Originally Posted by
dawg80
Beat Jerry Rice and Miss Valley State 66-19, and Jackson State 44-21. We led 44-0 then with about 10 mins left we cleared the bench, and JSU got 3 late, garbage time TDs.
The Valley game...I was standing around a group of their fans, about 12 of 'em, all decked out in their school's garb, and running their mouths BIG TIME before the game, and for a good portion of the 1st qtr. And then...they started getting quiet. They did jump around and high five each other, and then looked at we Tech fans with a smug look when Rice made that spectacular catch and run....but that just cut the score to Tech 38 Valley 19 at the half. We outscored 'em 28-0 in the second half. Our defense settled in and got the gist of their no-huddle, hurry-up offense and solved it. Valley was ahead of the times, back in '84, with that high octane offense. Willie Totten was the QB, and he was good. In addition to Rice they had other good players. Lost in all the passing was their huge fullback who had something like 250 yds rushing that day. They would spread out the defense will all those WRs, and then run that big FB right up the middle and the whole pile would move 8-10 yards each time.
Don't remember the exact numbers, but Valley easily had 500+ yards of total offense, and we had 600+ yards. The biggest difference was we finished drives, while their drives stalled in the red zone or they turned it over. It was a fun game! I admit I was nervous going into that one. The numbers Valley had hung up, like 1,000 yds of offense in one game, and often scoring 70+ pts, was enough to make us wonder if Tech could hang with 'em. But looking at their schedule it was all SWAC teams and games against the likes of Oklahoma Panhandle State. Tech was the first, and only, real football team they played.