100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters

Two beefy Louisiana Tech managers were carrying Tim Rattay to the locker room at Legion Field when he started screaming.

“Turn around! Turn around!”

They did. Rattay, his injured leg contorted, was turned around just in time to see Kevin Pond’s extra point sail through the uprights. Louisiana Tech 29, Alabama 28.

Thirty-eight seconds earlier, Rattay had been on the field. He had driven the Bulldogs 77 yards against No. 18 Alabama, converting a fourth-and-10 and a third-and-22 along the way. He had the Bulldogs at the Alabama 16. Then a sack crumpled his right ankle and he could not get up.

Brian Stallworth, a sophomore backup whose playing time had been limited to mop-up duty, came in cold.

“He didn’t even warm up,” head coach Jack Bicknell Jr. said. “He’d been standing there the whole game.”

Stallworth was sacked for nine yards on his first play. On fourth-and-22 from the Alabama 28, with two seconds on the clock, he threw deep into the end zone. Sean Cangelosi, 6-foot-4, outleaped two Alabama defenders and caught it. Pond kicked the extra point. The game was over.

“If you wrote this script for a movie, no one would go watch it because they would think it so unbelievable,” Bicknell told the Birmingham News.

The play punctuated something larger than a single upset. Louisiana Tech had spent the late 1990s building one of the most intriguing programs outside the BCS — a pass-happy Division I-A independent that took on big-name opponents and rolled up numbers that demanded attention. Rattay was the quarterback lighting up scoreboards and rewriting the NCAA record book. Bicknell, in his first year as head coach, had inherited a program ready to prove something.

The Quarterback

Rattay grew up in a football family in Phoenix and played at a small school — Phoenix Christian High — before spending a year at Scottsdale Community College. Major programs did not recruit him.

“I’d never heard of Tech before, being from the West Coast,” Rattay told the Los Angeles Times. “But when I came to visit I liked it, and I liked the way they throw the ball.”

Louisiana Tech threw the ball on almost every down. The Bulldogs averaged 24 running plays a game.

“We try to set up the run with the pass,” Bicknell told the Los Angeles Times.

Rattay thrived in the system. He once went 46-for-68 for 590 yards against Nebraska. He threw seven touchdown passes in a game — twice. By his senior season, he led the nation in total offense at nearly 379 yards per game and held the NCAA record for career average passing yards per game.

Paul Hackett, USC’s head coach, prepared for Rattay before the 1999 season finale.

“This quarterback is one of the premier players in the country,” Hackett told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s certainly the best quarterback we’ve faced this year, and maybe that we’ve faced in a long time.”

Hackett compared him to Purdue’s Drew Brees. “Just a little better,” he said.

“He has a great release,” Hackett said. “He has real snap on the ball. It’s not flaming, but very firm. That’s where his accuracy comes from. He doesn’t try to throw it through you, he just puts it exactly where he wants to.”

His own coach put it another way.

“Tim Rattay is the toughest guy I have ever met in my life,” Bicknell told the Anniston Star.

The Game

On September 18, 1999, Louisiana Tech — a Division I-A independent without a conference — played No. 18 Alabama at Legion Field in front of 80,312 people. The Bulldogs were 2-2. Alabama was 2-0.

Rattay completed 27 of 50 passes for 368 yards and three touchdowns. Cangelosi caught eight passes for 147 yards. Louisiana Tech racked up 416 yards of total offense — 400 through the air. Alabama turned the ball over four times.

Alabama had Shaun Alexander, who scored three touchdowns and piled up 263 all-purpose yards. The Crimson Tide took a 28-22 lead on a field goal with 2:36 remaining.

Rattay drove the winning possession before the sack ended his night with 38 seconds left. Alabama’s Marcus Spencer thought it was over.

“When Rattay limps off, I said ‘yeah, we got a guy who might throw one to us or run around and run out the clock,’” Spencer told the Huntsville Times.

Alabama’s head coach thought the same thing.

“I felt pretty good about it,” Mike DuBose told the Huntsville Times. “The field was to our advantage, a field goal couldn’t beat us and they were out of timeouts.”

Then Stallworth found Cangelosi in the end zone.

“I had three plays to get us in the end zone,” Stallworth told the Birmingham News. “It wasn’t a fluke because I knew what I was doing. Anybody would if they followed around Tim Rattay every place he goes all week. He’s a great quarterback. He’s a great teacher. He got us down the field. Then it became my responsibility to take us the rest of the way.”

Cangelosi, who caught the pass, had watched Alabama fans heading for the exits with 2½ minutes left.

“I couldn’t believe they were leaving,” Cangelosi told the Birmingham News. “That really miffed me. Also, it uplifted me. I was praying for the chance to show them something.”

Rattay, being carried to the locker room, screamed when the extra point went through — then screamed again when the celebration buckled his ankle.

“When I came off the field, I couldn’t walk,” Rattay told the Birmingham News. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I didn’t want to let my team down. Then, 30 seconds later, it was the greatest feeling in the world. I couldn’t hold it in.”

The Coach

Bicknell knew something about improbable endings. Fourteen years earlier, he was the center at Boston College who snapped the ball to Doug Flutie on the Hail Mary against Miami. Asked which moment was the greater thrill — the Flutie pass or the Stallworth pass — Bicknell did not hesitate.

“That’s like asking who do you love more, your son or your daughter,” Bicknell told the Birmingham News. “They were both unbelievable thrills. But right now this one feels better because it happened today.”

Neither time did he see the ball come down.

“I couldn’t tell,” he said of Stallworth’s throw. “I can’t believe it.”

And the Flutie pass? “I was on my back. I had no idea.”

What Louisiana Tech Got

Three days after the loss, Alabama’s second to the Bulldogs in three seasons, Crimson Tide athletic director Bob Bockrath resigned. Alabama rebounded, won three straight over ranked SEC opponents, beat Florida 34-7 in the SEC Championship Game and finished 10-3.

Louisiana Tech went 8-3. Their three losses came to teams ranked No. 1 (Florida State), No. 6 (Texas A&M) and No. 25 (USC). They beat the team that won the SEC. But they were not selected for a bowl game for the third straight year, following marks of 9-2 in 1997 and 6-6 in 1998.

Such was the life of an independent in those days.

Rattay finished his career with 12,746 passing yards and 115 touchdowns in 33 games. He was drafted in the seventh round by the San Francisco 49ers, played eight NFL seasons and broke Joe Montana’s 49ers single-game completions record in 2004. He was inducted into the Louisiana Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 2007. He is now the passing game coordinator at South Alabama.

David St. Marie, the center who blocked for Rattay on that 77-yard final drive, did not need a bowl bid to know what his team was.

“It’s unbelievable how we did it, but it’s not surprising,” St. Marie told the Birmingham News. “Hey, we’ve gone toe-to-toe with Florida State and Texas A&M this season. We lost to both of them, but we’ve been around the block. We knew it was just a matter of time before we nailed down a victory like this.”