The UL Ragin’ Cajuns will face the Tulane Green Wave at 11 a.m. Saturday at Cajun Field.
No doubt some former Cajuns will be in the stands with a game from 50 years ago still weighing on their minds.
“Every time we play Tulane, I think about that game … every time,” said Rick Keating, a sophomore tight end at the time, of UL’s 17-16 loss to the Green Wave on Sept. 14, 1974, at Tulane Stadium. “It was kind of like Hoosiers or Miracle on Ice, except we lost by a point. It wasn’t supposed to be anywhere close to that.”
The Augie Tammariello coaching era for the Cajuns was supposed to begin the week before against Arkansas State, but Hurricane Carmen postponed that game until the end of the season.
In 1973, the Cajuns were 0-10 and longtime coach Russ Faulkinberry was fired.
“I mean we were just skin and bones with very little experience and no confidence,” Tammariello said. “We didn’t even have a quarterback that spring.”
Coming off a winless season, Tammariello did some purging, making the roster even younger.
“Practices were so hard,” said Brady Muth, a freshman defensive lineman. “Every day was two-a-days. I can remember going into the bathroom and guys would be packing their bags and leaving.
“I’d say, ‘Where you going?’ They said, ‘I’m quitting,' going on about how hard it was. I asked one of the guys, ‘It wasn’t like that at your high school?’ and they looked at me like I had 10 heads.”
All Muth could compare it to was his practices at Rummel in Metairie, where he said coaches gave him 4 ounces of a "Raiderade" concoction filled with Kool-aid, sugar and salt twice during a two-hour practice. At Southwestern Louisiana, the former name of UL, he got two 12-ounce water sessions for a 2.5-hour practice.
A week before the regular season, so many players had left that the coaching staff moved Muth from linebacker to defensive end.
“We started four freshman defensive linemen — all high school players,” Tammariello said.
On the bus ride to New Orleans, Tammariello read in the newspaper that his young group was a 55-point underdog to Tulane.
“I remember listening to Hap Glaudi in the hotel room the Friday night before the game saying he was expecting Tulane to win like 60-0,” Keating said.
While the Cajuns were winless the prior season, the Green Wave had a 9-3 record that included a win over LSU for the first time in 25 years, a No. 20 national ranking and a Bluebonnet Bowl appearance.
“When we got on the bus to go to the stadium, I was so nervous that I needed to throw up,” Muth said. “I did once we got to the game. USL was my only offer. I didn’t think I’d be getting on the field for two years, and there I was starting as a freshman in my hometown.”
The unforgettable aspects of this strange game began to happen in pregame.
“It was the first time I had ever played on artificial turf,” Keating said. “Then going out on the field to start the game, we had students lined up to make a tunnel for us to run through. I had never seen that before and I hadn’t seen it since.”
It got even more unpredictable once the game started.
The Cajuns had a freshman kicker named Rafael Septien, who booted the opening kickoff out of the end zone.
“We stuffed them for a three-and-out and they punted and man, it was like we had won the Super Bowl,” Muth said. “They didn’t make an inch and it went on all night like that pretty much.”
On the Cajuns’ first drive, Septien smashed a school-record 50-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead.
“Tulane was laughing when he came out,” Muth said. “Back then, people didn’t kick 50-yard field goals. Septien could do it with either foot. He was so hyped up, it was like an explosion when he kicked it.
“It was a big hook right down the middle. Dude, it was unbelievable. We were leading. I couldn’t believe it.”
The Cajuns jumped out to a 10-0 lead after Emmanuel Guidry’s 21-yard touchdown run, led 13-7 at the half and was clinging to a 16-14 lead in the game’s final minutes.
Septien finished with field goals of 49 and 33 yards as well, but he did miss one attempt.
Offensively, USL was running the veer after bringing Barry Pollard in to play quarterback in the fall. Pollard was 75-of-163 passing for 848 yards with three touchdowns and 13 interceptions. Ulysses Abadie (25-366, 1 TD) was his top receiver.
“We were playing a new defense — an eight-man front that Jerry Claiborne used at Virginia Tech,” Tammariello said. “It was very confusing for them. I don’t think Tulane was ready for that. We kind of fooled them with the defense we were running.”
That’s when more curious things transpired, according to Tammariello.
Tulane quarterback Steve Foley — a future All-Pro safety for the Denver Broncos — orchestrated a 75-yard, game-winning drive that the Cajuns, to this day, claim was bogus.
“There was less than three minutes left and they were on their own 20,” Tammariello said. “He (Foley) threw a pass that was caught at the 50, but he was across the line of scrimmage. It was an illegal forward pass. But the referee on that side turned his head to watch the ball and he didn’t see it.”
A few plays later, Foley heaved a long pass and “their receiver and our corner inadvertently got tangled up with each other and the ball goes out of the end zone into the stands at the back of the old stadium," Tammariello said. “The back judge is waving incomplete pass and the guy on the sideline that blew the call on the illegal forward pass grabs his flag and throws his flag that it was pass interference.”
Tammariello — still emotional 50 years later — insists the collision took place at the USL 12 but the ball was placed at the 2.
Tulane tried two runs to score, but “we stuffed them both times,” Muth said.
Then David Falgoust kicked a 19-yard field goal with 15 seconds left to squash the Cajuns’ upset bid.
“It was devastating,” Muth said. “We were all crying, but the USL fans in the stands, they were just excited almost like we won the game — 0-10 the year before and 55-point underdogs. We won the game instead of the last few seconds.”
Muth said he met former Rummel teammate Rick Kelly at midfield.
“He found me in the middle of the field and said, ‘Brady, man, y’all kicked our butts. I can’t believe it. That was unbelievable,’ ” Muth said. “We recently reconnected and he told me the Tulane coach told all the freshmen to get ready to play because y’all might be in the game in the second quarter, but you’ll definitely be playing in the second half. He (Kelly) said he never got on the field.”
The night before the game, captain David Neustrom — weary from the 0-10 season before — implored his teammates to run sprints after the game on the field as a gesture of “trying as hard as they could no matter how the game went.”
When Tammariello got to an empty locker room, “I thought I don’t have any players. They all quit and went home.”
He soon learned they were still on the field doing wind sprints … and not alone.
“Everyone from the USL section was already on the field and they started running those sprints with us — all the drunk fraternity boys were out there running with us,” Keating said.
It became a routine.
“We did it every game that year,” Muth said. “There had to be 200 students down there running sprints with us. We almost didn’t have enough room. It was unbelievable. I’m getting kind of choked up now talking about it.”
After the heartbreaking, yet encouraging, loss at Tulane, the Cajuns won only two games that season, but Tammariello’s program improved to 6-5 in his third year before going 9-2 in 1976.
The secrets to the quick rise was his coaching staff and an influx of transfers, according to the coach.
“I was fortunate to get guys coming from great programs — places like Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas State and East Carolina,” Tammariello said. “(Offensive coordinator) Larry Zeno was just a terrific play-caller. He was an All-American at UCLA at quarterback.”
The staff included future Saints offensive coordinator Carl Smith.
“I was the only guy I ever saw Carl Smith yell at,” Muth, who credited the coaches with giving him the courage to fly jets in the Navy for 20 years, said with a laugh. “Some kind of way I made him mad.”
By the second season, the Cajuns had a quarterback from Notre Dame; linemen from Washington, Arizona and Texas A&M; and a cornerback from SMU.
“We were doing the portal long before the portal,” Tammariello said. “It was such a fun time for us. I loved every minute I had down there.”
That 1974 Tulane game was the first meeting between the two schools since 1930. The Green Wave would win the next five meetings, including close calls of 17-15 in 1983 and 42-39 in 1985. The Cajuns got their first win in the series 51-34 in 1988 and have beaten Tulane five more times since.
“That was one of the most exciting games to me in the history of football,” Muth said of the win in 1988.
When former USL players gather for Saturday’s game, the conversation will be centered around the one that got away.
“It’s been 50 years, but I think about that game all the time,” Muth said.