Nov. 20, 2007

By Wilt Browning
Special to theACC.com

As far as Pete Mitchell can remember - and his memory is excellent - there was not so much as a thank-you note. No one delivered a bushel of oranges to his dorm room at Chestnut Hills, Mass., as a sign of gratitude. There were no congratulatory phone calls.

Nothing.

"A national championship ring would have been nice," Mitchell said facetiously recently.

Mitchell knows that without him, Boston College teammate and quarterback Glenn Foley plus place-kicker David Gordon and their buddies, Florida State would not have been college football's national champions in 1993.

Mitchell, Foley and Gordon were the heroes of the 1993 Holy Wars series, a football rivalry played out between the nation's two major Catholic universities, Boston College and Notre Dame. It was a game so stunning in its conclusion that students ripped down the goalposts at Boston College (where the game was not played) and delivered them in pieces to the back yard of the apartment shared by Gordon. It had been Gordon's knuckleball field goal on the final play of the game that gave Boston College a stunning 41-39 victory over Notre Dame.

As dramatic as it was at South Bend, it was a game that not only shocked college football to its timbers that season, but still echoes through the ages as something special. While Gordon was enduring a nervous time out called by Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, the Fighting Irish were undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation. A 12th national championship seemed not to be the stuff of mere dreams, but Notre Dame's for the taking.

What Notre Dame fans would like to forget is that on that afternoon, November 20, 1993, Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 in the nation. In all the seasons since that game, the Fighting Irish have yet to return to the top of the college football ladder, though they have come close.

For Mitchell, one of the 12 Legends of the college game who will be honored at the Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship weekend, it is an easy game to remember, a game that's easy on the psyche.

"It's probably the greatest game of my football career, college or professional," the nine-year National Football League tight end says now, all these years later.

Indeed, Mitchell had exactly the kind of day Florida State, a loser to Notre Dame, 31-24, a week earlier in what had been called The Game of the Century, had to have to find its own national championship hopes resurrected. Mitchell caught 13 of Foley's passes for 132 yards and two touchdowns. It remains the best day any receiver has ever had at Boston College where talented quarterbacks have not been in short supply.

None of Mitchell's catches was bigger than the two he made the last time the Eagles had the ball with one final chance at a miracle in South Bend. The first of those was a desperation 12-yarder on third-and-10 from the Boston College 25 that kept slim hopes alive. But his final catch was even more dramatic.

On the play, Foley was chased from the pocket. Scrambling, he found Mitchell, his assigned route no longer an option, hunting open spaces in the middle of the Notre Dame secondary. The connection was good for 24 huge yards and when the ball was readied for play at the Notre Dame 33, just 19 seconds remained on the clock, a mere speck of time for the Eagles, an eternity for the Fighting Irish.

Pete Mitchell Boston College Tight End 1991-94 Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Two-time All-America, including a consensus pick in 1994 The Eagles' all-time leading receiver He played nine seasons in the NFL with four different teams Pete Mitchell, who lettered four times for Boston College, is still the Eagles' all-time leading receiver with 190 receptions for 2,388 yards. He helped Boston College to a 28-17-2 mark during his four seasons at BC, including appearances in the Hall of Fame (1992) and Carquest Bowls (1993). Named a first-team All-America as a junior in 1993, he earned consensus All-America honors as team captain in 1994. He then enjoyed a nine-year career in the National Football League including five with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

On the game's final play, it was Foley who would take the snap from center on a make-or-break 41-yard field goal attempt by Gordon who had missed what had been a chip shot attempt a week earlier against Northwestern that also would have won the game.

Before getting set for the snap from center, Foley had some advice for Gordon.

"Hey, don't worry about it," he told the kicker. "It's only Notre Dame. You miss this one and you'll be walking home."

Gordon found the remark funny, but Foley should have had a conversation with the long snapper instead. The ball came flying high and well off the mark for Foley, who jerked the errant snap out of the air and slammed it to the turf just in time for Gordon's swinging leg.

Foley said later that he looked up to follow the flight of the ball and had an instant sinking feeling. It was fluttering in the air, a knuckler, and Foley thought it would miss the uprights far to the right. "Then it took a hard left turn, and just dove through," Foley said later.

For Mitchell, the victory was especially sweet.

"My home was not far away," said the native of Royal Oak, Mich., a Detroit suburb. "I had a lot of friends and family there, maybe about 100. Some of them, though, were big Notre Dame fans - you know, die-hards - who already had tickets, and I haven't let them forget that game over the years, either."

Mitchell's impact on that game was not overlooked then, nor has it been in the years since. One Notre Dame assistant coach lamented that "Mitchell was running open the whole game."

Today, Mitchell laughs about the assessment, but does not deny it.

"Well, they really didn't make the (defensive) adjustments I thought they'd be making as the game went on. But you know, it was one of those games where things were just clicking. Foley and I had been playing together for almost three years at the time and I knew what he was thinking, and he knew what I was thinking. It was one of those things you hear about where you know what to do just from looking at the guy."

The critical 24-yard scramble pass for the first down was just such a mental connection as well as actual connection. Mitchell knew that Foley, in trouble and now out of the pocket of protection, would be looking for him. Not only that, but he would first look to the middle of the secondary, which is where Mitchell was when the ball came spinning into history to him.

But there was one other aspect of the game that remains important to Mitchell all these years later.

"It's easy to look at the drama of the `93 game and not remember that the year before, they beat us 54-7, and they kind of rubbed it in, too," Mitchell charges. "They were leading by something like 30 points and they went with a fake punt.

"In the dressing room after the `92 game, it was really quiet and Coach (Tom) Coughlin told us that we were going to play Notre Dame again the next year and he wanted us to remember what had happened.

"I don't know how much of a factor that was, though. We remembered, especially the fake punt in the second half, but you really don't have to have that kind of motivation when you're playing Notre Dame. I think it was more a matter of them being No. 1 in the nation and kind of looking past us.

"The other thing people don't often remember about that season is that the next week we played (top-ranked) West Virginia. It was written at the time that we were the first college team to play No. 1 teams in the nation on back-to-back weekends. And we should have won that game, too."

But it's the sweet memory of the victory over Notre Dame that remains in the memory of the former All-American tight end. But it's never too late for a bit of gratitude from Florida State.

Wilt Browning is a special contributor to theACC.com. He spent more than 40 years as a sports editor and columnist in the Southeast. He worked for the Greenville News, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the Charlotte Observer, the Greensboro News & Record and the Asheville Citizen-Times. His numerous awards include five North Carolina Sports Writer of the Year honors. He is also the author of five books, including Come Quittin' Time which was released this summer.

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