Arizona State needed a break. The Sun Devils had trailed UCLA for most of the afternoon on Oct. 12, 1996, much to the delight of 66,107 fans at the Rose Bowl, but now, after being down as many as 21 points, they had climbed back into the game.
Many dream seasons have a moment when determination and preparation meet unexpected good fortune. Twenty-five years ago, this was Arizona State’s moment. For the 1996 season’s first five weeks, the Sun Devils had been the darlings of college football, shocking No. 1 Nebraska, climbing to No. 4 in the national polls. Suddenly, a Pac-10 championship run seemed like a springboard to something greater.
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Then on a pleasant afternoon in Pasadena, a 2-2 UCLA team put up 21 points in the first quarter. Midway through the second, the Bruins led 28-7. Arizona State receiver Keith Poole remembers looking at the Rose Bowl scoreboard and thinking, “Holy crap, we’re going to let this one go.” Down 28-14 at halftime, head coach Bruce Snyder addressed his team in the locker room. Blowup? Tirade? No, that was not Snyder’s style.
Every Friday night before a game, Snyder had reminded the Sun Devils that every contest would be like a wave, filled with ups and downs. “What you got to do is play like this,” Snyder said, moving his arm in a straight line. “You got to play steady the whole time because the game is not won in all those ups and downs. The game is won playing level.” At halftime against UCLA, Snyder delivered a similar message.
“You got 30 minutes to figure this out,” he told the Sun Devils. “From the first kickoff, you better figure out who you are, what your purpose is, because if you want to get back here New Year’s Day, you need to go out and win this football game.”
Arizona State and UCLA traded touchdowns in the third quarter. With less than 8 minutes remaining, quarterback Jake Plummer threw a 23-yard pass to Kenny Mitchell, who made a superb leaping grab in the corner of the end zone. This brought the Sun Devils within 34-28, but they still needed help. The UCLA crowd came to life, trying to give the Bruins a boost.
On first down, UCLA quarterback Cade McNown, who had thrown for 244 yards and three touchdowns in the first half, took the snap and looked to hand off to Skip Hicks on a stretch play. Running left, McNown reached out to place the football in Hicks’ midsection, but he never quite got there. The ball fell to the grass. Arizona State safety Damian Richardson recovered. On the UCLA sideline, coach Bob Toledo turned in disbelief. The Sun Devils had gotten their break.
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Up in the Rose Bowl press box, quarterbacks coach John Pettas, Arizona State’s chief play caller, knew exactly what he wanted to run.
Offensively, Arizona State was largely a meat-and-potatoes operation. In 1996, the Sun Devils ran the ball on nearly 62 percent of their plays, averaging 248.6 yards per game on the ground. That had been the game plan against UCLA until Arizona State had fallen behind. Then Plummer had gotten on the sideline phone and told Pettas, “Coach, no disrespect, but we can’t run the ball worth a shit. Let me throw and we’ll win the game.”
Trick plays never were much of a consideration. The Sun Devils ran Poole or receiver Ricky Boyer on an occasional reverse, but it wasn’t like they were running flea-flickers. “Heck no!” Poole said, laughing. Recently they had started working on a halfback pass to the quarterback, but even then no one thought much of it. “Any time you do trick plays in practice, you never think you’re going to do it in a game, right?” tight end Zack Romero said. But with UCLA stacking the box to limit Arizona State’s run game, Pettas saw an opportunity. With the Bruins in man coverage, no one would account for the quarterback.
The play was called “Snake Pass,” which referred to Plummer’s nickname, “Jake the Snake.” When Pettas called it during the change of possession, Snyder hesitated. “Are you sure, John?” he said through his headset, according to Pettas. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
Even offensive coordinator Dan Cozzetto, coaching from the sideline, had reservations. After all, Arizona State had yet to execute the trick play during a game. “John, I hope you’re right,” Cozzetto said, “because they’re going to fire me if you’re not.”
First, Pettas had to set it up and get the right personnel on the field. On first down from the UCLA 16, Plummer handed off to freshman running back J.R. Redmond, who ran left for no gain.
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Second down.
Arizona State lined up in 12 personnel: two tight ends, two receivers and Redmond as the lone back. Before the snap, tight end Devin Kendall backed off the line of scrimmage and motioned right, ending up behind Romero. “Both Devin and I knew that we had to hold our blocks for probably an extra second or two,” Romero said. “Because if you think about it, each play lasts about eight seconds or so. When you’re blocking, you really only need to hold your block for a good 2-3 seconds on a run play. But on a pass play, such as the Snake Pass, that was a run out to the right where we had to sell the run. And, oh, by the way, we had to make sure J.R. didn’t get killed so he could throw the pass.”
Plummer took the snap, turned and pitched to Redmond, who ran right. The protection up front held. Guard Kyle Murphy took out a UCLA linebacker coming from the back side. Plummer squirted out left. The UCLA defense was fooled except for one player, middle linebacker Brian Willmer.
“I saw (Redmond) catch the ball and I immediately thought something was up,” Willmer said. “He was kind of tip-toeing and took a little bit more of a bowed-out angle. Something wasn’t right. And then I saw Plummer kind of slipping out of the backfield, so I immediately left the running back and started running toward him.”
After planting his right foot, Redmond looked to find Plummer, but it was hard to locate the quarterback through all the bodies. He fired anyway. “I could have thrown it better than I did,” Redmond said after the game. The pass was short, but Plummer adjusted and caught it at the 10. Willmer was in position to make the tackle, but his momentum took him to the sideline. Plummer cut inside. “He threw a juke, and I didn’t break down and make the play,” Willmer said.
From the sideline, Cozzetto couldn’t see what was going on. “Who the hell did he throw it to?” the offensive coordinator said. Plummer made two defenders miss and leaped into the end zone for the tying score. The extra point gave Arizona State its first lead, 35-34 with 6:33 left. The Sun Devils celebrated. Momentum had turned.
“That was one of those plays that defines a team,” Poole said. “Like, ‘We got to grab their nuts and call the play.’ It was a ballsy play — and it worked. It could’ve been so ugly. We could’ve thrown a pick. We could’ve fumbled. We could’ve done all kinds of stuff. But it was like, ‘OK, we’re meant to win this game now.'”
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Added Cozzetto, “After that play, we were doing nothing wrong.”
He was right. After a stop, Arizona State took possession and drove 66 yards in 12 plays. Plummer scored from the 1, giving the quarterback a passing, receiving and rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter. Once down 28-7, Arizona State had rallied to a 42-34 win, a game that would be aired in future years on ESPN Classic.
After Arizona State dressed in the visitors’ locker room, the Sun Devils loaded up and headed for the airport. As the bus left the Rose Bowl parking lot, Plummer stood and asked the driver to stop. Poole, who was cramping, barely could move, but he turned his attention to his quarterback.
“Look back there at that stadium, and make sure you remember,” Plummer said. “Just tell yourself every day that we’re going to be back here. This is where we’re coming back to on New Year’s Day.”
The game was a defining moment for both programs. To Willmer, the Bruins’ season might have looked different had they held on against Arizona State; instead, they finished 5-6. “That game was a huge turning point for us, and then that play kind of becomes the marker that you always remember,” he said.
For Arizona State, the comeback took the Sun Devils’ confidence to a higher level. They won their next five, capping off a perfect regular season. As Plummer predicted, they won the Pac-10 and returned to the Rose Bowl, one win away from a national title.
“That UCLA game is when we grew up and where we became the 1996 Pac-10 champions,” tackle Juan Roque said. “It wasn’t Nebraska. It wasn’t the Oregon beatdown. It wasn’t Washington. It was that game. Because that game could have ended very badly for us had we not gotten our heads out of our rear-ends.”
Twenty-five years later, Arizona State and UCLA, conference division frontrunners, are set to meet again at the Rose Bowl. On Saturday both teams should run about 65 plays. One could decide the game. It also could define the season.
(Photo of Jake Plummer: Mark J. Terrill / AP)
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