Time doesn’t cure all ills. Or at least it didn’t for ex-Virginia running back Nikki Fisher.
“Haunted,” is the adjective Fisher uses to describe the 25 years since then-No. 1 Virginia entertained No. 7 Georgia Tech on Nov. 3, 1990.
Those same two programs will face off Saturday at Scott Stadium in a Halloween affair that is certain to bring back some eerie memories.
“I think about it all the time,” said Fisher, now in the coliseum management business and living in Wilmington, North Carolina. “It was so heartbreaking for me personally. On the day after the game, I sat with my head in my hands in our film room. I couldn’t watch.”
Unbeaten Virginia led 28-14 at the half, only to fall 41-38 on a 37-yard field goal by Georgia Tech’s Scott Sisson with seven seconds remaining.
Fisher was one of three Virginia teammates from Martinsville High School, including All-America quarterback Shawn Moore and tight end Mark Cooke, a two-sport participant who had gone to UVa on a basketball scholarship.
All had a major role in the game, headed by Moore, who passed for a school-record 344 yards in that game. Nine of his 18 completions went to Danville’s Herman Moore, whose 234 receiving yards were a career high.
Fisher will always remember a third-quarter swing pass from Shawn Moore that went through his hands and caromed off his helmet. Georgia Tech’s Calvin Tiggle swooped in for an interception, taking the ball to the UVa 48.
“Very rarely did I get passes,” Fisher said. “I wanted to get more pass plays and was very vocal about it. I wanted to be more than a between-the-tackles running back. When that pass went awry, I felt I let down so many people.”
Not worth obsessing
Fisher couldn’t say what happened after Tiggle’s interception. Maybe that’s because nothing happened. The turnover may have “flipped” the field, but Georgia Tech didn’t score.
Salem’s David Sweeney, the Cavaliers’ fullback, can vouch for that. He chased down Tiggle outside scoring range.
“I obsessed about it for years,” Fisher said. “I think my first five years out of school, I didn’t go back [to UVa] at all. The underlying piece for me was that one play.”
Cooke, now a general manager for Pepsi in southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee, was involved in a more significant play than Fisher’s “but I got over mine a lot quicker,” he said.
The Cavaliers were trailing 38-35 before Moore connected with tight end Aaron Mundy on an apparent 1-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal. However, the play was nullified by penalty.
Virginia was whistled for an illegal formation. The Cavaliers had only 10 players on the field, which was permissible but they had only six of the required seven players on the line of scrimmage.
The Cavaliers could have taken a lead at 42-38, meaning it would have taken more than a field goal for Georgia Tech to win.
“I’ve taken the heat for that one for a long team,” said Cooke, the Cavaliers’ No. 2 tight end that day with regular Bruce McGonnigal sidelined by a ruptured spleen.
The play called for two tight ends and Cooke was heading to the field when he was held back by one of the coaches. Cooke’s version of the situation was confirmed when he saw former offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill at a reunion of UVa’s 1989 team.
“He told me that he remembered watching film the next day and seeing one of the coaches grabbing me and stopping me from going on the field,” Cooke said.
When the group assembled last year, Cooke reminded some of his defensive teammates that all they needed was hold the Yellow Jackets to 37 points.
“That wasn’t such a big ask,” he said.
Uplifting moment
George Welsh was in the ninth season of what became a 19-year UVa coaching career and was opposed by Bobby Ross, then in his fourth season at Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets finished the season 11-0-1 and were named the UPI (coaches poll) national champion. They finished second to Colorado in the AP (writers) poll. Ross remained at Georgia Tech for one more year before heading to the NFL.
At the end of the 2004 season, Ross took the San Diego Chargers to the Super Bowl. Orignally from Richmond, where he lives in retirement, he was the head coach for 206 games at the college level and 145 in the NFL.
“That game [with UVa] would be in the top five,” Ross said this week. “After the game, the players said, ‘We want your father in here.’ And, sure enough, they gave him the game ball. It was one of his proudest moments.
“It was a special time for me. My oldest son had just lost a child, [who] was born with multiple heart defects. On the day of the game, I got a call from my son who said his wife was pregnant again and doing well.”
Another proud moment occurred the next week by way of the postal service.
“On the day before the game, [Richmond sports editor] Bill Millsaps was up there and he ran into my wife,” Ross said. “He was telling my wife there was no way we would win. Her upper lip kind of stiffened and she said, ‘Let’s make a bet.’
“She said, “Bobby likes Almond Joy candy bars, so let’s bet some candy bars on this thing.’ Sure enough, about a week later, I get a whole box of Almond Joy candy bars.”
‘How could we?’
Ross was able to get tickets for 34 family members in a crowd of 49,700, the largest assemblage at Scott Stadium prior to a subsequent expansion, and thinks the demand could have reached 80,000.
“We could have put them away; they never did stop us,” said Welsh of an afternoon when the Cavaliers had 512 yards in total offense.
And, the Cavaliers could have been even more potent if not for an off-field accident suffered by McGonnigal, a first-team All-ACC selection in 1989 who had more than 100 receptions in his career.
According to the most widely circulated account, McGonnigal was helping his girlfriend look for a lost dog when he fell over an embankment. Cooke said the subject never came up during last year’s reunion.
“It’s a secret,” Cooke said. “You know how those college years are.”
It’s hard to say how much the UVa passing game suffered that day because Herman Moore had receptions for 63, 48, 44 and 36 yards.
“How could we not have won that game?” said Herman Moore, who once held the NFL single-season record for receptions. “We had a string of losses after that, but I remember that as the time of my life.”
Virginia went on to lose four of its last five games, including a 23-22 setback against Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl as Shawn Moore returned to action after breaking his right (throwing) thumb.
“The thing about the loss to Georgia Tech, it was one of the greatest football games ever played,” Shawn Moore said.
“It was unfortunate for us that we lost the game and lost our No. 1 ranking, but to be part of that game was an unbelievable feeling.”
