1988 NCAA Division I-A Football Season
UCLA's Bruins, featuring stellar quarterback Troy Aikman, had attained the #1 ranking for weeks 7 and 8 after demolishing then #2 Nebraska 41-28, before sustaining a huge upset loss to unheralded Washington State 34-30 in week 9, opening the door for Notre Dame. The 1988 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with Notre Dame winning the national championship. The Fighting Irish won the title via a 34-21 defeat of previously unbeaten West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona.
Notre Dame had several notable victories this season, including a 19–17 victory over #9 Michigan, won on a last drive field goal, which started off the championship season. The season's marquee game was a 31–30 victory over #1 Miami. Entering the game, Miami had a 36 game regular season winning streak, 20 straight road victories and a 16 game winning streak overall. This year was also the first time Notre Dame and USC had ever met when ranked #1 and #2. Most notable about this game is Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz's decision to leave behind two of his stars, Tony Brooks and Ricky Watters because they were late, cementing discipline as the main theme of this championship team.
This year's edition of the UCLA-USC rivalry game featured a second ranked USC and a fourth ranked UCLA. For the second year in a row the Rose Bowl berth was on the line but for USC it also had national title implications as the rivalry game with Notre Dame was the following week. USC beat UCLA but lost to Notre Dame, and then lost to Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
Oklahoma State running back Barry Sanders ran the Wing T offense all the way to the Heisman Trophy and numerous rushing records.
Read more about 1988 NCAA Division I-A Football Season: Conference Standings
Famous quotes containing the words division, football and/or season:
“Affection, indulgence, and humor alike are powerless against the instinct of children to rebel. It is essential to their minds and their wills as exercise is to their bodies. If they have no reasons, they will invent them, like nations bound on war. It is hard to imagine families limp enough always to be at peace. Wherever there is character there will be conflict. The best that children and parents can hope for is that the wounds of their conflict may not be too deep or too lasting.”
—New York State Division of Youth Newsletter (20th century)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)