing home jerseys?

Both UCLA and Tennessee wore dark jerseys at home and on the road for decades. Tennessee had a fit when the Cotton Bowl made them wear white after the 1968 season when they played Texas.

The NCAA made a rule in the early 80’s that the home team was to wear the dark jerseys and the visiting team would be in white.

Amazing day, when UCLA came to town in 1970. I was there with my parents. My dad had recovered from a severe heart attack 2 years before, and he had gone to the concessions to by a soft drink. It was at that moment the students began stomping on the bleachers.

He thought the world was ending! Had to take a nitro tablet.

Hook ’em!