Missing helmets, fallen goalposts and a Bud Light: The story of ASUs wildest postgame celebration -

In the final minute, from a television booth high above Frank Kush Field, Barry Tompkins and Danny White tried to capture a moment that was nearly impossible to capture.

“Our statistician just asked me if I have ever called a game that was as much of an upset as this, and I’m just sort of racing back through my mind,” Tompkins said on the Fox Sports regional broadcast.

“We’re all just kind of sitting here in shock, I think,” White said.

Sept. 21, 1996.

The game itself was incredible. Twenty-four point underdogs, Arizona State shocked No. 1 Nebraska 19-0, snapping the two-time reigning champs’ 26-game winning streak. No one had shut out the Cornhuskers during the regular season in 23 years, and yet, behind defensive end Derrick Rodgers, the Sun Devils had produced three safeties, dominating from start to finish.

But it was the celebration that made this night magical, an event that connected program to community. Fans storming the field. Students tearing down goalposts. An offensive lineman losing his helmet in the craziness — only to find it years later. Coaches running to find their wives. The man of the hour, ASU coach Bruce Snyder, getting a late-night standing ovation at a Mexican restaurant. Pat Tillman being Pat Tillman.

On the 150th anniversary of college football, it remains one of the more memorable moments in ASU sports history, worthy of a look back 23 years later. Even today, fans often approach players, telling them they were part of the mob that carried the goalposts down Mill Avenue. Amazingly, a piece of one goal post actually made it back to Snyder and his family.

On television, Tompkins reminded viewers that no one had given the Sun Devils much of a chance. Not with Nebraska dominating the sport. Not with the Cornhuskers whipping ASU 77-28 in Lincoln the previous season. As he spoke, fans made their way to the field, filling a walkway that surrounded the field. The noise in Sun Devil Stadium was deafening.

In Section 6, Ryan Smith, then a junior at Mesa Mountain View High, heard a man who looked to be in his 70s say he planned to go down and shake the hand of every last ASU player. Not far away, Robert Fleming, director of the Sun Devil Marching Band, told students: “I hope you all understand what you’re witnessing here tonight.”

Over three-plus hours, the Sun Devils had shocked the college football universe. Broken into 20 segments, this is the story of what happened next, from a coach racing to get off the field to a long-haired linebacker who planned to celebrate in his own way.

ASU coach Bruce Snyder during the 1996 Nebraska game. (Sun Devil Athletics)

1. Every impromptu celebration creates problems. The night’s first: Trying to get Synder to midfield so the ASU coach could shake Tom Osborne’s hand. The previous season, this hadn’t gone so well. Snyder, upset that Nebraska had run a trick play in the final minutes, had exchanged words with the Nebraska coach. This time the drama would be simply getting there.

In the final seconds, stadium manager Tom Sadler and security guard Jimmy Kaleta approached Snyder on the sideline. Along with a Department of Public Safety officer, they took off as fans rushed the field. “It wasn’t like we had a meeting with Coach Snyder midweek to say, ‘By the way, when we beat them 19-0, here’s what we’re going to do,”’ Sadler said. “We were just trying to be his wingmen. We were blocking for him.”

2. Up in the president’s suite, the Snyder family watched the craziness unfold. With five minutes left, Jennifer Snyder — the coach’s oldest daughter — had been convinced Nebraska somehow would rally. “It just didn’t seem real,” she said.

When it was finally over, the family had to wait for Linda Snyder. As usual, the coach’s wife had left to wander because she was so nervous. “Oftentimes, she’d go in the restroom,” Jennifer said. “It was just too much.”

3. In the student section, Greg Powers — ASU’s future hockey coach — was among the first on the field, racing down from the fifth row. Before the game, he had hoped the Sun Devils could just keep it close. Instead, “it was an utter shit-kicking.” Powers had a friend boost him up to the support arch of the south goalpost. “I was just hanging on it like a monkey,” he said.

4. After shaking Osborne’s hand, Snyder, then 56, was caught up in the hysteria. In seconds, Frank Kush Field had turned into one big mosh pit. Fans crowded him, patting him on the back. Wearing a gold ASU polo, Snyder pumped his fist. Watching the scene later on television, Jennifer Snyder thought her dad looked so happy he could explode.

“Coach, we got to go,” said Kaleta, the security guard. He put his right fingers through Snyder’s belt loop and extended his left arm to help clear a path. As they accelerated to the locker room, Kaleta rammed a couple of fans with his shoulder.

“We were yelling the whole time — MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” Kaleta said. “But people weren’t moving.”

5. Normally, Fox sideline reporter Andre Aldridge would wait for the winning coach at midfield for a quick postgame interview. Not this night. A few minutes before the game ended, a producer told him: “Andre, shit’s about to go down, so don’t worry about the interview.”

Aldridge rushed onto the field with a cameraman, hopeful to get material he could use next week. “I lost him,” Aldridge said. “The high cameras obviously shot everything we needed. Anything I was trying to add from the field — it was not going to happen.”

6. Exhausted, ASU left guard Kyle Murphy joined the celebration. Almost immediately a fan named Joe Healey — son of future ASU radio voice Tim Healey — ran by and slapped the lineman’s shoulder pads. This was a common field-storm experience, fans slapping shoulder pads like they were playing the bongos. Players hate it.

“I don’t need to be hit anymore!” Murphy thought. “I’ve been hit plenty tonight! Enough!”

He returned to the bench to get his helmet. Oops. The helmet was gone.

7. Receivers coach Robin Pflugrad, who had spent the night signaling in plays from the sideline, tried to get to the opposite side of the field to shake hands with Nebraska coaches and players. He soon realized he had no chance. “It was like running with the bulls,” he said.

Pflugrad tried to find his position players. Keith Poole. Kenny Mitchell. Lenzie Jackson. They had put in so much work, he wanted to congratulate them on the field. But his body felt like he was in the ocean. He had no control.

Through the mass of humanity, Pflugrad spotted left tackle Juan Roque. “If anyone’s going to get to the locker room, it’s that guy,” Pflugrad thought.

8. Just like Snyder, Roque initially had approached Osborne. Nebraska had recruited the left tackle out of high school and Roque wanted to let him know that choosing ASU had not been a mistake. “Part of my a-hole side as well as my sportsman side wanted to look him in the face, to let him know I was there,” Roque said. “Kind of my own little ‘Fork you.'”

From there, Roque walked toward the locker room. He couldn’t get there. “Next thing I know the fence (keeping fans off the field) collapses, and it was just a flood of people,” Roque said. ” I couldn’t tell you what they looked like other than they were coming right at me. I looked to my left and to my right and in that moment, I saw none of my teammates. All I saw was people.”

9. Up in the coaches’ box, running backs coach Cornell Jackson exchanged high fives with quarterbacks coach John Pettas and others, thinking: “I’m a part of history now.” On the ground, a golf cart waited to take the assistants to the locker room, but it was impossible to drive through the crowd. Instead, the coaches ran.

Jackson found his wife, Lorri, outside the locker room. He grabbed her. “Make sure I’m alive,” he said. “Did this really happen?”

10. It took Roque 10 minutes to get off the field. Once he did, he walked a third of the way down the tunnel and stopped. He turned and walked back to the top. “I just had to have one more look,” Roque said.

11. After rushing the field, Randy Corral — a 26-year-old graduate who had scored tickets in the student section — ran for the goalpost on the north end of Sun Devil Stadium. The crowd chanted: “Goalpost! Goalpost!” It came down it what seemed like seconds.

Corral boosted sister Christy on top of one piece. He hung on for a while himself but eventually fell off. “Next thing I know, I see my sister leaving the stadium,” Corral said. “They carried (the goal post) out of the southwest entrance, and she was actually sitting on it, riding it like a horse.”

12. The Snyder family returned to the coaches’ parking lot, not far from the ticket office. There, they popped open beers left over from their pregame tailgate. They started the car and listened to Snyder’s radio show, hoping he wouldn’t take long. Around them, they could hear fans spilling out of the stadium, taking the party to the streets.

13. In the television booth, as the Fox crew finished their postgame responsibilities, Tompkins looked out over the rim of Sun Devil Stadium and saw something he had never seen before. A sea of people carrying a section of goal post toward downtown Tempe.

14. In the press box, a crowded group of sportswriters tried to capture the moment and beat print deadlines. ASU had issued more than 300 media requests, so many that sports information director Mark Brand had to place some on the roof.

From an Orange County Register columnist: “A Plummer clogged up the national college championship outlook here Sunday night. Thanks to Arizona State quarterback Jake Plummer and his quick and resourceful teammates, Nebraska’s hopes of winning three consecutive titles are well down the drain.”

From an Arizona Republic columnist: “Nothing is forever. The Han Dynasty lasted from 206 B.C to 9 A.D. The Egyptian pharaohs died. Saturday night, another dynasty came to an end. I saw it and I still don’t believe it. “

15. Finally off the field, the Sun Devils met in the weight room. After wins, the team had a tradition of holding up the jersey that corresponded with the number of points they had scored. Reserve quarterback Chad Brown wore No. 19 so his jersey was lifted to the ceiling as the Sun Devils counted to 19. Then they sang the school fight song with more fight than anyone could remember. “Have fun tonight,” Snyder told his team, “but be careful. Let’s not celebrate too much, let’s not get too high.”

16. The moment started to register. As one player described: “Holy shit, this is a big deal.” Not that they were surprised. The Sun Devils had been motivated just walking off the bus after the ride to the stadium, seeing all that Nebraska red on their home turf. Some estimated that nearly 20,000 Cornhuskers fans attended the contest. ASU had made every last one miserable.

“Just an overwhelming feeling of joy,” running back Terry Battle said.

Battle’s younger brother, Patrick, had planned to come to Tempe to celebrate his birthday, which was the next day. But ultimately he decided to stay and celebrate in San Diego because he figured Nebraska would roll the Sun Devils and he didn’t want to be around such disappointment. “I always rub that in his face,” Battle said.

Pat Tillman, left, helps ensure the tackle against Nebraska. (Sun Devil Athletics)

17. In the locker room, fired up receiver Keith Poole — who had scored the night’s first touchdown, a 25-yard pass from Plummer — approached linebacker Pat Tillman and yelled: “WHAT ARE WE DOING TONIGHT?!”

Tillman calmly told Poole he had to return to the dorm because he promised Marie — his girlfriend and future wife — that he would call her at 11 p.m. In 1996, hardly anyone carried cellphones.

“Normally, any other person that I’ve ever played with I probably would’ve slapped him and said, ‘Dude, shut up! You can call her tomorrow morning! She’s good! You’re coming!”’ Poole said. “But I respected Pat so much, I was like, ‘Man, you go do your thing. Go celebrate with her and I’ll tell you stories tomorrow morning about how much fun we had.”

Often, players would return to Plummer’s house after games, but this night many ended up at Maloney’s Tavern. “Obviously, we were on cloud nine,” Poole said. “Going into Mahoney’s, they had those two big TVs, just watching all the highlights with the fans, what an awesome night.”

18. More than an hour after the game, once he had finished his media responsibilities, Bruce Snyder exited the football facility and met his family in the parking lot. He was operating on adrenaline. “I’m sure he hadn’t eaten anything,” Jennifer Snyder said. The coach hugged each member of his family. Then he cracked open the last remaining beer, a Bud Light.

After every home win, ASU coaches went to Macayo’s Depot Cantina on South Ash Avenue. They had a reserved room upstairs. On this night, the place was packed and as Snyder walked in, everyone in the restaurant gave him a standing ovation.

Snyder died in 2009, after a battle with cancer, at 69.

19. Manny Yrique hung out with friends at his tailgate on Tempe Beach following the victory. A longtime season-ticket holder, this was a tradition. Before games, they tailgated. After games, they finished everything off. After a big win, they often partied all night.

A friend walked up, carrying an 8-foot piece of goalpost. Everyone went nuts. Yrique shoved the goal post in the back of his truck and took it to his workshop. Days later, he cut the goalpost into small pieces and mounted them to a base. He engraved “I was there” and the 19-0 score on plates and attached them.

Before the next home game, Yrique sold each goal-post trophy for $19. He used the money to buy filet mignon for the last tailgate of the season, but he kept one trophy back for Snyder, which his daughter presented to the coach at his weekly radio show. The Snyder family still has it.

Courtesy Jennifer Snyder

20. In the school’s media-relations department, sports information directors Brand and Doug Tammaro prepared for a long night. At the time, the internet was still in its infancy. Twitter, Facebook and other social media didn’t exist. Given the time change, half the country probably didn’t know what had just unfolded in the desert. (Some speculated this was why ASU had moved just a few spots to No. 12 in the coaches’ poll — five spots behind Nebraska; many voters had gone to bed not knowing the result.)

The first call came at 4 a.m.

“I knew it was Sports Illustrated because they had a 212-522 number, and you just knew that as a PR person,” Tammaro said.

Said the voice on the other end: “Oh, my God, we need your help.”

The next morning, ASU’s win led NFL preview shows. Suddenly, the Sun Devils were a national story. They climbed 11 spots in the AP poll to No. 6. Interview requests flooded in from around the country.

Snyder already had moved on.

Before leaving the previous night, he had given his support staff a strict message. “He said, ‘I want all this Nebraska stuff taken down,”’ said Dan Cozzetto, his offensive coordinator. “I don’t want to see anything about Nebraska. From the time those kids walk into the building tomorrow at 3 p.m., they’re going to see nothing but ‘Beat Oregon.’ Bruce was always one game ahead. Always.”

That approach worked the rest of the season. The Sun Devils finished 11-1, losing only to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. It was a magical season, and it all started that hot September night against Nebraska. Things that happened then wouldn’t happen today.

“Today, there’s more security to keep people off the field and all that,” said Pflugrad, the receivers coach. “But that night, there was no way on God’s green Earth they were going to keep those people off the field. And I remember thinking: ‘ASU deserves this moment. Not only the football program but everybody that supports it in the community. The students.’ It was such a neat experience.”

Postscript

A couple of years later, after he had graduated, Murphy, the offensive lineman who had lost his helmet during the postgame celebration, attended a house party in Tempe. He didn’t know the guy throwing the party, but he knew people there.

In the living room, Murphy noticed a gold ASU helmet with a Sparky logo. It sat in a case, the only thing on a small shelf. “Well, that’s cool,” Murphy said to himself. He thought the helmet was a replica. Upon closer inspection, however, he realized it wasn’t.

Murphy called the party host over and asked about the helmet, playing it cool.

“How’d you get that?” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” the host said. “I was at the Nebraska game. I stormed the field and just happened to see it.”

“Cool,” Murphy said. “Because I left mine on the bench that night — and that’s mine.”

(Top photo courtesy Sun Devil Athletics)

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