Eric The Great

A Sliver of daylight was all he needed. Breaking free of his last pursuers, Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch broke into the clear and rushed into the arms of his mother, Susan. Their embrace took place outside the wrought-iron gates of Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday amid a scarlet sea of autograph-seeking Corn-huskers fans. In overtime an hour earlier, Susan's oldest son used his trademark burst to beat a pair of Irish defenders to the left corner of the end zone. His third touchdown of the day made the final score 27-24, averting a stunning upset and ending one of the best games of this young college football season.

The 15th meeting of these two teams, both steeped in tradition, took place in an atmosphere rich in humidity and cupidity. Despite the admonitions of Irish coach Bob Davie, who had tut-tutted in the days before the game that real Notre Dame fans would never stoop so low as to sell their tickets to Nebraska fans, a solid third of the 80,000-plus in attendance arrived in red. As Nebraska tuba player David Franzen gazed at the dense concentrations of Huskers faithful in the south end zone-reserved for Notre Dame faculty and staff, among others—he said, "Maybe they should pay their professors a little more."

If their mass migration from Lincoln to South Bend did not reflect a near-certainty among members of Husker Nation that their top-ranked team would make short work of the No. 23-ranked Irish, their behavior on campus tended to. Typical was this exchange, overheard outside the Grotto between one thirtysomething guy and his buddy in a DA CORN T-shirt:

"Wanna stop and say a prayer?"

"Nah. We don't need to pray."

Several Cornhuskers were similarly self-assured, foremost among them senior middle linebacker Carlos Polk, who told the Omaha World-Herald, "As far as I know, Touchdown Jesus is a Nebraska fan."

Teams dismiss Notre Dame's mosscovered mojo at their own risk. The Irish have made a habit of knocking off No. 1-ranked teams. (Their eight victories in such situations are more than any other team's.) Indeed, after Nebraska took a 21-7 lead early in the third quarter, the field-its grass left long to slow the speedier visitors—seemed to tilt in favor of the home team. Notre Dame's Julius Jones took a kickoff back 100 yards, and Joey Getherall hauled a punt 83 yards to bring the Irish even and force overtime.

Notre Dame's defeat was the result, in part, of its failure to execute its defensive game plan, reducible to two words: Stop Crouch. While he throws (albeit sparingly) a nice ball, the quicksilver junior from Omaha is lethal as a runner. On an innocuous-looking belly option late in the first quarter, Crouch exploded into the secondary and was gone for a 62-yard score. His second touchdown came on a one-yard sneak with 2:24 left before half-time and capped a more typical Cornhuskers possession, a 15-play geological epoch of a drive. Nebraska coach Frank Solich, explaining his decision to keep the ball in Crouch's hands in crunch time, said, "He's a guy who does not get excited, does not get flustered."

Well, not usually. There was that time in August of last year when Crouch left Lincoln in a huff and drove home to Omaha, where he contemplated quitting football. He had spent the preseason in a dogfight with Bobby Newcombe for the starting job. To the surprise of many in Huskerland who thought Crouch had out-performed his teammate, Newcombe got the nod. Crouch got out of town.

"I have a lot of respect for scout-team guys who stick it out five years and never play," says Crouch, "but that's not me. I need to be on the field. Even if it's Division III, I just want to play. So I went home. I was frustrated. I needed to step away, to evaluate what I wanted from my life."