Think of him as a lamp
November 29th, 1984: College football's greatest Hail Mary is covered in rain; CDs get scratched; the NCAA loses a monopoly; the paycheck of football's highest-paid player is signed by...just read it
The night after the prior Family Ties episode was the Friday after Thanksgiving. The defending national football champion Miami Hurricanes hosted Boston College.
It poured rain in Miami. The turf at the Orange Bowl was a sloppy mess. The winds gusted. The CBS telecast had a damp, smudgy, sloppy lens.
Last play of the game. Boston College had possession at midfield. They needed a touchdown to win.
Before I try to describe the context, you should watch this replay. Even if you’re already familiar with the Hail Flutie pass. It holds up, and you need to see it.
Flutie threw it 65 yards against 30mph winds. He contorted his body and planted his foot at an ungodly angle to trebuchet the ball in a perfect spiral into the rain. The ball crossed the goal line over the outstretched arms of three defenders bumping into each other, and plunked into the breadbasket of a falling Gerard Phelan, Flutie’s college roommate.
1984 was a year of change for college football. In June, the Supreme Court ended the NCAA’s monopoly on broadcast rights that it had held since the 1950s. The NCAA bottlenecked the TV broadcasts because it believed that televising games would hurt stadium attendance. I wrote about it here in the introductory post to the Family Ties project.
After that ruling, several new contracts were immediately signed between networks and conferences, and in 1984 the number of yearly televised games jumped from 80 to 200. (It’s 450 now).
It’s very likely that before 1984, the Miami-BC game wouldn’t have been nationally televised at all. We would have missed the whole thing. In the prior season, only TWO of Miami’s games had been televised. And they were the national champs that year!
In the wake of the SCOTUS ruling, CBS bought the rights to Miami games, along with games in the Big Ten, the Pac-10, and ACC.
Apparently, CBS’s money also gave them power to alter the teams’ schedules. The Miami-BC game was originally scheduled for September 29th. It was Flutie vs. Bernie Kosar, the top two QBs in college football, head-to-head.
CBS had an idea. How about moving this matchup to be a special Friday-after-Thanksgiving game? Miami had Rutgers on its schedule that weekend. So CBS paid Rutgers $80,000 to just, y’know, not show up. They moved September’s BC game into the bought-off slot.
Can you imagine being a kid on the Rutgers team, excited to play the defending national champs in the Orange Bowl, and then learning your university cashed in the whole game? For 80 grand?
This game is remembered 40 years later mostly because of the final play.
But let’s get real about the Hail Mary - there wasn’t any particular unusual athletic achievement. There wasn’t a great run or an amazing catch. The distance of Flutie’s pass was remarkable, but c’mon, there’s no way he knew which player he was targeting. Sometimes games are decided by freakish luck. Not only have we come to terms with this - we LOVE this!
The final play was legendary because it was the end of a great game to watch, the whole thing. The finale was the icing.
It wasn’t a “comeback.” There were 6 lead changes. BC led 14-0. Miami led 31-17. BC was actually ahead with less than a minute to go, just before Miami scored with a “final” drive that included a 3rd and 21 at their own 10, a loss of down penalty, a 4th down conversion, and Kosar barely eluding a sack in his own end zone.
Even with horrible weather, the offenses combined for 1,282 total yards. Flutie passed for 472 yards and Kosar for 447. The Hail Mary receiver, Phelan, caught 3 TD passes. There were 92 total points!
The game was in no way “pivotal,” despite our wishes to give it more importance in retrospect.
College football was just different back then. BC had already accepted its bid to play in the Cotton Bowl (BC’s last major bowl game, apparently forever). Miami, with new head coach Jimmy Johnson, finished 8-5 and #18 in the final poll.
The game did NOT earn Flutie his Heisman Trophy. Because he had already won it! It was already announced.
And this wasn’t David vs. Goliath. Defending champs though they were, Miami was just a 6 point favorite, playing at home.
It was just a great game, all by itself.
Doug Flutie is 5’9”. Yes, he was the first college QB ever to surpass 10,000 career passing yards, he was a celebrated and admired leader, unquestionably skilled, and he won the Heisman. But his height was always going to be a factor in his pro prospects.
It didn’t help that in the ‘80s football players wore shoulder pads bigger than Lady Diana’s. In the highlight films, Flutie’s pads make him look even smaller. They swallow him up, pulling his jersey up to midriff, clacking about his ears, his eyes peering just over the front.
It also didn’t help that the first celebration move was for the center to arm-carry Flutie down the field like a toddler:
Flutiemania did attract the attention of one team in particular. And just three months after the Hail Mary, he met with his new football boss and signed a professional contract. The contract wasn’t big, it was yuge. It made Flutie the highest paid player in all of pro football!
Who was that generous new boss? Donald Trump.
That’s right. Flutie decided to join the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, the ‘80s pro league born as a spring-season alternative to the NFL. The league was poised for its third (and final) year of existence.
Surprising choice, maybe, but not unprecedented. Flutie was the third consecutive Heisman winner(!) to stiffarm the NFL for the USFL, joining Mike Rozier and Herschel Walker.
Walker was Flutie’s teammate and Trump’s other superstar. He’s also Trump’s leading candidate to be in charge of America’s missile defense shield.
How did Trump get into this story? (MUST he be in this story, you ask?)
What Trump really wanted was to own an NFL team. First he tried to buy the Baltimore Colts, but that failed. After the USFL’s debut season in 1983, he bought the New Jersey Generals from a wealthy oil baron.
He immediately fired the head coach. He courted the legendary Don Shula of the Miami Dolphins, dangling a contract that would have doubled his salary.
Shula was indeed primed to take the job, until Trump went to the press during a Dolphins game and said the deal was done, EXCEPT for Shula insisting on a rent-free apartment at Trump Tower. Pissed, Shula immediately told Trump to stuff it and signed a new deal with the Dolphins.
Trump wanted to move the league from a spring league to a fall league, and merge it into the NFL, the way that the ABA had merged with the NBA. Then he would be an NFL owner! USFL owners had already voted to make the move to fall.
He also unveiled plans to move the Generals from New Jersey to Manhattan, where they would play in an 80,000 seat stadium called “Trump Stadium.”
The USFL folded after Flutie’s mediocre rookie season. The league “won” an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, led by Trump, but as compensation they were awarded…$3. Like, three dollars. Meaning hey, you lost.
Flutie moved to the NFL. He replaced injured Jim McMahon on the defending Super Bowl champion ‘86 Chicago Bears. McMahon was hurt on a completely gratuitous body-slam by the Packers’ Charles Martin.
Flutie then moved to the Canadian Football League, where he did quite well for 8 years, winning the Most Outstanding Player award. His career finished in the NFL, where in 2004 at 42 he became the oldest player to score a touchdown. His record was shattered by Tom Brady, who scored in 2023 at 45.
This is really fun for some reason:
Bandits, Gamblers, Breakers, Maulers, and Invaders. Stallions, Wranglers, Gunslingers, and Outlaws. Generals, Federals, and Showboats. Stars and Gold. Panthers and Bulls. Blitz and Express
RIP, Eighties USFL teams.
Two football leagues? Morning in America? The Macintosh? Purple Rain? Punch-Out?
Could there be even MORE to make us excited to be a 1984 kid?
''Short of throwing it into a furnace, the compact disk is virtually indestructible,'' said Gary Thorne, a vice president at the Philips Company. ''You could step on it and it would still play perfectly.'' — NYT 11/26/1984
I read this in an article in this FT episode week. It reminded me of the first time I ever saw a CD. I was with my Dad at a stereo shop. A skinny salesman with a red tie was trying to sell Dad a new player. He pulled a CD out of a jewel case and tossed it on the carpet. He put his foot on it, did an MJ spin, put the disk into the player, and played it. Way too loud.
CDs were a breakthrough in their sound quality, convenience, and digital-ness. But don’t forget the durability. If you didn’t grow up with vinyl, it’s hard to understand the appeal of a music format that seemed indestructible.
(Yes, of course there were cassettes. But can we agree that cassettes were for mixtapes, not for buying packaged records. Who would do that?)
It’s not because CDs didn’t scratch. It’s because they DID scratch, but it didn’t matter. Within reason.
LPs had to be white-glove handled to preserve “perfect” sound. Almost literally. Everyone had sprays and wipers and brushes and tinier brushes to clean your other brushes. If you just set down your cheeseburger to flip your favorite KISS record, you were f*cked.
CDs? We teenagers often stored them uncased and scattered on passenger side floorboards.
1984 turned out to be the breakout year for CDs (the orange). The price of players came down from $1,000 to $500. And the CD catalog was expanding.
And as we all know, CDs lasted forever and it’s all we would ever use for music ever again.
Family Ties, S3 E11: Don’t Kiss Me, I’m Only the Messenger
[Warning: This episode is heavy Skippy]
Mlaahhh!
MALLORY’s friend JANE arrives at the house. ALEX walks in with her, and he displays his best ‘80's coolguy things to say to girls that he’s just met.
ALEX: I found this girl wandering around outside. She claims she’s a friend of yours.
JANE: I have a name
ALEX: Oh! Congratulations!
JANE: It’s Jane
ALEX: OH and you know it, too! You’re brighter than most of Mal’s friends
Ugh. Remember this later. And that he doesn’t. Even. Know. Her. Name.
SKIPPY, the awkward neighbor kid, happens to be there, too. He’s clearly into Jane. As they go upstairs, Mallory tells Jane to “just think of him as a lamp.”
When they’re gone, Skippy clutches his heart, breathless, and tells Alex that his life now has meaning and he has met the girl of his dreams, whatever her name is. Alex encourages him to talk to her.
The girls come back downstairs. Skippy stands in front of a walking Jane. He stares at her confused face, makes a sound like “Mlaaah”, and crashes down a table lamp with a flailing arm.
Jane’s yearning
ALEX tells SKIPPY he’ll talk to Jane. MALLORY is jealous. She’s pissed.
MALLORY: I thought we had an understanding. You worship me, and I reject you.
JANE comes to the back door. Alex is now alone in the kitchen. He starts laying groundwork for Skippy. He asks Jane if she’s seeing anyone, she says no, and he says that’s great news!
Jane misunderstands. She starts going at Alex. HARD.
She says “I’ve had a desperate, passionate yearning for you, ever since I was a little kid,” while her hips grind against a door frame. She walks up to Alex seductively, says this was a moment she’s been waiting for her whole life, and kisses him.
I mean, she went at it. Wait, isn’t she 15 like Mallory? (The actress is, quite visibly, 22)
A bad idea
Three days later, ALEX explains the situation to DAD. He says that he and Jane “have a significant, meaningful…lust for each other,” but he knows Dad’s advice is right, he needs to cut it off.
So he has a tremendously bad idea. He invites JANE to a romantic dinner. With SKIPPY.
Skippy arrives in a top hat and cane. He tells Alex his plan to give Jane a wadded $10 bill as a gift.
This will go great.
Skippy can’t form a sentence and klutz-crashes things all over the dining room. He leaves Alex alone with Jane for a minute, and she starts grinding on Alex.
MALLORY and JENNIFER coincidentally happen to walk in to pick up a pizza, and they spot Alex and Jane mashing at the table. Skippy then walks in, but Mallory distracts him to save the situation — by *kissing him*. (Which was *his* lifelong dream until this episode.)
But Skippy gets wise anyway, loses it, and crashes things off of tables all the way out the door.
His turtle
We’re with SKIPPY in his room. He is talking to his turtle (which is not a euphemism in this case). ALEX comes in to apologize. Sincerely. He was wrong.
They’re friends. They hug. Everything is OK now.