• FSU's season had gotten off to a bad start. The #1-ranked Seminoles had been blown out in Miami 31-0 in the opener. They were #10 after shellacking Southern Miss 49-13.
• The 2-0 Tigers of Coach Danny Ford were #3.
• Both teams took the field with new pants. Clemson sported orange bottoms in which they had compiled a 14-1 record in big games. Burt Reynolds had donated white pants to his alma mater as a throwback to when he played in the 50s.
• The steady rain that started the night before and continued throughout the contest made those new pants dirty quickly.

Clemson dominated the first half.

• Pounding the ball on the ground, the Tigers racked up a 232-71 yardage advantage. FSU didn't make a first down rushing in the opening 30 minutes.
• QB Rodney Williams' 7y keeper with 2:45 left before intermission culminated a 99y drive that put the home team up 14-7.

With its O struggling, Florida State needed a lift and got it from its best player.

• Every time Deion Sanders went back to return a kick, the Clemson bench and fans taunted him with chants of "Prime Time."
• Early in Q3, Deion took Chris Gardocki's punt and ran straight upfield through a gaping hole in the coverage 76y to tie the game. He yelled to the crowd, "How do you like me now?"
• After getting the ball back, the Seminoles drove for the go-ahead TD. QB Chip Ferguson hit Victor Floyd for 34, then Terry Anthony for 10. Several plays later, Ferguson threw to 6-4 TE Bruce LaShane for 36y to the 1. FB Dayne Williams pushed it over for a 21-14 lead.
• Clemson blocked Richie Andrews' FG attempt late in the quarter to keep it a one-score game. At that point, Andrews had yet to make a FG in a Garnet and Gold uniform.

With 7:28 to play, Clemson started a drive from its 34.

• Using up five minutes, the Tigers moved through the mud to the 19. From there, FB Tracy Johnson ran it in to tie the game and send Death Valley into an uproar.
• A clipping penalty on the kickoff set FSU back to its 15.
• After Dexter Carter gained 6 on first down, LaSane dropped a pass. Ferguson's next pass should have been intercepted, but two defenders collided going for the ball.
• That made it fourth-and-four on the 21 with 1:33 to play. It looked like the best the Seminoles could hope for was a tie in those days before OT.

Bowden saw it differently. He considered it an excellent time to run the trick play he had promised the team at halftime that they would use.

• Nebraska had run the "Fumbleroosie" against Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl. The QB took the snap under C and put the ball on the ground behind the LG, who waited a few seconds as the offense moved to the right, then picked up the ball and ran to the left for a TD. After that, "rooskie" meant a trick play throughout football.
• An FSU graduate assistant recalled the play being run from punt formation at Arkansas State. So Bowden had the punt team practice it for the opener with Miami. However, the blowout loss provided no opportunity to call it.
• Some Seminole assistants wanted to run the play in the first half when trailing 14-7, but Bowden decided to keep his ace up his sleeve. Bobby later explained his thinking: "No, it will score, and the score will be 14-14, and they'll go into the half mad. It will be better off if they go in ahead and they'll get overconfident. And this way, we can go in and get all over the kids."
• Bobby told the team at halftime, "Men, keep your head up. We got the Puntrooskie." The Seminoles charged out with more energy.

As the punt team took the field, Bowden told junior S LeRoy Butler, the one designated to pick up the "fumble" and run, "Do it."

• Butler recalled his reaction: "We're at around the 20-yard lie. We're going to do this play. Are you kidding? Nervous ain't the word. I didn't have butterflies. I had lizards."
• Bowden remembers feeling all alone. "I made the call and there wasn't anybody around. One of the coaches was hiding under the bench, and two went inside. Can you imagine if the play doesn't work at our 21-yard line?" His philosophy was, "Boys, you can call it a 'Bowdenrooskie' if you want to. So if it fails, I get all the blame and not y'all."
• Bowden was confident the play would work because it had fooled his own team in practice not once but twice.

If ESPN had instituted its ESPY Awards that year, what happened next would have won for Best Play.

• Butler lined up at blocking back alongside the other blocking back just behind the C. The third back, Dayne Williams, stood two steps behind Butler while punter Tim Corlew awaited the snap as usual.
• The C snapped the ball to Williams while Corlew jumped high to his right to make the D believe the ball had sailed over his head. The rushers took the bait, chasing after Curlew.
• Meanwhile, Williams handed the ball forward between Butler's legs. LeRoy was supposed to stay hunched over in blocking position for three seconds to give the defenders time to clear out. "I got to the one and a half, and then I said, 'You gotta go, man.'"
• He picked up the ball and began running down the left sideline. There was no one between him and the EZ except the punt returner, Donnell Woolford, who had run forward after Corlew's deception.
• Woolford ran Butler down at the 1. "I was shocked," said Woolford. "I've never seen anything like that."
• Dayne Williams plunged over on first down, but FSU was penalized for delay of game. Bowden decided not to take any more chances and sent Andrews out to kick the FG with 0:32 left. Because of the earlier block and the fact that Richie had never made a FG in a game, the 3 points was not a sure thing.
• But Andrews booted it through. Clemson had time for several desperation plays that failed.
• FSU had won on what ESPN's Beano Cook dubbed "the greatest play since My Fair Lady."

Danny Ford admitted afterwards that his staff considered calling timeout before the 4th down play to warn the punt return team about a fake.

• It eventually came to light that the play had been leaked to Clemson. A few days before the game, Butler told his high school coach in Jacksonville about the rooskie. The next evening, the coach had some friends over to his house. During chit-chat, the coach told his guests what Butler had said. A Clemson graduate in the group got word to Ford's staff.
• Ford after the game: "We knew they had a fake and we talked about it. We wanted to save our timeouts for our drive for a winning FG." You could hardly blame them. Who would think Bowden would be so crazy as to try it at that point in the game at that spot on the field?
• Clemson S Gene Beasley said, "The man [Bowden] has no conscience. I couldn't have called that play." Tiger receiver Ricardo Hooper summed up the game. "Basically, we got out-tricked."

The opening loss proved to be FSU's only one of the season. A 13-7 victory over Auburn in the Sugar Bowl culminated the 11-1 season to earn the #3 ranking behind Notre Dame and Miami in the AP's final poll.

After an 8-0 season in 1950, Head Coach Don Veller greeted his next Seminole team, which included a player who would come to be called the "best player never."

• Roy Thompson hailed from Wrightsville, the small GA town that later produced Herschel Walker.
• A 5-10 173lb RB of great potential, Thompson had transferred from Georgia Tech where Coach Bobby Dodd considered him "a problem."
• Veller: "He would not practice, and he would not block. All he wanted to do was carry the football. Indeed, he could carry the ball. He was so fast on his start he made divots in the ground – honestly – the way he pushed."
• As an example of his athletic ability, Roy regularly bet $1 that he could jump over the hood of a car. He always won the bet.
• Unfortunately, Thompson ran to the beat of his own drummer. Veller: "Once, against Stetson, he had a TD going up the middle. Everybody had been knocked down. But he spun out, went wide – and lost 5y." When coaches asked Thompson why he hadn't gone up the middle, he replied, "Gosh, it was no fun doing that – nobody was there."
• Still, in that same game, Thompson ran 76y to paydirt to spark a 13-10 victory. Against Wofford, Roy ran for 133y in 17 carries. FSU won 14-0.
• To utilize Roy's ability, the coaches developed a special kickoff return. "We just threw the ball to him and let him run where he wanted to run."
• When Thompson skipped spring practice, Veller asked him why. "I'm out for the circus. I catch girls. It's more fun than football."
• Because he refused to practice, Roy sat on the bench most of the 1952 season when FSU went 1-8-1.
• Despite his belief that Thompson "was probably the best I ever saw," Veller didn't think it was fair to play him ahead of players who practiced. For the season, Roy ran the ball 70 times for 227y and 1 TD. He also completed 13-of-33 passes for 236y, 1 TD, and 4 INT.
• Roy disappeared after the '52 season. Veller later heard he had joined the Marines.

The year was 1952. The Seminoles hosted Louisville on October 4 in the second game of the season.

• The Cardinals were led by a skinny sophomore QB generously listed at 150 lb. His name was Johnny Unitas from Pittsburgh PA.
• Louisville had beaten Wayne State 19-12 in their opener.
• Coach John Camp had started practice that year with only 19 players because a new president had toughened the academic standards for athletes, causing 15 returning lettermen to flunk out.
• Camp filled out the roster with walk-on freshmen. One was a 190 lb T named Larry "Bumpy" Simmons who made history when he entered the opener against Wayne State in Q4, thus breaking the color line at Louisville. Simmons had to be left home for the trip to Tallahassee because of a Florida law prohibiting mixed-race athletic contests.
• Unitas had taken over the starting position behind C midway through the previous year. He led the Cardinals to four straight wins to end the year. The 5-4 record would be his only winning season at Louisville.

Don Veller had lost only four games in four years at the helm at FSU.

• The military veterans who flocked to Florida State after the war were beginning to run out just as the school started giving scholarships and therefore left the Dixie Conference.
• An opening loss at home to Louisiana Tech, 32-13, would prove to be an omen of the dismal season to come.

Despite a furious Seminole rush throughout the game, Unitas completed 22 passes for 198y and 3 TDs.

• Right after the game, Veller said, prophetically, of the visiting QB: "He is out of this world." Don recalled the game years later. "Unitas had the greatest day of any passer I've ever seen. He was just phenomenal. No way he couldn't play for anybody anywhere anytime."
• At one point, Johnny threw a left-handed pass between his legs for a 15y completion. "You should have seen him," said Lee Corso, who wasn't at FSU that year but played QB the next year and saw the films of the game. "Holy mackerel, was this guy good. A kind of rawboned-looking, bowlegged guy. Not fast but quick. Unbelievably quick release. Boom! Drop back in that pocket. Boom! The Seminoles didn't have a chance. He riddled them."
• Veller further remembered that "Louisville also had an extraordinary FB who graduated that year." His name was Jim Williams, and he ran for 143y that day in the 41-14 rout.

The two teams between them would win only two more games the rest of the season.

• FSU beat Wofford in the second-to-last contest to finish 1-8-1 in Veller's final season.
• The Cardinals beat Eastern Kentucky to complete a 3-5 campaign.

Louisville returned to the Florida capital the following season, 1953.

• With his team even more depleted, Unitas, nursing a bad ankle, endured a 59-0 shellacking by the Seminoles.
• Cardinal T Bob Bender recalled, "It was so bad, the cannon they fired off after TDs ran out of shells."
• Lee Corso, a 5-9 142 freshman whom new FSU coach Tom Nugent started at QB that night, said:

It wasn't fair. Louisville had almost no players except John. Overnight, it had turned into a high school team. We overran him, crushed him, killed him. But you still couldn't take your eyes off him. Studying the film from the year before, I couldn't get over how good he was. Now, I couldn't get over how tough he was.

Unitas would QB the Baltimore Colts to back-to-back NFL championships in 1958 and 1959. He earned election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.

To be continued ...