Foreword by Doug Flutie; includes audio cd
No matter if your favorite colors on autumn Saturdays are maize and blue or crimson and cream...or you're quite at-home in Happy Valley or in the House That Rockne Built...if you are a college football fan, you will thrill to this book. Fellow fan and author Ted Mandell has selected 100 of the greatest college game finishes spanning the last three decades. Each game comes alive as the author sets the scene, recounts the drama of the decisive play, and captures all the post-play emotion and impact. Making these memories even more vivid, a companion CD offers the actual broadcasts of 64 of the astounding, heart-wrenching, nail-biting, nerve-wracking plays that turned impending defeat into victory for one team and snatched it from the grasp of the other.
The teams appearing here come from the East Coast to the West Coast, the North to the South, Division IA to Division III, large universities and small colleges. Here are the famous: the Stanford Band game, Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass that defeated mighty Miami, Harry Oliver's 51-yard field goal as time ran out that lifted Notre Dame over favored Michigan. Equally exciting, less publicized, but no less dramatic are Thomas More College's victory over Defiance and the Principia Indians' 48-yeard touchdown pass that capped one of the most bizarre endings of all time and sent a stunned Illinois College squad to a last second defeat.
Turn up the audio CD and enjoy some of college football's greatest play calls. You'll hear broadcast professionals (and no-so professional) lose all composure as the player who could "go all the way" actually does in the final seconds or the potential game-winning field-goal kick "isss...goooooooood!" With each track, you'll feel the vibration of the stands, hear the roar of the crowd, and sense the pandemonium and passion of the moment.
These are the times that make college football the great game it is -- for players and fans; these are the games where spirit, grit and maybe a little magic determine the outcome. This collection of collegiate football finishes retold will still bring tingles to fans of the winners and chills to those whose favorites fell one play short of victory. Heart Stoppers and Hail Marys: the book that redefines "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" 100 times over.
About the Author
Ted Mandell is a faculty member in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches film and video production. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Notre Dame in 1986 and Maser of Arts degree in Broadcasting and Film from the University of Iowa in 1989. Ted has produced video segments on college football for Prime Sports Network and the College Football Hall of Fame. His documentary on little league baseball, I Coach Wendy’s, can be found in the library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Although he spent four years as a member of the Notre Dame Marching Band, Ted has never set foot on the gridiron as a player. His only athletic claims to fame are a four-year, 59-game winning streak as a little league baseball coach, and his plastic trophy as part of the 1998 World Whiffleball Championship team.
He resides in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife KeriAnn and their new son, Joel.
