The Syracuse New Times took former Orangemen head coach Dick MacPherson’s’ return to Syracuse to serve as Grand Marshal for the town’s St. Patrick’s Day parade as another opportunity to revisit the single most traumatizing event in Orangemen football history: Pat Dye’s (understandable and unrepentant) decision to kick a field goal in the 1988 Sugar Bowl.
Curiously, MacPherson seems to think that going for the tie was, somehow, the beginning of the end for Dye:
Q: How about that 1988 Sugar Bowl game against Auburn? What were your thoughts when Auburn head coach Pat Dye decided to tie the game with a field goal as time expired?
A: The thing about it was that was the last year before they changed that rule. When you think of Auburn, and the mean, tough, nasty and real great hard-nosed football players, Pat Dye epitomized that and that’s the last guy you’d think would go for a tie in the ball game. It was a shock to me. But on the same token, if I had ever known that, there were a lot of other things I could have done. The thing that {Dye} always said was you had a fourth-and-6 that could have put us in the bag and he was right. But I think a lot of people in Syracuse were very unhappy. And it was the same old story: {Dye} didn’t last too long after that, but he was the king of the world going into it.
“…that was the last year before they changed that rule”
Per Wikipedia (the grandaddy of online resources) CFB overtime didn’t start until 1996. Dick MacPherson is an asshat who can KMA!
Yea…5 more years (until he retired due to health problems), 2 SEC Championships, entering the college FB hall of fame, and beating an unbeaten #2 ranked hated rival on our home turf (after fighting for the right to decide where to we play our own home games) – yea…that sure was the beginning of end for Dye.
Coach Mac…if you wanted to win you should have scored more points (especially in the worst officiated Sugar Bowl ever…and the next one was pretty bad too), but hindsight is 50-50. If YOU weren’t such a gutless coward you might have the field at the Carrier Dome named after you too.
Pat Dye’s decision to go for the tie was one of the mostly cowardly and dishonorable in all of college football. Truly a shameful black mark on Auburn’s reputation.