October 31, 1992: Rutgers' Halloween Homecoming Thriller

October 31, 1992: Rutgers University plays Virginia Tech in a Halloween Homecoming thriller, in the next-to-last game at the old Rutgers Stadium. The stars of this game, all from New Jersey, were quarterback Bryan Fortay of East Brunswick, running back Bruce Presley of Highland Park, tight end Jim Guarantano of Lodi, and receiver Chris Brantley of Teaneck.

RU fell behind 42-23 in the 3rd quarter, before launching a comeback. With 1:32 left, and Tech leading 49-44, the Scarlet Knights got the ball on their own 22. Among the plays on this drive was a 46-yard pass from Fortay to Mario Henry with 7 seconds left. RU won on the final play, the 4th Fortay-to-Brantley touchdown pass of the game, 50-49. Yes, that score is in football, not basketball.

The shootout featured a combined 1,164 yards of total offense, on 167 plays, with 54 first downs, 10 interceptions and 14 touchdowns.

Rutgers played in the 1st college football game, in 1869. So they have, literally, been playing football longer than anybody in America. This may not be their greatest game in their history, and it certainly isn't the most important (or even the most important one since 1869). But it is the wildest.

RU advanced to 5-3 on the season, and had a shot at winning the Big East Conference title, having already beaten then-Number 15 Syracuse 3 weeks earlier.

But the next week, they lost away to the University of Cincinnati, 26-24, before closing the old Rutgers Stadium the following week with a 13-9 win over West Virginia. The closed the season by beating Temple at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. After playing all their home games at the Meadowlands in 1993, the old stadium was demolished, and the new Rutgers Stadium, now named SHI Stadium, opened on the site in 1994.

RU finished 7-4, and were not invited to go to a bowl game. After they lost their season opener, to Boston College, their quarterback, Glenn Foley -- a New Jersey native they let get away, from the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill -- told the media, "The only bowl Rutgers is going to is the one I just got off of." Big talk from a guy whose biggest achievement as a pro was starting 8 games at quarterback for the New York Jets.

*

October 31, 1992 was a Saturday. Among the other college football games played on that Halloween were these:

* Number 1 Miami beat West Virginia, 35-23 at the Orange Bowl in Miami. Miami won the Big East Conference title.

* Number 2 Washington beat Number 15 Stanford, 41-7 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. Washington won the Pacific-Ten title.

* Number 3 Michigan beat Purdue, 24-17 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Michigan won the Big Ten title, but lost the Rose Bowl to Washington.

* Number 4 Alabama had the week off. They went on to win the Southeastern Conference title, rising to Number 2, then beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl for the National Championship.

* Number 5 Texas A&M beat Southern Methodist (SMU), 41-7 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. A&M won the Southwest Conference title.

* Number 6 Florida State beat Number 23 Virginia, 13-3 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia. Florida State won the Atlantic Coast Conference title.

* Number 7 Georgia were upset by Number 20 Florida, 26-24 at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. Florida won the SEC Eastern Division title, but lost the SEC Championship Game to Alabama. They returned to the Gator Bowl stadium to play the game of the same name, and beat North Carolina State. Georgia beat Ohio State in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

* Number 8 Nebraska beat Number 9 Colorado, 52-7 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. Nebraska won the Big Eight Conference title, but lost the Orange Bowl to Florida State. Colorado went to the Fiesta Bowl, where they lost to Syracuse.

* Number 10 Notre Dame beat Navy, 38-7 at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. Notre Dame went to the Cotton Bowl, and beat Texas A&M.

* Number 14 Penn State were upset by Brigham Young University (BYU), 30-17 at Cougar Stadium (now LaVell Edwards Stadium) in Provo, Utah.

* Number 16 Tennessee were upset by South Carolina, 24-23 at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina.

* Number 19 Washington State were upset by Oregon, 34-17 at Martin Stadium in Pullman, Washington.

* Army beat Eastern Michigan, 57-17 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York.

Baseball season was over. The NBA season started 6 days later. There were 10 games played in the NHL:

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the New York Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 4-3 at the Montreal Forum.

* The New Jersey Devils beat the New York Islanders, 5-3 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the Winnipeg Jets, 3-2 at the Colisée de Québec.

* In another "Original Six" matchup, the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Hartford Whalers, 7-1 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators played to a tie, 2-2 at the Ottawa Civic Centre (now the TD Place Arena).

* The 2 remaining "Original Six" teams also played each other, as the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-4 at the St. Louis Arena.

* The Calgary Flames beat the Minnesota North Stars, 5-3 at the Saddledome in Calgary.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Washington Capitals, 4-2 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.

October 17, 1939: "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" Premieres

October 17, 1939: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premieres, at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. It was the 2nd of the 3 films that were directed by Frank Capra and starred James Stewart. The 1st was You Can't Take It With You in 1938. The 3rd was It's a Wonderful Life in 1946, which became the defining Frank Capra film and the defining Jimmy Stewart film.

U.S. Senator Sam Foley -- his State is never identified, but is said to be in the West -- dies in office. The Governor Hubert "Happy" Hopper (played by Guy Kibbee) appoints Jefferson Smith (Stewart) to replace him, thinking the young activist will be easy to manipulate. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), a friend of Smith's late father, mentors him, and Smith takes a liking to the Senator's daughter, Susan (Jean Arthur).

The Washington press take advantage of Smith's naïveté, and he ends up looking like a dim country bumpkin. He comes up with a bill to authorize a federal government loan to buy some land in his home State for a national boys' camp, to be paid back by youngsters across America. It sounds like a typical Franklin Roosevelt-style New Deal bill, and the public likes it, with donations pouring in immediately. However, the proposed campsite is already part of a dam-building graft scheme included in an appropriations bill framed by the the political machine of the State's party boss, Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), and supported by Paine.

Unwilling to politically destroy Smith so that their graft plan will go through, Paine tells Taylor he wants out, but Taylor reminds him that Paine is in power primarily through Taylor's influence. Paine then advises Smith to keep silent about the matter. The following day, when Smith speaks out about the bill at Senate, the machine, through Paine, accuses Smith of trying to profit from his bill, by producing fraudulent evidence that Smith already owns the land in question. Smith is too shocked and angry by Paine's betrayal to defend himself, and runs away.

Saunders, who looked down on Smith at first, but has come to believe in him, talks him into launching a filibuster, to postpone the appropriations bill and prove his innocence on the Senate floor just before the vote to expel him. In his last chance to prove his innocence, he talks non-stop for about 25 hours, reaffirming the American ideals of freedom and disclosing the dam scheme's true motives. Yet none of the other Senators are convinced.

Newspapers and radio stations in Smith's home State, on Taylor's orders, refuse to report what Smith has to say, and even distort the facts against the Senator. The Boy Rangers' effort to spread the news in support of Smith results in vicious attacks on the children by Taylor's gangsters.

Although all hope seems lost, the Senators begin to pay attention as Smith approaches utter exhaustion. Paine has one last card up his sleeve: He brings in bins of letters and telegrams from the home State, purportedly from average people demanding his expulsion. Nearly broken by the news, Smith finds a small ray of hope in a friendly smile from the President of the Senate. Smith vows to press on until people believe him, but immediately collapses in a faint.

Overcome with the pangs of remorse, Paine leaves the Senate chamber, and attempts to commit suicide by gunshot, but is stopped by onlooking Senators. He then bursts back into the Senate chamber, shouting a confession to the whole scheme. The reformed Paine further insists that he must be expelled from the Senate, and affirms Smith's innocence.

Because the film even suggested that the American federal government might harbor corruption, it was slammed as anti-American and pro-Communist. Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the Majority Leader (and later Vice President under Harry Truman), called the film "a grotesque distortion."

Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Britain (and later father to 3 U.S. Senators, 1 of whom became President), wrote to Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, the film's distributor, and urged that it be withdrawn from European release, because it would damage America's prestige in Europe. He needn't have worried: The major Fascist dictators -- Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Francisco Franco in Spain -- all banned it in their countries. It wasn't shown in the Soviet Union until 1950.

Since World War II, the words "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" have become code for a "citizen legislator" getting himself elected and fighting the entrenched interests in Congress. Many such candidates have proven to have been already bought by special interests before they got there.

*

October 17, 1939 was a Tuesday. Baseball season had just ended, with the New Yankees sweeping the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season didn't start for another 2 weeks. There was one score on this historic day, and it was in college football: William & Mary and VPI played to a 6-6 tie at City Stadium in Richmond, Virginia.

"VPI" was the abbreviation for what was known from 1896 to 1944 as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute; and from 1944 to 1970 as simply the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Since 1970, it has been Virginia Tech University.

September 22, 1994: "Friends" Premieres

Left to right: Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer,

Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow

September 22, 1994: The sitcom Friends premieres, at 8:30 PM U.S. Eastern Time, in between NBC's established hit sitcoms Mad About You and Seinfeld. It helped to make Thursday night fit the Peacock Network's slogan of "Must See TV."

The main cast, each of whom had some sitcom experience (though not all successfully), was as follows:

* Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, a 25-year-old chef from a never-specified town on New York's Long Island. She has an apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village. On the show, the address is given as 425 Bleecker Street. In real life, that address does not exist. The real building used for exterior shots was at 90 Bedford Street, on the corner of Bleecker. The apartment is secretly in her grandmother's name, and, between that and rent control, enables her to live there cheaply.

In such groups, there's always a leader, and, for this group, Monica is it, by force of personality. She is incredibly competitive, a control freak and a neat freak, who was fat as a teenager and worked it off through sheer willpower. Her love-life is bad: As Joey points out, when she begins the episode by saying she's got a date, "Come on! You're going out with the guy. There's gotta be something wrong with him!" This line gets retroactively funnier when she and Chandler end up together.

* David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Monica's brother, 2 years older. He's an anthropologist who works at a thinly-disguised version of the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. He's a nerd who takes things personally. While Monica almost never mentions faith, Ross cares about being Jewish.

In the pilot episode, his wife, Carol (played in the 2nd episode by Anita Barone, and thereafter by Jane Sibbett), has just left him, after discovering at age 27 that she's a lesbian. In the 2nd episode, she is revealed to be pregnant, and, with son Ben's birth in the next-to-last episode of Season 1, Ross has to negotiate a three-way parenting thing.

* Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green. A stereotypical JAP (Jewish-American Princess), she was Monica's best friend in high school, but they drifted apart. She got a nosejob and a dentist fiancée, but, in the pilot, she leaves him at the altar, runs into Central Perk, the coffee bar where the gang hangs out, finds Monica, and the two reconnect.

Rachel moves in with Monica, and, having to take care of herself for the first time in her life, gets a job waitressing at Central Perk. She's not very good at it, but Gunther (last name never revealed, played by James Michael Tyler), the manager, keeps her on, because he has a serious crush on her.

Not as serious as Ross, though: He'd been in love with her ever since high school, but, in the present as well as in the past, he can't bring himself to tell her.

(NBC had debuted the hospital drama ER 3 days earlier, and it had a character named Rachel Greene, with an E on the end, the daughter of the show's initial main character, a preteen at that point. She gets phased out after her parents' divorce, only occasionally reappearing, including in the finale, where she's graduated medical school and interning at her late father's hospital.)

* Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay. Her father left when she was little, and her mother committed suicide when Phoebe was 14, so she lived on the street until meeting Monica, and became her college roommate. She eventually moved out due to Monica's issues. She's a masseuse, who moonlights as a singer, with weird songs based on her weird life, often performing at Central Perk.

Kudrow had previously appeared on another NBC Thursday night sitcom, Mad About You, as Ursula, the ditzy waitress at a bar called Riff's. In Friends' 1st season, it is established at Phoebe are identical twins, albeit with very different personalities. This becomes a problem later on when Ursula dates Joey, and later still when uses Phoebe's name to star in porno movies, including Buffay the Vampire Layer. It's only when Joey notices a tattoo that Ursula has but Phoebe doesn't that they know it's not Phoebe.

* Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing. Also a product of a broken home: His mother is a romance novelist, and his father is a drag singer in Las Vegas, who left the family when Chandler was 9, right after Thanksgiving dinner. Chandler had been Ross' college roommate, and has a cubicle job at the show's beginning, but soon gets promoted to an executive job -- a vague job that is never really defined.

* And Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani. The Staten Island native, now Chandler's roommate in an apartment across the hall from Monica and Rachel, is an actor and a womanizer. At first, he seemed to be of reasonable intelligence. But, as the show went on, he got dumber.

And that was typical of the show: Over the course of 10 seasons, the characters eventually became parodies of what they originally were, their annoying characteristics getting worse. Ross and Rachel got together, then split up in Season 3 (the show's "jump the shark" moment), went back and forth, had a baby together in Season 8, and finally ended up together in the series finale. Monica and Chandler got together in the Season 4 finale, married in the Season 7 finale, and, after fertility issues, adopted twins in the series finale. Phoebe married someone from out of the circle (played by a pre-Avengers Paul Rudd), and Joey went to Hollywood to pursue his acting dream. The spinoff Joey did not do well, its last episode airing on August 23, 2006, ending the franchise after 12 years.

Monica and Ross' parents were played by Elliott Gould and St. Elsewhere actress Christina Pickles. Rachel's parents were played by Marlo Thomas and Tony-winning Broadway star Ron Leibman. Phoebe's birth parents were played by Teri Garr and Bob Balaban, familiar to NBC Thursday night viewers as NBC executive Russell Dalrymple on Seinfeld. Joey's parents were played by Brenda Vaccaro and Robert Costanzo, an actor who usually played blue-collar guys (as he did on that show) and mobsters. And Chandler's parents were played by Morgan Fairchild and... Kathleen Turner, to emphasize the fact that his father wasn't just gay, but transgender.

Which brings me to this point: In addition to the characters' bad points getting deepened as the show went along, a lot of things about the show don't hold up well. The cast was nearly all-white, with very few minority characters. The gay jokes -- about the actually gay characters, and the perception that straight characters might be gay -- now seem really insensitive. And Ross' transformation from a lovable loser to a nasty jerk, acting as more of a control freak where Rachel was concerned than Monica ever was with anyone, is a black mark on the show.

Still, the show remains a favorite among people of Generation X, people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, like me. It was the 1st TV show to show us as adults, however immature. The 1st season was wonderful; the 2nd, really good; the 3rd, pretty good; but as soon as Ross and Rachel went, or didn't go, "on a break," it never really recovered. It reached 10 seasons, lasting until May 6, 2004, mostly on inertia.

UPDATE: Matthew Perry was the first member of the main cast to die, on October 28, 2023. James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther -- never quite "The Seventh Friend" -- died on October 24, 2021.

*

September 22, 1994 was a Thursday. Baseball's Strike of '94 was on. But there was a score on this historic day, in college football: Virginia Tech, ranked Number 14 in the country, beat semi-rival West Virginia, 34-6 at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.

September 10, 2016: American Football's Biggest Crowd

September 10, 2016: The biggest crowd in the history of American football, at any level, is recorded. And not at a place known for hosting the sport.

The University of Tennessee is in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a.k.a. Virginia Tech, is in Blacksburg, Virginia. Their stadiums are 237 miles apart, separated by Interstates 81 and 40. However, they are not rivals, because they are in different leagues: Tennessee are in the Southeastern Conference (the SEC), Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference (the ACC).

Perhaps the fact that they are not rivals made this neutral-site game easier to set up. Tech's Lane Stadium seats 65,632. Tennessee's Neyland Stadium seats 101,915. But they set up a game against each other at a racetrack, the Bristol Motor Speedway, in Bristol, Tennessee, 110 miles from Neyland Stadium, 138 miles from Lane Stadium, and 7 miles from the Virginia/Tennessee State Line that Bristol straddles. (Bristol, Virginia is home to 17,000 people; Bristol, Tennessee, to 26,000.)

The Speedway opened in 1961, is a regular on the NASCAR "short track" circuit, and is known as "The World's Fastest Half Mile." Officially, it seats 153,000. But when the Tennessee Volunteers and the Virginia Tech Hokies played each other there on September 10, 2016, the attendance was a new record for a game of the sport the rest of the world calls "American football": 156,990.

The current NFL record is 112,376, for an exhibition game at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City in 1994. The Houston Oilers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 6-0. The biggest crowd for a regular-season game was 105,121 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on September 20, 2009. The Cowboys lost this one, too, to the New York Giants, 33-31.

Here's what the 156,990 at "The Battle at Bristol" saw. Tech scored 2 touchdowns in the 1st quarter, for a 14-0 lead. The Volunteers took over from there, scoring 31 unanswered points: 4 touchdowns and a field goal, making it 31-14. The Hokies added a field goal to close it to within 31-17 at the end of 3 quarters.

The Vols scored 2 more touchdowns in the 4th quarter. The Hokies added a touchdown, but that would be it: Tennessee 45, Virginia Tech 24. Tech football is known for 2 things: Michael Vick and good defense. On this night, they had neither.

Tennessee went 9-4, staying at home for the postseason, winning the Music City Bowl in Nashville. Virginia Tech went 10-4, winning the Coastal Division of the ACC, losing the ACC Championship Game to Clemson, and winning the Belk Bowl (now the Duke's Mayo Bowl) in Charlotte.

*

September 10, 2016 was a Saturday. These other notable college football games were played that day:

* Number 1 Alabama beat Western Kentucky, 38-10 at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

* Number 2 Clemson beat Troy, 30-24 at Clemson Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.

* Number 3 Florida State beat Charleston Southern at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida.

* Number 4 Ohio State beat the University of Tulsa, 48-3 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio.

* Number 5 Michigan beat Central Florida, 51-14 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

* Number 6 University of Houston beat Lamar University, 42-0 at TDECU Stadium in Houston.

* Number 8 University of Washington beat Idaho, 59-14 at Husky Stadium in Seattle.

* Number 9 Georgia beat Nicholls State, 26-24 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia.

* Number 10 Wisconsin beat the University of Akron, 54-1 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.

* Number 15 Texas Christian (TCU) were upset by Arkansas at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas.

* Number 22 Oklahoma State were upset by Central Michigan, 30-27 at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

* In a major rivalry, the University of Pittsburgh beat Penn State, 42-39 at Heinz Field (now Acrisure Stadium) in Pittsburgh.

* Among the service academies, Army beat Rice, 31-14 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York; Navy beat the University of Connecticut, 28-24 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland; and Air Force beat Georgia State, 48-14 at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

* And Rutgers beat Howard University, 52-14 at High Points Solutions Stadium (now SHI Stadium) in Piscataway, New Jersey.

It was a little early for the NBA and NHL seasons to start. But these baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Masahiro Tanaka was the winning pitcher, and home runs were hit by two men who became pariahs among Yankee Fans, Jacoby Ellsbury and Gary Sánchez.

* The New York Mets lost to the Atlanta Braves, 4-3 at Turner Field (now Center Parc Stadium) in Atlanta. Adonis Garcia singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The Washington Nationals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0 at Nationals Park in Washington. How many Nats pitchers does it take to pitch a 5-hit shutout? This time, 4: Max Scherzer, 6 2/3rds innings; Marc Rzepczynski, 1 inning; Shawn Kelley, 1/3rd of an inning, faced only one batter, but, because he was their pitcher when the Nats took the lead, on a 3-run home run by Bryce Harper in the bottom of the 8th, he was credited as the winning pitcher; and Mark Melancon, who got the save.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Miami Marlins, 5-0 at Marlins Park (now LoanDepot Park) in Miami. How many Dodger pitchers does it take to pitch a 2-hit shutout? Also 4. At least this time, the starter got the win: Rich Hill pitched 7 no-hit innings, before manager Dave Roberts replaced him with Joe Blanton, who allowed a hit in the 8th; Grant Dayton allowed a hit in the 9th, and Kenley Jansen got the last out.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat their arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-7 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 11-3 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-5 at U.S. Cellular Field (soon to be renamed Guaranteed Rate Field, and now named just Rate Field) in Chicago.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Cleveland Indians, 2-1 at Target Field in Minneapolis. Joe Mauer singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 12th inning.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-1 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 11-3 at Chase Field in Phoenix.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Colorado Rockies, 6-3 at Petco Park in San Diego.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Los Angeles Angels, 8-5 at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics, 14-3 at the Oakland Coliseum.

And in English soccer, Arsenal beat Hampshire team Southampton, 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium in North London.